Aztec mythology; Indian mythology -- Mexico; Mexico -- Religion
Compass Direction: Upper region.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Codex Fejérváry-Mayer.—Sheet 32: He has the head of a deer. He carries
for a staff the neck of a long-billed, white bird, a heron. Before him
stands a dish containing an eye and a feather ornament, reproducing in
form and colour the warrior’s forked heron-feather adornment. Sheet 6:
He is painted a yellow colour, thin and with wrinkled skin, his face
looking out of the open throat of a bird, which has a feather crest
curling up and a variegated rosette on its beak. In one hand he holds a
bone dagger, in the other a staff tied round with a white-fringed
cloth. As hieroglyph is shown beside him the day ce eecatl, “one wind.”
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 60: Here he is represented as having heron-feather
hair and beard, and a ring-shaped appendage below the upper lip
indicative of age. He is dressed as a priest, with tobacco-calabash on
back and red patch on temple. He holds in one hand a staff bent like a
heron’s neck, and in the other a bunch of malinalli grass. Sheet 24:
The representation here is almost identical, except that the staff has
a heron’s head and that a bone piercer is worn behind the ear. In both
pictures he wears a curious back device, recalling that on the
rattle-staff of Quetzalcoatl. In some places he wears a helmet-mask
like the head of a deer.
AS CAMAXTLI
Area of Worship: Tlaxcallan and Huexotzinco.
Festival: Ce tecpatl (movable feast).
Relationship: Brother of Uitzilopochtli, and probably a local
variant of him.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Face-paint.—He wears the domino face-paint, like Uitzilopochtli and
Mixcoatl, and a nose-plug.
The body is striped with red and white, in which circumstance he agrees
with Mixcoatl and Tlauizcalpantecutli, the morning star. He wears a
headdress seemingly of feathers, and in Duran his hair is long and he
wears a knitted loin-cloth. A dead rabbit, or its skin, is slung across
his breast. In the Humboldt MS. (Roy. Lib. of Berlin) his headdress
perhaps represents the symbol of hieroglyphic expression for the phrase
atl tlachinolli (water and fire) used in the sense of “war.”
Weapons, etc.—He carries the atlatl, or spear-thrower, and net-bag of
the wild hunting tribes, bow and arrows, sometimes tipped with down,
also a bag or pouch, in which he carries his arrowheads of obsidian.
Like Mixcoatl he is sometimes clothed in the device of the two-headed
deer, in which he went to war.
MYTHS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account