TONACACIUATL = “LADY OF OUR SUBSISTENCE”

ASPECT AND INSIGNIA

General.—In Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (sheet 10) the drawn-in angle of the mouth and the female figure point to the inference that here is depicted Tonacaciuatl, who is identified [[148]]by the interpreters with Xochiquetzal. In Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Codex Vaticanus A we find her standing in front of the male creative god Tonacatecutli. In the latter MS. the first interpreter calls her Tonagacigua, and the third Xochiquetzal, Oxomoco, and Chicomecohuatl. The picture shown under the nineteenth week of Codex Telleriano-Remensis pictures her with precisely the same dress and emblems as Xochiquetzal (q.v.).

MYTHS

These deities were identified by the Mexicans with the Creator, the Tloque Nahuaque, of whom almost every one of the post-Conquest Spanish writers speaks. Indeed the Codex Telleriano-Remensis expressly identifies them with the creative force. The passage runs: “All those epithets (God, Lord, Creator) they bestowed on their god Tonacatecutli, who, according to their account, was the god who created the world; and they painted him alone with a crown as lord of all. They never offered sacrifices to this god, for they said that he did not regard them.” Of the female deity the Codex Vaticanus says: “Tonacacigua was the wife of Tonacatecutle; for, as we have observed, although their gods were not, as they affirm, united together for matrimonial purposes, still they assigned to each a goddess as a companion. They called her by another name, Suchiquetzal and Chicomecoual, which means Seven Serpents, for they say that she was the cause of sterility, famine, and all the miseries of life.”[2]

In further descriptive passages concerning Tonacatecutli the same Codex says: “This is the representation of Tonacatecotle, which name signifies the Lord of our Bodies; others say that it means the First Man, or perhaps it means that the first man was so called.” “These are the figures which have been mentioned; and the first is that of their greatest god Tonacatecotle. It represented the first god under whom they affirm was the dominion of the world; who, when it appeared good to him, breathed and divided the waters of [[149]]the heavens and the earth, which at first were all confused together, and disposed of them as they now are; and accordingly they called him Lord of our Bodies; and also of abundance, who bestowed everything upon them; and on this account they paint him alone with a crown. They called him besides Seven Flowers, for they say that he disposes of the principalities of the earth. He had no temple, nor did they offer sacrifices to him, for they say that he did not require them, as if on account of his superior majesty.… They say that Tonacatecotle presided over the thirteen signs which are here marked (the day-signs of the tonalamatl, q.v.). Those above denote the thirteen causes or influences of the sky which are under subjection to him, and the others below are the thirteen signs of their superstition and sorcery. This man and woman represent the first pair who existed in the world; their names are Huehue (very old ones). Between them is placed a knife or razor and an arrow above each of their heads, typifying death, as in them death originated.”

“They called this god Tonacatecotli and by another name Citallatonalli[3]; and they said that he was the constellation which appears by night in the sky, St. James’s or the Milky Way. They paint these figures and all the others which follow, each of them in its own manner; because as they considered them their deities, each had its peculiar festival. It was necessary to wear in these festivals the habit of the god.”

The Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas regards these deities as appearing at the commencement of creation, but says nothing of their relations to the precise creative act.

The Anales de Quauhtitlan says of them:

And they say

that in the inner heaven

he [Quetzalcoatl] dedicated a cult

and called on them:

her with the star-studded robe, together with the astral Sun-god.

the mistress of our flesh, the lord of our flesh,

who is clothed in charcoal, clothed in blood,

who giveth food to the earth; [[150]]

and he cried aloft

—as they (the old people) were informed—

to the Omeyocan,

to the heaven lying above the nine that are bound together.

And—as they learnt—

those having their abode there,

those he called upon, those he worshipped.

(See also chapter on Cosmogony for further mythical material relating to these deities.)

NATURE AND STATUS

In examining the characteristics of these deities we find:

(1) That they were among the oldest of the Mexican divinities. Tonacatecutli is called, among other names, “Lord of the Steppe,”[4] which does not necessarily indicate that he was a deity of the Chichimec or hunting tribes, who from generation to generation raided the Mexican valley, but may apply to his stellar or heavenly significance. Reference is also made in the Anales de Quauhtitlan to the circumstance that he and his female counterpart were gods of the ancient Toltecs, and that their cult was founded by Quetzalcoatl, the typical Toltec priest-king.

