Editing Xiuhtecuhtli (section)

==New Fire Ceremony==

Xiuhtecuhtli was celebrated often but especially at the end of every 52-year period. This was the time the 365-day solar and the 260-day sacred calendars ended on the same day and the Aztec celebrated the Binding of the Years with the [[New Fire Ceremony]].<ref name="Bingham & Roberts 2010, p.143" /> In order to perform the ritual, priests marched in solemn procession up the [[Cerro de la Estrella (archaeological site)|Hill of the Star]] on a peninsula near ''Culhuacán'' to wait for the star ''Yohualtecuhtli'' (either [[Aldebaran]] in the Taurus constellation or the [[Pleiades]] as a whole) to get past its zenith. Having ascertained this, they would tear out the heart of a sacrificial victim and kindle a flame in a small wooden hearth they placed inside the hole left in his chest. Priests used a drill method to generate this sacred flame. It was then carried on pine sticks to light the fires anew in every hearth, including the sacred braziers of perpetual fire, that numbered over 600 in the capital alone.<ref>Roy 2005, p.316.</ref>