the “earth-mother” by the “sky-father.” As Ixcuine she represented a plurality of goddesses. Seler1 believes that Chicomecoatl represents the young maize ear, and Tlazolteotl, the ripe ear of the plant.
Cihuacoatl (Serpent Woman)—an earth-goddess of Xochimilco and Colhuacan.
Coatlicue or Coatlantonan (Serpent Skirt)—a Mexican earth-goddess, mother of Uitzilopochtli.
Xochiquetzal—originally a mountain goddess of the Tlalhuica. An earth-and-maize goddess as well as a deity of flowers and vegetation.
Xilonen—originally a maize-goddess of the Huichol tribes. She represented the young maize-plant.
Cinteotl (Maize-god)—son of Tlazolteotl, originally a god of the peoples of the Atlantic seaboard. He is occasionally alluded to as a female deity, but is always male in the MSS. of the Borgia group, executed by a people of Nahua speech dwelling in the south. He is the equivalent of Xochipilli and had a separate temple, the cinteopan.
Xipe—an earth-god of the Teotitlan district, a god of spring vegetation. His temples were called yopico. His great festival was the Tlacaxipeuliztli, or “flaying of men.”
Only three of these deities, Tlazolteotl, Xipe, and Xochiquetzal, appear as rulers of one or other of the twenty day-signs of the tonalamatl. But Cinteotl figures in the ochpaniztli feast and appears as one of the “Lords of the Night.”
These criteria are perhaps sufficient to identify these figures as separate divinities. We find in Sahagun that Chicomecoatl, Cinteotl, and Xipe had separate temples of their own. In several of the rituals of the great festivals,