CHAPTER V
DEITIES OF THE EARTH AND GROWTH PROPER
INTRODUCTORY
So numerous were the manifestations and variants of the Earth-goddess conceived by the Nahua or adopted into their pantheon, that this has been the cause of considerable misconception on the part of students of Mexican religion, who have confounded them in a manner which in the circumstances is scarcely surprising. An attempt will be made here to provide the reader with a list of the most important of these deities, briefly and barely outlining their various origins and attributes, in order that he may be the better able to comprehend what follows when we come to discuss them more fully.
Chicomecoatl (Seven Serpents)—the Mexican name of the Earth-goddess and that of the seventh day of the seventh week of the tonalamatl. She was probably of Toltec origin. The third interpreter of the Codex Vaticanus A identifies her with Xochiquetzal, and, perhaps more correctly, with Xumoco and Tonacacigua or Tonacaciuatl. She had two temples dedicated to her, the chicome iteopan and the cinteopan, and seems to have become a variant of Tonacaciuatl on the adoption of an agricultural basis of existence.
Tlazolteotl, Tlaelquani, Teteo innan or Toci—an earth-goddess whose worship had its origin among the tribes of the Atlantic seaboard, where maize grew abundantly. She possessed warlike propensities, as became a goddess to whom human sacrifice was much in vogue, and the myth of her impregnation by Uitzilopochtli was enacted at the ochpaniztli festival in August, typifying, perhaps, the impregnation of the “earth-mother” by the “sky-father.” As Ixcuine she represented a plurality of goddesses. Seler [175] believes that Chicomecoatl represents the young maize ear, and Tlazolteotl, the ripe ear of the plant.
Cihuacoatl (Serpent Woman)—an earth-goddess of Xochimilco and Colhuacan.
Coatlicue or Coatlantonan (Serpent Skirt)—a Mexican earth-goddess, mother of Uitzilopochtli.
Xochiquetzal—originally a mountain goddess of the Tlalhuica. An earth-and-maize goddess as well as a deity of flowers and vegetation.
Xilonen—originally a maize-goddess of the Huichol tribes. She represented the young maize-plant.
Cinteotl (Maize-god)—son of Tlazolteotl, originally a god of the peoples of the Atlantic seaboard. He is occasionally alluded to as a female deity, but is always male in the MSS. of the Borgia group, executed by a people of Nahua speech dwelling in the south. He is the equivalent of Xochipilli and had a separate temple, the cinteopan.
Xipe—an earth-god of the Teotitlan district, a god of spring vegetation. His temples were called yopico. His great festival was the Tlacaxipeuliztli, or “flaying of men.”
Only three of these deities, Tlazolteotl, Xipe, and Xochiquetzal, appear as rulers of one or other of the twenty day-signs of the tonalamatl. But Cinteotl figures in the ochpaniztli feast and appears as one of the “Lords of the Night.”
These criteria are perhaps sufficient to identify these figures as separate divinities. We find in Sahagun that Chicomecoatl, Cinteotl, and Xipe had separate temples of their own. In several of the rituals of the great festivals, however, the cults of Tlazolteotl, Chicomecoatl, and Cinteotl appear to have been very closely interwoven, and this leads me to suspect that the worship of the old Toltec goddess Chicomecoatl was in process of fusion with that of the “immigrant” Tlazolteotl at the period of the Conquest. Xilonen, too, according to Sahagun, had a separate festival in her honour, the uei tecuilhuitl. From all this and from considerations still to be advanced we may, perhaps, be justified in assuming:
(1) That at the period of the Conquest the cults of Tlazolteotl, Chicomecoatl, and Cinteotl were very naturally in process of becoming amalgamated, the worship of the two goddesses, Mexican and alien, presenting many features in common.
(2) That Xochiquetzal, originally the goddess of the Tlalhuica, was regarded more properly as the goddess of flowers and of the spring florescence, a hypothesis which is upheld by her myths. Her equation with Tonacaciuatl appears to have been a later concept, due to the connection of both with the earth.
(3) That the Huichol goddess Xilonen came to symbolize for the Nahua the maize plant in its early stages of growth, and in that respect resembles Cinteotl.
(4) That the cult of the southern god Xipe, the grain-deity of a related people, had made great headway among the Nahua of Mexico-Tenochtitlan.
(5) It follows from these conclusions that only one of these deities of growth—Coatlicue—was of Nahua origin, all the others being gods of the aboriginal or settled peoples. The Chichimec Nahua, a hunting people, possessing no official grain-goddess of their own, would naturally come to worship these on their adoption of an agricultural mode of life. As most of these forms hailed from districts of considerable cultural antiquity, I believe their worship to have been of long duration in the land, not much less ancient, indeed, than the cult of Tlaloc.
It is not claimed for these conclusions that they are more than approximate. The data relative to these deities is much too complex to permit of any more precise or dogmatic treatment, in fact at one time or another there was identification between them all; but with the above attempt at simplification in view we shall now endeavour to present the reader with a detailed account of each of these and other less important divinities who were regarded as in any way connected with the personification of the earth or the growth of the crops, their festivals and ritual.
The earth-deities seem to have been prophetic and divinatory and to have been connected with medicine, like similar European and Asiatic goddesses. Some of them, like Itzpapalotl, share the butterfly symbol with the gods of fire, with whom they are frequently connected. They are also closely associated with the deer, a fertility animal, and the eagle, the sun-bird, and their victims were, like those of the sun and war deities, decked with eagle-down.
TLAZOLTEOTL = “GODDESS OF DIRT”
Territory: Huaxtec, Mixtec, Olmec.
Minor Names: Tlaelquani = “Filth-eater.” Chicunaui acatl = “Nine Reed.” Teteo Innan = “Mother of the Gods.” Chiquacen acatl = “Six Reed.” Toci = “Our Grandmother.” Naui tecpatl = “Four Flint Knife.” Cocauic Xochitla = “Yellow Bloom.” Tlalli iyallo = “Heart of the Earth.” Iztac Xochitla = “White Bloom.” Ixcuine = “Four Faces.” Tonana Teumechaue = “Our mother, the goddess of the thigh-skin face-painting.”
Calendar Places: Ruler of the fourteenth day, ocelotl, of the thirteenth week, ce olin. Seventh of the nine lords of the night.
Compass Direction: West.
Festivals: Ochpaniztli (“Feast of Brooms”) in the eleventh month.
Symbols: A man eating excrement (“Dirt-eater”); a broom.
Relationships: Mother of Centeotl; one of the Tzitzimimê.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 74: Here Tlazolteotl is depicted as naked, and accompanied by a snake. A patch of rubber appears near the mouth, and her head is bound by a fillet of unspun cotton. Behind the neck a feather ornament is seen, made of the blue plumage of the quail, and she also wears the golden nasal Huaxtec ornament usually seen in connection with the octli-gods. In the Codex Vaticanus B her naked body is painted white, with yellow longitudinal stripes, and she has the bifurcated nose-ornament of Xipe. Significantly, perhaps, the shape of her eye recalls that of the god of flaying, whose eye is usually a mere slit in the flayed human skin which he wears, and through the mask of which he is supposed to be looking. She wears the cotton fillet and ear-plug typical of her.
Sahagun MS.—In this place she has a disk of liquid rubber on the face, with which substance her mouth is also painted, an elaborate cotton headdress, crowned with feathers, a tunic of sac shape with a fringe divided into compartments, a skirt with bands joined by diagonal lines, and she holds in her right hand the broom symbolic of her feast, and in her left a shield decorated with four concentric circles.
General.—In the tonalamatl of the Aubin-Goupil collection, wherever she is depicted as seventh of the nine lords of the night, her face is white, its upper portion being surrounded by a yellow band. In the Codex Borbonicus she is occasionally painted all yellow or all white, and this yellow colour symbolizes that of the ripe maize ear. In the song about her given by Sahagun, we observe that she is alluded to as “the yellow blossom” and the “white blossom,” otherwise the yellow or white maize—the maize at different stages of its growth.
Another of her distinguishing characteristics, as has been remarked, is the black colouring in the region of the mouth, which frequently extends to and includes the tip of the nose and chin and, as Sahagun states, this was effected with liquid rubber, as in the case of the Fire-god. The small patch or circle on her cheek is also commented upon by Sahagun, who says, “a hole has she placed on her cheek”—the “hole” being probably a disk of rubber with a perforated centre. As an alternative to this we find in Codex Borgia two broad horizontal lines and in Codex Borbonicus several short, vertical black lines below the eye, and it would seem that the concentric circle on the shield of the goddess in the Sahagun MS. has the same meaning—that is, it is probably a symbol of sex. [176] In some representations her skirt is covered with crescent-shaped objects perhaps typical of her symbol—excrement.
When Tlazolteotl appears as ruler of the thirteenth week she often lacks the ripe-maize colour with which she is represented elsewhere. Thus in Telleriano-Remensis she is painted about the mouth with liquid rubber, and in Borbonicus her face-paint is in two colours. A black stroke is seen descending from brow to nose, but she has the yellow skin-colour. In both cases she is, like Xipe, clothed in the skin of a victim. In Telleriano-Remensis and the Aubin tonalamatl her arms and legs are powdered with white chalk and small feathers are affixed to them, probably with ulli gum. In Telleriano-Remensis these cover part of her costume as well. In this codex, too, her Huaxtec nose-ornament is replaced by one having a stepped motif, or a butterfly formed of the spotted feathers of the quail.
The cotton fillet of the goddess is worthy of further remark. It is made from the unspun produce of the plant, covers the top of the head and reaches the shoulders on either side of the face. Spindles are stuck into the mass, which is marked upon its surface with acute-angled figures or groups of parallel lines on a white ground, which may be regarded as hieroglyphic of raw cotton.
In certain of the MSS., for example in the Aubin tonalamatl and in Telleriano-Remensis, Tlazolteotl wears a feather coronal, which in other codices takes the shape of a fan or nape-ring like that frequently worn by Quetzalcoatl. Occasionally, too, it rises from a rubber ball which rests upon the head. In Codex Borgia (sheet 68) the feathers are dark in colour, but are brightened by the red plumes which spring from them in turn. Elsewhere we find white, brown, or yellow feathers, the latter prepared artificially from palm-leaves, which, like the fan-shaped ornament itself, are Huaxtec in character. In the picture in Borbonicus of Tlazolteotl as ruler of the week ce olin (one reed) we see the conical Huaxtec hat, as worn by Quetzalcoatl, peeping above her cotton headdress, and the palm-leaf plume rising from a feather fan, which springs from a ball of rubber. In Telleriano-Remensis Tlazolteotl is seen wearing a string of snail-shells depending from the waist. This is known as citallicue, or “star-skirt,” another Huaxtec article of dress.
In none of the representations alluded to was Tlazolteotl pictured with the broom characteristic of her and of her feast-day, ochpanitztli (“when they sweep the ways”). This was made from hard, stiff, pointed grass, which was cut with sickles in the mountain-forests of Popocatepetl. [177] It was bound with a coloured leather strap, and the paper which held it together was flecked with the V-shaped cotton symbol.
MYTHS
Tlazolteotl is described in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis as “the woman who sinned before the deluge, who was the cause of all evil, of all deceit”; but this would appear to be an error for Ixnextli or Xochiquetzal (q.v.). The Anales de Quauhtitlan says of her: “In the same year (8 Rabbit) came the so-called Ixcuiname female demons [to Tollan] and, as they say from the reports of the old people, they came from Huaxteca. And in the place Cuextecatl ichocayan (“Where the Huaxtecs weep”) they summoned these captives whom they had taken in Huaxteca and explained to them what was about to be done, saying—‘We go now to Tollan. We wish to couple the earth with you, we desire to hold a feast with you, for till now no battle offerings have been made with men. We wish to make a beginning of it and shoot you to death with arrows.’”
SACRIFICE BY SHOOTING WITH ARROWS
This indicates that the goddess, one of the Ixcuiname, was regarded as the inventress of that especial mode of sacrifice by which the victim was tied to a framework and shot to death with arrows. We have no classical statement that such a proceeding took place at her festival, however, but it is known that it formed part of the ritual at the festival of Xipe (q.v.). The expression, “We wish to couple the earth with you,” when taken along with the straddling attitude of the victim on his frame, has given rise to the assumption [178] that such a sacrifice was intended to symbolize a sexual connection between the victim and the earth or earth-mother. It appears to me as more probable that its intention was to draw down rain by sympathetic magic, the dropping blood from the arrow wounds symbolizing the rain, and the tear which the victim sheds in the representation of this sacrifice in the Codex Nuttall and Codex Telleriano-Remensis, combined with the fact that such sacrifices are supposed to have been made in years of drought, strengthens my belief in the soundness of this theory.
Ixcuine means “four-faced,” and may apply to the circumstance that ancient idols of Tlazolteotl were, like those of Janus, provided with more than one face, so that they might look upon every direction whence the rain might come. Later, however, the Ixcuiname were regarded as a fourfold manifestation of Tlazolteotl and as personifying four sisters of different age, Tiacapan, Teicu, Tlaco and Xocoyotzin, who “represented the carnal passions.” [179]
HYMN
A song in the Sahagun MS. relating to Tlazolteotl is as follows:
“The yellow blossom has flowered. She, our mother, with the thigh-skin of the goddess painted upon her face, came out of Tamoanchan. The white blossom has burst open, she our mother,” etc. [180]
This of course symbolizes the yellow and white maize. The thigh-skin of the goddess “is the mask cut from the thigh of the sacrificed girl and worn by the priest” (see “Festivals,” infra). The statement that Tlazolteotl came out of Tamoanchan is important, for another song in the same series tells us that in that paradise was born her son Cinteotl, the Maize-god (q.v.).
FESTIVALS
Ochpaniztli.—This, the great festival of Tlazolteotl, was held in the opening of the eleventh Aztec month, commencing, says Sahagun, [181] about September 14th. Fifteen days before the festival began, those who were to celebrate it danced the sacred dances, which they continued for eight days. In complete silence they ranged themselves in four lines, and danced with their hands full of flowers, keeping time most precisely. At the end of eight days those women who practised medicine, the mid wives, leech-women, and steam-bath keepers probably, divided themselves into two companies and presented themselves before a female victim who represented the goddess and who was destined for sacrifice. Their object was, says Sahagun, to amuse her and to keep her from pondering upon her fate. The victim herself, accompanied by three old women called her “mothers,” headed one of these parties, who pelted each other with the red leaves of the cactus flower. In the whole performance we can see some such concept as survives in a manner in the modern “battle of flowers,” which in certain towns in Southern France ushers in the season of Lent. The victim was then led back to the place of detention, and the ceremony was repeated for several days in succession. Then the “mothers” who guarded her led her through the public market-place for the last time, on which occasion she sowed maize on every side, and on that day she was taken to a place near the teocalli [182] where she was to be sacrificed. As it was of importance that she should not mourn, she was informed that she was to become the bride of the king, and for this imaginary honour she was adorned with the full insignia of the goddess Tlazolteotl.
When midnight had arrived, in a dead and unbroken silence, she was led to the summit of the lofty teocalli, where she was placed on the shoulders of a man, as was the custom with brides about to be borne to the houses of their lords, and ere she could be well aware what was about to happen, she was decapitated and immediately flayed. First of all pieces of skin were removed from the broad portion of the thigh and carried to the temple of Cinteotl, the son of Tlazolteotl. The skin of the upper part of the body formed a jacket, which a priest of Tlazolteotl, chosen for his strength and vigour, drew over his own body. Accompanied by two men vowed to his assistance, as well as by other priests, dressed to represent the goddess’s Huaxtec servants, all of whom carried blood-sprinkled brooms which they brandished in a combative manner, he pursued a number of nobles and warriors, who struck their shields and made a threatening display. The priest who personified the goddess rushed upon these with simulated fury, but they fled before him, refusing him battle. This part of the proceedings symbolized the warlike nature of the goddess, and the military significance of her cult. As has been explained, the people of Mexico believed that only by the continued offering up of human sacrifice and blood could an adequate rainfall, and therefore abundant harvests, be procured, and this naturally presumed the upkeep of a considerable standing army and many military guilds or brotherhoods dedicated to the task of securing a large supply of sacrificial victims. The warlike character of the Earth-goddess was assumed as a matter of course.
