Aztec mythology; Indian mythology -- Mexico; Mexico -- Religion
According to Seler (Commentary on the Codex Vaticanus B, p. 91),
Uitzilopochtli figures in that MS. as showing “in a general way the
devices and the dress-badges of the fire-god,” differing, however, in
colour and painting. When found along with Tezcatlipocâ as Ruler of the
Southern Heaven, in Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (sheet 25), he is seated on a
jaguar-skin seat, enveloped in a long robe of a light blue colour, with
balls of downy feathers. He wears the aztaxelli or forked heron-feather
ornament on his head and has the yellow face-paint alluded to above. In
the Sahagun MS. (Bib. del Palacio) he is represented as wearing on his
back the “dragon’s head” alluded to in the text. In the Duran MS. (2 o,
plate 2 a), drawn by a European hand, the humming-bird headdress forms
a helmet-mask, and in the Codex Ramirez (Juan de Tobar), in which the
figure is Europeanized almost out of recognition, the same is the case,
but the shield-marking is incorrect, consisting as it does of seven
tufts of down instead of five.
Clavigero (tom. ii, pp. 17–19) says of Uitzilopochtli’s insignia: “Upon
his head he carried a beautiful crest, shaped like the beak of a bird,
upon his neck a collar shaped like ten figures of the human heart. His
statue was of an enormous size, in the posture of a man seated on a
blue-coloured bench, from the four corners of which issued four snakes.
His forehead was blue, but his face was covered with a golden mask,
while another of the same kind covered the back of his head. In his
hand he carried a large blue, twisted club, in his left a shield in
which appeared five balls of feathers disposed in the form of a cross,
and from the upper part of the shield rose a golden flag with four
arrows, which the Mexicans believed to have been sent to them from
heaven. His body was girt with a large golden snake, and adorned with
lesser figures of animals made of gold and precious stones, which
ornaments and insignia had each their peculiar meaning.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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