TLAZOLTEOTL = “GODDESS OF DIRT”

Broom of Tlazolteotl, the symbol of her festival. Headdress of Tlazolteotl.

(From Codex Telleriano-Remensis, 17 Verso.)

FORMS OF TLAZOLTEOTL.

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 [[157]]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.

(From Codex Borgia, sheet 55.)

As Teteô innan. (From Sahagun MS.)

FORMS OF TLAZOLTEOTL.

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 [[158]]a symbol of sex.[2] 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 [[159]]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.[3] 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 [[160]]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[4] 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.”[5]

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.[6]

This of course symbolizes the yellow and white maize. The thigh-skin of the goddess “is the mask cut from the [[161]]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,[7] 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[8] 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. [[162]]

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 [[163]]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.[9]

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.[10] They were also accompanied by the medical women. [[164]]

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 [[165]]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 [[166]]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 [[167]]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 [[168]]“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) [[169]]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[11] (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.[12] 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. [[170]]

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