This chase continued until the priest who personated Tlazolteotl came to the teocalli of Uitzilopochtli, the War-god. Here he lay down and stretched himself out in the female posture for sexual intercourse. Says the Aztec text of Sahagun: “Then she broadens herself [that is the priest personating the goddess], expands, stretches arms and legs out at the feet of Uitzilopochtli, her face turned towards him.” This ceremony undoubtedly had reference to a supposed impregnation of the goddess by the god Uitzilopochtli, and that the myth relating to it was enacted is shown by the symbolic presence of her son, Cinteotl, or a priest dressed to represent that god, who had placed over his face a mask made from the skin of the thighs of the flayed woman which had been sent to his temple, and who was now regarded as the son conceived. [183]
In addition to the skin-mask, the Cinteotl priest wore a hat or cap, also made of the skin of the sacrificed victim, which had a vandyked edging of the crown, or a crest like the comb of a cock, symbolic of the stone knife of sacrifice.
Together, the priests of Tlazolteotl and Cinteotl now proceeded to the temple of the former, where they awaited the morning. At dawn the chief men of the community, who had been waiting near the teocalli, ran up the steps of the temple bearing offerings. The priest of the goddess was then decorated with her insignia in addition to the dreadful trophy he wore. His head and feet were covered with the white down from the eagle’s breast, the particular ornament of the warrior who had captured a victim in battle. His face was painted red, the colour of the ripe maize, he was clothed in a short tunic which had woven upon it the semblance of an eagle, and he was equipped with other garments for the lower part of the body. Still richer and more elaborate vestments were then placed on him by the priests, after which he went to select the captives who must die. He chose four of these, and placing them upon the stone of sacrifice, dispatched them by taking out their hearts, handing over the others to the priests to deal with similarly. This done, he accompanied the Cinteotl priest to his temple, the Huaxtec servants marching before them, wearing what would seem to be huge artificial phalluses and tassels of untwisted cotton, to symbolize the virile strength and richness of the earth. [184] They were also accompanied by the medical women.
Coming to the temple of Cinteotl, the priest of Tlazolteotl placed one foot upon the drum there, and awaited the priest of Cinteotl, who later set out alone in a hasty manner, and accompanied by a large body of warriors, to a point on the frontiers of Mexico where a small hut stood, and at this place he left the mask and cap which he had worn, made from the thighs of the sacrificed woman. Not infrequently the party were attacked or ambushed and fighting ensued. I can form no opinion regarding the significance of this procedure. Was the skin left on the frontier as a gage of war, as would appear to be its most obvious interpretation, or did it possess a deeper and more symbolical meaning? If it did, I am at a loss to supply the elucidation. I feel that this is one of those acts so often encountered in primitive religion, when the temptation is to look for a profound meaning where, perhaps, none exists.
The priest of Tlazolteotl, on the departure of his colleague, proceeded to the temple called Atempan, or “Place of Death,” a favourite muster-place for children and leprous persons about to be sacrificed, which was situated in the precincts of the great temple of Mexico. Here the king took his seat on a throne, his footstool being a nest made of eagles’ skin and feathers, whilst an ocelot-skin was cast over the back of the seat, these articles symbolizing the “knighthoods” of the eagle and ocelot respectively. A military review followed, and the monarch distributed raiment, arms, and insignia to the deserving, who, thus distinguished, were expected to so comport themselves in war that they might eventually die the warrior’s death, the only fitting end for a Mexican brave. The recipients then repaired to the temple of Tlazolteotl, where dancing was engaged in. The scene was picturesque and even magnificent, for all the dancers held flowers in each hand and wore the dazzling insignia of their various ranks and orders.
This spectacle continued for two days, and on the evening of the second day the priests of the goddess Chicomecoatl (q.v.), clothed in the skins of captives slain at the festival of that goddess, ascended a little teocalli known as the “Table of Uitzilopochtli,” and threw broadcast maize and calabash seeds upon the heads of the multitude below, who scrambled for the grain. The young women in the service of Chicomecoatl now advanced, each bearing upon her shoulder seven ears of maize, rolled in a rich mantle, and wrapped in white paper, after being sprinkled with ulli gum. The high-priest of the goddess led the chant, after which he descended from the teocalli and placed in a little cavity between the temple stairs and the temple itself a large basket filled with powdered chalk and feather-down. The warriors at once rushed upon it and scrambled for the contents, which were, of course, symbolical of the goddess’s “make-up.” They were chased by the priests, whom they pelted with the chalk and feathers, even the king taking part in the sport. The priest then betook himself to the temple of the goddess, called Toctitlan (“The Place of our Grandmother”), where he saw the skin of the sacrificed woman properly disposed.
Thus ended the ceremonies of the ochpaniztli, one of the most picturesque and involved, yet gruesome, of the festivals of ancient Mexico.
RITUAL
Tlazolteotl, as we shall find when we attempt our elucidation of her characteristics, was regarded as the goddess of sexual indulgence, a not inappropriate rôle for the wild, wanton, and riotous goddess of earth, so prodigal in her bringing forth and (naturally in the eyes of a primitive people) so bountiful in her favours, for to the barbarian mind productiveness is the outcome of lustfulness. By an easy transition, then, she became the goddess of sexual immorality, the patron of prostitutes, and the archetype of female wantonness. But, rather strangely, although she presided over salacious vice, she alone could pardon it, and once in a lifetime the Mexican adulterer or libertine might approach her to obtain by a full confession remission of his sins. This he generally did late in life, for absolution could not be obtained on a subsequent occasion. The ritual associated with his cleansing was a prolonged and involved one, and is described by Sahagun in the twelfth chapter of his first book.
There is no reason to believe that the account of the ritual as furnished by Sahagun is otherwise than genuine, and he remarks upon the facility with which the native Mexicans embraced the Catholic confession as a proof that the rite was not unknown to them.
TEMPLE
We know from the descriptions of the ochpaniztli festivals in the Sahagun Aztec MS., and the illustrations accompanying them, that the temple of Tlazolteotl, the Toctitlan, was a scaffolding of poles on which was set a representation of the goddess.
PRIESTHOOD
That Tlazolteotl possessed a priesthood of her own is obvious from the repeated mention of the adolescent youths known as Cuecuesteca (“Her Huaxtecs”), who figured in the festival of ochpaniztli. But that these were only priests ad hoc, or employed temporarily for that celebration, is likely, as Sahagun states (Appendix to bk. ii) that the Atempan teohuatzin, or the Chief of Rites connected with the Atempan, had the task of assembling them, as well as charge of the insignia used at the festival. Tlazolteotl’s priests, according to Sahagun (bk. i, c. xii), were “the augurs who possessed the books with the prognostications and the destinies of the new-born and the spells and the omens and the traditions of the ancients, as they were handed down and came unto them.”
NATURE AND STATUS
Tlazolteotl has been completely identified with the Teteo innan or Toci of Sahagun and other writers, but though she ranked as the Earth-mother of Mexico par excellence, there is no room for doubt that her worship was originally alien, and assuredly of Huaxtec origin. The Huaxtecs were a people of Maya origin or affinities, isolated from the main body of that race, dwelling on the east coast of Mexico, and retaining many of their peculiar customs; and it is noteworthy that a Huaxtecan goddess should be alluded to in Mexican tradition as coming to Tollan, the city of the Toltecs, the people whom so many writers have tried to identify with the Maya. As has been observed, she was accompanied at the ochpaniztli festival by a band of youths dressed to represent Huaxtecs, who in the Codex Borbonicus picture of the festival are shown as wearing the cone-shaped Huaxtec cap. She herself wears the Huaxtec nose-ornament in common with the octli-gods. She is repeatedly stated to have had her “home” in Cuextlan, the Huaxtec country, and there are good grounds for supposing that its inhabitants, of whose religion we know little, had brought the cult of the Earth-mother to such a pitch of complex perfection as rendered its absorption of the allied Mexican cults merely a matter of time and occasion.
That she was originally a personification of the maize is also clear. In her songs she is alluded to as “the yellow bloom” and “the white bloom,” and the references to her dwelling in Tamoanchan, the western paradise where the maize was supposed to have had its mythical origin, and where she gave birth to Cinteotl, the young maize-god, proves her association with this food-plant. But she was also the Earth, the insatiable, lustful mother, who gives birth to Cinteotl the young maize-god, who is also the obsidian knife of sacrifice, for the Earth is the mother of stone. As Sin, she was also the mother of death, for Cinteotl in this guise was undoubtedly a god of fatality or doom.
Like many other deities of the earth she may have had an almost plutonic significance, for she is called Tlalli Iyallo, “Heart of the Earth.” But I think that Seler (Fejérváry-Mayer, p. 145) has mistaken the true significance of this expression in applying to it the meaning “interior of the earth.” The word “heart” in the Nahua tongue does not necessarily mean “interior.” True, Tepeyollotl, the Earthquake-god, possessed a similar designation, but on the other hand the Quiche Popol Vuh alludes to the god Hurakan as “The Heart of Heaven,” and I take the expression to mean in general “soul, spirit,” rather than “interior.” But, again, deities of grain have very frequently a subterranean association, and, according to Duran’s description of the feast of the goddess, we find that she was supposed to make her coming known by an earthquake shock, and she is ruler of the thirteenth week, ce olin, which some authorities translate as “earthquake” or “earth-motion.”
All this notwithstanding, in later times it was as the goddess of sensuality and lustfulness that Tlazolteotl made her strongest appeal to the Mexican imagination. We have already seen how this transition took place and how this attribute had its inception. In many climes the figure of the fruitful and abundant Earth-goddess has its bestial, revolting, and highly salacious side, and the Mexican earth-deity was no exception to the almost general rule. In several pictures her symbol is shown as a man devouring excrement (sin). She was the patroness of prostitutes, and by a transition, the ethical character of which seems to me obscure, she finally became the great pardoner of sexual misdeeds.
Probably because they forfeited their lives in the act of bringing forth, she came to be regarded as the chieftainess of those women who, dying in childbed, went to inhabit the Ciutlampa, the house of the women in the west. These female spirits were regarded by the Mexicans as the equal of warriors who had died heroically in battle, and issued daily from their paradise to accompany the sun in his afternoon course. It is typical of these Ciuateteô, or deified women, that in their jealousy of living people and their offspring, they exerted a noxious influence upon mortals, especially upon children, at certain seasons, and as the interpreter of Codex Telleriano-Remensis states, they are identified with European witches, flying through the air and meeting at cross-roads. Now the broom is the symbol of the European witch, as it is of Tlazolteotl, and in Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (sheet 17) we have a picture of Tlazolteotl as representative of the Ciuateteô, naked and riding upon a broomstick. In Codex Borgia (sheet 12) and Codex Vaticanus B (sheet 30) beside her is figured a house with an owl standing at the door, while in front hangs a string of dried medicinal herbs, the whole representing the dwelling of a sorceress or medicine-witch, for Tlazolteotl was also patroness of the medical women, who danced at her festival, and Sahagun (bk. i, c. viii) expressly states that she was venerated by the “physicians,” that is, the medicine-men and wizards.
Probably by reason of her fecundity Tlazolteotl was also regarded as a divinity who presided over human birth. She is frequently portrayed as the great parturient and represents the womb [185] (Vaticanus B, sheet 51). But she does not breathe the spirit into the newly-born child or transport it from the upper regions as does Quetzalcoatl, her office being the lower one of presiding over the child-bed, a task which she shares with other Mexican deities of vegetation and production.
Like other goddesses who preside over birth she may also have a lunar connection. It is probable that the Huaxtec nose-ornament which she wears in common with the octli-gods is a lunar symbol. [186] In Codex Borgia (sheet 55) she is represented as standing opposite the moon, but this may only indicate her connection with night and witchcraft. I am of opinion, however, that Seler’s assumption that she is a moon-goddess is not altogether capable of proof. On the other hand, goddesses of vegetation and childbirth are frequently associated with the moon, and his theory may be perfectly sound. We must remember, however, that in his more recent works, just as the solar school of mythologists was accused of “seeing sun-gods everywhere,” Seler has undoubtedly applied a lunar significance to several deities whose characteristics he formerly elucidated in totally different fashion.
The warlike nature of Tlazolteotl has already been dwelt upon and its reason demonstrated in the section dealing with the ochpaniztli festival.
CHICOMECOATL = “SEVEN SNAKE”
Area of Worship: Mexico.
Minor Name: Chicomolotl = “Seven Maize-ears.”
Relationship: Sister of Tlaloc.
Symbol: The double maize-ear (commaitl).
Festivals: Uei tozoztli, the fourth month; ochpaniztli, the eleventh month.
Calendar Place: Seventh day of the seventh week; the day chicomecoatl. (Sahagun states that all days containing a seven in their name were regarded as auspicious on her account.)
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Aubin-Goupil Tonalamatl.—Sheet 7: The goddess is depicted as having a red body and facial painting, and wears variegated raiment in which red is the preponderating colour. On her head is a large square headdress, also red in colour and decorated with rosettes at the four corners—such a headdress, indeed, as Tlazolteotl wears at the ochpaniztli festival. She holds in her hand the double maize-ear, which may be regarded as her peculiar and distinctive emblem.
Codex Borbonicus.—In this codex she is seen wearing red paint and the red garment, holding the double maize-ear, and carrying other maize-ears in a receptacle on her back. Seler thinks that her red colour is that of the granular bunch of the young maize-ear which she represents, and that Tlazolteotl or Teteoinnan, who is painted yellow and white, represents the ripe maize-ear.
Sahagun MS.—The Sahagun MS. states that Chicomecoatl’s face is coloured red and that she wears a paper crown on her head and a collar of green precious stones round her neck. She has an overdress and skirt of spring flowers and wears bells and shells on her feet. Her shield has the emblem of the summer flower painted upon its surface, and she carries the double maize-ear in her hand.
MYTHS
The hymn to Chicomecoatl as given in the Sahagun MS. is as follows:
Goddess of the seven ears, arise, awake! For, our mother, thou leavest us. Thou returnest to Tlalocan. Arise, awake! Mother, thou leavest us now, Thou goest to thy home in Tlalocan.
Which may, perhaps, be interpreted thus: The expression “seven ears” is an allusion to the seven ears of maize, sprinkled with rubber oil and wrapped in paper and cloth, which each maiden in a procession of virgins carried to the temple of the goddess, the cinteopan, at the festival of uei tozoztli (April 27th). The maize is now full grown and the goddess’s labours are over for the time being, so that she is enabled to return to Tlalocan, the paradise of her brother Tlaloc.
FESTIVALS
The Uei Tozoztli.—The first festival attributed to Chicomecoatl in the calendar was the uei tozoztli, or the “great watch,” so called because of the watch or wake kept in the houses of the people, accompanied by a general fast. The best accounts of it are those of Sahagun [187] and Torquemada. [188] In this rite the goddess was associated with Cinteotl. After a four days’ fast, certain rushes were stained with sacrificial blood and placed upon the images of the gods in both house and temple. Branches of laurel and beds or mattresses of hay were placed before the altars, and maize porridge was distributed to the young men. The people walked in the fields cutting stalks of the young maize, which they bedecked with flowers, placing them before the altars of the gods in the calpulli, or common house of the village, along with food-offerings of every kind, baskets of tortillas, or pancakes of chian flour and toasted maize mixed with beans, each surmounted by a cooked frog. On the back of the frog offered up with the tortillas they placed a joint cut from a maize-stalk filled with small pieces of every kind of the food offered up. Thus laden, the frog symbolized the earth, bearing her fruits on her back. All this victual was carried in the afternoon to the temple of Chicomecoatl, and eaten in a general scramble. The ears of maize preserved for seed were carried in procession by virgins to the temple of the goddess, each maiden bearing seven ears of maize, sprinkled with ulli gum and wrapped in paper and cloth. The legs and arms of these girls were ornamented with red feathers and their faces were smeared with pitch and sprinkled with marcassite. To these the crowd were forbidden to speak, but much persiflage was, nevertheless, engaged in. The people then returned to their houses, and the sanctified maize was placed in every granary and corn-crib, was known as the “heart” thereof, and remained there until taken out to be used as seed. It does not appear that human sacrifice accompanied this festival, which seems to have represented ancient rustic rites, the ritual of the family and the village, handed down from very early times.
Ochpaniztli (“Sweeping of Temples”).—In this festival, held about the beginning of September, the goddess played an important although by no means the principal part, and as it is fully described in the pages dealing with Tlazolteotl, it will suffice here to mention that the rites accorded to Chicomecoatl on this occasion appear to have been almost the same as those rendered at her first festival. The nature of her connection with the other deities of maize is indicated in the introduction to the section dealing with the earth and grain gods, and her participation in the rites of the ochpaniztli perhaps exhibits the zealous activity of an ancient cult in rivalry with a later and more popular one. It would certainly seem as if Chicomecoatl had been recognized in the ochpaniztli rites as an afterthought and for the purpose of placating her priesthood, as much as for the honour of the goddess herself, or that it was a protest on the part of the ministers of her cult, who did not desire to see their divinity ignored at a season at which she had probably been worshipped from time immemorial.
