Coatlicue
Coatlicue is the goddess of the Ground in the Aztec Mythologie . It is also known under the name Teteoinan (or Teteo Inan ), “mother of the gods”. She gave rise to the moon, to stars and to the god of the sun and the war. She received also the names of Toci (“our grandmother”), Tonantzin, and Cihuacóatl (“the lady with the snakes”), goddess of the women died in layers.
In Nahuatl, its name means “Lady with the skirts of snakes”. Its epithets are “Goddess-Mother of the Earth which gave rise to all the stars”, “Goddess of fire and the Fertilité”, “Goddess of the life, of died and of the rebirth” and “Mother of stars of the south”.
She is represented like a woman wearing a skirt of twisted snakes and a collar of human hearts, hands and craniums. Its feet and its hands are decorated claws (to dig the tombs) and its centres hang, flask to have nursed much. Coatlicue carries to its chest the hands, the hearts and the heads of his/her children, in order to purify them on its center.
Her husband was Mixcóatl, the snake of the clouds and the god of hunting. Only, it also gave the day to Quetzalcóatl and Xólotl. It is the mother of Coyolxauhqui, the Centzon Huitznaua, and Huitzilopochtli. This last was born after a ball of feathers had fallen into the temple which it was sweeping and the chest had touched to him. This mysterious design offended its four hundred sons (the Centzon Huitznaua, which, pushed by Coyolxauhqui, decided to kill their dishonoured mother.
It is what they did, but Huitzilopochtli left the belly of his/her mother out of weapons and killed her brothers and sisters stars. It cut the head of his sister Coyolxauhqui and launched it in the sky, where she changed, giving the moon.
An enormous sculpture, Pierre de Coatlicue, was discovered by the astronomer Antonio de León there Gama in 1790 during a restoration of the city, close to the place where was extracted feldspar Aztèque the aventurine.
External bonds
- Statue of Coatlicue