XOLOTL = “DOUBLE”

XOLOTL (right) AND TLALOC.

With sacrificial and fire-making symbols.

(From Codex Borbonicus, sheet 16.)

ASPECT AND INSIGNIA

Codex Borgia.—In the picture of Xolotl on the left side of the middle lower part of sheet 55 a resemblance to Quetzalcoatl is noticeable. On his head is the peculiar wedge-shaped Huaxtec hat, painted half-red and half-blue, which is one of Quetzalcoatl’s characteristics. The bone dagger symbolic of self-torture and penance, and the snail-shell armlets he wears, are also reminiscent of Quetzalcoatl’s insignia. His face-painting, however, differs from that usually worn by Quetzalcoatl in Codex Borgia, as the front portion of his face is blue and the part near the ears red. His body-paint is blue. Nor does he have a large beard or fan-shaped nape-ornament, but is shown wearing the Wind-god’s breast-ornament made from a sliced snail-shell. He also shows a likeness to Quetzalcoatl in the manner in which his loin-cloth and fillet are rounded off. As a travelling god, Xolotl is depicted in Codex Borgia as holding a fan similar in its three-flapped wedge-shape to that of the other peripatetic deities, except that it has a handle shaped like a bird’s head [[345]]and is seemingly composed of blue cotinga-feathers. His travelling pack is symbolized by a flowering tree, which he bears on his back, while his travelling staff is painted turquoise colour, is decorated with the chalchihuitl ornament, and is completed with a flower. In the picture to the right of sheet 36 Xolotl presents almost a new aspect, although certain of his attributes bear some resemblance to those which we have already observed as being peculiar to him. He still carries a travelling-staff with a jewelled head, but in this representation its general character is more that of the rattle-stick. His body-paint remains the same and he retains his blue feather fan. His pack is distinguished by a flower to serve as a connection with the florescent tree carried by him, as described elsewhere. In this sheet he is represented as wearing a long beard and his face-paint in the region of the mouth is white. His face is altered by a peculiar type of nose, which gives him a disfigured appearance. The god of monstrosities on sheet 10 of Codex Borgia has a similar patch of white about his mouth, resembling in shape a human hand, a symbol which also characterizes the face-painting of Macuil Xochitl. Elsewhere in this MS. he is represented as crooked-limbed and blear-eyed.

Codex Vaticanus B.—In this MS. Xolotl is represented as having a dog’s head and again appears in the garb and ornaments of Quetzalcoatl. In Codex Borgia his ears have a rim of yellow, evidently intended to represent dead flesh, while in Codex Vaticanus the canine character is indicated by the cropped ears. In the nostrils is a blue plug, the ornament of the deceased warrior, denoting that this is the dog which accompanies his master to Mictlampa, Place of the Dead, and assists him to swim the river which encircles it. This distinguishing plug is seen in Codex Vaticanus, but not in Codex Borgia. The rest of the god’s attire is exclusively that worn by Quetzalcoatl, as described in the space devoted to that god.

Ixtlilton. (From the Sahagun MS.) (See p. 349.) Omacatl. (From the Sahagun MS.) (See p. 352.)

Xolotl. (From the Codex Borgia.)

MINOR DEITIES.

Aubin Tonalamatl.—In this MS. he again takes on a canine appearance and is clothed in many respects like Quetzalcoatl. This frequent similarity in dress between the gods may have [[346]]its origin in the diverse meaning of the word coatl, which, besides meaning “snake,” also denotes “comrade” or “twin.” This dog-like creature is usually portrayed as of a dark colour, black, with the distinctive cropped ear, while in Codex Borgia he is depicted with jaguar-claws. Xolotl has the face-painting of Quetzalcoatl in the Mexican MSS. proper, that is in the middle front it is yellow and black at the sides. He wears the two-coloured white and brown (jaguar-skin) head-loop with rounded-off ends, which latter form is also continued in the loin-cloth. Both these articles of dress he has in common with Quetzalcoatl.

Codex Telleriano-Remensis.—Here he is depicted with Tlazolteotl’s spindles in his hair and an ichcaxochitl of unspun cotton, as well as the head-loop previously described. Only in this MS. is he so adorned. The instrument of self-mortification, the bone dagger, juts out from above his forehead, whence issues a trickle of blood, sometimes delineated symbolically as a feather-ball string completed with a flower, and at others represented as real blood. He grasps an obsidian knife, which implement also projects from his mouth along with a flower, while a copal bag is portrayed in front of him. In some MSS., as in Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Vaticanus A, he is represented as wearing a mask on his girdle.

WALL-PAINTINGS

Xolotl seems to be represented on one of the wall-paintings at Mitla, where he is characterized by the physiognomy of an animal with projecting upper teeth. He wears Quetzalcoatl’s conical cap of jaguar-skin and his necklace of snail-shells. The dog’s ears seem in this place to be merged into tufts of feathers.