PRIESTHOOD
That Chicomecoatl had a priesthood specially consecrated to her is manifest from the accounts of her festivals, and this must have been in most respects similar in organization and character to those of Cinteotl (the Cinteotzin), Tlazolteotl, and Xipe. That she had also a corps of priestesses or holy women attached to her worship is equally clear from the same source. But we learn nothing of their precise status or polity from any of the old authorities.
TEMPLES
Chicomecoatl appears to have had two temples, both situated within the precincts of the great temple at Mexico. The first was the Chicomecoatl iteopan (“Temple of Chicomecoatl”) and the other the Cinteopan (“Maize Temple”), which, however, must not be confounded with that sacred to Cinteotl.
NATURE AND STATUS
Chicomecoatl is obviously the ancient and indigenous maize-goddess of the Mexican Valley, whose worship had existed from early times. The statement by the interpreter in Codex Telleriano-Remensis that she caused famines is most certainly an error and much more applicable to Ciuacoatl. The identification of her in the same place with Tonacaciuatl, the female companion of the creative deity, is probably correct, as she seems to have been an agricultural variant of the old earth-mother. Chicomecoatl was the patroness of the food supply, who, says Sahagun, “was the goddess of subsistence,” and “the original maker of bread and victuals and cookery in general,” and whose sign radiated good fortune and happy influences. In this goddess, as viewed through the medium of the observances practised at her festival, we see, perhaps, the old and indigenous earth-goddess as the helper and foster-parent of the younger earth-mother, Tlazolteotl, for the grain of the year before was hers and was placed in the granaries to “help” or form a nucleus to the new grain. Again, it was perhaps natural that the elder earth-goddess should preside over the old grain used for seed, and the younger goddess over the grain which had not yet come to fruition. In many countries two grain-spirits, mother and daughter, appear in the agricultural pantheon. In Breton custom the mother-sheaf—a figure made out of the last sheaf—bears within it a lesser bundle, which is regarded as the unborn daughter; and in Prussia, Malaysia, Scotland, and Greece, this double personification of the corn was or is in vogue.
CINTEOTL = “MAIZE-GOD”
Territory: Totonac; Aztec; Xochimilco.
Minor Names: Ce Xochitl = “One Flower” (date). Chicomoltotzin = “Seven Ears.”
Relationship: Son of Tlazolteotl; husband of Xochiquetzal.
Symbol: The god’s head with maize headdress (as in Bologna tonalamatl).
Festivals: Uei tozoztli; ochpaniztli.
Compass Directions: North; West.
Calendar Place: Fourth of the Nine Lords of the Night. Seventh of the Thirteen Lords of the Day. (Codex Borbonicus, sheet 20.)
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 52: In this place Cinteotl is figured as a male deity of yellow colour and with a peculiar black, angular, longitudinal band on the face and bearing a load of maize-ears on his back. In one hand he carries the rain-staff and in the other the throwing-stick. Sheet 14: In this illustration he is clearly recognized as the Maize-god by the maize-ears and the maize-blooms which he wears in his fillet or on his head. In other respects his insignia resembles that of the Sun-god in its flame-coloured hair, the jewelled head-strap with the conventional bird’s head on the frontal side, the large gold disk on his breast, and on the nape of the neck the rosette painted in the colours of the green jewel chalchihuitl.
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 20: He wears on his head a notched crown like that of the earth, mountain, and rain gods, except that it is painted green and yellow, the colours of the maize. It is fastened with a tie at the occiput, which adornment is painted in like colours and resembles the knot worn by these deities. As with the Rain-god, it shows the long, dark hair hanging down below it. On his breast he wears, attached to a chain of jewelled beads, an ornament which is painted in the colours of the chalchihuitl and from which hang jewelled thongs. The loin-cloth is in the colours of the maize, showing alternate yellow and green cross-bands.
Aubin Tonalamatl.—Sheet 8: Here he is represented opposite Mayauel. On his back he wears a plumed staff with a heart. In his hand he holds the quetzal feather-flag.
MYTHS
Cinteotl was regarded by the Mexicans as having been born of the goddess Tlazolteotl in the sacred western region of Tamoanchan (the House of Birth), which they looked upon as the original home of the maize-plant. A song sung at the atamalqualiztli festival is as follows:
Born is the Maize-god In the House of Descent, In the place where the flowers are, The god One-flower. The Maize-god is born In the place of water and of mist, Where the children of men are made. In the jewel Michoacan.
He is also associated with the flower-gods in certain strophes of the song to these divinities:
On the ball-ground the quetzalcoxcoxtli sings; The Maize-god answers him. Beautifully sings our friend the quetzal, In the twilight of the red maize god.
My song shall be heard by the lord of the twilight, The god with the thigh-skin face-painting.
I came to the place where the roads meet, I, the Maize-god. Where shall I now go? Which way shall I take?
This song I would interpret as follows: The game of tlachtli, a description of hockey, is in some measure associated with the maize-gods. The quetzalcoxcoxtli bird is Xochipilli, the Flower-god, with whom Cinteotl is closely associated, and who is connected with games of all kinds, stone effigies of him being set up in the tlachtli courts. Cinteotl is a god who emanates from the west, and is associated with the twilight. At his festival a piece of skin was stripped from the thigh of the female victim and made into a mask for his priest. The place where the roads meet is evidently the haunting-place of the Ciuapipiltin or Ciuateteô, women who died in childbed, of whom Tlazolteotl, Cinteotl’s mother, was the patroness. The god complains that he has a difficulty in finding his way at the cross-roads. This was the precise reason for which they were made, that the Ciupipiltin or haunting mothers should be puzzled by them, or “wandered,” as the Scottish expression is. Witches all the world over are baffled by cross-roads, and formerly the bodies of suicides were buried beneath them, so that, did their spirits arise, they would be puzzled by the multiplicity of directions and be baffled in their intent to haunt the living.
FESTIVALS
The first festival with which Cinteotl was associated was the uei tozoztli, held in April. After a four days’ fast, the houses were decked with irises and sprinkled with blood drawn from the ears and the front of the legs, and the nobles and wealthier folk decorated their houses with the boughs of a plant called axcoyatl. [189] Search was made in the fields for the young stalks of maize, which were decked with flowers and placed before the gods, along with food. The goddess Chicomecoatl was also revered at this festival. At the ochpaniztli festival, too, in honour of his mother Tlazolteotl, Cinteotl was peculiarly venerated, and a full account of the proceedings will be found in the pages referring to Tlazolteotl. It is necessary, however, to refer in passing to one custom, that in connection with which the thigh-skin of the female victim was stripped off and carried to the temple of Cinteotl, where it was made into a mask which the priest of the god placed over his face. [190] He also wore a jacket and hood of feathers, resembling the naualli or bird-disguise of the god—the coxcoxtli, which seems to have represented both Cinteotl and Xochipilli, and to have formed a kind of bond between them. The crest of the hood resembled the comb of a cock, and whilst possibly having the significance of a bird’s comb, was also held to symbolize the sharp-cutting flint knife of sacrifice (see Tlazolteotl). Lastly, the horrible relics of the festival were conveyed by the Cinteotl priest and a picked body-guard to a hut on the frontier, where they were left, for what purpose I am able to form no definite opinion. [191]
TEMPLES
Several temples appear to have been dedicated to the worship of Cinteotl at Mexico, but as the names of these sometimes imply a collective dedication to the maize-gods, it is somewhat difficult to ascertain precisely which of the edifices was peculiar to Cinteotl. However, the Iztac cinteotl iteopan, or temple of the deity of white maize, at Mexico, more probably refers to Cinteotl’s place of worship, as Sahagun states, than to that of any other deity. Here, says the friar, were sacrificed leprous captives, who were slain during the days of fasting in honour of the sun, when that luminary was at its greatest height. [192] In the Cinteopan was to be seen a statue of Cinteotl, before which captives were sacrificed on the occasion of his festival.
The temple of Tlatauhqui Cinteotl (red maize) appears to have been the preserve of the maize-gods collectively.
PRIESTHOOD
That Cinteotl had a separate and distinct priesthood is manifest from allusions to it in accounts of his festivals. Among the Totonacs two high-priests were especially dedicated to him. These were widowers over sixty years of age, who wore jackets made from the skins of jackals, were not permitted to eat fish, and whose duty consisted in the preparation of manuscripts and the deliverance of oracular messages. The Totonacs thought human sacrifices unnecessary to him, and offered up birds and small animals at his shrine, regarding him as their protector from the more sanguinary deities, says Clavigero. [193]
NATURE AND STATUS
It would appear from the data at our disposal that Cinteotl was originally a maize-god of the Totonacs, a people allied in race to the Maya-speaking Huaxtecs of the east coast. It will be recalled that his mother, Tlazolteotl, was of Huaxtec origin. Cinteotl may originally have been regarded by the Maya-speaking coast people as her son, or again the relationship between them may have been symbolic and relatively late in its development. But the myth appears as ancient and well founded, and the corn-mother who has a son or daughter is noticeable in many mythologies.
Although Cinteotl is alluded to as a goddess by Clavigero and other writers, it is abundantly clear that his godhead is of the male order, as the pictures which represent him prove. Seler lays stress upon his absolute identification with Xochipilli and Macuilxochitl, but although resemblances certainly exist, it seems to me that there are as many points of difference between these gods and that the likeness was the outcome of later development. Thus it can be shown by Seler’s own conclusions that, whereas Xochipilli was the patron of gaming and sport and light-hearted amusement, Cinteotl, on the other hand, was symbolic of that death which is the offspring of sin. [194]
Cinteotl’s mother, Tlazolteotl, the goddess of lust, undoubtedly typifies sin, and her son symbolizes the death which follows it and is its wages, the sharp knife of sacrifice. The indented cap he wears is typical of this implement, and was known as itzlacoliuhqui (“frost”), an expression which is also translated as “death” and which is occasionally employed of Tezcatlipocâ in his phase of god of justice.
But Cinteotl had another connection with the plutonic, such as is possessed by many grain-gods, and must, like Hades and Ishtar, be regarded as a deity of the Underworld, the place of the dead, the realm in which the seed germinates ere it sprouts above ground. He was the tutelary deity of the goldsmiths of Xochimilco, oddly enough, it seems to us, until we recall the resemblance between the ripe maize-cob and the work of the native jewellers. [195]
It is, however, as the young maize-god—the maize in its tender and half-ripened condition—that he must be chiefly regarded, and that he was looked upon by the ancient Mexicans. He strongly resembles the Maya god E.
CIUACOATL = “SERPENT WOMAN”
Area of Worship: Colhuacan and Xochimilco.
Minor Names: Quilaztli = “Obsidian Plant” (?). Quauhciuatl = “Woman-eagle.” Yaociuatl = “Woman-warrior.” Tonantzin = “Our Mother.”
Relationship: Mother of Mixcoatl; sister of the Centzon Mimixcoa.
Symbol: Obsidian knife.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
General.—In Codex Borgia (sheet 60) she appears as one of the two heads, or faces, of Quaxolotl, a female face framed by long, streaming hair, with the fleshless under-jaw and the exposed teeth of a dead person’s skull.
The Sahagun MS. describes her as having a face painted half-red, half-black, with a thick smear of indiarubber round the lips. She wears a crown of eagle-feathers and a golden ear-plug. Her overdress is “the colour of spring flowers” (red), and she also has an undergarment with a fringe, and a white enagua, or skirt. Her costume is adorned with shells and she wears sandals. Her shield is inset with eagle’s feathers.
An ancient song to her states that she carries a rattle-stick. She has a shield-device similar to that of Chantico, with whom she seems to be a parallel.
MYTHS
In the “Song of the Earth-goddesses,” Ciuacoatl is alluded to as follows:
The eagle Quilaztli is painted with serpent’s blood; Her crown is made of eagle-feathers. The high cypresses of the Chalmecâ land shelter her.
The maize has come; On the fields of the gods She leans on the rattle-staff.
In my hand rests the agave thorn; On the fields of the gods She leans on her rattle-staff.
The broom is in my hand; On the fields of the gods She leans on the rattle-staff.
Thirteen eagles is our mother, goddess of the Chalmecâ; The spear of the prickly plant lays me low; It is my son Mixcoatl.
Our mother the warrior. The deer from Colhuacan, She is stuck with feathers.
Morning has dawned The order to the warriors has gone forth. Drag the captives hence, The whole land shall be destroyed. The deer from Colhuacan, She is stuck with feathers. Those who fight bravely in war Are painted with eagle-feathers. [196]
This wild song may be interpreted as follows:
The aspect of the goddess is described. She rests (as do Uitzilopochtli and other gods) under the shade of the cypress trees. The maize is about to be planted, and she bears in her hand the rattle-staff or rain-rattle, carried by all the earth- and rain-gods and their priests, with which she brings down the rain by dint of sympathetic magic and which implement was also symbolic of fruitfulness or sexual union. [197] The worshipper takes the agave thorn in his hand wherewith to pierce his tongue and other members, so that the blood thus obtained may produce rain for the growth of the maize. The broom alluded to is a symbol of the earth-goddesses, and was made of hard, stiff, pointed grass, cut with sickles in the mountainous forests of Popocatepetl and Ajusco (see Tlazolteotl). “Thirteen eagles” is a date in the tonalamatl, the last day of the division ce calli. It was connected with the Ciuateteô, the vengeful women who died in childbed, of whom Tlazolteotl is the prototype. The “spear of the prickly plant” (cactus) is the weapon of Mixcoatl, son of the goddess, and is here probably alluded to as the lightning which accompanies the rainfall in Mexico, for Mixcoatl is the “Cloud-Serpent,” “the lightning-god.” Or the worshipper may complain of weakness from loss of blood shed as an offering by his use of the agave thorn. The warlike nature of Ciuacoatl is next alluded to. She was evidently identified at Cuitlauac, and Xochimilco, with the two-headed deer, an animal frequently connected with the worship of the nomadic Chichimecs, as was Mixcoatl, her son. She is stuck with eagle feathers or down, like the successful warrior who had captured an enemy. The warriors must now depart to seek for further victims. The whole song is eloquent of the connection of the earth-cult with war and human sacrifice.
Ciuacoatl is spoken of by Duran and Sahagun as a warrior goddess who gave the Mexicans victory over their enemies, and by Torquemada [198] as the elder sister of the Mimixcoa, the stellar gods of the steppe. She it was, too, who, according to another myth, pounded the human bones brought by Quetzalcoatl from the Underworld into a paste, from which men were formed—an allusion to the belief current in Mexico that man was made, or at least “built up,” from maize. [199] Sahagun says of her [200] that she dispensed adverse fortune, poverty, abjectness, and misery. She was wont to appear to men in the guise of a richly dressed lady, such as frequented the court. Through the night she wandered, howling and bellowing. Occasionally she was seen carrying a cradle, and when she vanished, examination showed that the resting-place of what was believed to be an infant contained nothing but an obsidian knife, such as was used in human sacrifice. [201] There are also indications that she presided over childbirth.
TEMPLES
Ciuacoatl had a temple called the Tlillan Calmecac, or “Black College,” where dwelt those priests devoted to her service. [202]
NATURE AND STATUS
The circumstance that Ciuacoatl appears with the skull of a dead person leads to the conclusion that, besides being an earth-deity, she had phantom or underworld characteristics—a common connection for a grain-goddess. From her hymn we gather that she has a magical influence over the plantation and growth of the maize. She is, perhaps, a prototype of the Ciuateteô, the disappointed and vengeful women who had died in their first childbed, and the myth of her cradle containing the sacrificial knife is eloquent of the connection of the Earth-goddess with human sacrifice. Her martial character, also, is apparent and is a concomitant of her agricultural and sacrificial significance. From her association with Mixcoatl, the Mimixcoa, the Chichimec gods, as from her name, Quilaztli, and her symbol it is evident that she is connected with the Chichimec or native Indian cult. Her connection with childbed is clear from one of the addresses given by Sahagun, who states that the midwife exhorted the woman in childbed to be strong and valiant as was Ciuacoatl. “Who first bore children,” in allusion to a myth mentioned by Gama (pt. i, p. 39), who says that she gave birth to two children, male and female, whence sprung the human race—a story I have failed to trace elsewhere, except in Clavigero.
COATLICUE = “SERPENT-SKIRT”
Area of Worship: Mexico-Tenochtitlan.
Minor Name: Coatlantonan = “Our Serpent Mother.”
Relationship: Mother of Uitzilopochtli by Mixcoatl; mother of Coyolxauhqui and the Centzonuitznaua; wife of Tezcatzoncatl or Izquitecatl.
