Tonacatecutli and his spouse are to be regarded as the parents of Quetzalcoatl, but this is probably a theogonic myth of late origin, brought about by the constant association of Quetzalcoatl with the creative gods as deities of the ancient Toltecs, and the frequent references to him as the founder of their cult.
Ixtlilxochitl states in his fourth Relacion that Tonacatecutli and his wife were the chief gods of the Toltecs, who represented them as the sun and the moon, and he goes on to say that at certain seasons of the year criminals were sacrificed to them by a method called Telimonamiquian, “which is to say grinding between the stones.” Two great stones, he says, were balanced opposite each other, and the victim was crushed between them as they fell—the slain man thus representing the corn-spirit, or, indeed, the corn itself in the process of being ground.