Aztec mythology; Indian mythology -- Mexico; Mexico -- Religion
Codex Fejérváry-Mayer.—Sheet 41: Mixcoatl is here depicted with
body-colour half-blue, half-red, the black domino-stellar painting
about the eye, his hair puffed up above the brow and surmounted by the
warrior’s adornment. The body-painting in this place is merely a
variant of the striped colour, perhaps indicating the twilight. As god
of the hunting tribes, he is naked like the hunter, and has an ear-plug
made from a deer’s foot. He is armed with a throwing-stick (atlatl).
WALL-PAINTINGS
On the west side of the court of Palace I at Mitla are certain
fragments, some of which undoubtedly represent Mixcoatl in his
different phases. In the first of these he is represented as wearing a
white wig surmounted by tufts of down in which arrows are stuck. On his
face he has the familiar “domino-painting,” he is bearded, and his
nose-plug is of a peculiar character, somewhat unfamiliar and
expressing a serpentine motif. He wears a collar with sharp stellar
edges. The fifth figure to the right from this once more represents him
in the same guise, only that in his left hand he holds the atlatl, or
spear-thrower. His peculiarly stellar character has not been lost upon
the artist who executed these paintings, as the stellar eye-motif
decorates the top of the frieze on which they appear. Not far away is
seen the deer usually associated with him.
STATUARY AND PAINTINGS
An interesting stone figure of Mixcoatl was discovered in the ruins of
the Castillo de Teayo, to the west of the pyramid. It is made of
sandstone, and the frontal aspect shows the god wearing a high panache
of feathers, a headdress flanked by tufts or puffings of some textile
material from which feathers depend, and an elaborate necklace. The
skirt, the upper part of which is V-shaped, hangs down to the ankles,
and is tied up behind in a double knot. In his left hand he carries the
bag which holds obsidian arrow-heads, his invariable symbol, and in the
right the S-formed lightning symbol, with which he is often
represented, as in the Codex Magliabecchiano. Another relief from the
same site shows him carrying the same symbols. His hair is decorated
with feather-balls, as in the Codex Magliabecchiano and Duran’s
illustration. In a painting from Teopancaxo he wears a peculiar
headdress from which falls behind a large panache of feathers, and
which seems to be decorated with down; a horizontal band crosses the
face beneath the eye and covers the whole of the nose. In one hand he
carries the lightning symbol, from which spring serpentine streaks of
lightning, and in the other a small shield like a sunflower and three
arrows with blunt ends.
AS IZTAC MIXCOATL = “WHITE CLOUD SERPENT”
Minor Names: Ce eecatl = “One Wind.”
Relationship:
Husband of Ilancuêyê and progenitor of the Xelhua national
ancestors, Tenoch, Ulmecatl, Xicalancatl, Mixtecatl, Otomitl.
Husband of a second wife, Chimamatl, by whom he had a son,
Quetzalcoatl.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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