Festival: Feast of the flower-sellers in the second month, tlacaxipeuliztli.
Symbol: The eagle’s foot.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Sahagun MS.—The face of the goddess is painted with white infusorial earth of the kind known as tiçitl. She wears a crown of eagle-feathers and a white overdress. Her skirt is formed of serpents, as her name implies. On her feet she wears white sandals and shells. Her shield is inset with eagle-feathers, and she bears a serpent-staff in her hand.
STATUES
Much argument has circled around the colossal statue of Coatlicue (see Introduction) which formerly adorned one of the entrances to the great temple of Mexico, and which was evidently supported by upright stones, so that it formed the key-stone of a gateway where it could be seen by all who passed in and out of the temple. It has been assigned to more than one goddess, and when it was disinterred amongst other relics in the course of making new drains in the Plaza Mayor of Mexico in August 1790, it was placed in the court of the university and there worshipped by the Indians, who decked it with flowers. The Mexican antiquaries, relying on a statement by Boturini [203] in which he states that Uitzilopochtli was accompanied by the goddess “Teoyaomiqui,” regarded the two-faced idol as being bi-sexual and as a composite figure of both gods, and this notion was perpetuated by Gama in his Dos Piedras. Payne, in his History of the New World, appends a long and very “sane” note to his description of it, sneers at the conclusions of the Mexican antiquaries, and states, somewhat dogmatically, that it must be regarded as a representation of Chicomecoatl. But it is undoubtedly Coatlicue. In the first place that goddess had a right to a position in the temple of Uitzilopochtli as his mother, secondly the idol wears the skirt of serpents which is implied in her name. But this notwithstanding, the stone figure has obviously a symbolical meaning as illustrating the whole circumstances of human sacrifice. The head is formed by the junction of the heads of two serpents, which symbolize the two streams of blood welling out from a decapitated body. The flayed skin of the victim is hung in front and is shown knotted behind as in the statue of Xipe found at the Castillo de Teayo. The cups from which octli was drunk are stuck in front of the flayed human skin, and a skull adorns the serpent-skirt before and behind. Through all these attributes, however, the personality of the serpent-woman goddess can be sensed as much as observed. [204]
Other statues and paintings of Coatlicue uphold the theory that she is represented by this idol. One found in the Calle de las Escalerillas, and others recovered from the Calle de Coliseo in Mexico City, show her as having the face of a skull. In the latter she wears a peculiar flat headdress with maize-like motifs depending from the back, and her hair recalls the ruffled “night-hair” of Mictlantecutli. Around her body are strange step-motifs which constitute the ends of parallel lines; and from her ears depend large cotton plugs. She wears a girdle of skulls with serpentine noses. Another relief of her found in the Calle de las Escalerillas is, however, much more enlightening than the foregoing. In this spirited work she wears what is evidently a panache of stone knives or malinalli grass, the face is that of a skull, she has the claws of a jaguar, and the skirt of entwined serpents is noticeable. Be all this as it may, however, the insignia of the goddess is by no means a fixed quantity, and considerable research is necessary before anything like certainty can be arrived at.
MYTH
Sahagun (bk. iii, c. i) related of this goddess that near the ancient city of Tulla or Tulan rose the mountain of Coatepec (“Serpent Mountain”), where lived a woman named Coatlicue, mother of certain “Indians” called Cenzonuitznaua. She had a daughter called Coyolxauhqui. Coatlicue, who was a widow and very devout, climbed each day to the mountain of Coatepec to do penance, and on one occasion, as she reached its summit, a little ball of feathers resembling a roll of thread or twine fell upon her. Picking it up, she placed it in her bosom, and later was unable to find it. Shortly afterwards she became enceinte. Her children, observing her condition, were indignant, and Coyolxauhqui advised her brothers to slay their mother for the shame she had put upon them. Her unborn infant whispered to her to be of good cheer. But one day her sons armed themselves and prepared to slay her. One of them, however, called Quauitlicac, whispered to the supernatural child that treason was toward, and at the moment when, headed by Coyolxauhqui, Coatlicue’s children came to dispatch her, Uitzilopochtli was born, fully armed. Falling upon his brothers and sister with his terrible weapon, the xiuhcoatl, or fiery serpent, he speedily dispatched them all. [205]
FESTIVAL
Tlacaxipeuliztli.—Sahagun (bk. ii, c. 22) relates that on the second day of this month the people of the temple quarter of Coatlan offered flowers in the temple and made music during the entire day in honour of Coatlicue. These flowers were the first-fruits of the year, were offered up by the master florists, who had a great devotion to the goddess, and none of the blossoms in their gardens might be smelt until these bouquets had been offered up in the temple of Coatlicue. They made for this feast tamallis called tzatzapaltamalli (“sharp-tasting herb cakes”).
NATURE AND STATUS
Coatlicue is, in one of her aspects, undoubtedly the flower-covered earth of spring, from whom, as it were, the sun (Uitzilopochtli) is reborn. Her serpent-skirt is probably symbolic of the circumstance that, at the season which she represents, the earth is clothed with the rain as with a garment. The myth which makes her a pious widow is obviously of late, and probably of hierophantic, origin. In my view Uitzilopochtli is chiefly her son in his naualli or disguise of a humming-bird. The humming-bird sucks from the breasts of earth as a child from its mother’s. But the myth is highly conglomerate, and, as we possess it, is obviously the result of the fusion of several varying conceptions of the two principal figures. Coatlicue’s appearance as a serpent in her great statue which has been described above, and her name of Coatlantonan, “Our Serpent Mother,” in my view tend to identify her with the earth in its form of dragon, serpent, or cipactli, regarding which hypothesis the reader is referred to my remarks in the Introduction.
It is not improbable that, like Xochiquetzal, Coatlicue is one of those mountain goddesses from whose sacred heights the rain descended upon the parched fields. This seems likely from the name of her abode, Coatepetl (“Serpent Mountain”), the serpents of which her skirt is composed being symbolical, perhaps, of the stream flowing from the tarns or pools situated on its lower acclivities. That such a mountain actually existed in the vicinity of Tollan is proved by the statement of Sahagun. Uitzilopochtli (q.v.) is thus the sun which rises out of the mountain, or is “born” from it, armed with the xiuhcoatl, or fire-snake, the red dawn, with which he slays his sister Coyolxauhqui, whose insignia show her to represent the moon, and puts the stars to flight.
XOCHIQUETZAL = “FLOWER FEATHER”
Area of Worship: Plateau of Anahuac; Tlaxcallan; Tlalhuica.
Minor Names: Ce atl = “One Water.” Ce Mazatl (Calendar date) = “One Deer.” Mazateotl = “Deer Goddess.”
Calendar Place: Ruler of the twentieth day (xochitl) and of the nineteenth “week” (ce quauhtli).
Compass Direction: West.
Festivals: Tepeilhuitl (Tlalhuica). Quecholli (Tlaxcallan). Chicome xochitl (Mexico).
Relationship: The first woman, and thus companion of Piltzintecutli (the Sun-god); otherwise, wife of Tlaloc, abducted by Tezcatlipocâ.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 9: Here the goddess is represented as wearing an upper garment of diversified pattern, finished with a variegated edging. Her shawl is painted in the chalchihuitl colours, and from it depend two strings or ribbons of a dark shade, completed with a flower. Her nose-plate is blue and is formed rather after the fashion of the butterfly design, while her helmet-mask represents a quetzal-bird. In sheet 58 she is vis-à-vis with the Death-god and is garbed like an earth-deity with a many-coloured robe. Her hair is dressed like that of the Zapotec women, that is, two tresses are twisted up like horns and secured with parti-coloured bands. On the same sheet (next picture) she confronts one of her servitors or priests (tlamacazque), and her garments in this place are very similar to those already described. In the next illustration the only addition to her costume is a wreath of flowers, but under her arm she holds a quetzal-bird and sits opposite a red Tezcatlipocâ. On sheet 59 she is represented in the first place opposite the tlamacazque, and in the following picture confronts a naked prostitute. Between these figures is her servitor, surprised in the act of pressing the courtesan’s breasts. This female is characterized by her wearing of Xochiquetzal’s shawl, hair-dressing, and the hieroglyph of the warrior caste (shield and spears) shown above her head. In the lowest row of the same sheet the goddess is seen opposite the Vulture-god, Tlacacozcaquauhtli. In the following sheets of the codex her aspect and garb are practically similar to those described above, with the exception of sheet 60, where she appears in the act of parturition, with the double head and certain of the insignia of Quaxolotl, being delivered by Quetzalcoatl in the character of Xolotl. In the region of her mouth is an angular line of red.
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 42: Here Xochiquetzal is adorned by a wreath of flowers and faces her servant. On sheet 41 we observe that her cheek is painted with a round red spot, like that of the Sun-god, whilst her head is adorned with quetzal-feathers, and the quetzal-bird is held under her arm. She is ensconced on a jaguar skin, and on her head is the wreath of flowers with two feather tufts, which is especially characteristic of her. On her face is depicted a red, angular line. Opposite is the figure of her priest, and between them is a headless woman, whose head is replaced by a flowering tree. On sheet 39 she is shown as wearing a quetzal-bird mask and a blue, step-shaped nose-plate, while her face-paint is elaborately executed. In this picture is seen issuing from her body a quetzal-feather ornament, symbolic of a newly-born child. In one hand she holds a jewelled ornament, and in the other an ear of maize, and she wears the opossum wristlets applied to women in travail. Her new-born twins are seated beside her. In another part of this codex she is represented as facing various male deities in characteristic positions, which are evidently more typical of her personality than any insignia.
Codex Laud.—Sheet 38: She is here represented facing the tlamacazque in a kneeling attitude, with her hair dressed in a peculiar manner. Sheet 35 shows her similarly represented to her picture in Codex Vaticanus B, sheet 39. Her twins are seated one on the instep curve of each foot.
Pottery Figures.—Various pottery figures of the goddess found in the Valley of Mexico are to be seen in the Uhde Collection, Berlin. In one of these she is represented holding an infant, and her general attire agrees with the manuscript representations of her. Her hair is dressed in the Zapotec style, rising up in two horns and secured with plaited bands. The shawl or tippet with a V-shape in front is a constant factor, and in one example is scalloped, in another plain, while in the third it ends in the chalchihuitl ornament and a bead or ball-fringing. In the Seler collection is a curious little statuette from Cholula, in which the goddess is again represented as carrying a child. She wears a flat cap, almost like that of a cook or chef, the precise significance of which escapes me, unless it be a local headdress, as some other examples in the same collection would seem to prove. In a relief found at Zanja de la Piedra Labrada, near Castillo de Teayo, she is represented opposite Tlaloc, as if to show her connection with rain. Her headdress in this place would seem to be a compromise between the Zapotec hairdressing and a motif representative of florescence. She wears the same V-shaped tippet, which is here adorned with three tassels, and she has the stepped nose-ornament. In her right hand she carries a sceptre of water-rushes, the same as that held by Tlaloc, and in her left the staff commonly seen in the representation of gods in the Sahagun MS. (Biblioteca del Palacio), and which seems to me to be a development of the chicaunaztli, or rain-rattle.
MYTHS
Perhaps the most important of these is that found in the Sahagun collection of songs or hymns (the ninth item):
Out of the land of the rain and the mist I, Xochiquetzal, come. Out of Tamoanchan. The pious Piltzintecutli weeps; He seeks Xochiquetzal. To the land of corruption I must go.
The goddess here declares that, like other fertility goddesses, she comes from the fruitful supernatural country of Tamaonchan, the home of the maize. Piltzintecutli, the Sun-god, seeks her, but, like Ishtar in Babylonian myth, she must betake herself to the Underworld, until it is once more time to resume her growth-assisting labours. We have here good grounds for positing the existence of a popular myth which would seem to have recounted how the divine lovers dwelt happily in Tamoanchan until Xochiquetzal was forced to quit the blest abode or was carried off, and was sought for by the Sun-god, a myth like that of Proserpine or Orpheus. It may refer to the sun seeking the flower, or may have a bearing upon the myth of Ixnextli, a variant of Xochiquetzal, who was expelled from Paradise, and of whom the interpreter of Codex Vaticanus A says: “Ixnextli, who is the same as Eve, is always weeping, her eyes dim with ashes, a rose in her hand, emblematical of her grief, being in consequence of her having gathered it. And accordingly they celebrate a fast every eight years on account of this calamitous event; the fast was on bread and water. They fasted on the eight signs preceding the entrance of the rose, and when that sign arrived, they prepared themselves for the celebration of the festival. They affirm that every series of five days comprised in this calendar was dedicated to this fall, because on such a day Eve sinned. They were accordingly enjoined to bathe themselves on this night in order to escape disease.” Regarding this myth the interpreter of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis says: “They represented her as Eve always weeping and looking at her husband, Adam. She is called Ysnextli, which signifies ‘eyes blind with ashes’; and this refers to the time subsequent to her sinning by plucking the roses. They accordingly declare that they are still unable to look up to heaven, and in recollection of the happy state which she lost, they fasted every eight years on account of this fall.” It is significant that the goddess pictured beside this statement is called “Suchiquezal.”
Diego Muñoz Camargo, in his Historia de Tlaxcala, equates Xochiquetzal with Venus and states that: “She dwells above the nine heavens in a very pleasant and delectable place, accompanied and guarded by many people and waited on by other women of the rank of goddesses, where are many delights of fountains, brooks, flower-gardens, and without her wanting for anything, and that where she sojourned she was guarded and sheltered from the gaze of the people, and that in her retinue she had a great many dwarfs and hunchbacks, jesters, and buffoons, who entertained her with music and dancing and whom she sent as her confidants and messengers to the other gods, and that their chief occupation was the spinning and weaving of sumptuous artistic fabrics, and that they were painted so beautifully and elegantly that nothing finer could be found amongst mortals. But the place where she dwelt was called Tamohuanichan Xochitl ihcacan, Chicuhnauh-nepaniuhcan, Itzehecaya, that is, ‘the house of the descent or of birth, the place where are the flowers, the ninefold enchained, the place of the fresh, cool winds.’ And every year she was honoured with a great feast, to which many people from all parts were gathered in her temple.” He continues: “They say that she had formerly been the spouse of the Rain-god, Tlaloc, but that Tezcatlipocâ had abducted her, and brought her to the nine heavens, and made her the goddess of love. And then there was another goddess, Matlalcuêyê, the goddess to whom were attributed witchcraft and soothsaying. Her Tlaloc had made his consort after Tezcatlipocâ had carried off his wife Xochiquetzal.” [206]
Another myth, given by Boturini, recounts her temptation of the holy ascetic Yappan, who dwelt in a desert place in order to lead a continent and solitary life, so that he might win the favour of the gods. He took up his abode on a rock called Tehuehuetl, but the gods conceived a doubt of his piety, and sent an enemy of his, Yaotl (enemy), to watch his movements. Even this bitter foe found nothing to cavil at in his conduct, and women sent by the gods to lead him from the paths of rectitude were sternly repulsed. The divine beings were about to consider his apotheosis, when Xochiquetzal, feeling that her reputation as a tempter of men was at stake, angrily assured them that she was able to effect his seduction. Descending to earth, she sought out the hermit, whom she assured of her admiration and esteem, and asked by what path she might ascend to his rocky seat. All unsuspicious of her intent, Yappan descended from his place on the rock and assisted her to climb the rugged eminence. Yappan forgot his vow of chastity, and when the goddess had departed, found himself deserted by the angry gods to the mercies of his enemy, Yaotl, who slew him out of hand. The gods transformed the slain man into a scorpion, and Yaotl having also slain Yappan’s wife, Tlahuitzin, whom he had abandoned for the life ascetic, she was transformed into an animal of the same species, and crawling under a stone, found her husband there. But the gods, wrathful at Yaotl’s excessive cruelty, changed him into a locust. [207]
FESTIVALS
Chicomexochitl (“Seven Flower”).—In the sign ce ocelotl, on the day chicomexochitl, the artists united to hold festival to the goddess, and the laundresses, says Sahagun, [208] fasted forty days. “They joined together, twenty or more, to obtain a better quality of pictures and weaves and to this end offered up quails and incense.” This was one of the movable feasts.
