Festivals: Ce acatl (movable feast). Atlacahualco. Compass Direction: East. ASPECT AND INSIGNIA General.—The insignia of Quetzalcoatl is fairly constant in its appearance. He usually wears the Huaxtec cone-shaped hat painted in the design of the jaguar-skin, which is occasionally divided vertically into a black or blue and a red field, having an eye in the middle. The hair is bound by a leather strap set with jewels, which has a conventional bird’s head on the front, and in Codex Borgia consistently shows a black, stepped pattern on a white ground. Elsewhere a bow with rounded ends takes the place of this strap, but in Borgia (sheet 62) the hair is bound up with two intertwined snakes. At the back of the neck a fan-shaped nape-ornament is usually seen, consisting of black feathers, from which rise the red plumes of the quetzal bird, and it seems, from the account of the costume sent to Cortéz by Motecuhzoma, that this nape-appendage was made from grouse-feathers, although the Spanish account states that they belonged to the crow. The god usually wears white ear-pendants of hook-like shape, which, Sahagun states, were made of gold. The necklace is of spirally voluted snail-shells, and on the breast is worn a large ornament, also sliced from a shell. The ends of the loin-cloth are rounded off and are generally painted in two colours—brown, the colour of the jaguar-skin, and white or red. The god’s atlatl, or spear-thrower, is painted with the stellar design of white circles on a black ground, and in his headdress is stuck the agave-leaf spike and the bone dagger, the implements of penance and mortification. The body-paint is frequently black, like that of the priests. Most of these insignia are of Huaxtec origin and show that Quetzalcoatl was usually associated with this coastal people. The snail-shell ornament on the breast, the hook-shaped ear-pendant, the fan-shaped nape-ornament, and the cone-shaped cap, were undoubtedly of Huaxtec origin, and such objects have been taken from Huaxtec graves and are found represented on vases and jugs from the State of Hidalgo. In many representations of him the god is seen wearing a long-snouted mask, usually painted a bright red, through which he was supposed to expel the wind in his guise of Eecatl, the Wind-god. This mask is frequently fringed with a beard. Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 75: Quetzalcoatl’s body-paint is a dark colour, and in his hair he wears unspun cotton, as does Tlazoltcotl. Sheet 76: Here his face is painted black and he wears the fillet with the step-pattern and the two-coloured cap, and in his hair are stuck the instruments of mortification. He holds in his hand a snake, which is to be regarded as the agricultural implement with which he tills the ground.