Latin-American Mythology. Hartley Burr Alexander

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      V. THE POWERS OF LIFE³⁷

       Table of Contents

      Universally Earth is the mythic Mother of Gods and Men, and Giver of Life; nor does the Mexican pantheon offer an exception to the rule, although its embodiments of the Earth Mother possess associations which give a character of their own. Like similar goddesses, the Mexican Earth Mothers are prophetic and divinatory, and in various forms they appear in the calendric omen-books. They are goddesses of medicine, too, probably owing this function primarily to their association with the sweat-bath, which, in its primitive form of earth-lodge and heated stones, is the fundamental instrument of American Indian therapeutics. It is here, possibly, that these goddesses get their connexion with the fire-gods, of whom they are not infrequently consorts, and with whom they share the butterfly insignia—a symbol of fertility, for the fire-god, at earth's centre, was believed to generate the warmth of life. Serpents also are signs of the earth goddesses, not the plumed serpents of the skies, but underworld powers, likewise associated with generation in Aztec symbolism. A third animal connected with generation, and hence with these deities, is the deer—the white, dead Deer of the East denoted plenty; the stricken, brown Deer of the North was a symbol of drought, and related to the fire-gods. The eagle, also, is sometimes found associated with the goddesses by a process of indirection, for the eagle is primarily the heavenly warrior, Tonatiuh, the Sun. Frequently, however, the earth goddess is a war-goddess; Coatlicue, mother of the war-god Huitzilopochtli, is an earth deity, wearing the serpent skirt; and it was a wide-spread belief among the Mexicans that the Earth was the first victim offered on the sacrificial stone to the Sun—the first, therefore, to die a warrior's death. When a victim was dedicated for sacrifice, therefore, his captor adorned himself in eagle's down in honour, at once, of the Sun and of the goddess who had been the primal offering.

      Among the earth goddesses the most famous was Ciuacoatl ("Snake Woman"), whose voice, roaring through the night, betokened war. She was also called Tonantzin ("Our Mother") and, Sahagun says, "these two circumstances give her a resemblance to our mother Eve who was duped by the Serpent." Other names for the same divinity were Ilamatecutli ("the Old Goddess"), sometimes represented as the Earth Toad, Tlatecutli, swallowing a stone knife; Itzpapalotl ("Obsidian Butterfly"), occasionally shown as a deer; Temazcalteci ("Grandmother of the Sweat-Bath"); and Teteoinnan, the Mother of the Gods, who, like several other of the earth goddesses, was also a lunar deity. In her honour a harvest-home was celebrated in which her Huastec priests (for she probably hailed from the eastern coast) bore phallic emblems.

      Closely connected with the earth goddesses are their children, the vegetation-deities. Of these the maize-spirits are the most important, maize being the great cereal of the highland region, and, indeed, so much the "corn" of primitive America that the latter word has come to mean maize in the English-speaking parts of the New World. Cinteotl was the maize-god, and Chicomecoatl ("Seven Snakes"), also known as Xilonen, was his female counterpart, their symbol being the young maize-ear. Because of the use of maize as the staff of life, a crown filled with this grain was the symbol of Tonacatecutli ("Lord of our Flesh"), creator-god and food-giver. Pedro de Rios says³⁸ of him that he was "the first Lord that the world was said to have had, and who, as it pleased him, blew and divided the waters from the heaven and from the earth, which before him were all intermingled; and he it is who disposed them as they now are, and so they called him 'Lord of our Bodies' and 'Lord of the Overflow'; and he gave them all things, and therefore he alone was pictured with the royal crown. He was further called 'Seven Flowers' [Chicomexochitl], because they said that he divided the principalities of the world. He had no temple of any kind, nor were offerings brought to him, because they say he desired them not, as it were to a greater Majesty." This god was also identified with the Milky Way.

      Of all Mexican vegetation-deities, however, at once the most important and the most horrible was Xipe Totec ("Our Lord the Flayed"), represented as clad in a human skin, stripped from the body of a sacrificed captive. He was the god of the renewal of vegetation—the fresh skin which Earth receives with the recurrent green—and his great festival, the Feast of the Man-Flaying, was held in the spring when the fresh verdure was appearing. At this time, men, women, and children captives were sacrificed, their bodies eaten, and the skins flayed from them to be worn by personators of the god. That there was a kind of sacrament in this rite is evident from Sahagun's statement that the captor did not partake of the flesh of his own captive, regarding it as part of his own body. Again, youths clad in skins flayed from sacrificed warriors were called by the god's own name, and they waged mimic warfare with bands pitted against them; if a captive was made, a mock sacrifice was enacted. The famous sacrificio gladiatorio was also celebrated in the god's honour, the victim, with weak weapons, being pitted against strong warriors until he succumbed. The magic properties of the skins torn from victims' bodies is shown by the fact that persons suffering from diseases of the skin and eye wore these trophies for their healing, the period being twenty days. Xipe Totec was clad in a green garment, but yellow was his predominant colour; his ornaments were golden, and he was the patron of gold-workers—a symbolism probably related to the ripening grain, for with all that is horrible about him Xipe Totec is at bottom a simple agricultural deity. At his festival were stately areitos, and songs were chanted, one of which is preserved:³⁹

      "Thou night-time drinker, why dost thou delay?

Put on thy disguise—thy golden garment, put it on! "My Lord, let thine emerald waters come descending! Now is the old tree changed to green plumage— The Fire-Snake is transformed into the Quetzal! "It may be that I am to die, I, the young maize-plant; Like an emerald is my heart; gold would I see it be; I shall be happy when first it is ripe—the war-chief born! "My Lord, when there is abundance in the maize-fields, I shall look СКАЧАТЬ