GODS OF DEATH, EARTH, AND THE UNDERWORLD
MICTLANTECUTLI = “LORD OF MICTLAMPA” (REGION OF THE DEAD)
Area of Worship: Mexican Plateau.
Calendar Places:
Lord of the tenth day-count, ce tecpatl, and of the tenth week.
Eleventh of the thirteen lords of the day and fifth of the nine
lords of the night.
Symbol: Skull, or bunch of malinalli grass.
Compass Direction: North.
Relationship: Husband of Mictecaciuatl; one of the Tzitzimimê.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 14: This is one of the most striking
representations of the Death-god which has come down to us. Here he is
depicted as a skeleton with a skeleton’s thorax and a skull for head,
the arms and legs painted white with yellow spots picked with red, to
symbolize the bones of a newly flayed person. He has a large rosette at
the occiput and a flag, both painted in alternate white and red
cross-bands, and this motif is carried out in the ends of the
loin-cloth, and in the extremities of other bands and stripes. He
presents a burnt-offering. The symbolic crossways and the owl are
figured before him, the death-bird being surrounded with paper flags,
the decoration of corpses prepared for cremation. Sheet 15: On this
sheet he wears the death-symbols. At the nape of the neck he has a
paper rosette, decorated with red and white cross-bands, the paper flag
painted in the same way, broken in the middle and bent, and an ear-plug
consisting of a human hand. His symbol in this place is a bunch of
malinalli grass. Sheet 79: In this representation of the Death-god we
find the invariable skeleton head, but the body is painted, like that
of the priests, in black. The nape-ornament is of paper, and the
ear-plug is a human hand. The screech owl’s wing also appears. Opposite
him is a corpse wrapped up in a cloth and corded with strings, a paper
flag, used in the decoration of corpses prepared for cremation, and a
cross, apparently made of knotted sheets of cloth or paper. His hair or
wig is black and curly, some of the curls ending in eye-like circles
with red centres. In this picture he sits opposite Tonatiuh, the
Sun-god, and thus, perhaps, represents night in its black aspect, the
eyes in his wig, as elsewhere, symbolizing the stars. Sheet 57: Here he
is placed opposite the Death-goddess and wears the usual insignia. The
ground on which their seats are placed is not simply yellow, as in the
other sections, but consists of alternate fields of malinalli grass and
fragments of skulls in the style of the hieroglyph of arable land. Both
present each other with a naked human figure, symbolic of human
sacrifice. Between them stands a receptacle painted black and studded
with eyes, with red bands in the middle and yellow border. On the left
of this stands a dish filled with blood and smoking hearts, on which
the goddess is pouring fire from a vessel. On the right projects the
body and tail of a dragon, which is seized by the god. In the centre is
seen a skull swallowing a man who is falling headforemost into its
throat, and above all is pictured the moon, without, however, the usual
rabbit appearing in its circumference.
Codex Fejérváry-Mayer.—Sheet 37: Here Mictlantecutli is placed opposite
the Death-goddess. He has the usual insignia, but wears black garments,
decorated with eyes and crossbones. His seat is made of ribs and a
piece of skull, and he holds a dragon in both hands. Between him and
his mate a man sinks into the yawning jaws of the earth, and above it
is a dish with a stone sacrificial knife.
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 21: He has the usual skeleton head, but in the
arms and legs the bony structure is merely indicated by a yellow colour
and a black design. He is clothed with a jacket of green malinalli
blades and wears in his ear a strip of unspun cotton. He has as
back-device a pot, in which three flags are stuck. Sheet 34: In this
sheet he is represented much as in Codex Borgia, sheet 15. Sheet 58:
Here he is pictured as a black god, with a skull for head and seated on
a chair made of blood, bones, and malinalli grass. He has the
nape-shield and the flag inclining forward, and a nose like a
sacrificial stone knife.
