The mode of sacrifice by shooting to death with darts or arrows was employed in connection with Xipe as well as in the case of Tlazolteotl (q.v.). A captive was secured to a scaffold and shot with darts, so that his blood might fall upon the ground. This usage may be regarded as of the nature of sympathetic magic to secure rainfall.
TEMPLES
At least three buildings were erected to the honour of Xipe at Mexico.[56] The first of these, known as yopico (“in Yopi [[218]]land”), has already been alluded to, and was probably the principal place connected with his worship. It was at this temple that the ceremonies of the tlacaxipeuliztli festival took place. The second, called yopico calmecac, appears to have been situated in the quarter of Tlatelolco, and, as its name implies, was evidently a monastery or place of instruction. At another edifice, the yopoci tzompantli, the heads of the victims slain at the festival of the god were exhibited. In front of the first of these stood the temalacatl, the stone to which the captives were secured when they fought with the Mexican warriors before they were finally sacrificed.
PRIESTHOOD
The Xipe yopico teohua, or priesthood dedicated to the service of Xipe, is enumerated among the various classes of priests charged with the service of the gods,[57] and held in their keeping Xipe’s insignia and the accessories for his festival. They resided in the yopico calmecac or monastery.
NATURE AND STATUS
Xipe is pre-eminently a god of seed-time and planting.[58] He is the Tlaltecutli, or “Lord of the Earth,” and in a secondary sense, the god of the warrior’s death on the stone of combat, because of the association between the food-supply and military service for the purpose of gaining captives. There can be no question that Xipe was of Zapotec origin; indeed, that is manifest from the name of his temple, Yopico, which means the “land of the Yopi” or Tlappeneca, a people of Zapotec affinities, and his cap was known as yopitzontli, “the Yopi head.” One of his names was Anauatl itecu, or “Lord of the Coastland,” and we know from Herrera[59] that he was especially worshipped in the district of Teotitlan, [[219]]which commands the road to Tabasco. Both Sahagun and the interpreter of Codex Vaticanus A uphold his alien origin.
Just as the Egyptian priests of Ammon at Thebes once a year killed a ram, flayed it, and clothed the image of their god in the skin, just as the Celtic priest wore the skin of a bull at certain festivals, so the Mexicans slew and flayed a man, in whose skin they clothed their priests and those who desired to be closely associated with the god. The idea underlying this practice would appear to be the renewal of the life of the deity. It seems to have some bearing on the phenomena of the system known as “totemism,” regarding the real significance of which we know so little, despite the seeming erudition which has of late years been lavished upon its consideration, for, as we have seen, the captor of the slain victim was not permitted to eat of his flesh, although that may only have been taboo to him because he stood to the doomed man in the relation of a sponsor. Xipe represents the earth “flayed,” that is bare, and ready for sowing. The flaying of the captive and the dressing of the god’s representative in the skin may have been of the nature of sympathetic magic, as a suggestion to the earth to rehabilitate itself in its covering of yellow maize.
It is precisely the agricultural god whom in Mexico we must expect to find clothed in all the attributes of the warrior, and truly Xipe does not disappoint us in this respect. He is armed cap-à-pie, and his dress was the favourite harness of Mexican royalty when it went forth to battle, as witness the Spartan suggestion of Motecuhzoma to his brother on the eve of a great combat.[60] The Codex Vaticanus A calls him “il guerreggiatore attristato.” Thus at his feast the sacrifice takes the form of a combat. Indeed, he represents the warrior caste, by the efforts of whom the altars of Mexico were supplied with human victims, and the maize-crop was consequently secured.
Xipe is in some measure associated with that sacred bird [[220]]the quail, which has been connected with sacrifice in many lands. This bird frequently takes refuge in the last sheaves of grain in a harvest-field, and thus, perhaps, came to symbolize the corn-spirit driven from its last stronghold. In Normandy in the harvest-field the reapers pretend to catch a quail and dispatch it.[61] The quail was sacrificed to the Tyrian Baal,[62] and is associated by Robertson Smith with the god Eshmun-Iolaos.[63] The bird-like character of Xipe’s dress may assist us in the belief that he was partially evolved from some bird of the quail species commonly found in the maize-field. He bears a strong resemblance to the Maya god F.