Huitzilopochtli has no childhood. In the story that shaped the Aztec Empire, his mother Coatlicue is impregnated by a ball of feathers on Coatepec, her 400 sons and her daughter Coyolxauhqui march to kill her, and he bursts from the womb fully armed with the fire serpent, decapitating his sister and scattering his brothers across the sky. This episode reads that myth as an astronomical blueprint, with the sun defeating the moon and stars every dawn, and explains why a tiny hummingbird, observed by the friar Diego Duran entering winter torpor and reviving in spring, made sense as the emblem of a war god.

The discussion covers how the political reformer Tlacaelel elevated a minor tribal patron to the level of ancient gods like Tlaloc, the migration from Aztlan and the renaming of the people as Mexica, the abandoned sorceress sister Malinalxoc ...