ITZPAPALOTL = “OBSIDIAN KNIFE BUTTERFLY”
- Area of Worship: Originally Chichimec tribes; Mexican Plateau.
- Relationship: Associated with Mixcoatl and the Centzon Mimixcoa; one of the Tzitzimimê.
- Symbols: The butterfly; Mixcoatl’s stone knife.
- Compass Direction: Earth (?).
- Calendar Place: Ruler of the sixteenth day, cozcaquauhtli; of the fifteenth “week,” ce calli.
ITZPAPALOTL.
(Stone of Aristides Martel.)
| XILONEN. (Sahagun MS.) See p. 228. | ZAPOTLANTENAN. (Sahagun MS.) See p. 228. |
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 92: In this representation and on the sheet devoted to the fifteenth tonalamatl division and its ruler, Itzpapalotl is depicted as furnished with human teeth, but is predominantly animal in form, retaining, however, certain peculiarities which indicate the intention that she should be regarded as an insect. She displays a kind of butterfly wing, edged round with stone knives. Above her is figured the flowering tree broken in the middle from which blood flows. This symbol denotes the Tamoanchan, or House of Descent, the region of the mythical west, home of the maize-plant and seat of the primeval gods, where the wandering tribes were said to have made a long sojourn. In sheet 63 she is represented as standing upon a platform, which seems to be covered with a symbolic leaf—perhaps that on which butterflies are most usually found. She has a dark body edged with white, and the claws and face are flecked with ulli rubber gum. The head is an adaptation of that of Tlaloc, and a short, wheel-shaped wing occupies the back from nape to tail-root.
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 11: In this place the goddess is depicted as a woman with jaguar claws on hands and feet. The facial painting is like that of Tlauizcalpantecutli, but the [[224]]features are those of the Death-god—a skull with a stone-knife nose. She wears a collar with the form and colouring of a butterfly’s wing, and her dress is set with stone knives at prominent points. She is accompanied by an animal of rapacious aspect, perhaps a jaguar or ocelot.
Codex Telleriano-Remensis.—A butterfly with antennæ and wings acts as a naualli, or disguise (a kind of helmet-mask), to a female figure which has death’s-head teeth, animal claws on the hands and feet, and a blue-coloured disk on the cheek. As in Codex Borgia, this face has a stone knife on the nose, a collar studded with stone knives, and on the head the warrior’s forked heron-feather ornament. The crown is of dark feathers, the sombreness of which is lightened by quetzal plumes and a loin-cloth like that of the Ciuateteô or Ciuapipiltin, the dead women who had perished in childbed, and who were regarded as partaking of the nature of warriors. The end of the loin-cloth and skirt is trimmed with a hem of teeth. As a back-mirror she wears a death’s-head, below which hangs a “star-skirt,” to the plaited thongs of which rattling snail-shells are attached.