In an illuminating passage in his disquisition upon the Aubin tonalamatl (p. 123) Seler says: “As I have remarked at the opening of the section, the goddess Xochiquetzal is properly the expression of the day-sign xochitl. But owing to the transference of the series of rulers of the day-signs to the weeks in the peculiar way affected by the calendar-makers, that is, by a general shifting of one member, [209] Xochiquetzal has been brought into association with the sign ce quauhtli (one eagle). But in Telleriano-Remensis at this week the hand-mark [210] which indicates the feast-day proper of the ruler of the week stands at the first day itself—the sign ce quauhtli, that induced the calendar-makers to effect the above-described dislocation in the second half of the list of rulers. For more than one reason the day ce quauhtli must really have seemed to the priestly savants specially appropriate to the goddess Xochiquetzal, and above all, because this day was one of the five which fell at the beginning or western quarter of the tonalamatl disposed in columns of five members. Hence these five days were collectively regarded as dedicated to the earth-goddesses, and as the days in which the ghostly women dwelling in the west, the Ciuateteô, swooped down upon earth, striking the children with epilepsy and beguiling the men to lust and sin.” These Ciuateteô were stregæ, witches, succubi, and their characteristics, which are touched upon in the section dealing with Tlazolteotl, will be more fully outlined elsewhere. Quecholli.—The people of Tlaxcallan held a festival to Xochiquetzal in the month quecholli, when the Mexicans celebrated the feast of Mixcoatl. At the Tlaxcaltec feast numbers of young women were sacrificed to the goddess, “to the honour of love,” and the prostitutes were also in the habit of offering themselves for immolation, we are informed by Torquemada, [211] first haling the “honest” women through the mire and subjecting them to the foulest abuse. The Tlalhuica, who lived in the hot lands south of Mexico, themselves, like the Tlaxcaltecs, a people of Nahua race, held a festival in honour of Xochiquetzal in the month tepeilhuitl, which the Mexicans dedicated to the Tlaloque, gods of rain, as is related by the interpreter of the Codex Magliabecchiano. Torquemada, too, [212] states that the Tlaxcaltecs sacrificed many children to Xochiquetzal and to the mountain-gods (Tlaloque) evidently at this season. Xochiquetzal was also connected with the festival of the atamalqualiztli, celebrated every eight years. In the picture of that feast in the Sahagun MS. we observe her seated at a loom. From these considerations it is manifest that the verdurous and “watery” attributes of the goddess connected her with the Tlaloque, but that she was not actually of their company. TEMPLES