In an illuminating passage in his disquisition upon the Aubin tonalamatl (p. 123) Seler says: “As I have remarked at the opening of the section, the goddess Xochiquetzal is properly the expression of the day-sign xochitl. But owing to the transference of the series of rulers of the day-signs to the weeks in the peculiar way affected by the calendar-makers, that is, by a general shifting of one member, [209] Xochiquetzal has been brought into association with the sign ce quauhtli (one eagle). But in Telleriano-Remensis at this week the hand-mark [210] which indicates the feast-day proper of the ruler of the week stands at the first day itself—the sign ce quauhtli, that induced the calendar-makers to effect the above-described dislocation in the second half of the list of rulers. For more than one reason the day ce quauhtli must really have seemed to the priestly savants specially appropriate to the goddess Xochiquetzal, and above all, because this day was one of the five which fell at the beginning or western quarter of the tonalamatl disposed in columns of five members. Hence these five days were collectively regarded as dedicated to the earth-goddesses, and as the days in which the ghostly women dwelling in the west, the Ciuateteô, swooped down upon earth, striking the children with epilepsy and beguiling the men to lust and sin.” These Ciuateteô were stregæ, witches, succubi, and their characteristics, which are touched upon in the section dealing with Tlazolteotl, will be more fully outlined elsewhere.
Quecholli.—The people of Tlaxcallan held a festival to Xochiquetzal in the month quecholli, when the Mexicans celebrated the feast of Mixcoatl. At the Tlaxcaltec feast numbers of young women were sacrificed to the goddess, “to the honour of love,” and the prostitutes were also in the habit of offering themselves for immolation, we are informed by Torquemada, [211] first haling the “honest” women through the mire and subjecting them to the foulest abuse. The Tlalhuica, who lived in the hot lands south of Mexico, themselves, like the Tlaxcaltecs, a people of Nahua race, held a festival in honour of Xochiquetzal in the month tepeilhuitl, which the Mexicans dedicated to the Tlaloque, gods of rain, as is related by the interpreter of the Codex Magliabecchiano. Torquemada, too, [212] states that the Tlaxcaltecs sacrificed many children to Xochiquetzal and to the mountain-gods (Tlaloque) evidently at this season. Xochiquetzal was also connected with the festival of the atamalqualiztli, celebrated every eight years. In the picture of that feast in the Sahagun MS. we observe her seated at a loom. From these considerations it is manifest that the verdurous and “watery” attributes of the goddess connected her with the Tlaloque, but that she was not actually of their company.
TEMPLES
In Tlalhuica, not far from Cuernavaca or Quauhnauac, stands the pyramid of Xochicalco, one of the most perfect specimens extant of Nahua architectural skill. There is reason to believe that Xochiquetzal was originally the local deity of one of these mountains the waters from which irrigate the fields below, [213] and it seems probable that the teocalli of Xochicalco typified this eminence. We know that the teotlalpan, or “Place of Divine Earth,” in the sacred precinct at Mexico, was sacred to Mixcoatl, a deity who was perhaps of Otomi origin, and that it was probably symbolic of a mountain in the Otomi country of which he was the presiding deity, so that the probability is borne out by analogy. In the country of the Tlaxcaltecs stood the heights of Xochtecatl, “Goddess of the Flowery Land,” a mountain, according to Torquemada, about six miles in circumference, which was the nucleus of a settlement, and was surrounded by graves hewn out of the solid rock. This, perhaps, provides a fuller illustration of the theory advanced above.
NATURE AND STATUS
The original home of Xochiquetzal seems to have been among the Tlalhuica and Tlaxcaltecs. But as the latter were closely connected with the Mexicans racially, there is good reason to believe that she was also an original member of their pantheon. In any case she had a place in the metropolitan calendar, and the contention of the compilers of both interpretative codices, as well as of the native author of the picture writings in the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas, that she is to be equated with Tonacaciuatl, the female member of the creative pair, seems to have been a later development.
But Xochiquetzal is more especially the goddess of flowers, the female counterpart of Xochipilli-Macuilxochitl. As has been mentioned, she was probably at first the goddess who presided over some lofty mountain whose streams watered the sun-dried plains beneath and clothed them in abundant florescence, perhaps that very mountain of Xochtecatl to which allusion has been made, and which stood in Tlaxcaltec territory. As the “feminine” of Xochipilli, however, she certainly partook of his festive and frivolous character, and thus presided over the song, the dance, and all sportive amusements. By a further slight effort of imagination she came to be regarded as the goddess of illicit love, or of the sensuous side of intercourse between the sexes, not so much a goddess of degraded animal passion, like Tlazolteotl, as a figure bearing a close resemblance to the Apsarasas of Hindu myth, lovely and voluptuous, and, like them, addicted to the game of throwing the dice (patolli). A further step established her as the patron goddess of the prostitutes who existed for the pleasure of the unmarried warriors and who resided with them in the great common house of the bachelors. From this circumstance arose the obscene character of the feast of Quecholli among the Tlaxcaltecs and the Tepeilhuitl festival among the Tlalhuica.
Xochiquetzal was also in some measure the patroness of pregnant women, according to the interpreter of Codex Vaticanus A, and these worshipped and sacrificed to her in order that they should not give birth to girls. She is herself figured in Codex Borgia as the great parturient, and in Codex Vaticanus B (sheet 39) as has been indicated above.
She had also, like Xochipilli, an artistic significance, as the patroness of weavers and artists. She was revered by the women who practised the former art, the invention of spinning and weaving was attributed to her, and many kinds of craftsmen paid her honours. She had, moreover, a magical side to her character; in the Aubin tonalamatl she is seated opposite the dancing wizard, and she is furthermore one of the Tzitzimimê, or deities of the darksome night, among whom she is symbolized by the spider.
MACUILXOCHITL = “FIVE FLOWER,” OR XOCHIPILLI = “FLOWER PRINCE”
Area of Worship: Tehuacan, Cozcatlan, Teotitlan del Camino, Oaxaca, Mexico.
Minor Names: Auia teotl = “God of Pleasure.” Mazatl = “Deer.” Auiatl = “The Jovial.”
Symbol: The sign five-flower.
Calendar Place: Ruler of the eleventh day-sign, ozomatli. Seventh of the thirteen day-lords. Ruler of the twentieth day-count, xochitl.
Festival: The Xochilhuitl (“Feast of Flowers”), one of the movable feasts.
Compass Directions: South; West.
Relationship: Brother of Ixlilton; son of Piltzintecutli.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA (as Macuilxochitl)
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 15: In this place the god wears as breast-ornament a human lower jaw, which, combined with the green band to which it is tied up, may possibly express the day-count malinalli. He has a large feather nape-ornament. The upper part of his face is white, with a dark band over the nose and cheek, and white painting over the mouth, in the semblance of an outspread hand. He wears a cap with vertically projecting bands painted in the colours of the green jewel chalchihuitl.
Sahagun MS.—Here he is represented with a white hand painted on his mouth and a feather crown surmounted by a crest.
General.—Like the other gods of dance and sport, Macuilxochitl wears the four balls of the toualli emblem on his shield and sometimes carries the staff with the heart. Like Ixtlilton, he had probably once a bird’s-head mask, which in the course of his evolution degenerated into a feather crest and a wing on his back. The deterioration of this feature can be observed in the stone effigies of his counterpart Xochipilli.
STATUES
A stone figure of Macuilxochitl found in Cuernavaca represents the god seated in a squatting attitude, and it is evidently intended to show him as an onlooker at the ball-game. He wears a pointed headdress or mitre, on the top of what would seem to be a cotton head-covering. A head of the god in stone is included in the collection of the Natural History Museum at Vienna. In this the nose-plug is prominent and he wears round earrings. The wing-ornament stands well out behind the head and the face seems to look out of a bird helmet-mask, on both sides of which are large, circular holes, through which feathers or cotton ear-plugs fall. The difficulty of working in stone has evidently restrained the sculptor from representing the upper and lower portions of the bird’s beak, and the helmet-mask bears a strong resemblance to that of Xochipilli in the Codex Magliabecchiano, if the beak in that representation were removed. A statue of the god found in the Calle de las Escalerillas in Mexico City on December 13, 1900, is almost identical with the first of those two statues, and agrees with the second in that here we have the circular holes at the side of the headdress with the dependent feathers or cotton plug. The best known of the representations of this god, however, is the clay model found by Seler at Teotitlan del Camino. It represents Macuilxochitl in a sitting position and is brilliantly coloured. The face of the god looks out of a bird helmet-mask, highly conventionalized, and which has practically lost all its birdlike characteristics. The two circular holes below the ear are, however, still represented. The upper part of the face is painted yellow, but under each eye is an oblong patch painted in variegated colours, such as appears on the faces of the gods of grain. Around the mouth is a large white patch, in which we may see the white hand motif conventionalized. The body-paint is red and the garment white, except that portion at the neck, which is blue. Small golden bells adorn the necklace and wristlets. In this statuette we have evidently a very late and highly developed figure of the deity, showing a considerable departure from the earlier drawings and statues of him. In the Anthropological Museum at Berlin is a stone statue of Macuilxochitl, also in a squatting attitude, in which the circular motif above the ear, with its accompanying plug, is strongly in evidence. A number of stone statuettes of the god were found at Tepeaca in the state of Puebla and are now housed in the Natural History Museum at Vienna. These do not differ from the examples already described, save that in one of them the Greek fret-pattern takes the place of the circular ear-plug motif. A stone figure of the god was found amid the ruins of the Castillo de Teayo, a teocalli, or pyramid, in Vera Cruz. In this, which is also a squatting figure, the god is covered by a mantle which is surmounted by the bird’s comb, as seen in Magliabecchiano and elsewhere. Around the head are three of the circular holes above mentioned, one above each ear and one at the back of the head, from which depend a double strip of cotton or other textile.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA (as Xochipilli)
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 26: In this MS. the god is painted a light yellow colour. His light hair is bound with a jewelled strap ornamented on the frontal side with a conventional bird’s head. Round his head he also wears the fillet of the Sun-god, ornamented with a feather tuft. As a breast ornament he has a large gold disk suspended from a broad gold chain, hung with bells. His right hand clasps a bundle of grass, and in his left he bears a staff embellished with turquoise mosaic and flowers, probably intended for a rattle-stick. Above the twilight symbol of the west in the water are instruments of mortification. On sheet 32 he is represented as of a blue colour with a jewelled chain in front of his mouth.
Codex Fejérváry-Mayer.—The description of the god in this MS. is similar to that just given. In his hand he supports a dish with ornaments, a bangle for the upper arm, a feather tuft and a neck-chain.
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 13: In this codex he is seen seated on a royal throne. His body and the lower part of his face are coloured red, the upper facial region is painted yellow, but contains a small, rectangular field, half-red and half-white, while round the mouth is executed a butterfly design, after the manner of Tonacatecutli and the maize-gods. His blue ear-plug has a jewelled thong dependent from it, and his nose-plug is reproduced in the colours of the chalchihuitl jewel. On his head he wears the strap decorated by two large jewelled disks. On the frontal side is the stereotyped bird-ornament, while from the whole, four ends branch off. Surmounting this representation is the symbol of the night-sky, the dusk-enveloped eye. His nape-ornament consists of red and white feathers blended together. On his breast is a large disk of gold, secured by strings of greenstone beads. His loin-cloth is adorned with jewelled disks, and to the back-bow is fastened a coxcoxtli bird’s head, which serves as a “mirror-tail,” or back-mirror. A portion of the ends of his loin-cloth is coloured like the chalchihuitl jewel. In front of his mouth is a flower from which two jewelled thongs project.
Codex Magliabecchiano.—The mantles worn by Xochipilli are alluded to in the MS. which accompanies the paintings in this codex as “mantas de un selo señor o de Cinco Rosas y manta de Cinco Rosas” (see sheets 5 and 6). There is also a picture of him on sheet 47. The figure on the red quemitl which he wears is similar to that worn on sheet 20 of Codex Borbonicus by the god Cinteotl, and is, perhaps, a butterfly motif.
STATUES
Stone effigies of Xochipilli were set up in the tlachtli courts. In the Museo Naçional at Mexico there is a stone statue of the god which represents him as sitting cross-legged, as if watching the ball-game. He wears the mask of a player or dancer. By the aid of such statues of Xochipilli, which are found in considerable numbers all over the eastern Mexican slope, the transition from the bird-helmet to the rudimentary crest may be studied. [214]
MYTH
The only mythical matter of importance concerning Macuilxochitl or Xochipilli is the nineteenth song in the Sahagun collection, which is as follows [215]:
SONG OF THE GOD OF MUSIC AND GAMES
Out of the place of flowers I come, Priest of the Sunset, Lord of the Twilight.
I come even now, my granddam, Thou of the thigh-skin face-painting, Lady of the Sunset, I, priest of the Sunset, Lord of the Twilight.
The god of evil omens, The lord Tezcatlipocâ, Shall answer to me, the Maize-god.
In the temple of the octli-god The rabbit has come to life again. It runs about. By my god was it created. I will bring down the fire-drill, fire will I twirl On the mountain of Mixcoatl in Culhuacan.
Raising my voice, I strike the little mirror; The little mirror has grown weak In the temple of the octli-god. The white hair grows moist, Ripe has the octli become.
I will endeavour to elucidate the above strophes, the obscurity of which is apparent. The god declares that he comes from Tamoanchan, the mythical paradise of flowers and vegetation in the west, and that he is the priest of the sunset and lord of the twilight, both of which are characteristic of that region. He invokes his mother, or grandmother, Tlazolteotl, by names with which her worshippers were familiar. He warns Tezcatlipocâ that he has the power to avert his evil omens, probably by means of merriment and carousing. The rabbit was the Mexican symbol of intoxication by octli. This strophe regarding it comes, as it were, from the worshipper, who states that his god Macuilxochitl or Xochipilli has created or re-created the rabbit, or spirit of the octli beverage. Sahagun calls Xochipilli a god of fire, and we know that he was associated with the sacrificial fire-drill, which was also the symbol of sexual union and licence. Seler thinks that this song shows “the relation which exists between the pulque (octli) gatherings, the deity of feasts and the fire-drill.” [216]
FESTIVALS
Xochilhuitl.—Of the feast of flowers over which this god presided Sahagun says: “The great folk made a feast, dancing and singing in honour of this sign, decorating themselves with their feathers and all their grandeur for the areyto. At this feast the king bestowed honours upon warriors, musicians, and courtiers.” He states (Lib. II, Appendix c, xix): “They made each year in his honour a feast called xochilhuitl.... During the four days which preceded this feast all those who were to take part in it, men as well as women, observed a rigorous fast; and if during that period a man had commerce with a woman or a woman with a man, they held that the fast was soiled; that the god held it for a high offence, and that he would visit the offenders with maladies in their privy parts.... Before the feast everyone deprived himself of the use of chilli pepper. They fed upon a kind of broth called tlalcuilolatolli, which is to say, ‘broth decorated with a flower in the middle.’... Those who fasted without the use of chilli or other savoury things, ate only once a day at midday.” Those who did not fast ate fermented bread. The people ornamented themselves with the symbols of the gods “as if they aspired to represent their images,” and danced and sang to the sound of the drum.
At midday they beheaded a great number of quails and made offerings of their blood before the image of the god. They also pierced their ears in his presence. Others pierced the tongue with the spines of the maguey, and passed through it a great number of osier reeds. Another ceremony consisted of making five tamalli (cakes) of maize, which they called “fasting bread.” These were placed beneath an arrow called xochimitl (“flower-dart”) and were offered to the idol as from the whole community. Those who wished to make a separate offering gave the god five tamalli upon a wooden platter, and chilmolli soup in a vase. Maize in all shapes and forms was also offered up. On the same day all the great folk in Mexico who lived near the frontiers of an enemy brought the slaves whom they had captured to the capital for sacrifice.
NATURE AND STATUS
This god appears to have had a highly developed cult among the peoples of Tehuacan, Cozcatlan, and Teotitlan del Camino. He is primarily a god of flowers and food, that is of abundance, and as such he equates with the god Cinteotl, with whom some of the sacred hymns even seem to confound him. But there are strong reasons why he should not be wholly identified with Cinteotl, as Seler attempts to do, and as the Mexicans certainly did not do, unless in later times. (See Cinteotl.) It may be, however, that he was originally a god of vegetation, who later became more especially a god of flowers, the cult of which was one particularly favoured by the people of Mexico. However this may be, there is no doubt that the joyous and sportive side of the god developed at the expense of all others, and we find Sahagun speaking of him under his two names as “the god of those who served for the amusement or pastime of the great.” [217] He is, indeed, the god of merriment, of dance and sport, of the ball-game, the jester or buffoon, and moreover presides over the gambling game of patolli, which he is seen patronizing in the Magliabecchiano MS. According to Jacinto de la Serna, he is the god of the great gamblers who frittered away their substance. As the god of sport he is frequently represented by the ape, the beast of mimicry and diversion.
But he had also a more worthy side, for to artists of all kinds, painters, weavers, and musicians in especial, he stood as the patron of all artistic effort, and those engaged in it celebrated their worship of him at the xochilhuitl festival. Several of the mantle designs in the Codex Magliabecchiano indicate that as a flower-god he was not forgotten by the weavers’ caste.
