Opochtli

Surviving summaries do not preserve a detailed mythic birth or creation narrative for Opochtli in the supplied sources. Instead, he appears in Aztec religious taxonomy as a specialized deity associated with water-related subsistence in the lakes and marshes of the Valley of Mexico. His name—Nahuatl Opochtli, glossed as "The Left" or "The Left-Handed"—encodes both a personal trait (left-handed spear-thrower) and a spatial placement within Aztec ritual orientation: because the west was treated as the primary cardinal point, the left side corresponded to the south, which is the direction associated with him. Several modern summaries also describe him as a representative or attendant of the larger rain deity Tlaloc, situating him functionally within the wider rain/water/fertility complex rather than as an independent cosmic origin figure.

The available sources provide limited iconographic detail beyond a recurring motif: Opochtli is commonly depicted riding a dolphin. Beyond this aquatic-mounted image, the surveyed accounts do not supply consistent or detailed descriptions of clothing, facial features, or additional attributes; summaries emphasize his role as a left-handed spear-thrower and inventor of fishing and hunting implements, which implies the presence of tools such as an atlatl, net, canoe pole, or bird snare in his iconography but does not provide a standardized, detailed visual canon in the provided materials.

Source summaries describe Opochtli primarily as the patron and technician of lacustrine subsistence: he is the god of fishing and hunting who is credited with inventing specific tools and techniques used in lakes and marshes — the atlatl (spear-thrower), the fishing net, the canoe pole, and the bird snare. He is characterized in sources as "the god who threw his spear with his left hand," marking left-handed spear-throwing as a defining skill. His functional relationship to Tlaloc, when noted, frames him as an agent or representative within the rain/water/fertility domain rather than as an unrelated mercantile or household power. The sources do not attribute cosmically transformative or ambiguous supernatural abilities beyond these occupational, technological, and representative functions.