ITZPAPALOTL = “OBSIDIAN KNIFE BUTTERFLY”

ITZPAPALOTL.

(Stone of Aristides Martel.)

XILONEN. (Sahagun MS.) See p. 228. ZAPOTLANTENAN. (Sahagun MS.) See p. 228.

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 [[224]]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 [[225]]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.” [[226]]

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[66] 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 [[227]]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,[67] 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 [[228]]typify the frivolous nature of these dead women.[68] 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.[69]

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?

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