(From Codex Vaticanus B, sheet 37.)
FORMS OF TLAUIZCALPANTECUTLI.
On the five sheets of Codex Vaticanus B which indicate the periods of the planet Venus we observe Tlauizcalpantecutli depicted five times, and have thus a most favourable opportunity for studying his various attributes. All of these pictures represent him in the form of the evening star, with the quincunx of white spots on the dark background of his face. He is depicted as half-black, half-white, the body, upper arms, and knees being black, but the forearms, thighs, and lower part of the legs white and striped with yellow longitudinal lines, like the striping on Uitzilopochtli’s body. Under the eye is a motif which recalls the blue snake-band round the mouth of Tlaloc, but it is yellow in colour, and forms a kind of coil in the middle of the face over the nose. A tassel or other ornament falls from it, the whole recalling certain Maya types. The hair is flame-coloured, curls upward, and is bound with the usual fillet studded with white slicings from mussel-shells, and the black, white-tipped feathers, previously alluded to, and intermingled with eagle-plumes, crown the head. The breast is covered with the white eye-ring, also described above, and which is characteristic [[321]]of Tezcatlipocâ. Accompanying the picture is the emblem of the stellar eye, which in this place is almost certainly intended to depict the planet Venus. The god holds in one hand the atlatl, or spear-thrower, and in the other a bundle of darts, to symbolize his nature as a shooting god.
TLAUIZCALPANTECUTLI (left) AND VICTIM.
(From Codex Borgia, sheet 19.)
In those pictures in Codex Borgia where the god is represented as casting his spear at various mythological figures, his insignia is in agreement with that portrayed in Codex Vaticanus B. But of the five figures in which he is shown as the spear-thrower, in one only is he depicted with white, red-striped limbs, the remaining figures being coloured green, yellow, brown, and blue. Nor has the face the characteristic painting known as “stellar” and frequently described on those pages, but is skull-shaped, and represented as swallowing blood and a human heart. He holds, however, the usual spear-thrower, shield, hand-flag, and the hunter’s net-bag. The Codex Borgia pictures show, too, the incidence of the god’s other attributes, the oval, egg-shaped ornaments and the white-tipped black feathers, which, however, are here considerably shorter, and spread over the crown of the head only. Here also the first of the five figures is red-striped, the others being blue, red, and yellow, and red-striped. Like the figures in Codex Bologna, the first has the head of a skull painted with the face-paint of Tlauizcalpantecutli, with the quincunx of five disks on a dark ground. The other four figures wear masks, that part of their faces which is visible being coloured like the body and having the quincunx of five white disks. The second figure wears an owl naual, or mask, the third that of a dog, the fourth a rabbit-mask, and the fifth, like the first, a dead man’s skull, which, however, is portrayed in its natural colour and has no face-paint. The owl-mask of the second figure and the skull-mask of the fifth show that they represent the sequence of five periods of the planet Venus, five time-counts based on its period of visibility, and that, moreover, these figures are to be referred respectively to the compass directions, east, north, west, south, below. The Codex Fejérváry figure differs from the other representations, the face being painted white [[322]]with yellow stripes, like the rest of the body and limbs. But that this figure is in reality identical with those of the other manuscripts is proved by the quincunx of white spots disposed in the same manner as in the Codex Vaticanus B figure, by the three curly locks on the brow, and by the star-like eye worn by the god on his breast. In Codex Borgia are shown a sacrificial cord and two small paper flags. In Codex Fejérváry we see a shield with feather appendage, and one paper flag, which is evidently intended to appear in the ritual of the death by sacrifice. Tlauizcalpantecutli was for the Mexicans an indication of the warrior’s death, that is, sacrificial death.
In Codex Telleriano-Remensis the hair is plastered with white downy feathers, and round the neck is slung the aztemacatl, the heron-feather cord, the whole indicating the insignia of the victim about to be sacrificed after ceremonial combat. He wears a skull as helmet-mask in this MS. In the Aubin-Goupil tonalamatl Tlauizcalpantecutli wears a rod-shaped nose-plug and the blue breast-plate of the Fire-god.
NATURE AND STATUS
This god, as Seler indicates,[7] is a variant of the planet Venus, the morning star, who was regarded as the shooting god and who was perhaps identical with Mixcoatl. The Anales de Quauhtitlan says that: “When he appears he strikes various classes of people with his rays, shoots them, sheds his light on them,” and these several types of people thus shot are clearly to be seen in Codex Borgia, and in the corresponding places of the other manuscripts, where their sequence is, however, varied. That they stand in relation to the quarters of the heavens there can be no doubt, but these quarters vary with the several codices. Thus in Codex Borgia we find the jaguar occupying the north, while in Vaticanus B and Bologna we find it occupying the fifth or downward direction, and in this varying arrangement we probably see differences [[323]]of local conception. The deities or figures at which the god hurled his spear are the jaguar, or Tezcatlipocâ, Chalchihuitlicue, the black Tezcatlipocâ (probably as Tepeyollotl), Cinteotl, the Tlatouani, or King, and the Yayotl, or the symbol of war; but these do not agree with the “classes of people” shot by the god as given by the Anales de Quauhtitlan, which states “that in the sign cipactli he shoots old men and women, in the sign coatl he shoots the rain, for it will not rain, in the sign atl, the universal drought, in the sign acatl, kings and rulers, and in the sign olin, youths and maidens.”