(2) That these gods were regarded by the Mexican priesthood in more modern times at least, as abstractions, ideal beings who arose out of philosophic speculation. That they had become rather neglected in the popular Mexican faith is clear from the circumstance that they had no temples and that no offerings were made them. Tonacatecutli represented, indeed, that great invisible and intangible figure which at all times and in all religions has loomed behind most pantheons—the great god behind the gods—the principle of causality, that first cause beyond which the speculations of theology cannot proceed.

(3) They presided over the food supply. Although other deities occupied the positions of maize and vegetable gods, the creative deities were in the ultimate the great givers of all food. Thus they were designated “Lords of Food Supplies” and “Lords of Superabundance.” [[151]]

(4) They must be regarded as the direct creators of the spirit of man. To the Mexican man flesh was merely maize in another form. But apart from this conception the pair typified the first human couple, and as such they are represented in all the MSS. lying side by side and cross-legged under a blanket, in the attitude of procreation. They are, indeed, the great initiators of life, and must be comprehended as sending the human soul to occupy the body made by human procreation, giving warmth and breath to the infant before birth.[5]

(5) They commence the series of twenty day-signs, and this alone symbolizes their creative and original nature.

(6) They represent the sign cipactli, the animal from which the earth was made.

(7) They are gods of the Omeyocan, the highest or thirteenth heaven, which fact further illustrates their supreme character.

CONCLUSIONS

From these facts we may be justified in concluding:

(1) That in the most early times Tonacatecutli and his consort typified the father-sky and mother-earth respectively, but that this aspect of them had been forgotten and they came to have a purely abstract creative significance for both priests and people. That Tonacaciuatl originally represented the earth there is no doubt, and her identification with Xochiquetzal and Chicomecoatl alone would show this to be so. Again, the association with the sign cipactli proves the connection of one of the divine pair with the earth, and from what has been said regarding this sign in the introduction, and by the constant association of goddesses in the Mexican mind with the terrestrial sphere, it is plain that Tonacatecutli, her male counterpart, is not likely to have represented it in early times. The suggestion that he symbolizes the sky is perhaps assisted by the nature of his abode, the uppermost heaven, and from his close identification with Citlallatonac, [[152]]the god of the night heaven, who was supposed to represent the Milky Way.

(2) That in later times the early concepts of these divinities became fused almost into one, and that in some measure they had come to be regarded as androgynous. This view may be traversed by the circumstance that they are frequently represented separately, but on the other hand their names appear as one in the form Tonacatecutli-Tonacaciuatl in many passages. The same may be posited of their counterparts in the Quiche Popol Vuh, Xpiyacoc and Xmucane.[6]

Tonacatecutli and his spouse are to be regarded as the parents of Quetzalcoatl, but this is probably a theogonic myth of late origin, brought about by the constant association of Quetzalcoatl with the creative gods as deities of the ancient Toltecs, and the frequent references to him as the founder of their cult.

Ixtlilxochitl states in his fourth Relacion that Tonacatecutli and his wife were the chief gods of the Toltecs, who represented them as the sun and the moon, and he goes on to say that at certain seasons of the year criminals were sacrificed to them by a method called Telimonamiquian, “which is to say grinding between the stones.” Two great stones, he says, were balanced opposite each other, and the victim was crushed between them as they fell—the slain man thus representing the corn-spirit, or, indeed, the corn itself in the process of being ground. [[153]]

[1] A generic name for green precious or semi-precious stones—turquoise, jadeite, nephrite, emerald, etc. [↑]

[2] In Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, vol. vi. [↑]

[3] On this identification see also Torquemada, bk. vi, c. xix. [↑]

[4] Codex Telleriano-Remensis. [↑]

[5] Seler, Codex Vaticanus B, p. 132. [↑]

[6] Spence, Popol Vuh. London, 1908. [↑]

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CHAPTER V

DEITIES OF THE EARTH AND GROWTH PROPER

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INTRODUCTORY

So numerous were the manifestations and variants of the Earth-goddess conceived by the Nahua or adopted into their pantheon, that this has been the cause of considerable misconception on the part of students of Mexican religion, who have confounded them in a manner which in the circumstances is scarcely surprising. An attempt will be made here to provide the reader with a list of the most important of these deities, briefly and barely outlining their various origins and attributes, in order that he may be the better able to comprehend what follows when we come to discuss them more fully.

Chicomecoatl (Seven Serpents)—the Mexican name of the Earth-goddess and that of the seventh day of the seventh week of the tonalamatl. She was probably of Toltec origin. The third interpreter of the Codex Vaticanus A identifies her with Xochiquetzal, and, perhaps more correctly, with Xumoco and Tonacacigua or Tonacaciuatl. She had two temples dedicated to her, the chicome iteopan and the cinteopan, and seems to have become a variant of Tonacaciuatl on the adoption of an agricultural basis of existence.

