Patecatl

Patécatl (in the normalized classical Nahuatl spelling Pahtēcatl, literally 'He of the Remedies' or 'Lord of the Medicinal Roots') is the venerable Mexica deity of herbal pharmacopoeia, botanical healing, and the sacred chemical process of pulque (octli) fermentation. Husband of the agave goddess Mayahuel and mythical progenitor of the Centzon Totochtin ('The Four Hundred Rabbits', the divine band of ritual drunkenness), Patécatl is celebrated in sixteenth-century texts as the discoverer of the ocpatli root, a plant that, when crushed and macerated in the sweet aguamiel drawn from the maguey, accelerated fermentation and prevented the fermented drink from spoiling. Revered as the spiritual patron of traditional physicians, surgeons and Indigenous apothecaries (ticitl), Patécatl embodied the ancestral science of pain relief, fever reduction and the ritual use of psychoactive substances for oracular and therapeutic ends. In the tonalpohualli divinatory calendar he governed the eleventh trecena (beginning on day 1-Monkey), wearing lunar insignia that connected him to the rhythms of plant growth and the fertility of earthly waters.

5 min read · Reviewed on September 30, 2026 · How we research

The medicinal herbs, the fermentation root, the axe and the pulque

Primary sources

• Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and Collaborators of Tlatelolco, Florentine Codex: Book 1 (Chapter 22: Gods of Pulque) and Book 10 (Ticitl Physicians). translation: Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, Florentine Codex: Book 10 - The People (University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 1961). read
• Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, Tratado de las supersticiones y costumbres gentílicas (1629). translation: J. Richard Andrews and Ross Hassig, Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1984, Treatise IV). read
• Traditional Tlacuilos of Anáhuac, Codex Borgia (Plates 13 and 62: Trecena of 1-Ozomahtli). translation: Eduard Seler, Comentarios al Códice Borgia (tomo I, Fondo de Cultura Económica, México, 1963). read
• Nahua Scribes of Tepeapulco (edition by Paso y Troncoso), Primeros Memoriales (Códices Matritenses de Sahagún). translation: Facsimile ed. by Francisco del Paso y Troncoso (Fototipia Hauser y Menet, Madrid, 1905, folio 259v). read

Studies

• Oswaldo Gonçalves de Lima, El maguey y el pulque en los códices mexicanos (chemical and historical study of the ocpatli). Fondo de Cultura Económica, Cidade do México, 1956. open
• Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, Medicina, salud y nutrición de los antiguos mexicanos. Siglo XXI Editores, Cidade do México, 1993. open
• Henry B. Nicholson, Religion in Pre-Hispanic Central Mexico (Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 10). University of Texas Press, Austin, 1971. open
• Guilhem Olivier, Las deidades del pulque en la cosmovisión mesoamericana (Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl). Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, UNAM, México, 2000. open