She is, however, not always represented as in old age, or else there was another serpent goddess in the mythology; for in a number of places a similar serpentine head-dress is borne by a young woman who holds a vase containing the rattles of the rattlesnake (Cod. Dres., pp. 15, 18); or (ibid., p. 20), a figure which shows seven black dots. May this be a sign of the constellation of the Pleiades, which in the Maya language bore the same name as the rattles of the rattlesnake, tzab?
As to the signification of the serpent goddess, I think there can be no question of it, from a study of her appearance, signs, and associations. She was the personification of the thunderstorm. The vase she empties is the descending torrent of rain, the rattles she carries are the thunderclaps, her severe mien is the terror inspired by the din of the elements. In Maya, the word for “thunder,” pecchac, is derived from the noun pec, which means “a sound like that of a bell or rattle” (Dicc. Motul).
Representations of Xmucane.—A third goddess who can be clearly distinguished is one with features of an old woman, her face wrinkled, her mouth sunken, and but one tooth left in her lower jaw. She usually wears her hair in a peculiar style, two wisps or ends of it twisted above her head.
She does not appear in the Peresianus, and perhaps not in the Dresden manuscript, but holds a prominent place in the Troanus and Cortesianus. Her occupations are peaceable; she is weaving on a loom (C. Tro., p. 11), carrying a plate of cakes, etc. (Cod. Cortes., pp. 10, 11).
In appearance she is the female counterpart of Cuculcan, and is plainly intended to represent his companion or wife. In the “Tableau des Bacabs” of the Codex Cortes., these two alone are represented sitting under the central “tree of life,” where they are placed back to back (see above, p. 49); while in the section of the tableau showing the West, they are placed face to face, she seated under a canopy hung with black and red dotted lines.
In her, therefore, we have a person of great importance, the consort of Cuculcan, intimately associated with the quarter of the West to which he belongs. Dr. Seler has argued that she was the goddess Ix chel, and the personification of the Earth. With the last supposition I agree, but not with the name. Ix chel was distinctly by name and myth the goddess of the rainbow. Much more probably we have in this ancient crone, as I have already said, the personification of the Evening Star, and the Earth, Xmucane, the companion of the sun when worn out by his day’s work, whose home is with him in the West, and whom she soon joins.
Representation of Ah-Puch, God of Death.—Next to Itzamna, god of Life, the god of Death, Ah-Puch, is represented most frequently on both Codices and monuments. In the former his picture is given about eighty times, usually as a skeleton with tremendous jaws, always with fleshless skull and backbone,—a true “God Barebones,” as the Dicc. de Motul describes him.
His symbols are unmistakeable,—the head of a corpse and cross-bones, the ill-omened owl and the ravenous dog,—wonderfully “European” indeed. He has numerous costumes and head dresses, some quite fanciful, and occasionally bells are attached to his ankles and clothing. Some of his delineations seem to reveal a sense of ghastly humor, as we see in the medieval “dance of death.”
Fig. 24.—The God of Death. (From the Codices.)