Abstract Investigations into the evolution of early religious institutions should emphasize how the ritual manipulation of symbolically charged objects generated shared understandings regarding divine entities among religious communities of practice. This study demonstrates that the origins of two distinctively central Mexican deities—the Old God of Fire and the Storm God—can best be understood through contextual analysis of effigy vessels depicting them during later Formative periods (ca. 600b.c.–a.d. 100). By presenting new examples of such effigy vessels and assembling contemporary counterparts from other central Mexican sites, we can better appreciate the Formative religious integration of the region and its legacy for the religious systems of later societies. Specifically, the primacy of the Old God of Fire and the Storm God to Aztec dedicatory offerings, and the private/domestic associations of the former and public/monumental associations of the latter at Teotihuacan were elaborations on patterns apparent in Formative ritual practices.
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