Tlazolteotl, Tlaelquani, Teteo innan or Toci—an earth-goddess whose worship had its origin among the tribes of the Atlantic seaboard, where maize grew abundantly. She possessed warlike propensities, as became a goddess to whom human sacrifice was much in vogue, and the myth of her impregnation by Uitzilopochtli was enacted at the ochpaniztli festival in August, typifying, perhaps, the impregnation of [[154]]the “earth-mother” by the “sky-father.” As Ixcuine she represented a plurality of goddesses. Seler[1] believes that Chicomecoatl represents the young maize ear, and Tlazolteotl, the ripe ear of the plant.

Cihuacoatl (Serpent Woman)—an earth-goddess of Xochimilco and Colhuacan.

Coatlicue or Coatlantonan (Serpent Skirt)—a Mexican earth-goddess, mother of Uitzilopochtli.

Xochiquetzal—originally a mountain goddess of the Tlalhuica. An earth-and-maize goddess as well as a deity of flowers and vegetation.

Xilonen—originally a maize-goddess of the Huichol tribes. She represented the young maize-plant.

Cinteotl (Maize-god)—son of Tlazolteotl, originally a god of the peoples of the Atlantic seaboard. He is occasionally alluded to as a female deity, but is always male in the MSS. of the Borgia group, executed by a people of Nahua speech dwelling in the south. He is the equivalent of Xochipilli and had a separate temple, the cinteopan.

Xipe—an earth-god of the Teotitlan district, a god of spring vegetation. His temples were called yopico. His great festival was the Tlacaxipeuliztli, or “flaying of men.”

Only three of these deities, Tlazolteotl, Xipe, and Xochiquetzal, appear as rulers of one or other of the twenty day-signs of the tonalamatl. But Cinteotl figures in the ochpaniztli feast and appears as one of the “Lords of the Night.”

These criteria are perhaps sufficient to identify these figures as separate divinities. We find in Sahagun that Chicomecoatl, Cinteotl, and Xipe had separate temples of their own. In several of the rituals of the great festivals, however, the cults of Tlazolteotl, Chicomecoatl, and Cinteotl appear to have been very closely interwoven, and this leads me to suspect that the worship of the old Toltec goddess Chicomecoatl was in process of fusion with that of the “immigrant” Tlazolteotl at the period of the Conquest. Xilonen, too, according to Sahagun, had a separate festival in her honour, [[155]]the uei tecuilhuitl. From all this and from considerations still to be advanced we may, perhaps, be justified in assuming:

(1) That at the period of the Conquest the cults of Tlazolteotl, Chicomecoatl, and Cinteotl were very naturally in process of becoming amalgamated, the worship of the two goddesses, Mexican and alien, presenting many features in common.

(2) That Xochiquetzal, originally the goddess of the Tlalhuica, was regarded more properly as the goddess of flowers and of the spring florescence, a hypothesis which is upheld by her myths. Her equation with Tonacaciuatl appears to have been a later concept, due to the connection of both with the earth.

(3) That the Huichol goddess Xilonen came to symbolize for the Nahua the maize plant in its early stages of growth, and in that respect resembles Cinteotl.

(4) That the cult of the southern god Xipe, the grain-deity of a related people, had made great headway among the Nahua of Mexico-Tenochtitlan.

(5) It follows from these conclusions that only one of these deities of growth—Coatlicue—was of Nahua origin, all the others being gods of the aboriginal or settled peoples. The Chichimec Nahua, a hunting people, possessing no official grain-goddess of their own, would naturally come to worship these on their adoption of an agricultural mode of life. As most of these forms hailed from districts of considerable cultural antiquity, I believe their worship to have been of long duration in the land, not much less ancient, indeed, than the cult of Tlaloc.

It is not claimed for these conclusions that they are more than approximate. The data relative to these deities is much too complex to permit of any more precise or dogmatic treatment, in fact at one time or another there was identification between them all; but with the above attempt at simplification in view we shall now endeavour to present the reader with a detailed account of each of these and other less important divinities who were regarded as in any way connected [[156]]with the personification of the earth or the growth of the crops, their festivals and ritual.

The earth-deities seem to have been prophetic and divinatory and to have been connected with medicine, like similar European and Asiatic goddesses. Some of them, like Itzpapalotl, share the butterfly symbol with the gods of fire, with whom they are frequently connected. They are also closely associated with the deer, a fertility animal, and the eagle, the sun-bird, and their victims were, like those of the sun and war deities, decked with eagle-down.

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