He has associations with several other gods besides Cinteotl, especially with Ixtlilton (q.v.), who is spoken of as his brother, and with the Ciuateteô, or deceased warrior women, probably because as a food-god he was supposed to come from the west, the place of plenty, where they resided, or, more likely, because of the hunger for earthly excitement displayed by these pleasure-starved dead women, debarred from the sensuous delights of earth. His connection with the octli-gods as the god of merriment and abundance of victuals and festive good things is plain; and he is very naturally the male counterpart of the goddess Xochiquetzal (q.v.). As hailing from a locality where planetary mythology was in an advanced condition, and where the worship of the morning star was practised, he may have had an astronomic significance, but what this was precisely is by no means clear. We probably assess his nature correctly if we allude to him as a god of pleasure, feast, and frivolity.
XIPE TOTEC = “OUR LORD THE FLAYED”
Area of Worship: Plateau of Anahuac, Zapotecs, Yopis.
Minor Names: Tlaltecutli = “Lord of the Earth.” Anauatl yteuc = “Lord of the Seaboard.” Tlatauhqui Tezcatlipocâ = “The Red Tezcatlipocâ.” Itztapaltotec = “Our Lord of the Flat Stone.” Youallauan = “Night Drinker.”
Symbol: In Codex Borgia a quail with its head torn off seems symbolical of this god.
Calendar Place: Lord of the fifteenth day, quauhtli, and of the fourteenth week, ce itzcuintli; with the Fire-god, lord of the twentieth tonalamatl division, ce tochtli.
Festival: Tlacaxipeuliztli.
Compass Direction: West.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 92: Xipe is depicted in this codex as clothed in the flayed skin of the sacrificed human victim, which, after the dreadful rite, was drawn over the priest’s body and worn for a number of days. The slit eyes of the mask he wears shows that this also is composed of human skin. He wears a nasal rod and plate having the general appearance of the peculiar peaked cap with which he is sometimes represented. The ends of his loin-cloth are slit and coloured white and red. Sheet 62. As ruler of the fourteenth tonalamatl division and god of the fifteenth day-count, Xipe is represented on this sheet as a red Tezcatlipocâ. The limbless body is red, the costume of the same colour, but with a face-mask of yellow, tinted to represent dead human flesh, with the chapfallen jaw of the dead, narrow slit eyes, as on sheet 92, and a red streak running over the eye, the full length of the face, indicative, perhaps, of the place where the operation of flaying was commenced. Here the nose-cap is also reminiscent of Xipe’s peculiar peaked cap, its ends especially resembling those of that headdress. Two red and white bands, the colours of the roseate spoonbill, depend from the ear. The hair is bound by a fillet on which are twin ornaments of dull gold, and above this rise two rows of quetzal feathers.
Codex Vaticanus A.—Plate xiv, Duc de Loubat’s reproduction: As a back-device he wears the three banners which are also shown of him in the picture in Duran’s collection. As god of the fourteenth tonalamatl division, he holds a shield, banner, and a bundle of spears, while half of his shield is painted in dark and light red rings.
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 49: In the Codex Borgia, Xipe is shown in his character of the patron god of the warrior’s death by combat, or the stone of sacrifice. He wears a wig made from the downy feathers of the eagle, which, however, does not altogether conceal his flame-coloured hair, two forelocks of which recall the hairdressing of Tlauizcalpantecutli, the god of the planet Venus. Underneath is shown his small petticoat or apron of green zapote leaves. From his mouth protrudes a double-jewelled string, which, perhaps, signifies the fertilizing rain, for as god of human sacrifice he has a connection with the gods of fertility. He is similarly represented on sheet 25, where he is also shown as ruler of the fourteenth tonalamatl division, and the picture indeed bears a close resemblance to that in Codex Vaticanus B, except that his breast-ornament, carved from a snail-shell, is attached to his variegated feather necklace. In this place he also wears a feather wig with a red crest made of the plumes of the roseate spoonbill, alternating with chalchihuitls on leather and the heads of rattle-sticks.
Image of Xipe found at Castillo de Teayo, showing him dressed in the skin of the sacrificed victim.
Codex Borgia Group Generally.—In this group generally Xipe stands as the representative of the sign of the day quauhtli. His insignia are the same as those of the red Tezcatlipocâ, with striped face-painting, but executed in red and yellow without the human skin, or other special characteristics, and decorated only with the warrior’s headdress and Tezcatlipocâ’s ring-shaped breast-ornament. The head and neck are covered with cloth, on which are stuck downy feather-balls. He holds in some places a severed arm, which he appears to be smelling or about to devour.
Codex Borbonicus.—In this codex Xipe is represented as Tezcatlipocâ, and has the face-painting of the red phase of that god, with the smoking mirror at his temple, the characteristic white ring, and the peculiar form of feather back-ornament, which is to be seen in some other Tezcatlipocâ pictures of this codex. But he wears on his head-fillet, instead of jewelled disks, an ornament of beaten gold, the crown of roseate spoonbill feathers, the ends of the bands shaped in swallow-tailed fashion, and other insignia pertaining to his own regular dress. The quetzalcomitl on his back carries a banner painted in light and dark red, his especial colours, and he also bears a shield painted in light and dark red concentric circles. In this codex he holds a fire-pan, painted with large patches of rubber gum, in which is inserted the rattle-stick with Xipe’s bands and loops coloured red and white, or light red and dark red with bifurcated ends.
Vienna Codex.—Xipe is represented here in the flayed human skin and designated by the date “Seven Rain.”
Codex Nuttall (Zouche).—Sheet 83: In this codex there is a good representation of the god, especially as regards his headdress. He is depicted as the warrior secured to the stone of combat, whose eye sheds tears at the thought of approaching death, and he bears in his hands the bâtons with which the military victims defended themselves against their adversaries (see Festival).
Sahagun MS.—This describes him as having a brown face covered with the feathers of the quail, and with open lips (chapfallen jaw?). His crown has parted ends, and he wears a wig of curled feathers. He has golden ear-plugs. Round the hips he has a woman’s short skirt of zapote leaves, and shells decorate his feet. His shield is red, with concentric circles, and he carries a rattle-staff.
MASKS, VASES, ETC.
The well-known mask of Xipe in the British Museum represents the mask of the sacrificed victim. On the back or inside, the carving of the god shows him wearing his full insignia, with the peculiar headdress and rattle-staff. Another mask of Xipe in the Bauer collection is of a most individual character. It was found near Tezcuco, and bears both wind and serpent symbols. On a stone at Cuernavaca is incised a good representation of the shield, darts, and flag of Xipe, with date ce ocelotl (“one ocelot”). On a cup in the Aldana collection Xipe is seen wearing the flayed skin, with a necklace, evidently of intestines. His hair is dressed in a manner resembling that affected by the warrior caste, and he carries the rattle-staff.
STATUES
Representations of Xipe in statuary are considerably numerous. Several found in the Valley of Mexico are housed in the Uhde collection, Berlin. Two of these represent the god as wearing the victim’s flayed skin and one of them is pitted with marks, evidently indicative of blood-spots. The crown with feathers of the roseate spoonbill is well exemplified in one of these, but in the other a mitre-like headdress superimposed upon a circular crown, from which depend large ribbons or paper ornaments, is noticeable. In another of these figures the headdress is a sort of barret-cap with knobs or studs. Still another figure of the same class shows the god with a very large stepped nose-ornament. All carry a rattle-staff and three bear a shield. A most striking statue of Xipe was discovered at the Castillo de Teayo site, at Vera Cruz. The head, which is round and bullet-shaped, bears an extraordinary resemblance to that of the well-known Egyptian figure of the Sheik-el-Beled in the Boulaq Museum. In this statue the god wears the skin of the victim, and the manner in which it was tied on to the priest is well illustrated by the knotting at the back. The faces, of course, are masks of the sacrificed victim.
ELEMENTS OF XIPE’S INSIGNIA
Although Xipe is so frequently portrayed as possessing the outward characteristics of a red Tezcatlipocâ, few of the Mexican deities possess insignia so individual, or so rich in manifold elements. The Xipe dress was a favourite one with Mexican kings and military chieftains, and, in the Codex Vaticanus A, King Motecuhzoma II is represented as wearing the costume on the occasion of his victory over Toluca. Tezozomoc also states that Axayacatl wore this dress, [218] and on the eve of a fierce engagement Tlacauepan, brother of Motecuhzoma, donned it at the latter’s special request. The elements of Xipe’s costume are as follows [219]:
(1) The painted crown of feathers of the roseate spoonbill, with bifurcated ends.
(2) The gilded timbrel.
(3) The jacket of spoonbill feathers.
(4) The petticoat or apron of zapote leaves, overlapping each other like tiles.
(5) The jaguar or ocelot-skin scabbard.
(6) The round shield covered with red spoonbill feathers, showing concentric circles of darker tints, sometimes noticeably bisected, one-half of which is again subdivided obliquely into a smaller upper portion containing a chalchihuitl on a blue field, and a larger lower portion, covered with jaguar or ocelot-skin.
Xipe’s dress has three forms:
(1) That of the red god, of the colour of the roseate spoonbill.
(2) That of the blue god, of the colour of the blue cotinga.
(3) As a jaguar or ocelot.
MYTHS
The interpreter of Codex Vaticanus A says of Xipe: “Amongst those who began to follow the example of Quetzalcoatl and his austerities by their own acts of penance, Totec is very famous, who, on account of his having been a great sinner, first stood in the house of sorrow called Tlaxipuchicalco, where, having completed his penance, he ascended the mountain Catcitepulz (‘the mountain which speaks’), which mountain was covered with thorns. There continuing his penance, he cried from thence very strongly, reproving his people of Tulan, calling to them to come and do penance with him for the enormous guilt which they had incurred in forgetting the services and sacrifices of their gods and having abandoned themselves so much to pleasure. They say that Totec was accustomed to go about clothed in a human skin and so it has been the custom till those times. In the festivals, likewise, which they celebrated to Totec, men clothed themselves in the skins of those whom they had slain in war and in this manner danced and celebrated the festival of the sign dedicated to him (for from him, they say, wars originated), and accordingly they paint him with these insignia, viz. a lance, banner, and shield. They hold him in the utmost veneration, for they say that he was the first who opened to them the way to heaven; for they were under this error amongst others; they supposed that only those who died in war went to heaven, as we have already said. Whilst Totec still continued doing penance, preaching and crying from the top of the mountain which has been named, they pretend that he dreamed this night that he beheld a horrible figure with its bowels protruding, which was the cause of the great abomination of his people. On this, praying to his god to reveal to him what the figure signified, he answered that it was the sin of his people, and that he should issue an order to the people, and cause them all to be assembled, charging them to bring thick ropes, and to bind that miserable spectre, as it was the cause of all their sins, and that, dragging it away, they should remove it from the people, who, giving faith to the words of Totec, were by him conducted to a certain wild place, where they found the figure of death, which, having bound, they dragged it to a distance, and drawing it backwards, they fell all into a cavity between the two mountains, which closed together, and there they have remained buried ever since; none of them having effected their escape, with the exception of the innocent children who remained in Tulan.”
A few lines farther on the interpreter says: “The two masters of penance were Quetzalcoatle and Totec, who was called by another name, Chipe; who, having taken the children and the innocent people who remained in Tulan, proceeded with them, peopling the world, and collecting along with them other people whom they chanced to find. They further add that, journeying in this manner with these people, they arrived at a certain mountain, which not being able to pass, they feign that they bored a subterranean way through it and so passed. Others say that they remained shut up and that they were transformed into stones, and other such fables.”
The first part of this myth is, of course, merely ætiological of the practice of making vows to Xipe to capture and immolate an enemy in his honour, as, we shall see in the paragraph dealing with his festivals, was done on that occasion. But I would point out that it possesses some importance as providing further evidence regarding the existence of the ascetic life in Mexico, most of the myths dealing with which, like that under discussion, are connected with the Toltecs, the people of Quetzalcoatl. Xipe, who plays the part of the Toltec Jeremiah, is here the subject of a tale which is also recounted of Tezcatlipocâ, with whom he is frequently confounded or identified, perhaps because both were great gods of the sacrificial stone, or for the reason that practically all Mexican cults tended to gravitate towards Tezcatlipocâ in late times.
That portion of the story which details the burial en masse of the Toltecs is, of course, the widespread tale of the disappearance of the old hero-race underground—the fate which overtook Charlemagne and his peers, King Arthur and “the auld Picts” at Arthur’s Seat, near Edinburgh, Barbarossa and his men, and many another group of paladins. The whole may allude, in the ultimate, to mound-burial. It is strange too—or quite natural, as we believe in, or doubt, the penetration of America by alien influences—to find in Mexico an incomplete variant of the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I should not be surprised to find that Xipe piped the Toltec children into the Underworld, for Tezcatlipocâ, with whom he was identified, or at least the captive who represented that god at the Toxcatl festival, and who had a year of merriment in which to prepare himself for his fate, went through the city at intervals, playing upon a flute. This almost universal myth may allude to the ancient belief that the souls of the dead travelled with the wind, and were the cause of its sighing and whistling. [220] We know, too, that the whistling of the night wind through the mountains was regarded by the Mexicans as of evil omen, and that Yoalli Eecatl (The Wind of Night) was one of the names of Tezcatlipocâ. [221]
The following song from the Sahagun MS. is in celebration of Xipe:
Wherefore dost thou disguise thyself, O Night-drinker? Put on thy golden garment.
O my god, thy rich sacrificial water descended; The lofty cypress tree has become a quetzal; That which was a serpent has become a quetzal. The fire-serpent, the famine, has left me.
It may be that I shall go thence to perish, I, the young maize-plant. My heart is like a chalchihuitl; But I shall yet see gold in that place. I shall be satisfied when I can say The warrior chief is born.
Let the maize be ready in abundance, O my god. I look towards thy mountain, I, who worship thee.
I will be satisfied When the maize ripens, When the warrior chief is born.
I believe the god to have been called “Night-drinker” from the circumstance that, in the belief of certain barbarous peoples, vegetation is more greatly assisted in its growth by night than by day, that it “drinks,” or is saturated by, the mists and vapours of the night season, which are believed to emanate from the moon. [222] Indeed, dew is believed to be caused by the moon, [223] which is regarded as the great source of all moisture, as the sun is the great source of all heat. [224]
Xipe is here entreated by the young maize-plant to don his golden garment, the rain, as, indeed, one translation of this song states it to be, taking a reasonable liberty with the original. When the rain comes the cypress glitters like a quetzal-feather, a Mexican euphuism for a glittering gem, or anything very precious. The xiuhcoatl, or fire-serpent, is the terrible weapon of Uitzilopochtli, with which he slew his rebellious brothers and sister, the enemies of his mother Coatlicue, as Indra slew those of his mother, both of these events occurring immediately after the birth of the gods thus compared. (In the case of Indra the weapon was a thunderbolt.) The fire-serpent in this place evidently symbolizes the scorching, torrid heat which brings about famine. If the rain continues not, the maize-plant, the young heart of which is green as jadeite, and from which the golden maize will emerge later, may perish. Finally the worshipper (?) states that he will remain unsatisfied until the plumed and full-grown plant, symbolic of the warrior and all that he fights for, has come to fruition.
My reading of this song differs considerably from those of other authorities, but I may, perhaps, be pardoned if I say that I prefer my own elucidation as at least more circumstantial and more in line with the facts of Mexican belief.
FESTIVAL
Tlacaxipeuliztli.—The best description of this festival is that of Sahagun (bk. ii, c. xxi) who tells us that on the last day of the month of that name the Mexicans celebrated a solemn festival to Xipe and Uitzilopochtli. On the afternoon of the day prior to that on which the feast was to take place they held a solemn areyto, or dance, and they watched all the night in the temple called calpulco [225] with those who were to be sacrificed on the morrow. They shaved the hair from the tops of their heads, at the same time drawing blood from their own ears to offer to the gods. When daybreak had come, they conducted the captives to the temple of Uitzilopochtli, where they were sacrificed and flayed, from which circumstance the feast took its name. Many of the victims were called Xipeme or Tototectin (plurals of the god’s name). The masters of the captives, or those who had captured them in war, formally handed them over to the priests at the foot of the teocalli, and these took them by the hair of the head to make them mount the steps more quickly. If they refused to walk to the stone of sacrifice they were dragged thence. When their hearts had been withdrawn they were offered up to the gods, and the body cast down the steps of the teocalli, where other priests received it for flaying. The hearts of the unfortunates thus slaughtered were thrown into a tub of wood and took the name of quanochtli, or “nopal wood,” of which the tubs were made.