Codex Magliabecchiano.—Mictlantecutli is represented more than once in
this codex, importantly on pages 73 and 79. In the first instance he is
depicted with blue-grey body and enormous claws on hands and feet, the
head plastered with the yellow patches and bloodstains he frequently
shows. The head is that of a skull, with protruding yellow nasal-bone,
but the ground-colour is blue, not bone-colour. He wears the
“night-hair” occasionally associated with him, and his coiffure is
decorated with small, black, festal bannerets, interspersed with what
appear to be stellar eye-motifs. His maxtli appears to consist of a
rope or twisted piece of cotton, and he wears wristlets and anklets of
bright red cotton. The necklace is reminiscent of that worn by several
of the Maya deities. He sits in the portal of a temple, and before him
squat a number of men and women, regaling themselves on human flesh
from several earthen vessels containing a head, a leg, and an arm. The
second picture exhibits the penance done before him. In this place he
is painted brown, with the same enormous talons, the death’s-head face,
“night-hair” and bannerets (yellow), without, however, the
accompaniment of the stellar eye-ornaments. These, however, appear to
be reproduced upon the wrists, knees, and one ankle, and, perhaps, make
this phase of the god a parallel to the Greek Argus, the “eye-spotted”
night. On the breast depends an ornament which is not sufficiently
clear to justify its description. On page 82 the god is depicted as
wearing a garment covered with crosses, and on page 88 as standing on
the skull-altar (see Tezcatlipocâ). His wavy hair is surrounded by a
red and yellow cotton fillet, and he is being anointed by a priest from
a vessel of blood, whilst other priests stand before him with pots full
of blood and human hearts. He wears a curious blue necklace almost of
the “masonry” type seen in Egyptian, Greek, and Asiatic deific
ornaments, and a cotton garment with red bows. A cotton web depends
from his blue ear-plug.
MYTHS
The interpreter of Codex Vaticanus A says of Mictlantecutli: “He
descends for souls as a spider lowers itself with its head downwards
from the web.” Later on he states that “he is the great lord of the
dead below in hell, who alone after Tonacatecutli was painted with a
crown.... They painted this demon near the sun, for in the same way as
they believed that the one conducted souls to heaven, so they supposed
that the other carried them to hell. He is here represented [that is in
the codex] with his hands open and stretched towards the sun to seize
on any soul that might escape from him.” Later he states that Ixcuina,
“the goddess of salt, dirt, and immodesty,” was the wife of
Mictlantecutli. The commentator of Codex Telleriano-Remensis seems to
regard Mictlantecutli as rescuing souls from the realm of the dead. He
says: “They place him opposite to the sun to see if he can rescue any
of those seized upon by the lord of the dead.” The two interpretative
codices were almost certainly edited, if not copied one from the other,
by the same hand, and it is such passages as this which show the great
dubiety existing in the minds of the priestly commentators regarding
the precise nature of the Mexican deities.
Sahagun in the Appendix to his third book, the first chapter of which
treats of burial, gives a prayer or address to the dead which mentions
Mictlantecutli, and which states that he and his wife Mictecaciuatl
await the deceased, who goes to dwell among the shadows, “where there
is no light or window.” It is further explained that when he arrived in
the realm of the god of the dead (which has already been described in
the chapter on Cosmogony), he makes him an offering of the papers which
he carries, of faggots or torches of pinewood, and of perfumed reeds,
cotton, mantles, and costly apparel.
Boturini and Brasseur give a great deal of matter regarding this god
which is absolutely worthless, as does Leon y Gama, and the deity has
been in some manner confounded with a god Teoyaomiqui, who seems to be
quite supposititious in character and never to have had no other
existence in the minds of Gama and his copyists.
