Coatlicue (deity)

Symbols: Serpent skirt

Culture: Aztec

Mother: Unknown (in some accounts, Omecihuatl)

Father: Unknown (in some accounts, Ometecuhtli)

Siblings: None (in some accounts, Xipe Totec; Quetzalcoatl; Tezcatlipoca; Huitzilopochtli)

Children: Huitzilopochtli; the Centzonhuitznahua; Coyolxauhqui; Malinalxochitl (in some accounts, Xipe Totec, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, and Huitzilopochtli are children, not siblings)

Coatlicue was the Aztec earth goddess. In that role, she gave birth to the war god Huitzilopochtli, who was the patron god of the Aztecs and also the god of the sun. Coatlicue played other roles in Aztec mythology and sometimes is linked with the goddesses Toci (translation: "Our Grandmother") and Cihuacoatl ("The Lady of the Serpent"), the patron of women who die in childbirth. Coatlicue was sometimes called the goddess of life, death, and rebirth.

Coatlicue’s name means "snake skirt." In a statue unearthed in 1790, she has a fierce appearance. The stone statue is more than eleven feet high and nearly five feet wide. Coatlicue’s head is replaced by two snakes, which have been interpreted two ways. In one view, they represent Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, the dual creator gods. In this view, Coatlicue is Earth itself, which the two gods created. In the other interpretation, it is said that the serpents represent flowing blood, a convention of Aztec art that signifies life. This idea suggests the goddess’s role as the giver of life. Down her back are thirteen coils of hair, which symbolize the thirteen months in the Aztec calendar and the thirteen heavens of the Aztec universe. The statue shows her wearing a necklace made of human hands and hearts and a large skull pendant, suggesting her role as a life-giving force. She has many breasts, indicating her role as mother. Her skirt is full of writhing snakes, which refers to her epithet and helps identify her.

In Mythology

Coatlicue has two important birth stories. In the first, she is made pregnant by an obsidian knife. Obsidian is a volcanic glass that can be sharpened to a very sharp point. The Aztecs used obsidian blades in their bloodletting rituals, and they believed that the sacrifice of one’s own blood—or the blood of captives—would purify and ensure fertility. Thus, using an obsidian knife to bring about Coatlicue’s pregnancy makes sense. As a result of this pregnancy, the goddess gave birth to a daughter, Coyolxauhqui, and to four hundred sons, the Centzonhuitznahua. (There is no account of the birth of her other daughter, Malinalxochitl.)

Some time later, according to the second birth story, Coatlicue was sweeping the floor of a temple at the top of the mountain Coatepec ("Snake Mountain"). As she cleaned, a ball of feathers fell from the sky. She picked it up and stored it inside her clothing. The feathers, however, made her pregnant. When her children realized she was pregnant, they were shocked and wanted to know who had fathered the child. Coatlicue had no satisfactory answer, which angered her children, particularly her daughter Coyolxauhqui. She believed that her mother had shamed the family through her dishonorable actions. Some sources say that as a goddess, Coatlicue was only supposed to give birth once. At any rate, Coatlicue’s daughter convinced her brothers that they had to kill their mother.

While they made their preparations, Coatlicue learned of their plans and feared for her life. Huitzilopochtli—a talented little baby—calmed his mother from her womb and told her that he would protect her. When his half-siblings arrived, he sprang forth from his mother. (In one version of the story, she was decapitated before the warrior Huitzilopochtli emerged, which might account for the headless state of her statue.) The warrior struck quickly, cutting off the head of Coyolxauhqui. Again, there are different versions of what followed. In one account, Huitzilopochtli flung Coyolxauhqui’s head into the sky. There, she became the moon. In another, he butchered his half-sister, throwing the pieces of her body off the mountain, where they collected in a steep valley.

Huitzilopochtli, however, was not done. He next went after his half-brothers, the Centzonhuitznahua. Although there were four hundred of them, they were no match for the divine warrior. He killed several and chased the rest around the mountain, killing more as he hunted them down. He hurled the rest of them into the sky, as he had done his sister. They became the stars.

Coatlicue appears in another myth in which she foretells the doom of the Aztec people. In this story, Montezuma II—the last Aztec emperor—wanted to acquire secret knowledge, and so he dispatched sixty magicians to visit Coatlicue. What she said, however, was disturbing. She prophesied that each Aztec city would be conquered, one after another. When the last one fell, she said, she would be reunited with Huitzilopochtli.

Origins and Cults

The story of the birth of Huitzilopochtli explains two of the epithets, or descriptive names, given to Coatlicue. She is called Mother of the Southern Stars, which refers to her four hundred sons. Another of those epithets is Mother Goddess of the Earth Who Gives Birth to All Celestial Things, which would include her status as mother of the moon and stars.

While Coatlicue’s association with snakes makes sense within Aztec beliefs, it also links the deity to other fertility goddesses. The snake goddess of the Minoan culture is also a fertility symbol. Kali, the Hindu goddess, is likewise linked to snakes, but she is the goddess of death. To the Hindus, death precedes rebirth in another form, and Coatlicue is also associated with both death as well as life. The connection of these two forces suggests her impressive and terrifying power—she is both the giver of life and the destroyer of life, insofar as life and death are part of the ongoing cycle of existence. Snakes are thought to have this association with rebirth because many species shed their skin each year.

Coatlicue was celebrated in two festivals. One was a spring festival named Tozozontli, which came in the time of heavy rains. It included offerings of the first fruits and flowers of the season to the goddess, and it was thought to be a time of purification and healing. The second festival honoring her was Quecholli, and it came in the fall. In this festival, a woman was sacrificed as an act of ritual renewal.

Bibliography

Bierhorst, John. The Mythology of Mexico and Central America. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.

Carrasco, David. The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.

Gómez-Cano, Grisel. The Return to Coatlicue: Goddesses and Warladies in Mexican Folklore. Bloomington: Xlibris, 2010. Print.

Granziera, Patricia. "From Coatlicue to Guadalupe: The Image of the Great Mother in Mexico." Studies in World Christianity 10.2 (2005): 250–73. Print.

León-Portilla, Miguel. Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl. Trans. Jack Emory Davis. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1990. Print.

Phillips, Charles. The Lost History of Aztec and Maya: The History, Legend, Myth and Culture of the Ancient Native Peoples of Mexico and Central America. London: Southwater Publishing, 2014. Print.

Smith, Michael E. The Aztecs. 3rd ed. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Print.