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From: Ricardo Ocampo-RedLuz <chicanos@...> 
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 21:34:16 -0700 
To: LuxWeb <LuxWeb@...> 
Cc: LuxWebII <LuxWebII@...>bIII xWebIII <luxwebIII@...> 
Subject: A GODDESS TO EACH WOMAN / Tlazolteotl, the Great Mother / Mexica 
Archetype of the Warrior Woman / Mother of the Gods 
 
Dearest friends, 
 
Lady TLAZOLTEOTL <http://www.arts-history.mx/diosas/cap5-2.html>; is maybe 
the main goddess of ancient Mexico, from Toltec origin and in the Mexica (so 
called 'Aztec') Culture, and she is the ocult sacred character behind the 
Lord of Chalma (Tezcatlipoca), according to esoteric guardianship of old 
traditions. The town of Chalma, two hours away from Mexico City, is today 
the second most visited sanctuary in all Mesoamerica, with millions of 
pilgrim visitors each year, after the Shrine of our Lady of 
Guadalupe/Tonantzin (Mother Mary/Mother Earth), the most visited pilgrimage 
site in the Western Hemisphere 
<http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/virgins.html>;, situated in the ANAHUAC 
Valley, site of Mexico City. Our peoples visit this sanctuary every year 
since milleniums for "washing sins" and healing pourposes. 
 
With this message, we inaugurate the posting in the Global Web of Light of a 
series of documents on Mesoamerican Mythology. As our Elder Brothers and 
Ascended Masters state, we need to know more about indigenous cultures, 
archetypes and oral traditions around the world. They have a great knowledge 
for us all. Today. 
 
Enjoy 
The seal has been opened 
I love you all! 
 
Ricardo Ocampo 
Editor & Publisher 
Latinamerican Web of Light 
LuxWeb / RedLuz 
 
* * * * * * * * * * 
 
THE GODDESSES OF THE BORGIA  GROUP CODEXES: 
THE ARCHETYPES OF THE POSTCLASIC WOMEN 
by María de los Angeles Ojeda Díaz 
<http://www.arts-history.mx/diosas/cap5-2.html>; 
 
A GODDESS TO EACH WOMAN 
 
5.1 Tlazolteotl 
5.2 Xochiquetzal 
5.3 Mayahuel 
5.4 Chalchiuhtlicue 
5.5 Cihuateteo 
5.6 Itzpapalotl 
5.7 Chantico 
5.8 Mictlancihuatl 
 
5.1 TLAZOLTEOTL  
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
Fig. 2 
Tlazolteotl, Ctonian depth, is fertilized by the water thrown by 
Tlaloc-Xochipilli-Tonatiuh. Borgia, 28 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 
Tlazolteotl, Goddess of the garbage or filth, goddess of the human 
fertility, the great woman in labour (La Gran Parturienta), goddess of the 
love and ctónica, terrestrial deity associated to the moon. In this deity, 
more than in any other, converge almost all the characteristic attributes 
that belongs to the Great Mother-Earth, of such way that in the Borgia 
Codex, we could examine by using the iconography, images that lead us to 
very old tellurian conceptions; they are direct antecedents of the 
Goddesses-Mothers. It implies that Tlazolteotl in the beginning was 
conceived like Mother-Earth in her infinite and inexhaustible capacity of 
giving child, like a tellurian layer, a terrestrial depth, from which 
everything is born. So for example, in the sheet 28 (fig. 2) diverse 
incarnations of the deity are shown influenced by the forces -personified in 
Tláloc- helping or affecting the corn plants. 
 
But also Tlazolteotl is the Great Mother, conceived as the great woman who 
has just given birth. In the Laud Codex, sheet 40 (fig. 3) she is 
represented pregnant, with the legs opened in labour position mamazouhticac 
to have the arms extended. It suits to distinguish that usually she is 
represented after giving birth, this is, having full and heavy breasts with 
pleats in the belly. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
Fig. 3 
Tlazolteotl, on childbirth position. Laud, 40 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 
For her childbirth (parir) activity she is rather associated to the mature 
woman, whom she protects during the pregnancy joined to his child. In this 
context, the earth fertility and the woman fecundity are lined up with each 
other: "the earth is a woman and the woman is the earth"(26). Both produce 
life and contain inside of them the creation mystery. The human mother, in 
this sense, is the representative of the Great Tellurian Mother, because 
"the childbirth and the delivery are microcosmic version of an exemplary act 
executed by the earth. The human mother doesn't make but imitate or repeat 
this primordial act of appearing the life in the breast of the earth"(27). 
 
