with this food-plant. But she was also the Earth, the insatiable, lustful mother, who gives birth to Cinteotl the young maize-god, who is also the obsidian knife of sacrifice, for the Earth is the mother of stone. As Sin, she was also the mother of death, for Cinteotl in this guise was undoubtedly a god of fatality or doom.
Like many other deities of the earth she may have had an almost plutonic significance, for she is called Tlalli Iyallo, “Heart of the Earth.” But I think that Seler (Fejérváry-Mayer, p. 145) has mistaken the true significance of this expression in applying to it the meaning “interior of the earth.” The word “heart” in the Nahua tongue does not necessarily mean “interior.” True, Tepeyollotl, the Earthquake-god, possessed a similar designation, but on the other hand the Quiche Popol Vuh alludes to the god Hurakan as “The Heart of Heaven,” and I take the expression to mean in general “soul, spirit,” rather than “interior.” But, again, deities of grain have very frequently a subterranean association, and, according to Duran’s description of the feast of the goddess, we find that she was supposed to make her coming known by an earthquake shock, and she is ruler of the thirteenth week, ce olin, which some authorities translate as “earthquake” or “earth-motion.”
All this notwithstanding, in later times it was as the goddess of sensuality and lustfulness that Tlazolteotl made her strongest appeal to the