There is, however, every reason to believe that she had a still more profound significance in Mexican theology, and this is made clear if we examine the prayer to her preserved by Sahagun in which she seems to represent the purifying and cleansing influence of water as an agency to wipe away the original sin with which it was thought man came into the world. That the goddess had also a lunar significance is plain from the allusion to her as the mother of the Centzon Mimixcoa, or stars of the Northern Hemisphere, and the great importance attached to the prayers offered up to her in connection with child-bearing. As has been hinted, she had also a medicinal aspect. The child sacrificed to her at the etzalqualiztli festival was slain at the hill known as Yauhqueme (“covered with mugwort”), and, as instanced in the case of Tlaloc, this plant is the especial medicine-herb of the Greek Artemis. In Codex Borgia, indeed, she is associated with a herb which may possibly be the mugwort or wormwood, and Seler thinks she is to be regarded as the giver of “healing draughts of physic.” UIXTOCIUATL = “SALT WOMAN” Area of Worship: Originally the eastern sea-coast. Relationship: Elder sister of the Tlaloquê. ASPECT AND INSIGNIA Sahagun MS. (Biblioteca del Palacio).—The goddess is painted yellow and wears a crown of paper or cotton, adorned with quetzal-feathers and a golden ear-plug. Her overdress and skirt are painted with wavy lines of water and she wears sandals. Her shield is entirely white and she bears a rush staff in her hand, from which depend strips of cotton or paper. FESTIVALS Tecuilhuitontli.—“The seventh month” (says Sahagun, bk. ii, c. vii) “was designated tecuilhuitontli, the first day of which was dedicated to the goddess of salt, who was styled Uixtociuatl. She was termed the elder sister of the god Tlaloc. A woman was slain in her honour, robed with the same ornaments as were worn by the images of this divinity. “The night preceding this festival, the women, old, young, and children, gave themselves up to singing and dancing, marching in a ring, linked by cords which they each held by an end, which they called xochimecatl, and which were garlanded with the absinthe flowers of the country, called iztauhyatl. Old men led the songs and dances, while in the midst of the ring stood the poor woman doomed to death, richly dressed in the manner of the image of the goddess. All the women, in company with her who was to die, watched, sang and danced the whole of the night preceding the festival. Day having dawned, all the priests assumed their ornaments, and partook in a solemn dance, all those who assisted carrying in their hands flowers called cempoalxochitl. Dancing all the way, they brought several captives to the temple of Tlaloc, in the midst of whom walked the woman who was to die, dressed as the image of Uixtociuatl. Before she was sacrificed, the captives were first put to death. [285]