TLAUIZCALPANTECUTLI = “LORD OF THE HOUSE OF THE DAWN”

ASPECT AND INSIGNIA

General.—In the Codex Borgia (sheet 25) he is painted as having a white-and-red-striped body, and the black face with white-spotted quincunx peculiar to him in his special form as evening star. The hair is yellow, the locks rising in curls above the brow, and bound by a red fillet. We can probably recognize him in the figure seen in sheet 19 of Codex Vaticanus B, which bears a strong resemblance to that found on sheet 57 of the same MS., confronting the Fire-god; but in the first instance he is not shown with the black “half-mask” painting about the eye. He has, however, the same warlike implements—shield, spears, and atlatl—as in Codex Borgia, as well as a pouch for obsidian arrow-heads and a small sacrificial flag. He is, however, almost universally represented with a white or white-and-red-striped body and [[320]]face-painting, and the deep black “half-mask” edged with small white circles which is usually shown in the pictures of Mixcoatl, Paynal, and Atlaua, and which is described as “the stellar face-painting called darkness.” He frequently wears long, tapering oval ornaments attached to red leather thongs in place of the chalchihuitl jewels which so often depend from the dress of the other gods, and the band which supports these has four diverging ends terminating in a bunch of feathers, as with Tonatiuh, Ueuecoyotl, and Xochipilli. The crown is generally composed of black feathers having white spots, alternating with longer yellow or red plumes. On the breast is seen an ornament like that of Tezcatlipocâ. In Codex Borbonicus and Borgia he is accompanied by the insignia of those warriors who died by sacrifice, the blue crown with the three-cornered frontal plate, the axe-shaped blue ear-plug, the blue nose-plug, the white paper shoulder-tie, and the small blue dog which accompanied the dead man on his way to the region of Mictlan.

Tlauizcalpantecutli piercing Chalchihuitlicue.

(From Codex Borgia, sheet 53.)

(From Codex Vaticanus B, sheet 37.)

FORMS OF TLAUIZCALPANTECUTLI.

On the five sheets of Codex Vaticanus B which indicate the periods of the planet Venus we observe Tlauizcalpantecutli depicted five times, and have thus a most favourable opportunity for studying his various attributes. All of these pictures represent him in the form of the evening star, with the quincunx of white spots on the dark background of his face. He is depicted as half-black, half-white, the body, upper arms, and knees being black, but the forearms, thighs, and lower part of the legs white and striped with yellow longitudinal lines, like the striping on Uitzilopochtli’s body. Under the eye is a motif which recalls the blue snake-band round the mouth of Tlaloc, but it is yellow in colour, and forms a kind of coil in the middle of the face over the nose. A tassel or other ornament falls from it, the whole recalling certain Maya types. The hair is flame-coloured, curls upward, and is bound with the usual fillet studded with white slicings from mussel-shells, and the black, white-tipped feathers, previously alluded to, and intermingled with eagle-plumes, crown the head. The breast is covered with the white eye-ring, also described above, and which is characteristic [[321]]of Tezcatlipocâ. Accompanying the picture is the emblem of the stellar eye, which in this place is almost certainly intended to depict the planet Venus. The god holds in one hand the atlatl, or spear-thrower, and in the other a bundle of darts, to symbolize his nature as a shooting god.

TLAUIZCALPANTECUTLI (left) AND VICTIM.

(From Codex Borgia, sheet 19.)