NATURE AND STATUS
Mictlantecutli, it would seem, is neither more nor less than a god of
the dead, that is, his original conception was probably that of a
prince of Hades, a ruler of the realm of the departed, who in time came
to possess the terrific aspect and the punitive attributes of a deity
whose office it was to torment the souls of the erring. The fact that
he presides over the eleventh hour—the hour of sunset—shows that he was
in a measure identified with the night, as certain aspects of his
insignia would appear to show. In a manner he must be regarded as the
earth, which in its form of the grave, yawns or gapes insatiably for
the bodies of the dead. (See Mictecaciuatl.) He appears to have
analogies with the Lords of Xibalba, or the Place of the Dead, alluded
to in the Popol Vuh, of the Quiches of Guatemala. [324]
MICTECACIUATL = “LADY OF THE PLACE OF THE DEAD”
Area of Worship: Mexican Plateau.
Minor Name: Chicunaui cipactli = “Nine Earth-monster.”
Relationship: Wife of Mictlantecutli.
Calendar Place:
Ruler of the tenth day-count, itzcuintli.
Fourth of the four guardians of the Third Venus Period,
denoting the north.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 90: She has a skull for head, with round eye
and marked supraciliary arch, tousled, dark hair studded with eyes
symbolizing night and stars. The skull and body are painted yellow, and
one breast is showing. Her wig has eyes for ornaments, and she wears
the nape-ornament of paper usually placed on corpses. Her earring is
also fashioned after the eye-motif. The feather balls at her wrists are
set with eye-like jewels. She is engaged in thrusting a mummy-pack into
the yawning jaws of the earth.
Codex Bologna (Cospi).—Sheet 27: The date “nine earth-monster”
(chicunaui cipactli) stands here beside Mictecaciuatl as her
hieroglyphic name.
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 57: Here she is represented opposite
Mictlantecutli. She has a wig decorated with stars. The face is human,
but the fleshless lower jaw resembles the sign malinalli. Her nape
ornament of paper is painted red and white, and her costume is red with
white cotton borders and an upper border of variegated white and
yellow.
NATURE AND STATUS
See Mictlantecutli.
TEPEYOLLOTL = “HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS”
Area of Worship: Tierras Calientes.
Relationship: One of the Tzitzimimê.
Symbols:
A cave (see Codex Borgia, sheet 2).
A marine shell (Codex Borbonicus). See also Seler, Gesammelte
Abhandlungen, vol. i, p. 606, for glyph in Codex Bologna
(Cospi).
Calendar Place: Eighth of the lords of the night; ruler of the
third day, and of the third week, ce mazatl.
Compass Direction: South.
ASPECT AND INSIGNIA
In Codices Fejérváry-Mayer and Vaticanus B the face-paint of this god
is red, and in the latter MS. has the alternate red and yellow
cross-bars of the red Tezcatlipocâ. In Codex Borgia the body is painted
black, but in this MS., as well as in the Aubin tonalamatl, the upper
part of the face resembles that of Quetzalcoatl in its decoration, the
profile being of a light colour, while the temporal region is painted
differently, these colours in the Aubin tonalamatl being separated by a
black line. But whereas the temporal colouring in the Vienna MS. is
green, in Codex Borgia it shows the alternate black and yellow of
Tezcatlipocâ’s face-paint. In Codex Borgia, sheet 14, a beard is worn
and a plug is in the nostrils. The region of the mouth has the painting
of a jaguar’s skin. The hair is puffed up in two pads, symbolic,
perhaps, of the mountainous region with which the god is connected. In
Codex Telleriano-Remensis he wears the broad necktie of the rain-gods,
only painted in green and not in blue, and in Codex Borgia shows
Tlaloc’s colours in the loin-cloth, fillet, and neck-ornament. In this
MS., too, he is represented as blowing the conch-shell, and here, as
well as in Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, he stands before a building which has
the cone-shaped, high-pitched straw roof of the houses in the tierras
calientes, crowned with a jagged motif. As ruler of the third day-sign
and third week he is represented as a jaguar pure and simple in the
Aubin tonalamatl, Telleriano-Remensis and Borbonicus codices, which is
merely a disguise for the personality of Tezcatlipocâ, as is shown by
the face of that god looking out from the jaguar’s head in
Telleriano-Remensis.
