figure are represented a bunch of malinalli grass and a variegated snake. Nothing here enters the mouth of the Ciuateteô, but from it issues a similar snake, and another hangs on each of her arms. Before the last figure, in the dish is perched a screech-owl, and a stream of blood passes from the mouth of the figure to that of the owl.
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheets 77–79: Five figures are here also depicted which bear a resemblance to Tlazolteotl, but are without the golden nasal crescent. With the last four the same curling locks of hair are seen as in the case of the Codex Borgia figures, but the first figure is pictured with the hair bristling up on one side, as worn by the warrior caste. The eye too is hanging out, and the headdresses and nape-vessels resemble those in Codex Borgia. In the majority of cases the skirt is white with two diagonal red stripes crossing each other. Only with the first figure is it painted red with white cross-bones. The last figure has a skirt made of strips of malinalli grass fastened by a girdle made of a skeletal spinal column, on which is set a dead man’s skull as back-mirror. All five wear the men’s loin-cloth besides the skirt. They carry the symbols of sacrifice and mortification as in the Codex Borgia, and similar incense-vessels stand before them.
MYTHS
Sahagun says of the Ciuateteô:
“The Ciuapipiltin, the noble women, were those who had died in childbed. They were supposed to wander through the air, descending when they wished to the earth to afflict children with paralysis and other maladies. They haunted cross-roads to practise their maleficent deeds, and they had temples built at these places, where bread offerings in the shape of butterflies were made to them, also the thunder-stones which fall from the sky. Their faces were white, and their arms, hands, and legs were coloured with a white powder, ticitl (chalk). Their ears were gilded