THE FALL OF THE GODS
In the literature of ancient Mexican mythology we find persistent vestigial notices of a fall of the gods, or rather of certain deities from “heaven.” Thus in the interpretation of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis we find a divine locality called Tamoanchan described as the “mansion” from which they fell, and “where they gathered roses.” The same paragraph27 relates that Tamoanchan “is the place where these gods were created whom they feared: it signifies the Terrestrial Paradise, and accordingly they relate that those gods being in that place transgressed by plucking roses and branches from the trees, and that on this account Tonacatecutli and his wife, Tonacacigua, became highly incensed, and cast them out of that place, and that some of them came to earth and others went to hell.” One of these, the divinity most frequently associated by the Codices with this event, Ixnextli, is spoken of in the same work28 as “Eve, always weeping and looking at her husband Adam. She is called Ixnextli, which signifies ‘Eyes blind with ashes,’ and this refers to the time subsequent to her sinning by plucking the roses.” In Codex Telleriano-Remensis (Plate VII, Kingsborough) she is associated with a god Ueuecoyotl and is represented as kneeling on a chair with head averted. There is no doubt that the name given her here, and which is supplemented by the name Xochiquetzal, is that of a variant of the latter, who is the goddess of flowers.
In his interpretation of this goddess in his work on the Aubin-Goupil tonalamatl (pp. 118–119) Seler gives it as his opinion that the insignia of the goddess Tonacaciuatl, consort of the creative deity Tonacatecutli, is identical with that of Xochiquetzal, and proceeds to say that this strongly suggests “that the home of the cosmogonic speculations