In Codex Borbonicus he is more unmistakably represented as
Tezcatlipocâ, for the hands and feet projecting from underneath the
jaguar skin are striped like those of that god, and one of the feet
wears Tezcatlipocâ’s sandal, the itzcoatl (or obsidian snake), whilst
the other is torn off and replaced by his smoking mirror. The jaguar of
Codex Borbonicus has other portions of the insignia of Tezcatlipocâ
about him, such as the aztaxelli, or feather head-ornament, and the
anauatl, or white mussel-shell ring. In the Codex Borbonicus a large
marine shell or conch-shell appears to be symbolical of Tepeyollotl.
The god is alluded to by Sahagun as among the unlucky symbols. He
figures as one of the faces of the double-headed Quaxolotl.
MYTHS
The interpreter of the Codex Vaticanus A says:
“They considered Tepeyolotli the lord of these thirteen signs in which
they celebrated his festival, during the four last of which they
fasted, out of reverence, on account of the earth’s having remained
after the deluge. But as its conditions were disordered or filthy, they
did not consider the sacrifices of these signs as good or clean, but,
on the contrary, as unclean, and they applied to them an appellation
which in common phraseology we might explain by the term ‘sacrifices of
filth.’ These last four signs in which they fasted were likewise out of
reverence and in honour of Suguequezal (Xochiquetzal), the wife of
Tonacatecotle, whose name signifies the lifting up or raising up of the
Roses, for they say that goddess caused the earth to flourish. This
proper name might be written Tiscuelutli, which is the Heart of the
Mountain, which means the echo.”
The interpreter of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis says:
“The name refers to the manner in which the earth was preserved after
the deluge. The sacrifices of these thirteen days were not deemed good;
they might be interpreted in Spanish ‘sacrifices of dung.’
“The sign under which number one is written caused paralysis and evil
humours. Two was appropriated to drunkards; and three was applied to
the earth. Tepeolotlec presided over those thirteen days in which they
celebrated a festival; and during the last four days of which (where
the hands are marked) they fasted. Tepeolotlec means Lord of Animals.
“The four days of the fast were in honour of Suciquecal, who was the
man who remained in the earth which we now inhabit. Tepeolotlec is the
same as the echo of the voice when it reverberates in a valley from one
mountain to another. They bestowed the appellation of the tiger on the
earth because the tiger is a very courageous animal, and they say that
the deluge ceased at the reverberation caused by the echo in the
mountains.”
NATURE AND STATUS
The commentators of the Interpretative Codices briefly explain
Tepeyollotl as “echo” and “earth.” As Seler states, [325] it is most
probable that he is a cave-god, an alien barbaric deity, perhaps
identical with the god whom the Maya tribes of Chiapas called Votan or
“heart.” Seler also believes him to be Tezcatlipocâ in his form as an
apparition. [326] It is strange that it is only in the works of the
interpreters that he is mentioned at all, and we can discover no
precise locality where his worship was celebrated. The interpreters
also designate him “Lord of the Animals,” and add that the name of
jaguar is given to the earth, because the jaguar is the wildest of
beasts. It may be as Seler declares, that “in order to understand and
explain this figure we have to start from the jaguar (ocelotl).” The
Indians of the Vera Paz district in Guatemala, when they met this
beast, instead of attacking him or running away, knelt down and began
to confess their sins, [327] and it is probable that some such species
of worship was paid Tepeyollotl, who by his mouth-painting, and as
ruler of the third day-sign and third week, in the Codex Borgia, is
certainly depicted as a jaguar. But it seems possible, too, that this
beast, perhaps because it dwelt in caves, and because of its terrible
nightly roaring, may have symbolized for the Mexicans the earth itself
in its dangerous aspect of earthquake. [328] The Nagualists, a
politico-religious secret society of post-Conquest origin, paid
especial reverence to the jaguar, whom they regarded as a beast-patron
or totemic guardian. It is clear that their conception of him arose out
of that of Tepeyollotl.