VARIANTS OF THE GREAT GODS.

ASPECT AND INSIGNIA

Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 19: He looks out from the open jaws of a stone knife, which is designed with teeth and the socket of an eye above them. Otherwise he is pictured as a black Tezcatlipocâ with the yellow cross-bands on his face. The smoking mirror, the badge of Tezcatlipocâ, is clearly to be discerned. The clouds of incense reach a great height, and are set with feather-work. He wears the blue nose-rod from which a little plate falls over the mouth, and he has a white breast-ring.

Codex Borgia.—Sheet 14: In this place he is represented with his hair brushed up on one side, over the brow, the warrior’s hairdressing, and the forked heron-feather ornament in his hair, part of the warrior’s dancing attire. The smoking mirror at the temple is given with great clearness.

Codex Fejérváry-Mayer.—Sheet 2: The one foot exhibited as missing or torn off is stuck in the throat of a stone knife. The body-paint has perhaps been forgotten here, and the facial painting differs from Tezcatlipocâ’s usual adornment, being perhaps reminiscent of that of Tezcatlipocâ-Itzlacoliuhqui. The head and neck are wrapped in a cloth with a fringed hem, and which must be regarded as decked with feather balls on the surface as in the picture of the red [[337]]Tezcatlipocâ in Borgia (sheet 11). He is associated with the crossway in all MSS.

NATURE AND STATUS

This deity is a surrogate of Tezcatlipocâ in his guise of the obsidian knife of sacrifice, and as such is, of course, representative of the paramount connection of that god with the obsidian cult alluded to in the Introduction. He is, indeed, nothing more or less than a personalization of the obsidian knife; his name implies this and the picture of him in Codex Vaticanus B (sheet 19), where he is seen looking out of the jaws of an obsidian knife disguise, affords absolute proof, if more were required, of the identification.

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ITZTLACOLIUHQUI-IXQUIMILLI = “THE CURVED OBSIDIAN KNIFE,” “THE BLIND ONE”