At times he was painted with a large hat and flowing robe, and was then called “Father of the Sons of the Clouds,” that is, of the rain drops.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Diego Duran, Historia, in Kingsborough, viii, p. 267.]

These various representations doubtless referred to him at different parts of his chequered career, and as a god under different manifestations of his divine nature.  The religious art of the Aztecs did not demand any uniformity in this respect.

Sec.5. The Return of Quetzalcoatl.

Quetzalcoatl was gone.

Whether he had removed to the palace prepared for him in Tlapallan, whether he had floated out to sea on his wizard raft of serpent skins, or whether his body had been burned on the sandy sea strand and his soul had mounted to the morning star, the wise men were not agreed.  But on one point there was unanimity.  Quetzalcoatl was gone; but he would return.

In his own good time, in the sign of his year, when the ages were ripe, once more he would come from the east, surrounded by his fair-faced retinue, and resume the sway of his people and their descendants.  Tezcatlipoca had conquered, but not for aye.  The immutable laws which had fixed the destruction of Tollan assigned likewise its restoration.  Such was the universal belief among the Aztec race.

For this reason Quetzalcoatl’s statue, or one of them, was in a reclining position and covered with wrappings, signifying that he was absent, “as of one who lays him down to sleep, and that when he should awake from that dream of absence, he should rise to rule again the land."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana, Lib. vi, cap. xxiv.  So in Egyptian mythology Tum was called “the concealed or imprisoned god, in a physical sense the Sun-god in the darkness of night, not revealing himself, but alive, nevertheless.”  Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, p. 77.]

He was not dead.  He had indeed built mansions underground, to the Lord of Mictlan, the abode of the dead, the place of darkness, but he himself did not occupy them.[1] Where he passed his time was where the sun stays at night.  As this, too, is somewhere beneath the level of the earth, it was occasionally spoken of as Tlillapa, The Murky Land,[2] and allied therefore to Mictlan.  Caverns led down to it, especially one south of Chapultepec, called Cincalco, “To the Abode of Abundance,” through whose gloomy corridors one could reach the habitation of the sun and the happy land still governed by Quetzalcoatl and his lieutenant Totec.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Sahagun, Historia, Lib. iii. cap. ult.]

[Footnote 2:  Mendieta, Hist.  Eclesiast.  Indiana, Lib. ii, cap. v.  The name is from tlilli, something dark, obscure.]

[Footnote 3:  Sahagun, Historia, Lib. xii, cap. ix; Duran, Historia, cap. lxviii; Tezozomoc, Cron.  Mexicana, cap. ciii.  Sahagun and Tezozomoc give the name Cincalco, To the House of Maize, i.e., Fertility, Abundance, the Paradise.  Duran gives Cicalco, and translates it “casa de la liebre,” citli, hare, calli, house, co locative.  But this is, no doubt, an error, mistaking citli for cintli, maize.]