Deities
Coatlicue
Aztec Deities
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Coatlicue, She of the Serpent Skirt, is an Aztec earth and mother goddess, the devouring and generative ground from which life springs and to which it returns, mother of the moon, the stars and the war god Huitzilopochtli. In the account of his birth she conceives Huitzilopochtli from a ball of feathers while sweeping, and when her daughter Coyolxauhqui and her four hundred starry sons move to kill her for the shame of it, the god is born fully armed and destroys them. Her colossal statue from Tenochtitlan shows her with a skirt of woven serpents, a necklace of hearts and hands, and twin serpent heads for a face. She embodies the earth that both gives and consumes.
Facts
Cult
Attributes and IconographyCoatlicue, whose name means serpent skirt, is depicted wearing a skirt of writhing snakes and a necklace of severed hands and hearts, an image of the earth as both creator and devourer. 3 Attributes and IconographyHer colossal statue, excavated in Mexico City on the site of ancient Tenochtitlan, gives her two serpent heads facing outward in place of a single human face, meeting where her own head had been struck from her body. 4 Worship and PracticeThe Aztec monthly festival Ochpaniztli, the Sweeping of the Road, honored earth mother goddesses of Coatlicue's type with rites of ritual sweeping, echoing the sweeping act in her own conception myth, when Huitzilopochtli's feathered token fell to her as she swept the temple at Coatepec. 1 Life
Associated RelicCoatlicue's monumental statue, carved from basalt and excavated in Mexico City in 1790, stands nearly two and a half meters tall and remains one of the largest single sculptures to survive from Aztec religious art, now held at the National Museum of Anthropology. 2 Attributions
Mythic AssociationAztec myth holds that Coatlicue conceived Huitzilopochtli after a ball of feathers fell into her bosom while she was sweeping, a conception so angering her other children that they conspired to kill her. 2 Mythic AssociationWhen her daughter Coyolxauhqui and her four hundred star sons moved to kill her for the shame of her pregnancy, Huitzilopochtli was born already fully armed and destroyed them, an origin myth read as commemorating the sun's daily victory over the night sky. 2 History
Historical NoteWorkers uncovered her colossal statue in the main square of Mexico City in 1790, and the authorities had it reburied soon after out of concern that its power might stir unrest, so that it was only dug up again later for study and display. 2 Origins
Origin of the NameCoatlicue's name is Nahuatl for she of the serpent skirt, a description literally realized in her surviving monumental statue, whose skirt is carved from a woven mass of serpents. 4 Attestation
Veneration TodayHistorically attested; no continuous cult 1 HistoricityNot a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 3 Function
Domain / Function Domain / Function Domain / Function Belief
TheologyPolytheistic: many gods 3 Position Profile
Key TextThe Florentine Codex recounts that Coatlicue became miraculously pregnant with Huitzilopochtli after a ball of feathers descended from the sky and touched her while she swept at the temple atop Coatepec, and that her scandalized other children, led by her daughter Coyolxauhqui, plotted to kill her for the dishonor, a plot Huitzilopochtli foiled by springing from her womb fully grown and armed to defend his mother. 5 Practice
LineageCoatlicue is named in Aztec tradition as the mother of the war god Huitzilopochtli, conceived when a ball of feathers fell upon her as she swept a temple, a miraculous conception recorded in the Florentine Codex alongside her other children's furious reaction to the pregnancy. 5 Learn More
She of the Serpent Skirt
Coatlicue, She of the Serpent Skirt, is an Aztec earth and mother goddess, at once the devouring and the generative ground from which life springs and to which it returns. She is the mother of the moon goddess Coyolxauhqui, of the four hundred star-gods called the Centzon Huitznahua, and of the war god and patron of the Mexica, Huitzilopochtli.
