Ixtlilxochitl states in his fourth Relacion that Tonacatecutli and his wife were the chief gods of the Toltecs, who represented them as the sun and the moon, and he goes on to say that at certain seasons of the year criminals were sacrificed to them by a method called Telimonamiquian, “which is to say grinding between the stones.” Two great stones, he says, were balanced opposite each other, and the victim was crushed between them as they fell—the slain man thus representing the corn-spirit, or, indeed, the corn itself in the process of being ground. CHAPTER V DEITIES OF THE EARTH AND GROWTH PROPER INTRODUCTORY So numerous were the manifestations and variants of the Earth-goddess conceived by the Nahua or adopted into their pantheon, that this has been the cause of considerable misconception on the part of students of Mexican religion, who have confounded them in a manner which in the circumstances is scarcely surprising. An attempt will be made here to provide the reader with a list of the most important of these deities, briefly and barely outlining their various origins and attributes, in order that he may be the better able to comprehend what follows when we come to discuss them more fully. Chicomecoatl (Seven Serpents)—the Mexican name of the Earth-goddess and that of the seventh day of the seventh week of the tonalamatl. She was probably of Toltec origin. The third interpreter of the Codex Vaticanus A identifies her with Xochiquetzal, and, perhaps more correctly, with Xumoco and Tonacacigua or Tonacaciuatl. She had two temples dedicated to her, the chicome iteopan and the cinteopan, and seems to have become a variant of Tonacaciuatl on the adoption of an agricultural basis of existence. Tlazolteotl, Tlaelquani, Teteo innan or Toci—an earth-goddess whose worship had its origin among the tribes of the Atlantic seaboard, where maize grew abundantly. She possessed warlike propensities, as became a goddess to whom human sacrifice was much in vogue, and the myth of her impregnation by Uitzilopochtli was enacted at the ochpaniztli festival in August, typifying, perhaps, the impregnation of the “earth-mother” by the “sky-father.” As Ixcuine she represented a plurality of goddesses. Seler [175] believes that Chicomecoatl represents the young maize ear, and Tlazolteotl, the ripe ear of the plant. Cihuacoatl (Serpent Woman)—an earth-goddess of Xochimilco and Colhuacan. Coatlicue or Coatlantonan (Serpent Skirt)—a Mexican earth-goddess, mother of Uitzilopochtli. Xochiquetzal—originally a mountain goddess of the Tlalhuica. An earth-and-maize goddess as well as a deity of flowers and vegetation. Xilonen—originally a maize-goddess of the Huichol tribes. She represented the young maize-plant.