Aztec mythology; Indian mythology -- Mexico; Mexico -- Religion
Relationship: Frequently associated with the Uitznaua.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Codex Borgia.—Sheets 47–48: Five figures here represent the Ciuateteô
and are dressed in the style of Tlazolteotl, with the fillet and
ear-plug of unspun cotton, and the golden nasal crescent worn by that
goddess and the octli-gods. In each case the eye has been gouged out
and hangs out of the socket, as with Xolotl. They wear on their heads a
feather ornament like the heron-feather plume of the warrior caste, but
consisting of five white feathers or strips of paper above a bunch of
downy feathers. At the nape of the neck the figures wear a black vessel
as their device, in which lies a bunch of malinalli grass. The upper
part of the body is naked, and round the hips is wrapped a skirt
showing cross-bones on its surface and a border painted in the manner
of the variegated coral snake. The resemblance between all five figures
is close. Only the face-, arm-, and leg-painting is different. In the
case of the first the colour is white striped with red, in the second
blue, in the third yellow, in the fourth red, and in the fifth black.
All hold in one hand a broom of malinalli grass, and in the other a
black obsidian sacrificial knife, a bone dagger, and an agave-leaf
spike, both furnished with a flower symbolic of blood. They inhale the
smoke which ascends from a black incense or fire-vessel standing on the
ground before them. A rubber ball lies in the vessel of the first
figure; with the second the vessel is replaced by a cross-way, and the
ascending smoke by a centipede issuing from the mouth of the goddess.
With the third a skeleton is seated in the dish, holding a heart in one
hand and a sacrificial knife in the other. The ascending smoke is
replaced by two streams of blood passing into the mouth of a skeleton,
one of which comes from the mouth of the figure, the other from her
right breast. With the fourth figure are represented a bunch of
malinalli grass and a variegated snake. Nothing here enters the mouth
of the Ciuateteô, but from it issues a similar snake, and another hangs
on each of her arms. Before the last figure, in the dish is perched a
screech-owl, and a stream of blood passes from the mouth of the figure
to that of the owl.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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