Every year a flawless young captive warrior lived as a god in Tenochtitlan, draped in jade and gold, playing clay flutes as citizens knelt before him, knowing that in twelve months he would climb a pyramid and be sacrificed. This deep dive builds a biography of the deity he embodied: Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, Aztec god of the night sky, the invisible night wind, divination, and change through conflict.

We trace his roots in older Maya deities of obsidian and lightning, his creation of the earth by dangling his own foot as bait for the crocodilian monster Cipactli, and his cosmic rivalry with Quetzalcoatl across the Five Suns. We then decode his iconography in the codices, the self-abasing coronation prayers of Aztec kings, and the full mechanics of the Toxcatl festival and its deity impersonator, before asking what flutes you might  ...