Copal incenseMaizeFlowersPaperWaterSweepings of the floorQuail
Invocation Approach
Tone
The ground that gives and takes
Address
CoatlicueSerpent SkirtMother of the Gods
Relationship
The ground everyone stands on and returns to
Warning
She is the grave as much as the womb
Resonance
Mothers the bereaved those who work the soil
Symbols
Serpent skirtNecklace of hearts and handsEagle downSkullTwo serpent heads
Mythology Summary
Coatlicue, Serpent Skirt, is the Aztec earth mother, Teteo Innan, the mother of the gods. The Florentine Codex (Book 3) and the colonial histories tell how she was sweeping on Coatepec, the Serpent Mountain, when a ball of down fell from the sky; she tucked it into her breast and conceived Huitzilopochtli, and her daughter Coyolxauhqui led the four hundred Huitznahua to kill her for the shame - whereupon the child was born fully armed and cut them down. The great statue unearthed in 1790 and now in the Museo Nacional de Antropologia shows her decapitated, two serpent heads rising from her neck, wearing a necklace of human hearts and hands and a skirt of intertwined snakes: the earth that eats what it grows.
Modern Practice
Coatlicue is the ground under the work: compost, burial, the return of what has been used up. She is called on by those who need to hold both the giving and the taking of the same hand, and by women for whom motherhood was not a gentle thing.