[Aztlan] Shell Pendants

[lahunik.62 at skynet.be]

Message 3 Vol 38 Issue5

To DM Urquidi

Subject: Shell pendants.

Plate 64 of the Borgia Codex is the 4th tercena, or the 4th group of 13 days
of the Tonalpohualli.

Deities are painted in the panel above each period as patrons for this
particular period. It is still not very clear why a particular deity is
depicted above each trecena. One should think that the patron of the 4th
trecena must be Xochiquetzal, the Goddess of the Flowers, but here
Huehuecoyotl is depicted. It is also still not very clear what the
connections were with the first eight pages of the Tonalpohualli in this
Codex.

The 4th trecena is under the sign of Ce Xochitl, 1 Flower, at the bottom
right of Plate 64.

The deity of the 4th trecena is Huehuecoyotl, the Old Coyote, the God of
Lust, Passion and Dance. He is not entirely depicted as an animal but only
with the head of a coyote, and is sitting on a throne covered with a
jaguarfleece, a kings'throne. He is wearring a leather necklace with
snails'shells. On his chest a same, but bigger, shell is hanging on a
leather belt, an Oyohualli. An Oyohualli is a sort of ringing bells by which
the God in question rinkled and rattled, and by which he made himself
audible.

"Inin coyolli mihtoya oyohualli",this little bells were called Oyohualli.

Before his head we can see the sign of war and under that a human is falling
down to the Earth. Before that a dancer is depicted wearring the same
Oyohualli-necklage of the Coyote. On his head an ear of the coyote is
depicted, and his face is covered with a mask. Around the eye a ring is
painted with white soil, Ticatl. He has a sort of white moustache under his
noise, a typical sign of the drummers. 

Finally on the left side of the panel a woman is depicted in an open temple.
She is bowing her face down and with one hand she is rubbing tears of her
eyes. With the other hand she is carrying a dish, a Cuitlatl, filled with
excrements or evil. Her name is Ixnextli, the lady of the earthly paradise,
(Tomoanchan or Xochitl icacan) always weeping in front of the first man. The
name Ixnextli means "face full with ashes". The remarks made of her are as
follows:"cosa es, cuerto, digna de llanto la ceguedad de esta gente y la
astucia de Satanas". This could be a transposition of the popular expression
"Ixnex", "face of ashes" and said of whome who had made a failure and
believed nobody knows that. 

Of Ixnextli is told that:"Es casi lo mismo que Eva, la cual siempre llora y
se ciega con ceniza, con una flor en la mano, danao a entender que llora por
haberla cogida".

It is told that Ixnextli has broken the flowers in Tomoanchan, and therefor
she could no longer looking up to the sky, a memory to the lost paradise.

So Ixnextli is the female part of the first human couple. 

Lahun Ik 62

Baert Georges

Flanders Fields