POTTERY FIGURES

Two small pottery figures of Xolotl found in the Valley of Mexico insist strongly upon his animal character, but in neither of these is the precise bestial type ascertainable. [[347]]The first shows a face ending in a blunt snout and surmounted by a kind of wig, with ear-pieces rising on either side. What seems to be a collar of feathers surrounds the neck. In the other he is represented as a little bear, or dog, without clothing, but having Quetzalcoatl’s sliced snail-shell breast-ornament. A stone head of him found in the Calle de las Escalerillas in Mexico City on 29th October 1900 shows a blunt, almost ape-like animal face with large powerful molar teeth, dog-like canines, and large, sharp fangs, not unlike those with which Tlaloc was usually represented. Incised lines represent powerful muscular development in the region of the nose and jaws. The type is only generally and not particularly bestial, and it would seem that it was the aim of the sculptor to represent a ferocious animal countenance without laying stress upon the peculiarities of any one species.

MYTHS

The most important of the myths relating to Xolotl are those given by Sahagun and Olmos, which have already been described at length in the chapter on Cosmogony. The Codex Vaticanus A says of him: “They believe Xolotle to be the god of monstrous productions and of twins, which are such things as grow double. He was one of the seven who remained after the deluge, and he presided over these thirteen signs which they usually considered unlucky.” The Codex Telleriano-Remensis describes him in verbiage almost identical.

Juan de Cordova in his Zapotec Grammar writes: “When a solar eclipse occurred then they said that the world is coming to an end, and that the Sun-god wanted war, and that they would kill one another, whoever was first able to do this. Likewise they said that the dwarfs were created by the sun, and that at the time (that is during the eclipse) the Sun-god wanted the dwarfs as his property. And therefore wherever dwarfs or undersized persons were found in a house the people fell upon and killed them, and they hid themselves in order not to be killed, so that during that time few escaped from their fate.” [[348]]

One of the hymns or songs given in the Sahagun MS. says of Xolotl:

Old Xolotl plays ball, plays ball

On the magic playing-ground.

NATURE AND STATUS

The Mexican game of tlachtli symbolized the movements of the moon (but more probably of both sun and moon). This, perhaps the favourite Mexican amusement, was a ball-game, played with a rubber ball by two persons one at each end of a T-shaped court, which in the manuscripts is sometimes represented as painted in dark and light colours, or in four variegated hues. In several of the MSS. Xolotl is depicted striving at this game against other gods. For example, in the Codex Mendoza we see him playing with the Moon-god, and can recognize him by the sign ollin which accompanies him, and by the gouged-out eye in which that symbol ends. Seler thinks “that the root of the name olin suggested to the Mexicans the motion of the rubber ball olli and, as a consequence, of ball-playing.” It seems to me to have represented both light and darkness, as is witnessed by its colours. Xolotl is, indeed, the darkness that accompanies light. Hence he is “the twin” or shadow, hence he travels with the sun and the moon, with one or other of which he “plays ball,” overcoming them or losing to them. He is the god of eclipse, and naturally a dog, the animal of eclipse. Peruvians, Tupis, Creeks, Iroquois, Algonquins, and Eskimos believed him to be so, thrashing dogs during the phenomenon, a practice explained by saying that the big dog was swallowing the sun, and that by whipping the little ones they would make him desist. The dog is the animal of the dead, and therefore of the Place of Shadows.[1] Thus also Xolotl is a monster, the sun-swallowing monster, like the Hindu Rahu, who chases the sun and moon. As a shadow he is “the double” of everything. The axolotl, a marine animal found in Mexico, was confounded with his [[349]]name because of its monstrous appearance, and he was classed along with Quetzalcoatl merely because that god’s name bore the element coatl, which may be translated either “twin” or “snake.” Lastly, as he was “variable as the shade,” so were the fortunes of the game over which he presided.

At the same time he seems to me to have affinities with the Zapotec and Maya lightning-dog peche-xolo[2] and may represent the lightning which descends from the thunder-cloud, the flash, the reflection of which arouses in many primitive people the belief that the lightning is “double,” and leads them to suppose a connection between the lightning and twins, or other phenomena of a twofold kind. As the dog, too, he has a connection with Hades, and, said myth, was dispatched thence for the bones from which man was created.

He is also a travelling god, for the shadows cast by the clouds seem to travel quickly over plain and mountain. As the monstrous dwarf, too, he symbolized the palace-slave, the deformed jester who catered for the amusement of the great, and this probably accounts for the symbol of the white hand outspread on his face, which he has in common with Xochipilli and the other gods of pleasure. He bears a suspicious resemblance to the mandrake spirits of Europe and Asia, both as regards his duality, his loud lamentation when as a double-rooted plant he was discovered and pulled up by the roots, and his symbol, which may be a reminiscence of the mandrake.

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