Aztec mythology; Indian mythology -- Mexico; Mexico -- Religion
Cinteotl (Maize-god)—son of Tlazolteotl, originally a god of the
peoples of the Atlantic seaboard. He is occasionally alluded to as a
female deity, but is always male in the MSS. of the Borgia group,
executed by a people of Nahua speech dwelling in the south. He is the
equivalent of Xochipilli and had a separate temple, the cinteopan.
Xipe—an earth-god of the Teotitlan district, a god of spring
vegetation. His temples were called yopico. His great festival was the
Tlacaxipeuliztli, or “flaying of men.”
Only three of these deities, Tlazolteotl, Xipe, and Xochiquetzal,
appear as rulers of one or other of the twenty day-signs of the
tonalamatl. But Cinteotl figures in the ochpaniztli feast and appears
as one of the “Lords of the Night.”
These criteria are perhaps sufficient to identify these figures as
separate divinities. We find in Sahagun that Chicomecoatl, Cinteotl,
and Xipe had separate temples of their own. In several of the rituals
of the great festivals, however, the cults of Tlazolteotl,
Chicomecoatl, and Cinteotl appear to have been very closely interwoven,
and this leads me to suspect that the worship of the old Toltec goddess
Chicomecoatl was in process of fusion with that of the “immigrant”
Tlazolteotl at the period of the Conquest. Xilonen, too, according to
Sahagun, had a separate festival in her honour, the uei tecuilhuitl.
From all this and from considerations still to be advanced we may,
perhaps, be justified in assuming:
(1) That at the period of the Conquest the cults of Tlazolteotl,
Chicomecoatl, and Cinteotl were very naturally in process of becoming
amalgamated, the worship of the two goddesses, Mexican and alien,
presenting many features in common.
(2) That Xochiquetzal, originally the goddess of the Tlalhuica, was
regarded more properly as the goddess of flowers and of the spring
florescence, a hypothesis which is upheld by her myths. Her equation
with Tonacaciuatl appears to have been a later concept, due to the
connection of both with the earth.
(3) That the Huichol goddess Xilonen came to symbolize for the Nahua
the maize plant in its early stages of growth, and in that respect
resembles Cinteotl.
(4) That the cult of the southern god Xipe, the grain-deity of a
related people, had made great headway among the Nahua of
Mexico-Tenochtitlan.
(5) It follows from these conclusions that only one of these deities of
growth—Coatlicue—was of Nahua origin, all the others being gods of the
aboriginal or settled peoples. The Chichimec Nahua, a hunting people,
possessing no official grain-goddess of their own, would naturally come
to worship these on their adoption of an agricultural mode of life. As
most of these forms hailed from districts of considerable cultural
antiquity, I believe their worship to have been of long duration in the
land, not much less ancient, indeed, than the cult of Tlaloc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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