Chapter V: Deities of the Earth and Growth Proper (1)

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: