Because of his connection with the lightning Mixcoatl was also god of the fire-twirler, the apparatus with which fire was made, and he appears in this character during the fire festival.
TLAUIZCALPANTECUTLI = “LORD OF THE HOUSE OF THE DAWN”
- Area of Worship: Mexico; Toltec (?).
- Calendar Place: With the Fire-god, lord of the ninth week, ce coatl. Twelfth of the thirteen lords of the day-hours.
- Compass Direction: West.
- Relationship: Variant of Quetzalcoatl.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
General.—In the Codex Borgia (sheet 25) he is painted as having a white-and-red-striped body, and the black face with white-spotted quincunx peculiar to him in his special form as evening star. The hair is yellow, the locks rising in curls above the brow, and bound by a red fillet. We can probably recognize him in the figure seen in sheet 19 of Codex Vaticanus B, which bears a strong resemblance to that found on sheet 57 of the same MS., confronting the Fire-god; but in the first instance he is not shown with the black “half-mask” painting about the eye. He has, however, the same warlike implements—shield, spears, and atlatl—as in Codex Borgia, as well as a pouch for obsidian arrow-heads and a small sacrificial flag. He is, however, almost universally represented with a white or white-and-red-striped body and [[320]]face-painting, and the deep black “half-mask” edged with small white circles which is usually shown in the pictures of Mixcoatl, Paynal, and Atlaua, and which is described as “the stellar face-painting called darkness.” He frequently wears long, tapering oval ornaments attached to red leather thongs in place of the chalchihuitl jewels which so often depend from the dress of the other gods, and the band which supports these has four diverging ends terminating in a bunch of feathers, as with Tonatiuh, Ueuecoyotl, and Xochipilli. The crown is generally composed of black feathers having white spots, alternating with longer yellow or red plumes. On the breast is seen an ornament like that of Tezcatlipocâ. In Codex Borbonicus and Borgia he is accompanied by the insignia of those warriors who died by sacrifice, the blue crown with the three-cornered frontal plate, the axe-shaped blue ear-plug, the blue nose-plug, the white paper shoulder-tie, and the small blue dog which accompanied the dead man on his way to the region of Mictlan.
Tlauizcalpantecutli piercing Chalchihuitlicue.
(From Codex Borgia, sheet 53.)