Also, the childbirth parir model was established by the gods. When women 
could not give birth, the midwives spoke to them like this: "beloved 
daughter of mine, look, you are a strong woman, make an effort and do as a 
virile woman, do as that goddess does , that gave birth in the first place, 
that was called Cihuacoatl and Quilaztli"(28). An incarnation of the Mother 
goddess. 
 
Tlazolteotl, in her incarnation as Teteoinnan Mother of the Gods, was 
protector of the midwives, doctor women and of those who told the luck with 
corn grains(29). By the way, medicine and the luck reading through the corn 
grains practices ,were woman activities, since the beginning of humanity, 
the gods established it that way.... [the gods] had given to her certain 
corn grains, so that she would heal with them and used them in divination 
and sorceress, that is the way they use to do it.(30). 
 
With no doubt, Tlazolteotl had a very important place among the deities 
represented in the Borgia Codex. Her cult should have had hierarchy in the 
origin zone of the document. A total of 57 images are distributed in several 
sections of the codex, alluding to the diverse deity epiphanies. The sign of 
the jaguar day rules and is protector of the 13th thirteenth of the 
tonalamatl which begins with the day uno-movimiento, one-movement. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
Fig. 4 
Tlazolteotl, archetype of the Mother, of the mature woman, Borgia, 12 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 
In such context we could identify her by means of her essential attires. In 
the sheet 12 where she appears as tutor of the ocelotl jaguar sign (fig. 4). 
She uses cotton bandages without spinning ichcaxochitl "cotton flower", that 
are a part of the head ornament which is crowned with two golden spindles 
that have upper needles, from which generally are hanging down woven cotton 
flakes like spikelets, called tlamamalacaquetzalli "perforayed spindles with 
precious feathers". This attire alludes directly to one of the main woman 
occupations: the spinning and weave. Activities also were established by the 
gods; because when the man and the woman were created, they sent her to spin 
and to weave(31). 
 
Her ornaments are several, a golden necklace, and another of turquoise 
mosaic covered with round golden bells. A string of precious beads with 
golden bells and a pectoral in form of maguey penca -fleshy leaf-, 
hand-crafted in what could be shell and turquoise mosaic. The bracelet is 
made of fine feathers with golden pendants. The torso is nude and only a 
small white and black layer, in the back can be appreciated, that could be 
made out of paper for its rigidity. The lumbar decoration is a guacamaya 
head , from which hangs down two ribbons, one worked with feathers and the 
other one with paper. 
 
She wears cueitl a "skirt" in black and red colors, with a symbol in form of 
horseshoe and a flint inside of the symbol, that it is the iconography 
convention that represents the moon in its increasing phase. Likewise, the 
border with red band, flints and black points, in blue background, 
suggesting the night. Therefore the skirt is a selenic allegory, all time 
that the deity is intimately linked with the moon. We will explain in 
detail, this relation with the moon later on. 
 
Following with the description of the attires, we find that she wears a 
feather nape decoration in a fan shape, among which highlight the black ones 
taken of wild hens or crows. As the attire extension stands out part of the 
yellow leaves crest, made of the zoyatl palm, called zoyatemalli, that grows 
from a hank made with quail feathers, that in this case it is hidden for the 
image in the first plane. The nose ring in a moon form yacameztli is golden, 
like the earflap wired with a ball of cotton. The facial painting consists 
in a double black, wide and narrow stripe under the eye; and in a blackened 
zone with oilskin around the mouth, named motenolcopintica. The yellow 
corporal painting is characteristic of the goddesses. 
 
In addition, Tlazolteotl is sitting on icpalli "armchair with back and 
jaguar skin seat", which makes reference to the idea of the hierarchy and 
power of the ruler, to the authority, to the dignity and the control and, in 
a figured sense, to the mother, to the protector(32), and in a more extended 
concept, it also makes reference to the loving mother that gives life and 
protects her creatures. 
 
We found that one of the powers or forces associated with the deity are the 
selenics, in this sense, is obvious why her yacameztli and her skirt symbols 
are completely identified as the moon and darkness. In other images of the 
codex the relationship Moon-Tlazolteotl is clear(33). 
 
