Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [226]
Tlaloc’s consort is She of the Jade Skirt (Chalchiuhtlicue), the goddess of rivers and standing waters. She of the Jade Skirt also protects children. Perhaps she is associated with them because of the water that breaks before a woman gives birth.
Tlazolteotl Certainly one of the least appealing deities in any pantheon, Tlazolteotl is called “eater of the excrement” and is aptly know as the filth goddess. Associated with the consequences of lust and licentiousness, she is depicted squatting in a traditional birthing position. She is also linked with confession, purification, and penitence.
Xipe Totec The god of agriculture and penitential torture, Xipe Totec is “the flayed lord.” According to myth, the flayed lord undergoes self-torture, which the Aztecs imitate by lacerating their bodies with cactus thorns and sharp-edged reeds. There may have been a connection between this ritual and corn, which loses its skin when the shoots begin to burst through. Or the link between new skin and spring growth. Xipe Totec also may have been sacrificing himself to placate the Lady of the Serpent Skirt goddess, Coatlicue, because the world and the soil need to be replenished with regular sacrifice.
One Aztec form of sacrifice involved flaying. Priests sometimes donned the skins that had been stripped from their victims, perhaps in homage to the “flayed lord.”
And you thought The Silence of the Lambs was creepy.
Xochiquetzal The goddess of flowers and fruits, Xochiquetzal, or Feather Flower, is the mother of Quetzalcoatl. With her twin brother, Xochipilli, the flower prince, she rules over beauty, love, female sexuality, happiness, and youth. When Quetzalcoatl departs the empire, she takes less interest in the affairs of humans. Very much akin to the Mesopotamian Inanna and other Near Eastern love goddesses, she protects lovers and prostitutes in her role as moon goddess. Symbolized by flowers, Xochiquetzal also protects marriage and is a fertility goddess who may have committed incest with her brother, Xochipilli, the flower prince and god of lust. In Aztec myth, Xochipilli is the guardian of the spirits of brave warriors who die and become richly plumed birds.
THE MYTHS OF THE INCAS
Rulers of one of the largest and richest empires in the Americas, the Incas began their rise about 1200 CE and began to expand into an empire in the 1400s, until they dominated a vast region that centered on the capital, Cuzco. The empire extended more than 2,500 miles along the western coast of South America until the Incas—reeling from an epidemic that led to civil war—fell to Spanish forces soon after their arrival in 1532. But their cultural heritage is still evident today in the highlands of Peru, where descendants of the Incas still speak Quechua, the Incan language, and perform traditional healing ceremonies.
Was the “lost city” of Machu Picchu really a “sacred place”?
Sure, “lost city” sounds a lot more intriguing than “summer house” or “weekend getaway.” But, contrary to conventional wisdom, Machu Picchu may not have been a sacred place. New archaeological evidence shows that when the Incas went to Machu Picchu, they probably kicked back, drank some chicha (fermented corn or berry beer), and enjoyed themselves.
For most of the nearly hundred years since Hiram Bingham, an explorer with no archaeological training, stumbled upon the ruins of Machu Picchu in 1911, the idea of a secret, sacred “lost city” has captivated imaginations. Elevated in the snow-clad Andean peaks, Machu Picchu (“old peak”) has been the impetus for many a New Age odyssey to Peru in hopes of attaining enlightenment at this high, Andean “energy vortex.” On the Richter scale of the world’s “mystical places,” Machu Picchu ranks right up there with Stonehenge and the pyramids.