This has often been made use of by one set of writers to prove that Quetzalcoatl was some Christian teacher; and by others as evidence that these native tales were of a date subsequent to the Conquest.  But a moment’s consideration of the meaning of this cruciform symbol as revealed in its native names shows where it belongs and what it refers to.  These names are three, and their significations are, “The Rain-God,” “The Tree of our Life,” “The God of Strength."[1] As the rains fertilize the fields and ripen the food crops, so he who sends them is indeed the prop or tree of our subsistence, and thus becomes the giver of health and strength.  No other explanation is needed, or is, in fact, allowable.

[Footnote 1:  The Aztec words are Quiahuitl teotl, quiahuitl, rain, teotl, god; Tonacaquahuitl, from to, our, naca, flesh or life, quahuitl, tree; Chicahualizteotl, from chicahualiztli, strength or courage, and teotl, god.  These names are given by Ixtlilxochitl, Historia chichimeca, cap. i.]

The winds and rains come from the four cardinal points.  This fact was figuratively represented by a cruciform figure, the ends directed toward each of these.  The God of the Four Winds bore these crosses as one of his emblems.  The sign came to be connected with fertility, reproduction and life, through its associations as a symbol of the rains which restore the parched fields and aid in the germination of seeds.  Their influence in this respect is most striking in those southern countries where a long dry season is followed by heavy tropical showers, which in a few days change the whole face of nature, from one of parched sterility to one of a wealth of vegetable growth.

As there is a close connection, in meteorology, between the winds and the rains, so in Aztec mythology, there was an equally near one between Quetzalcoatl, as the god of the winds, and the gods of rain, Tlaloc and his sister, or wife, or mother, Chalchihuitlicue.  According to one myth, these were created by the four primeval brother-gods, and placed in the heavens, where they occupy a large mansion divided into four apartments, with a court in the middle.  In this court stand four enormous vases of water, and an infinite number of very small slaves (the rain drops) stand ready to dip out the water from one or the other vase and pour it on the earth in showers.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Ramirez de Fuen-leal, Historia de los Mexicanos, cap. ii.]

Tlaloc means, literally, “The wine of the Earth,"[1] the figure being that as man’s heart is made glad, and his strength revived by the joyous spirit of wine, so is the soil refreshed and restored by the rains. Tlaloc tecutli, the Lord of the Wine of the Earth, was the proper title of the male divinity, who sent the fertilizing showers, and thus caused the seed to grow in barren places.  It was he who gave abundant crops and saved the parched and dying grain after times of drought.  Therefore, he was appealed to as the giver of good things, of corn and wine; and the name of his home, Tlalocan, became synonymous with that of the terrestrial paradise.