It is told that when it was still night, when there was no day, when there was still no light, they got together, the gods met at Teotihuacan.
They said: "Come here, oh gods! Who will be in charge of making the day, of bringing light?”
Right away Tecuciztecatl presented himself and said:
- "it will be me, I will do it!" Then the gods asked: - "who else will help him?"
The gods looked at each other with fear, -How can we do it?
No one dared to show their face. All the gods were frightened and backed away. Nobody made themselves visible. Nanahuatzin, one of those gods, was sitting by them, he was listening to everything that they said. Then the gods turned to him and told him:
-"It will be you, oh Nanahuatzin!" He then quickly answered with enthusiasm:
- "that's good, oh gods, you have been good to me."
Nanahuatzin and Tecuciztecatl were doing their penance while the other gods turned on a bonfire so that the one who would throw himself into it would turn into the sun. Tecuiztecatl offered feathers from a bird called quetzal, golden balls, precious stones, coral and copal. Nanahuatzin offered green reed and thorns of agaves covered with his blood. At midnight the penance was finished and the ceremony begun. They turned on the fire of creation and ordered Tecuciztecatl to get in. But he got scared and backed off. He tryed again but he backed off once again. He did this four times. Then it was Nanahuatzin´s turn, who closed his eyes, got into the fire and burned. When the wealthy god ( Tecuciztecatl) saw him he did the same thing. Then an eagle flew into the fire and got burned, too (For this reason the eagle has dark feathers) . After that a tiger jumped in, scorched itself and got black and white stains. The gods then sat down and waited to see from which part Nanahuatzin was going to come out; the gods looked east and saw the sun coming out with very red colour. They could not look at it and it threw beams everywhere. They looked east again and saw the moon. At first the two gods were shinig equally, so one of the gods there threw a rabit to the wealthy god's face and this way it became less shiny. But the sun was not moving. Therefore the other gods decided to sacrifice themselves and die in order to give the sun movement, and it is because of the gods' sacrifice that the sun started to move around the sky and for this reason there is night and day.
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