The link , was surely based on the cyclic nature of the moon. The Mexicas 
recognized the rhythms that made the moon reborn and die "when the moon is 
born again it looks like a little arch of thin wire, [and] after its rhythms 
the moon dies"(34). If this is so, then, we could talk about a regeneration 
in the cosmic plane. The religious valuation of the lunar cycles made 
possible the first anthropocosmic synthesis of the ancient men, by relating 
facts as heterogeneous as birth, evolution, death and resurrection, the 
water, the plants, the woman and fertility(35). 
 
But for the moment our interest about the wide conception of the moon is 
centered in the aspects that influence from the cycles of the plants to the 
women physiology. Indeed, it is recognized the recurrent of the feminine 
nature and since the most remote historical times, the menstrual cycle has 
been compared with the different moon phases(36); recognizing that the moon 
governed these periods. So, the woman like the moon are cyclic. In the same 
way the world of the plants is subjected to the same returns controlled by 
the lunar rhythms(37). 
 
To the light of this strong association between the moon and the vegetation 
we could understand why several fertility goddesses are at the same time 
lunar deities. Therefore, the selenic symbols so abundant in the Tlazolteotl 
iconography take us to the rhythm idea, so much in the woman physiology as 
in the vegetation. 
 
In this goddess appears, by the way, properties that make her responsible 
for the sensuality and the excesses of sexual nature. Her name like goddess 
of the garbage and filth -in a symbolic sense- has a lot to do with this 
since these exaggerations contaminated the man with filth. In this context, 
she is presided over the sign of the one ocelotl day, women born under the 
force of this day would be adulterous(38). But the force that take man to 
the lust was Tlazolteotl. 
 
The dust and the garbage 
the works of the flesh 
were caused by Tlazolteotl, she light them 
Tlazolteotl fomented them 
and only she discharged 
she purified, she relieved 
she washed, she bathed(39). 
 
But it implies that, as the final part of the text indicated, Tlazolteotl 
had the capacity of recovering the force that she penetrated in the man; she 
was in turn, Tlaelcuani "eater of filth". As López Austin hints, "the gods 
inspired -they formed inside the man- the positive and negative 
passions"(40). 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
Fig. 5 
Tlazolteotl, archetype of the Warrior Woman, Laud, 20 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 
Finally, the deity incorporates the woman fighter archetype, although 
without a doubt, could be thought that its correspondence to the woman is 
referred to the childbirth, since she was imagined like fighter that 
struggled to bring to the world to a new child, as the documentary sources 
said. Even so, we thought that the deity representations in the Borgia 63, 
Cospi 24 and Laud 20 codexes (fig. 5), where she is shown as warrior woman 
by wearing chimalli or shield, flag, arrows, lance darts; multicolored band 
associated with the war, tied up to the waist and Cuauhpilolli "rag of eagle 
feathers" are referred indeed to the woman war like activity; as we could 
verify in another historical codex such as the Selden, where she appears 
belligerent. We will return to this idea later on. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
Tlazolteotl, Warrior Woman. Cospi, 26 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
Fig. 5 
Tlazolteotl, archetype of the mature woman, Laud, 42 
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
 
Without a doubt Tlazolteotl was a multiple unfolding deity, which should 
concern to several Mesoamerican woman archetypes inside the goddess 
mythology. We have already mentioned that she become assimilated to the 
mature woman in her fullness of procreating. But there are some later 
incarnations that are linked to other ages of the woman; such as Toci Our 
Grandmother, Heart of the Earth, she was identified with the old and wise 
woman, besides the attributions that she has as Tlazolteotl avatar 
-protector of the doctor woman or midwives, protector of the newly birth and 
their children- she is also the inventor of the temazcal bath and was 
responsible of the earthquakes(41). 
 
* * * * * * * * * * 
 
OTHER RELATED WEB SITES: 
 
Central American (MesoAmerican) Goddesses 
<http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/1582/centralg.html>; 
 
<http://www.crystalinks.com/aztecgods.html>; 
<http://www.aztecvirgin.com/virginofguadalupe8.html>; 
<http://www.chicanismo.com/ton.html>; 
<http://ojinaga.com/curandero/Tonantzin/tonantzin.html>; 
<http://www.lasculturas.com/aa/aa060600a.php>; 
<http://www.sacredsites.com/2nd56/399.html>; 
<http://www.uwec.edu/Academic/Curric/greidebe/Indigenous/Guadalupe/Guadalupe 
.htm> 
<http://www.ladyfest.org/LadiesWeLike/Coatlicue_Tonantzin.html>; 
 
 
 
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