Aztec mythology; Indian mythology -- Mexico; Mexico -- Religion
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 12: She is painted yellow, the women’s colour, and
is seen issuing from an agave-plant. In sheet 16 she has the general
aspect of Tlazolteotl, and her hair is bound up with a band of unspun
cotton, a plug of which also hangs from her ear. About the mouth she is
painted with black rubber, and as a nasal ornament wears the golden
crescent. Her face is white, and her tippet and skirt are painted in
the semblance of water and both garments have a fringe of snail-shells.
She suckles a fish. Sheet 68: In this place she is represented as ruler
of the eighth week. She has a two-coloured face-painting, the upper
half yellow, and the lower green or blue. The octli colour is
represented in her garments, which are white. In the pictures of the
Borgia group generally she is shown wearing the blue indented
nose-plate which is assigned to Xochiquetzal. In Codex Borgia generally
she wears as a back-device a quemitl after the style of Tlaloc, but
coloured white and blue or green. On her flame-coloured locks she
sometimes wears a jewelled chain with a conventional bird’s head
decorating the front of it, while the feather-tuft on her head
resembles that worn by the Sun-god in Codex Borgia (sheet 15), and is
intended to symbolize the fiery nature of the octli liquor.
Aubin Tonalamatl.—Sheet 8: She is painted the colour of the
Maize-goddess and her maidens—red. As a headdress she wears a bandage
with a neck-loop formed and coloured like that of the goddess
Chalchihuitlicue, and connected with a high crown. She bears a copal
incense bag.
Codex Vaticanus A.—She is shown with the upper half of her face yellow
and the lower blue, thus depicting the typical two-coloured
face-painting of the octli-gods. On her head she wears the
characteristic octli-god’s headdress, also worn by Tlaloc, and holds a
drinking-vessel brimming with octli.
Codex Borbonicus.—Her face is blue with a few oblique lines after the
style of the warrior’s face-paint. She wears as a headdress a bandage
of unspun cotton (usually the characteristic of Tlazolteotl), spindles
in her hair, a quail’s wing and long plumes of a yellow colour. In her
hand she bears a bunch of octli-wort, a root which, if added to the
agave liquor, makes its powers of intoxication more potent.
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheets 31 and 89: She is represented wearing the
headdress typical of Tlaloc and of the octli-gods—a bandage coloured
white and blue, with knots to the right and left, which leaves these
tips or tippets sticking out. Two large white and blue rosettes with
similarly coloured tassels depend by strings from the right and left of
this bandage.
Codex Fejérváry-Mayer.—Sheet 28: Clothed in a yellow-striped tippet
like that of Chalchihuitlicue, with a border painted in the colours of
the jewel, she lies in her agave-plant. She is crowned with a wreath of
flowers and wears a blue skirt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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