The flaying process was undertaken by a caste of elderly and probably inferior priests, the quaquacuilton. [226] Before the bodies of the sacrificed were so treated they were carried to the temple, where the “master” of the captive had made his vow to capture and consecrate a victim to the god. The body was broken up at this place, and a leg was dispatched to court for the table of the king, the remainder being divided among the great, or the master’s parents. The dreadful repast was usually partaken of in the house of him who had taken the captive prisoner in war. They cooked the flesh with maize and gave a little to each in a small porringer. The dish was called tlacatlaolli, or “man and maize.” After having eaten, the feasters became intoxicated on octli. On the following day, having watched all the night, they went to amuse themselves by examining the other captives, and in watching them being baited on the stone of combat. These latter were known as uauantin, “the pierced,” with reference to the wounds they received. [227]
Before the sacrificial rites took place the captors of the victims gathered together, and when the victims had been dispatched the captors, or certain priests (it is not clear which), drew on the skins of the flayed victims, and took up positions on hillocks of hay or heaps of chalk or rubbish. Others approached them, and defied them to combat by words and pinches. A skirmish ensued, and those who were captured did not escape scot-free, being rather roughly handled. This mock combat over, the real business of the day began in terrible earnest. The wretched captive was secured by one ankle to the temalacatl, or stone of combat, and wooden bâtons on which eagle-down had been stuck, in imitation of a maquahuitl, or obsidian-edged sword, were placed in his hands. Four warriors now came against the victim, two of the ocelotl corps of knights and two of the quauhtli or Eagle Corps, and having raised their shields and weapons to the sun, one of them attacked the captive tied to the stone. If he defended himself with address, two or even three of his opponents attacked him, and if he still made good his resistance, all four fell upon him, “intermingling their blows with dances and numerous poses.”
Prior to the combat a solemn procession was formed to the temalacatl. A body of priests, dressed in the insignia of one or other of the gods in whose honour the festival was held, issued from the yopico (“in Yopi land”), the temple of Xipe, followed by the tecutlis, or knights, already alluded to, who flourished their weapons and made a martial show. Arrived at the temalacatl, they marched round it, and seated themselves on carven stools called quecholicpalli (“perch of the strong bird”). The priest who took charge of the proceedings was called Youallauan (Night-drinker), one of the names of the god, and when all were seated, an orchestra of trumpets, flutes, and conch-shells struck up, mingled with whistling and singing. The performers wore on their shoulders streamers of white feathers mounted on long staves, which, as we have seen, was part of the Xipe dress, and sat between the priests and the stone of combat.
When the frightful overture had concluded, a captive was placed on the stone by the person who devoted him to sacrifice, and a beaker of octli was given him to hearten him to fight well. This he presented to the four points of the compass, and then sucked its contents through a reed. A priest then took up his stand in front of the doomed man, and holding a living quail before him as before a god, tore off its head. Another priest clad in a bear-skin secured the captive to the stone and handed him his weapons, and then his captor danced before him, as before a divinity. The combat then took place, and in the unusual event of a victim overcoming the four well-appointed warriors who opposed him, a fifth, who must be a left-handed man, rushed in, raised the exhausted victor in his arms and threw him to the ground, where he was dispatched by the Youallauan.
The victim’s heart was then thrown into the wooden tub before alluded to, after it had been held up to the sun. Another priest now took a hollow reed and introduced it into the opening from which the heart had been removed. Having drawn off a sufficient quantity of blood, he went to offer it up to the sun. The master of the captive who had been slain then filled a bowl with the blood of his victim, which vessel was gaily decorated with feathers and which contained a tube, similarly ornamented. With this he went the round of the temples, smearing the blood upon the lips of the idols with the feathered tube. He next divested himself of the gay feather cloak he wore for the occasion and carried the flayed corpse of his captive, or what remained of it, to his house, after royal and other requirements had been met. As has been said, he feasted his family and friends on the body, but did not himself partake of it, as he was regarded as the ritual father of the deceased. “The skin of a victim also belonged to his captor, and this he gave to those who dressed themselves in skins (in consequence of a vow), and so attired, paraded the streets of the town. Others wore the heads of wolves.” [228]
“When the captive had been slain, all who were present, priests, warriors and others, began to dance the areyto round the temalacatl, the captors of the victims carrying the heads of the slain. This areyto, or dance, was called motzontecomaitotia (dance with decapitated heads). The cuitlachueue (old jackal [229]), godfather of the captives, took in his hands the cords which had held them to the temalacatl and raised them to the four cardinal points in sign of adoration. After that ‘he groaned, he wept for the dead.’
“The foreigners with whom Motecuhzoma was at war came to assist secretly at the spectacle. These were the men of Uexotzinco, Tlaxcallan and Nonoualco, Cempoallan, and many other places. The Mexicans pretended not to see them, and they were thus able to behold the fate reserved for captives in Mexico. When all was over, everyone ate a tortilla called uilocpalli, or pigeon-seat, a kind of little paté made with uncooked maize. Next day everyone assisted at an areyto of great solemnity, which was commenced in the royal palace. All were dressed in their best and carried tamallis and tortillas of roasted maize, called momochtli, which they wore instead of collars and garlands. They carried also red feathers and stalks of maize. The areyto ceased at midday, and the nobles ranged themselves three and three in the royal palaces. The king appeared, having upon his right the King of Tezcuco and on his left the Lord of Tacuba. A solemn dance then took place, which lasted until the sun went down, after which they commenced another dance, in which everyone took hands and danced in a serpentine figure. The old soldiers and recruits came to this dance, bringing with them female partners and even public women. This lasted also on the place where the captives had been slain till nearly midnight, and they continued to celebrate these feasts for nearly twenty days, until they had arrived at the kalends of the month which they called tozoztontli.”
Twenty days after the festival those who wore the skins of the slain removed them, but it would seem, from what Sahagun says, that certain devotees wore these from the festival of tlacaxipeuliztli at the end of that month to the beginning of the following tlacaxipeuliztli. Persons afflicted with skin diseases or weak sight frequently made a vow to be present at this ceremony. The devotees then performed ceremonial ablutions in a bath in the temple, in which water was mixed with maize flour, or, more strictly speaking, they were bathed by others. They then shampooed their heads and did penance for the death of the captive. After this the captor erected a tripod in the court of his house, on the top of which was a petlatl, or mat rolled into a ball, on which he placed all the paper ornaments which the captive had worn at his sacrifice. “He then chose a courageous young man who wore those papers, and who took a shield in one hand and a cudgel in the other, and went through the streets as if looking for an evil-doer. Everyone was afraid, and cried, ‘Behold the telzompac (noble one) comes!’ If he caught anyone he took his mantle, and all the spoil he took he brought back to the captor. The captor then placed in the middle of the court of his house a joist in the form of a column, which indicated that he had made captives in war, and which was the blazon of his honour. Then he took the thigh-bone of the captive, ornamented it with the papers, and attached it to the top of the column in his courtyard. He then invited his parents, friends, and the men of his quarter, in presence of whom he hung the bone up, and then he gave them to eat and drink. Family songs were sung. All these things were done in the twenty days before they arrived at the uei tozoztli.
The goldsmiths, of whose caste Xipe was the patron, probably because the yellow human skin in which he was represented as being clad typified an overlay of gold-foil, held a festival during tlacaxipeuliztli in the yopico temple sacred to the god, sacrificing and burning victims to him, and covering a human representative of him with ornaments and precious stones, a crown of feathers, golden necklaces and earrings, and scarlet sandals. They then placed him upon a throne and offered him the first fruits and flowers of the season, together with bunches of maize-seed.
The mode of sacrifice by shooting to death with darts or arrows was employed in connection with Xipe as well as in the case of Tlazolteotl (q.v.). A captive was secured to a scaffold and shot with darts, so that his blood might fall upon the ground. This usage may be regarded as of the nature of sympathetic magic to secure rainfall.
TEMPLES
At least three buildings were erected to the honour of Xipe at Mexico. [230] The first of these, known as yopico (“in Yopi land”), has already been alluded to, and was probably the principal place connected with his worship. It was at this temple that the ceremonies of the tlacaxipeuliztli festival took place. The second, called yopico calmecac, appears to have been situated in the quarter of Tlatelolco, and, as its name implies, was evidently a monastery or place of instruction. At another edifice, the yopoci tzompantli, the heads of the victims slain at the festival of the god were exhibited. In front of the first of these stood the temalacatl, the stone to which the captives were secured when they fought with the Mexican warriors before they were finally sacrificed.
PRIESTHOOD
The Xipe yopico teohua, or priesthood dedicated to the service of Xipe, is enumerated among the various classes of priests charged with the service of the gods, [231] and held in their keeping Xipe’s insignia and the accessories for his festival. They resided in the yopico calmecac or monastery.
NATURE AND STATUS
Xipe is pre-eminently a god of seed-time and planting. [232] He is the Tlaltecutli, or “Lord of the Earth,” and in a secondary sense, the god of the warrior’s death on the stone of combat, because of the association between the food-supply and military service for the purpose of gaining captives. There can be no question that Xipe was of Zapotec origin; indeed, that is manifest from the name of his temple, Yopico, which means the “land of the Yopi” or Tlappeneca, a people of Zapotec affinities, and his cap was known as yopitzontli, “the Yopi head.” One of his names was Anauatl itecu, or “Lord of the Coastland,” and we know from Herrera [233] that he was especially worshipped in the district of Teotitlan, which commands the road to Tabasco. Both Sahagun and the interpreter of Codex Vaticanus A uphold his alien origin.
Just as the Egyptian priests of Ammon at Thebes once a year killed a ram, flayed it, and clothed the image of their god in the skin, just as the Celtic priest wore the skin of a bull at certain festivals, so the Mexicans slew and flayed a man, in whose skin they clothed their priests and those who desired to be closely associated with the god. The idea underlying this practice would appear to be the renewal of the life of the deity. It seems to have some bearing on the phenomena of the system known as “totemism,” regarding the real significance of which we know so little, despite the seeming erudition which has of late years been lavished upon its consideration, for, as we have seen, the captor of the slain victim was not permitted to eat of his flesh, although that may only have been taboo to him because he stood to the doomed man in the relation of a sponsor. Xipe represents the earth “flayed,” that is bare, and ready for sowing. The flaying of the captive and the dressing of the god’s representative in the skin may have been of the nature of sympathetic magic, as a suggestion to the earth to rehabilitate itself in its covering of yellow maize.
It is precisely the agricultural god whom in Mexico we must expect to find clothed in all the attributes of the warrior, and truly Xipe does not disappoint us in this respect. He is armed cap-à-pie, and his dress was the favourite harness of Mexican royalty when it went forth to battle, as witness the Spartan suggestion of Motecuhzoma to his brother on the eve of a great combat. [234] The Codex Vaticanus A calls him “il guerreggiatore attristato.” Thus at his feast the sacrifice takes the form of a combat. Indeed, he represents the warrior caste, by the efforts of whom the altars of Mexico were supplied with human victims, and the maize-crop was consequently secured.
Xipe is in some measure associated with that sacred bird the quail, which has been connected with sacrifice in many lands. This bird frequently takes refuge in the last sheaves of grain in a harvest-field, and thus, perhaps, came to symbolize the corn-spirit driven from its last stronghold. In Normandy in the harvest-field the reapers pretend to catch a quail and dispatch it. [235] The quail was sacrificed to the Tyrian Baal, [236] and is associated by Robertson Smith with the god Eshmun-Iolaos. [237] The bird-like character of Xipe’s dress may assist us in the belief that he was partially evolved from some bird of the quail species commonly found in the maize-field. He bears a strong resemblance to the Maya god F.
Xipe was probably a maize-god of the Yopi who came to partake of the character of an Aztec grain-and-sacrifice deity, his own type of immolation, the shooting by arrows, being partially superseded by the warrior’s death upon the temalacatl. It would seem that, as the god of a people of Nahua race, but older in their occupation of the land than the Aztecâ and Chichimecs, he probably took much the same line of development after his worshippers settled in the Yopi country as Tezcatlipocâ and Uitzilopochtli took in a more northern environment, that the resemblance was recognized by the Aztecâ (as is shown by his affinity with Tezcatlipocâ, with whom, indeed, he is identified as Tlatlauhqui Tezcatlipocâ, or “the Red Tezcatlipocâ”), and that under their guidance his festival took a similar form to that of the gods in question. His festival is certainly a mytho-dramatic performance explanatory of the preparation of the earth for the sowing of grain, the soil being rehabilitated by the death of the captive warrior.
XILONEN = “YOUNG MAIZE MOTHER”
Area of Worship: Originally Huichol tribes; later, Valley of Anahuac.
Festival: Uei tecuilhuitl, in the eighth month.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Sahagun MS. (Biblioteca del Palacio).—The face is painted half red, half yellow, and the goddess wears a crown of paper decorated with quetzal-feathers. Her collar is of green precious stones and her overdress is “the colour of spring flowers” (red). Her skirt is of the same hue. She wears sandals, and carries a shield with horizontal lines. In her hand she holds a red rattle-board.
FESTIVAL
The Uei tecuilhuitl.—The festival to Xilonen was the uei tecuilhuitl, or “great festival of the chiefs,” which lasted eight days and was celebrated when the maize-plant had almost reached maturity. Our chief authorities for its events are Sahagun [238] and Torquemada. [239] The former states that at this period of the year (June–July) the women wore their hair unbound, in order that the maize might be prompted to grow in equal luxuriance. During the days of the festival such persons as visited the temple were permitted to drink abundantly of chian pinolli (a beverage manufactured from the seed of the chian tree, mingled with maize-flour and aloe honey) and as much maize-porridge as could be grasped in the hand, to symbolize the plenty which would follow the ripening of the grain. The food thus supplied was the gift of the chiefs, from which circumstance the festival took its name. Dancing commenced each night at sunset, and was accompanied by singing, the scene being illuminated by the glare from burning pine-torches.
The dancer around whom interest chiefly centred was the xalaquia (“she who is clothed with the soil”), a slave girl who represented the goddess, wearing her red face-paint, large square headdress and variegated raiment. She was constantly guarded by three old women called her “mothers,” and was sedulously instructed in the dancing-school for the part she had to play. In all likelihood she was kept in complete ignorance of her impending fate. Day after day she danced, surrounded by the women of the community, who shook their long hair, and it was believed that the maize-crop would be vigorous or the reverse as her terpsichorean exertions were spirited or listless. On the last day of the rites, the priestesses of the Maize-goddess, attired in her insignia, gathered together in the teopan, or temple-precinct, and accompanied the victim in a performance which lasted throughout the night. When day broke, the chief nobles and warriors of Mexico joined the women and danced a solemn areyto, the men dancing in front and the women behind them. In this manner they danced to the foot of the teocalli of the goddess, which they ascended, the victim being carried on the back of one of the priests, after the manner of a bride being borne to her husband’s house. Arrived at the summit, she was decapitated and her heart offered to the goddess. Until she was sacrificed no one might eat of the new maize, lest it should fail to ripen.
PRIESTHOOD
The Cinteotzin (Lord of Maize), says Sahagun, had charge of affairs at the festival of Xilonen (see Cinteotl).
NATURE AND STATUS
Xilonen appears to be nothing more than a deification of the young, tender ear of the maize-plant. Her name, the season at which her rites took place and the youth of the xalaquia who represented her would seem to bear this out. She was originally a goddess of the Huichol tribes, and, by some circumstance of evolution or imagery, came to symbolize for the Nahua the maize in the earlier stages of its ripeness, thus to some extent resembling Cinteotl. Payne and also Seler in some places seem to confound her festival with that of Chicomecoatl, and offer no reasons for thus traversing the statements of the older authorities, which are definite enough and which in this instance I prefer to follow.
ITZPAPALOTL = “OBSIDIAN KNIFE BUTTERFLY”
Area of Worship: Originally Chichimec tribes; Mexican Plateau.
Relationship: Associated with Mixcoatl and the Centzon Mimixcoa; one of the Tzitzimimê.
Symbols: The butterfly; Mixcoatl’s stone knife.
Compass Direction: Earth (?).
