CIUACOATL = “SERPENT WOMAN”

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 [[180]]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.

CIUACOATL.

(From Codex Magliabecchiano, sheet 33.)

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.[22]

[[181]]

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.[23] 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.

(From the Sahagun MS.)

Pottery figure. (Uhde Collection.)

FORMS OF CIUACOATL.

Ciuacoatl is spoken of by Duran and Sahagun as a warrior goddess who gave the Mexicans victory over their enemies, [[182]]and by Torquemada[24] 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.[25] Sahagun says of her[26] 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.[27] 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.[28]

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 [[183]]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.

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