The most powerful surviving image of her is a colossal stone statue, one of the great masterpieces of Aztec sculpture: it shows a figure whose head is two great serpents facing each other (for she has been decapitated, and twin streams of blood, rendered as snakes, rise from her neck), who wears a skirt woven of writhing serpents and a necklace of severed human hands and hearts with a skull at its centre, and whose hands and feet end in claws. It is an uncompromising vision of the earth as the power that both brings forth life and consumes it in death.
The Miraculous Birth of the War God
Coatlicue's central myth, recorded by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun from Nahua informants, tells of the conception of Huitzilopochtli. As Coatlicue was sweeping at the temple on the sacred hill of Coatepec, a ball of feathers drifted down from the sky, and she tucked it into her waistband; by it she became pregnant. Her daughter Coyolxauhqui and her four hundred sons, taking their mother's mysterious pregnancy as a dishonour, resolved to kill her, and armed themselves and advanced upon the hill. But at the moment of the attack Huitzilopochtli was born from his mother fully grown and fully armed, wielding the fire-serpent Xiuhcoatl; he struck down Coyolxauhqui, cut off her head and hurled her dismembered body down the slope of Coatepec, and scattered and defeated the four hundred. This myth was enacted in the very architecture of the Aztec capital: the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan was Coatepec made stone, and at the foot of the stairway of Huitzilopochtli's shrine lay a great round carving of the dismembered Coyolxauhqui, so that the goddess her son had cast down lay broken at the bottom of the temple. Coatlicue thus stands at the origin of the war god of the Mexica, the earth-mother out of whom the sun-and-war god is born to defeat the moon and the stars each day, a cosmic drama of the dawn re-enacted at the heart of the Aztec state.
Correspondences & Relations
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Coatlicue directly: "A Wikipedia article on Coatlicue, the Aztec mother goddess."
This source names Coatlicue directly: "page for a photograph of the colossal Coatlicue statue displayed in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, the photographer's own documentation."
Coatlicue is the mother whose killing sets the depicted myth in motion.
Coatlicue conceives Huitzilopochtli from a ball of feathers while sweeping; born fully armed, he defends her and destroys her attackers.
Coatlicue's colossal statue, showing her with a skirt of woven serpents and a necklace of hearts and hands, was excavated at Tenochtitlan.
Children
Coyolxauhqui led her brothers, the Centzon Huitznahua, in the attack on their mother Coatlicue that Huitzilopochtli was born fully armed to repel, beheading and dismembering Coyolxauhqui, a myth commemorated in the Coyolxauhqui Stone at the base of the Templo Mayor.
Aztec myth holds that Coatlicue conceived Huitzilopochtli after a ball of feathers fell into her bosom while she was sweeping at Coatepec, a conception her other children read as a disgrace and conspired to punish.
Depicted In
The statue's sole subject, on permanent display at the National Museum of Anthropology, captioned as Coatlicue.
Opposes
Coatlicue's daughter Coyolxauhqui and her four hundred starry brothers move to kill her for the shame of her pregnancy, and Huitzilopochtli is born to stop them.
Patron Of
Tozoztontli's ruling deity is recorded as Tlaloc, Coatlicue and Centeotl.
Worshipped In
Coatlicue, mother of Huitzilopochtli, embodied the earth as both life-giving and devouring.
Sources
1. Religions of Mesoamerica, 2nd edition
David Carrasco, Waveland Press, 2013
2. Incarnations of the Aztec Supernatural: The Image of Huitzilopochtli in Mexico and Europe
3. Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind
4. An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya
Mary Miller and Karl Taube, Thames and Hudson, 1993CoatlicueView the Source 5. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain
Bernardino de Sahagun; translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, School of American Research and University of Utah Press, 1950The Florentine Codex: Coatlicue and the birth of Huitzilopochtli at CoatepecView the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. Coatlicue; the earth mother and the colossal statueView the Source Coatlicue (Wikipedia)
WikipediaDepicted In: Statue of Coatlicue (National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City)Quote, Depicted In: Statue of Coatlicue (National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City)
Statue of Coatlicue displayed in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.
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