(6) The round shield covered with red spoonbill feathers, showing concentric circles of darker tints, sometimes noticeably bisected, one-half of which is again subdivided obliquely into a smaller upper portion containing a chalchihuitl on a blue field, and a larger lower portion, covered with jaguar or ocelot-skin. Xipe’s dress has three forms: (1) That of the red god, of the colour of the roseate spoonbill. (2) That of the blue god, of the colour of the blue cotinga. (3) As a jaguar or ocelot. MYTHS The interpreter of Codex Vaticanus A says of Xipe: “Amongst those who began to follow the example of Quetzalcoatl and his austerities by their own acts of penance, Totec is very famous, who, on account of his having been a great sinner, first stood in the house of sorrow called Tlaxipuchicalco, where, having completed his penance, he ascended the mountain Catcitepulz (‘the mountain which speaks’), which mountain was covered with thorns. There continuing his penance, he cried from thence very strongly, reproving his people of Tulan, calling to them to come and do penance with him for the enormous guilt which they had incurred in forgetting the services and sacrifices of their gods and having abandoned themselves so much to pleasure. They say that Totec was accustomed to go about clothed in a human skin and so it has been the custom till those times. In the festivals, likewise, which they celebrated to Totec, men clothed themselves in the skins of those whom they had slain in war and in this manner danced and celebrated the festival of the sign dedicated to him (for from him, they say, wars originated), and accordingly they paint him with these insignia, viz. a lance, banner, and shield. They hold him in the utmost veneration, for they say that he was the first who opened to them the way to heaven; for they were under this error amongst others; they supposed that only those who died in war went to heaven, as we have already said. Whilst Totec still continued doing penance, preaching and crying from the top of the mountain which has been named, they pretend that he dreamed this night that he beheld a horrible figure with its bowels protruding, which was the cause of the great abomination of his people. On this, praying to his god to reveal to him what the figure signified, he answered that it was the sin of his people, and that he should issue an order to the people, and cause them all to be assembled, charging them to bring thick ropes, and to bind that miserable spectre, as it was the cause of all their sins, and that, dragging it away, they should remove it from the people, who, giving faith to the words of Totec, were by him conducted to a certain wild place, where they found the figure of death, which, having bound, they dragged it to a distance, and drawing it backwards, they fell all into a cavity between the two mountains, which closed together, and there they have remained buried ever since;