In those pictures in Codex Borgia where the god is represented as casting his spear at various mythological figures, his insignia is in agreement with that portrayed in Codex Vaticanus B. But of the five figures in which he is shown as the spear-thrower, in one only is he depicted with white, red-striped limbs, the remaining figures being coloured green, yellow, brown, and blue. Nor has the face the characteristic painting known as “stellar” and frequently described on those pages, but is skull-shaped, and represented as swallowing blood and a human heart. He holds, however, the usual spear-thrower, shield, hand-flag, and the hunter’s net-bag. The Codex Borgia pictures show, too, the incidence of the god’s other attributes, the oval, egg-shaped ornaments and the white-tipped black feathers, which, however, are here considerably shorter, and spread over the crown of the head only. Here also the first of the five figures is red-striped, the others being blue, red, and yellow, and red-striped. Like the figures in Codex Bologna, the first has the head of a skull painted with the face-paint of Tlauizcalpantecutli, with the quincunx of five disks on a dark ground. The other four figures wear masks, that part of their faces which is visible being coloured like the body and having the quincunx of five white disks. The second figure wears an owl naual, or mask, the third that of a dog, the fourth a rabbit-mask, and the fifth, like the first, a dead man’s skull, which, however, is portrayed in its natural colour and has no face-paint. The owl-mask of the second figure and the skull-mask of the fifth show that they represent the sequence of five periods of the planet Venus, five time-counts based on its period of visibility, and that, moreover, these figures are to be referred respectively to the compass directions, east, north, west, south, below. The Codex Fejérváry figure differs from the other representations, the face being painted white [[322]]with yellow stripes, like the rest of the body and limbs. But that this figure is in reality identical with those of the other manuscripts is proved by the quincunx of white spots disposed in the same manner as in the Codex Vaticanus B figure, by the three curly locks on the brow, and by the star-like eye worn by the god on his breast. In Codex Borgia are shown a sacrificial cord and two small paper flags. In Codex Fejérváry we see a shield with feather appendage, and one paper flag, which is evidently intended to appear in the ritual of the death by sacrifice. Tlauizcalpantecutli was for the Mexicans an indication of the warrior’s death, that is, sacrificial death.

In Codex Telleriano-Remensis the hair is plastered with white downy feathers, and round the neck is slung the aztemacatl, the heron-feather cord, the whole indicating the insignia of the victim about to be sacrificed after ceremonial combat. He wears a skull as helmet-mask in this MS. In the Aubin-Goupil tonalamatl Tlauizcalpantecutli wears a rod-shaped nose-plug and the blue breast-plate of the Fire-god.

NATURE AND STATUS

This god, as Seler indicates,[7] is a variant of the planet Venus, the morning star, who was regarded as the shooting god and who was perhaps identical with Mixcoatl. The Anales de Quauhtitlan says that: “When he appears he strikes various classes of people with his rays, shoots them, sheds his light on them,” and these several types of people thus shot are clearly to be seen in Codex Borgia, and in the corresponding places of the other manuscripts, where their sequence is, however, varied. That they stand in relation to the quarters of the heavens there can be no doubt, but these quarters vary with the several codices. Thus in Codex Borgia we find the jaguar occupying the north, while in Vaticanus B and Bologna we find it occupying the fifth or downward direction, and in this varying arrangement we probably see differences [[323]]of local conception. The deities or figures at which the god hurled his spear are the jaguar, or Tezcatlipocâ, Chalchihuitlicue, the black Tezcatlipocâ (probably as Tepeyollotl), Cinteotl, the Tlatouani, or King, and the Yayotl, or the symbol of war; but these do not agree with the “classes of people” shot by the god as given by the Anales de Quauhtitlan, which states “that in the sign cipactli he shoots old men and women, in the sign coatl he shoots the rain, for it will not rain, in the sign atl, the universal drought, in the sign acatl, kings and rulers, and in the sign olin, youths and maidens.”

This seems to me to indicate not so much that the god was identical with Mixcoatl, as Seler states, although he may have had connections with this deity, but that he typifies in some manner the evil influences of the rays of the planet Venus at certain times of the year. We know that the Mexicans, like many other peoples, believed that the stars emanated influences good and bad, and as Seler himself states in his essay on “The Venus Period in Picture-Writing,”[8] “it is possible that we have on these pages simply an astrological speculation arising from superstitious fear of the influence of the light of this powerful planet. By natural association of ideas the rays of light emitted by the sun or other luminous bodies are imagined to be darts or arrows which are shot in all directions by the luminous body. The more the rays are perceived to be productive of discomfort or injury, so much the more fittingly does this apply. In this way the abstract noun miotl or meyotli with the meaning ‘ray of light’ is derived from the Mexican word mitl, ‘arrow’ … thus miotli is the arrow which belongs by nature to a body sending forth arrows, a luminous body.… When the planet appeared anew in the heavens, smoke-vents and chimneys were stopped up lest the light should penetrate into the house.… It is hardly possible to see anything else in these figures struck by the spear than augural speculations regarding the influence of the light from the planet suggested by the initial signs of the period.” Seler also points out that we possess the analogy of the periods in which [[324]]the Ciuateteô, or “spectre women,” send down similar baleful influences from above.

[[Contents]]