Calendar Place: Ruler of the sixteenth day, cozcaquauhtli; of the fifteenth “week,” ce calli.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 92: In this representation and on the sheet devoted to the fifteenth tonalamatl division and its ruler, Itzpapalotl is depicted as furnished with human teeth, but is predominantly animal in form, retaining, however, certain peculiarities which indicate the intention that she should be regarded as an insect. She displays a kind of butterfly wing, edged round with stone knives. Above her is figured the flowering tree broken in the middle from which blood flows. This symbol denotes the Tamoanchan, or House of Descent, the region of the mythical west, home of the maize-plant and seat of the primeval gods, where the wandering tribes were said to have made a long sojourn. In sheet 63 she is represented as standing upon a platform, which seems to be covered with a symbolic leaf—perhaps that on which butterflies are most usually found. She has a dark body edged with white, and the claws and face are flecked with ulli rubber gum. The head is an adaptation of that of Tlaloc, and a short, wheel-shaped wing occupies the back from nape to tail-root.
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 11: In this place the goddess is depicted as a woman with jaguar claws on hands and feet. The facial painting is like that of Tlauizcalpantecutli, but the features are those of the Death-god—a skull with a stone-knife nose. She wears a collar with the form and colouring of a butterfly’s wing, and her dress is set with stone knives at prominent points. She is accompanied by an animal of rapacious aspect, perhaps a jaguar or ocelot.
Codex Telleriano-Remensis.—A butterfly with antennæ and wings acts as a naualli, or disguise (a kind of helmet-mask), to a female figure which has death’s-head teeth, animal claws on the hands and feet, and a blue-coloured disk on the cheek. As in Codex Borgia, this face has a stone knife on the nose, a collar studded with stone knives, and on the head the warrior’s forked heron-feather ornament. The crown is of dark feathers, the sombreness of which is lightened by quetzal plumes and a loin-cloth like that of the Ciuateteô or Ciuapipiltin, the dead women who had perished in childbed, and who were regarded as partaking of the nature of warriors. The end of the loin-cloth and skirt is trimmed with a hem of teeth. As a back-mirror she wears a death’s-head, below which hangs a “star-skirt,” to the plaited thongs of which rattling snail-shells are attached.
Aubin-Goupil Tonalamatl (15th Division).—Here the goddess looks out of a butterfly helmet-mask. Her face is painted a red colour and she is decorated with dark plumage on arms and legs. She has a snail-shell before her face, and wears a gold disk on the breast. Opposite her are a broken tree and a beheaded captive, whose body spouts two streams of blood in the shape of snakes’ heads. She is seated on a throne ornamented with small disks.
Codex Borbonicus.—Here the goddess is pictured as a demon of darkness, tzitzimitl, who descends from heaven in the form of an eagle.
Bas-relief.—A bas-relief, known as the stone of Aristides Martel, represents the goddess as in the act of flight, and agrees with the representations of her in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis and the Codex Borbonicus. The face is intended to represent that of an insect with round eyes and almost reptilian mouth, and the headdress is flat and covered with feather balls. The hands and feet are furnished with long claws. In this place the feather-marking of the goddess presents a distinctly serpentine appearance and she is surrounded by serpent motifs, between the folds of which is seen the cross-hatching symbolical of these reptiles.
MYTHS
The interpreter of Codex Telleriano-Remensis regards Itzpapalotl as a male deity, probably because, like the Ciuateteô or women who died in childbed, who were regarded as the equals of the warriors, she wore a male loin-cloth. He says: “He was called Xounco and after he sinned Yzpapalotle. The sign of this name is a Knife of Butterflies, and accordingly he is surrounded with knives and wings of butterflies; for they say that he sometimes appears to them, and that they only see feet resembling those of an eagle. Yzpapalotle was one of those who fell from heaven with the rest, whose names are the following: Queçalcoatle, Ochululuchesi, Tezcatlipoca, Caleteotle, and Hatzcanpantecoatl.”
The interpreter of the Codex Vaticanus A also labours under a misapprehension regarding Itzpapalotl’s sex. He states: “Yxpapalotl signifies a knife of butterflies. He was one of those gods who, as they affirm, was expelled from heaven; and on this account they paint him surrounded with knives and wings of butterflies. They represent him with the feet of an eagle, because they say that he occasionally appears to them, and they only see the feet of an eagle. They further add that, being in a garden of great delight, he pulled some roses, but that suddenly the tree broke and blood streamed from it; and that in consequence of this they were deprived of that place of enjoyment and were cast into this world because Tonacatecutli and his wife became incensed, and accordingly they came some of them to the earth, and others went to hell. He presided over these thirteen signs; the first of which the house (calli) they considered unfortunate, because they said that demons came through the air on that sign in the figure of women such as we call witches, who usually went to the highways, where they met in the form of a cross.”
In the song to Tlazolteotl, the fourth of the Sahagun series, we find the following strophes relating to Itzpapalotl:
The stone-knife butterfly Who hovers over the cactus. Her food is on the Nine Plains, She was nurtured on the hearts of deer, Our mother, the Earth-goddess.
The reference to the Nine Plains alludes to the circumstance that Itzpapalotl is a goddess of the Chichimec, or hunting people. The two first lines of this song are translated by Seler as follows:
“O, she has become a goddess of the melon cactus, Our mother Itzpapalotl, the Obsidian Butterfly.”
The inference in these lines seems to be that whereas Itzpapalotl was formerly the goddess of a hunting tribe who sacrificed deer to her, she has now become the deity of the cultivated field and a settled agricultural community. This hypothesis would appear to gain strength from the text of the Anales de Quauhtitlan, where Itzpapalotl is spoken of as the foundress of the oldest Chichimec kingdom in Nequameyocan, “Place of the Wild Agave.” Camargo states [240] that the tribes issuing from Chicomoztoc, “The Seven Caves,” first came to Mazatepec, “The Deer Mountain,” then to the province of Tepeueuec, where a victim was sacrificed to Itzpapalotl by shooting him with arrows, a circumstance which in itself proves the goddess to have been associated with the earth.
NATURE AND STATUS
Like Mixcoatl, with whom she is closely associated, Itzpapalotl appears to have been originally one of the ancient stellar and lightning deities of the Chichimec or nomadic tribes of the northern plains. Later, on the abandonment of the hunting mode of subsistence and the acceptance of a more settled and agricultural mode of life by the tribes who worshipped her, Itzpapalotl would appear (as the allusion to her in the song to Tlazolteotl seems to show) to have become a goddess of the food-supply, the melon-patch, and the maize-crop. She was one of the Tzitzimimê, or demons of darkness, and as such symbolically took insect shape (cf. Xochiquetzal as a spider), but beneath her butterfly form there lurks the symbol of the old, fierce earth-mother with claws and merciless, protruding teeth, which were originally evolved from those of the cipactli, or earth-monster. It seems to me also that she bears about her the marks of the deer, and at this I am not surprised, as I am convinced that in many lands the deer is regarded as a surrogate of the dragon, and is thus frequently associated with fire and water. Indeed, in places, Itzpapalotl is tacitly identified with the mythical deer Itzcuêyê, [241] the captive and wife of Mixcoatl.
That Itzpapalotl is associated with fire is probable, and we know from the song that she was nurtured on the hearts of deer. From her association with the obsidian cult and the fact that she is closely connected with Mixcoatl, whose obsidian knife is her symbol, I should not be surprised to find further evidence that she is in some manner identified with the lightning, the heavenly fire, or the stars. Again, we know that the butterfly was in some measure associated with the Ciuateteô, the women who died in childbed. We know, too, from Sahagun’s account that at the festival of the Ciuateteô the people offered cakes stamped with a butterfly and S-shaped cakes to these spirits, to represent the lightning. In Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Itzpapalotl wears the male loin-cloth, like the Ciuateteô, and in Codex Vaticanus B (sheet 92) there is represented near her a flowering tree broken in the middle and spouting blood, the glyph or symbol of Tamoanchan, the paradise of the west, where dwelt the Ciuateteô. In the Mexican mind the gaudy hues of the butterfly may have become associated with the brilliance of the western sky at sunset, and this may account for the connection which undoubtedly exists between Itzpapalotl and the western home of the Ciuateteô. Again, the insect may typify the frivolous nature of these dead women. [242] However, the precise significance of this goddess is by no means easy to arrive at, and in any case is composed of elements of considerable obscurity and diversity. [243]
Tezcatlipocâ, it may be recalled, is “the obsidian snake.” His obsidian sandals in some MSS. bear the zigzag lines of the snake and, as has already been said, the footgear is frequently eloquent of the name or character of a person or divinity in Mexican painting. In Itzpapalotl we seem to see another deity of the obsidian cult. Certain of her pictures as a butterfly are, as has been indicated, of dragon-like aspect, and we know that the butterfly is in some countries a surrogate of the dragon. Is obsidian to be regarded as the “bones” of the cipactli, the earth-beast or dragon?
ZAPOTLANTENAN = “MOTHER OF ZAPOTLAN”
Area of Worship: Mexico; Zapotlan.
Symbol: The eagle-feather.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Sahagun MS. (Biblioteca del Palacio).—Behind the region of the chin and on the front part of the neck the goddess has a black, almost beard-like painting. She wears a crown of paper flecked with ulli gum, and decorated at the top with quetzal-feathers. Her collar is of chalchihuitl stones and she wears a plain overdress and skirt edged with horizontal bands, connected by slanting strips. Her feet are sandalled, and her shield has the insignia of the eagle-feather. In her hand she carries the rattle-staff of the Rain-god.
PRIESTHOOD
Sahagun states (Appendix to bk. ii) that Zapotlantenan had a special high-priest, the Zapotlan teohuatzin, who was charged with making all the necessary arrangements for the festival of that goddess, such as procuring a supply of paper, copal, ulli, and odoriferous plants for incense. Clavigero says that she was annually honoured with the sacrifice of human victims and with particular hymns composed in her praise. [244]
NATURE AND STATUS
Sahagun states [245] that she was said to have been the inventor or discoverer of turpentine, which was used in Mexico for medicinal purposes, and it seems probable that she may have been revered as a goddess of medicine. Clearly she is also an earth-goddess of the people of the populous valley of Zapotlan, on the other side of the Otomi country, adopted into the Mexican pantheon, but having no place in the calendar.
ILAMATECUTLI = “THE OLD PRINCESS”
Area of Worship: Tehuacan (?); Cozcatlan (?); Chichimec.
Minor Names: Citlallinicue = “She of the Starry Skirt.” Cozcamiauh = “Necklace of Maize.”
Calendar Place: Thirteenth of the lords of the day-hours.
Compass Direction: The Middle.
Festival: Tititl (“stretching of limbs”) in the seventeenth month.
Relationship: Spouse of Iztac Mixcoatl; variant of Tonacaciuatl or Ciuacoatl.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Codex Borgia.—Sheets 9, 11: In this representation the goddess is shown with hair composed of heron-feathers and wearing a white garment. In the pictures of this codex the contracted corners of her mouth, due to old age, are indicated by a ring-shaped ornament worn below the upper lip.
Codex Borbonicus.—She has a skeleton’s head, which differs from that of the Death-god in that it is coloured yellow, with red lines instead of black, but shows a similarity to it in the ruffled “night-hair” with which it is covered. In most of the pictures of her in this codex her blue dress is dotted with circular white spots which are perhaps intended for stars. This garment is completed with thongs, from which depend snail-shells, a decoration also seen in the rattling girdle ornaments (citlalicue) characteristic of the Earth and Underworld goddesses.
MYTHS
According to the myth related by Motolinia, [246] Ilamatecutli or Ilancuêyê, as he designates her, was the wife of Iztac Mixcoatl (q.v.), with whom she dwelt in Chicomoztoc, “the land of the seven canes,” the mythical officina gentium of the Mexican tribes, whence the aboriginal ancestors of the several races of Mexico were supposed to have had their being. By a second wife, Chinamatl, or Chimalmat, Iztac Mixcoatl became the father of Quetzalcoatl.
FESTIVAL
Tititl (“Stretching of Limbs”).—This festival was held in the Kalends of the seventeenth month, probably about December 19. [247] A female slave was bought by the authorities and dressed as follows: She wore an upper garment or peplum of white stuff and a skirt of the same colour, beneath which showed the citlalicue, or star-skirt, of the goddess, a dress sprinkled with stars, cut at the ankles in the shape of many thongs, from each of which hung a small shell, so that when she walked these came together and made a rattling sound. Her sandals were white and she bore a shield whitened with chalk, having a design of eagle’s feathers in the centre. Fringes of heron’s feathers terminating in eagle’s plumes hung from the lower edge of the shield. In the other hand she carried the tzotozopaztli, a wooden knife, used for pressing cloth. Her face was painted black and yellow. Her hair was dressed in the form known as tzompilinalli, or “hair tied at the temples,” and eagle’s plumes fell from it behind.
Before the victim was dispatched they made her dance to the sound of instruments played by old men, which mingled with the chanting of the priests. The wretched woman wept and sobbed as she danced, and as evening approached she was taken to the temple of Uitzilopochtli, accompanied by all the priests wearing their insignia and the masks of their gods, one of which was that of Ilamatecutli. On arriving at the summit of the teocalli, or pyramid-temple, she was immediately slain, her heart was torn out and she was decapitated. The head was given to the priest attired in the insignia of the goddess, who held it in his right hand by the hair, and engaged in a dance, raising and lowering the horrid trophy, and in this solemn measure he was accompanied by the priests who represented the other divinities. They then descended the steps of the teocalli in procession, and sought their quarters.
The priest of Ilamatecutli carried a great cane, the stock of which had three roots. The mask of the goddess which he bore had two faces with “great mouths, bulging eyes, and surmounted by a crown of paper cut into sharp points.” The priests, disguised as gods, having entered the calpulli, or priests’ quarters, a priest descended from the teocalli dressed as a young exquisite, wearing a splendid cloak, his head decorated with white plumes and wearing in place of sandals the hoofs of a deer. He carried in his hand a leaf of the maguey, surmounted by a little paper banner. He proceeded to the quauhxicalco, a place of sacrifice principally associated with human offerings to Tezcatlipocâ, where there was a small cage made of pine-wood and covered with paper, and known as “the granary of Ilamatecutli.” The priest laid the maguey-leaf in this receptacle and then set the whole on fire. Seeing this, the other priests rushed to the summit of the teocalli. This ceremony was known as the xochipayna, or “flower-running.” Placing on high a flower called teoxochitl, or “blossom of the god,” the first who gained the eminence seized upon it and cast it upon the quauhxicalco where the “cage” burned. Upon the following day the men and boys made little sacks, which they filled with flowers or paper, and with these they skirmished with one another and beat the young girls who chanced to pass by.
The purpose underlying this celebration is obscure. The costume worn by the victim is, of course, that of the goddess herself, and we may, perhaps, infer that the wooden knife she carried, the purpose of which was to press cloth, was symbolical of one of the domestic duties of the older women, whom she appears in a measure to have represented. The exercise of dancing to which the victim was subjected seems to bear reference to the name of the festival, tititl, the “stretching of limbs,” and its purpose was probably to ensure vigour and “liveliness” in the earth or soil, for it was about this period that the winter solstice occurred and the labours of the field were renewed. The Earth-mother must, therefore, stretch her limbs ere she once more took up the great task of growth. [248]
The decapitation of the slave girl was probably a dramatic-mythical representation of the reaping of the maize. The “great cane” borne by the priest of Ilamatecutli was, of course, the magic rain-rattle, so prominent an adjunct to many Mexican religious ceremonies. The “young exquisite” we must surely explain as a representative of vegetation, his deer’s-hoofs sandals having, perhaps, a pluvial significance, or else indicating the swift growth of the maize-plant, which takes but four months to ripen. The burning of the maguey-leaf in the granary would seem to indicate the end of the season of vegetative luxuriance and the commencement of that of domestic fires, and the casting of the sacred blossom into the flames probably possessed a similar significance.
NATURE AND STATUS
Ilamatecutli was unquestionably a goddess of the primeval time, as her aged appearance in the manuscripts, her association with Iztac Mixcoatl, the old Chichimec god, and her connection with fire would lead us to suppose. She is primarily a goddess of the earth and of maize. Her stellar connection and her name Citlallinicue (Star Skirt) are eloquent of her Chichimec derivation, and she may represent the starry night sky, or possibly the Milky Way, just as does her mythical husband, and in this she connects with Tonacaciuatl. As an earth-goddess she has also a plutonic significance and can be equated with Mictecaciuatl, mistress of Hades, in this resembling many other earth-goddesses. Again, she is the “old goddess” par excellence, patroness of old women, and worker at the metate, or stone on which the maize cakes were, and still are, made by Mexican women. Her connection with fire proves her relative antiquity. The circumstance that her mask is described as being two-faced leads me to believe that her idol or image had been evolved from the “Kirn-baby,” or doll made at harvests out of the last sheaf of grain and furnished with a face and hands, frequently with two faces, in order that it should not prove of bad omen to those following the image in procession. In this respect Ilamatecutli is similar to Chicomecoatl (q.v.).