Xolotl

In Aztec mythic tradition Xolotl is the canine twin or brother of Quetzalcōātl and participates in creation episodes and the cycle of suns. Notably, in the retrieval-of-bones myth Xolotl accompanies Quetzalcōātl into Mictlān to obtain the bones of prior peoples so that humans for the present era can be remade. In one account Xolotl refuses or withdraws from a sacrificial act, transforms repeatedly (into doubled plant forms and an amphibious animal) to avoid being sacrificed, and in some versions is later slain—narratives that place him among the gods whose deaths or sacrifices enable cosmic renewal. Scholarly readings (e.g., Eduard Seler as reported in summaries) interpret his twin status as part of a darkness/lightness twin motif, though this interpretation is an academic hypothesis recorded in secondary sources.

Sources commonly depict Xolotl as a dog-headed man, a skeletal canine, or a deformed monster often shown with reversed feet; pictorial manuscripts and ethnographic summaries also associate him with torch- or lightning-bearing canine imagery. Material-culture attestations linked in summaries include censers and representations interpreted as skeletal canines, and archaeological finds of dog remains and dog sculptures in burials that connect the deity's canine aspect to funerary practice. A Teotihuacan legend recorded in sources offers an explanatory motif for his empty eye sockets (he wept so much his eyes fell out), which appears in artistic representation.

Xolotl is described as a psychopomp who guides the dead to Mictlān and as the necessary escort for souls (hence dogs placed with the dead), a protector and helper for Quetzalcōātl in underworld retrievals of bones, and a transformer who in myths changes into doubled plant forms and an amphibious creature (linked to the axolotl) to evade sacrifice. He is also identified with fire and lightning and with the evening aspect of Venus (the Evening Star), and is associated with misfortune, sickness, monsters, twins, and deformity—domains that mark boundary states and anomalous conditions in Aztec cosmology.