The Mexica lived in a society pivoting on the glamour of the warrior and his capacity to tap into the wealth of the tribute warehouses. But despite the vertiginous honours accorded the warriors and their own firm exclusion from public life (an exclusion too easily taken as a decisive indicator of lack of social worth), Mexica women enjoyed effective protection, and exercised a degree of individual autonomy in the small liberties and decisions of everyday life which possibly surpassed that of men. An ideology which stressed tribal identity over gender, and the common plight of humankind over tribe, allowed them to escape definition as ‘other’. They were free from the notion of the polluting power of menstrual blood which sets the female apart in so many traditions, and sexuality was accepted as a legitimate delight for both sexes. In the parabola of mundane life marriage opened benefits to men and to women alike. In marriage women appear to have been regarded, and to have regarded themselves, not merely as helpmates but as partners with men in the human enterprise.

In that enterprise the trajectories of the involvement of each sex with the social and the sacred followed a similar curve. Men had most sacred and erotic power in youth, for it was then that they came closest to exemplifying the cultural and aesthetic ideal of the young warrior. Social power came in middle age, with the moral authority accumulated through experience, and through the military record, rank, offices or expertise achieved, which indicated the fulfilment of one's tonalli. Through childbirth young women were precipitated into intimate contact with the sacred, as they were caught up in the convulsive workings of the forces of procreation.