Ōmeyōcān

Description

In the highest layer of heaven, known as Ōmeyōcān or “place of duality,” a divine pair resided. The Florentine Codex describes this realm as “the place of duality, above the nine-tired heavens.” According to a Nahuatl source translated by the Franciscan priest André Thevet in the Histoyre du Mechique, a god called Ometecuhtli—meaning “two-gods”—existed there, and one of these was a goddess. Multiple sources, including the Codex Ríos, the History of the Mexicans as Told by Their Paintings, the Histoyre du Mechique, and the Florentine Codex, state that the fertility and creation goddess Tōnacācihuātl and her counterpart Tōnacātēcuhtli lived in Ōmeyōcān, where they made human souls and sent them to earth.

Sahagún clarifies that these names are epithets of Ōmetēcuhtli (“two-lord”) and Ōmecihuātl (“two-lady”), and he gives an alternate name for Ōmeyōcān: “in tōnacātēcuhtli īchān,” or “the mansion of Tōnacātēcuhtli.” Some evidence suggests these two gods were seen as aspects of a single being. In the Cantares Mexicanos, a singer asks where he can go, noting that “they, God, stand double.” The History of the Mexicans as Told by Their Paintings reports that the pair created themselves and had always been in the thirteenth heaven; nothing was ever known of their beginning, only their dwelling and creation there.

In the Florentine Codex, Sahagún records that Aztec midwives, after bathing a newborn, would say: “You were created in the place of duality, the place above the nine heavens. Your mother and father—Ōmetēcuhtli and Ōmecihuātl, the heavenly lady—formed you, created you.” A song from the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca includes the phrase “ay ōmeteōtl ya tēyōcoyani,” meaning “two-god, creator of humanity.” The Codex Ríos states that Ōmeyōcān “means the place where the creator of all things—or the First Cause—exists. They also name it Hometeule.”