Article suitable for older students

Chicahuaztli (rattle staff)

23rd Feb 2023

Group of chicahuaztli rattle staffs, Templo Mayor Museum

The chicahuaztli was a Mexica/Nahua/Aztec sound instrument that had multiple ritual associations - with fertility, maize, rain, lightning, magic, combat, even human procreation... (Written by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

What physically IS a chicahuaztli, and what does the word mean? It’s a long, heavy wooden pole, staff or lance with a pointed top end; along its shaft are usually several lozenge-shaped capsules containing seeds, stones or beads, in the style of a maraca.
The name comes from the Nahuatl chicahua ‘to strengthen, to fortify, to mature’ and the instrumental form chicahuaztli would mean ‘that by means of which something is made strong or powerful’ (Neumann 1976: 257, quoting the 19th century German anthropologist Eduard Seler, who originally defined the term as womit etwas kraftig gemacht wird).
The terminology hints at the use to which this instrument was put - symbolically to penetrate the earth - opening it up to the rays of the sun - and thus render it super-fertile. Several commentators have suggested that it was a purely ritualistic artefact, restricted to religious ceremonies dedicated to fertility deities.

These festivals regularly involved rattle dances, which have long been associated with agricultural rituals. The leading Mexican musicologist Vicente T. Mendoza explains this clearly in his description of one such danza de sonajas:-
Esta danza varonil, de gran energía, golpeando la tierra con los pies, sacudiendo el aire con el ruido de las sonajas y con los gritos estridentes de los bailarines, tiene por simbolismo preparar la tierra para la fecundada por los rayos del sol... (1959: 351).
In Book 2 of the Florentine Codex in Song of Cihuacóatl (goddess of childbirth and fertility) there are constant references to the ‘rattle stick upraised’ (chicavaztli motlaquechizca) in sacred maize fields (1981: 236).

The dance Mendoza describes he says is clearly that of Xipe Totec (The Flayed God), Aztec deity of spring and fertility, and the festival in which it is performed, held in March, is Tlacaxipehualiztli (The Flaying of Men), the veintena (twenty-day ‘month’) in which an exceptional number of victims were offered in human (including gladiatorial) sacrifice during the various rituals in the veintena. According to the Florentine Codex in the run-up to the festival captors would dress their captives four times - twice in red paper clothing, twice in white - and display them ‘before the people’ before finally, now dressed in red for the last time, ornamenting the captives with stripes using liquid rubber, prior to being flayed. In the (captives’) dance, the captor accompanied his victim ‘and his rattle stick went with him; he went rattling his rattle stick. He went planting the rattle stick forcefully [on the ground]; it rattled; it jingled’ (Book 2, chapter 20, pp. 45-46).

At this point it’s worth noting that, in an early (1934) study of indigenous musical instruments from the continent, Karl Izikowitz noted that ‘gourd rattles on long sticks which are pounded on the ground’ similar to the Mexican chicahuaztli are also found in Brazil and Guyana (1970: 117). What’s more, ‘rattles of this kind are still used in agricultural ceremonies in Mexico’ (Matos Moctezuma, 2002: 468): ‘María Elena Aramoni, describing contemporary Nahua traditions in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, says that the way water is requested from the underworld gods is to beat on the ground to make sure that they hear. The rattle-sticks of the ancient Nahua priests were a similar type of petition’ (López Austin, 1996: 106); and Samuel Martí reported that ‘actualmente los huicholes y coras del Estado de Nayarit los siguen empleando en sus ritos’ (1968: 56). We can see a modern-day adaptation of the chicahuaztli in the sonaja (rattle or ‘sounding stick’) central to a fertility ceremony performed annually in Jalisco (pic 4): ‘Several round metal discs are incorporated in this artistically carved angular wooden stick and these cause a deafening noise when the instrument is shaken or hit. During the dancing wild cries and howls are uttered from time to time and the people stamp violently on the ground. In short, this is a vigorous masculine dance... meant to shake the earth into activity and life and prepare for its fertilisation’ (Collaer 1973: 126).

In the Tlacaxipehualiztli festival the rattle boards were themselves symbolically ‘sown’ (ayacachpixollo), alongside regular gourd rattles (ayacachtli), the aim being ‘to shake the seeds in order to make them sprout’ (Both, 2006: 322). The chicahuaztli was the principal accessory of Xipe Totec, a deity who for the Mexica inhabited the eastern, masculine, part of the universe, was associated with the colour red, and represented the regenerative powers of the earth (Matos Moctezuma 2002: 468). Sahagún and his Nahua informants refer several times specifically to Xipe’s rattle stick: ‘he holds his rattle instrument chicahuaztli in his right hand; when he places it firmly on the ground it rattles’ (Florentine Codex Book 9), ‘His rattle stick was in his hand’ (Book 1), ‘His rattle staff is in his hand’ (Primeros Memoriales Chapter 1).
Clearly it was an instrument ‘by means of which one is enabled to make contact with the spiritual world’ (Neumann 1976: 261).

What’s more, in the feast of Tlacaxipehualiztli all those present had literally a rattling good time! ‘Everyone, all the noblemen and commoners, danced with their rattles; and in the market all the commoners, everyone who gathered there, danced with their rattles’ (Primeros Memoriales 1997: 57). It will be noted (pic 6) that the chicahuaztli held by the leading priest is both ‘oversized’ (Stevenson 1968: 38) and entirely painted in blue, a clear indication of its association with water/rain. This is in fact an ayochicahuaztli, ayauhchicahuaztli or ayacachicauhaztli, a ‘mist rattle-stick’ or ‘stick for strengthening the mist’ - in other words, what today we would call a rainstick. The deities of sun, earth, maize and rain are all vital in working together to bring fertility, sustenance and the renewal of vegetation to the world. As well as being pounded on the ground, the rainstick was shaken by priests to invoke, imitate and - in Eduard Seler’s words - to ‘charm’ rain from the realm of the rain god (quoted by Neumann, op cit p. 259). Pounded or shaken, ‘the sound of rattles was primarily associated with agricultural fecundity and, in specific rain ceremonies, was meant to simulate the sound of rain’ (Both 2006: 322).

Not surprisingly, then, we find that the chicahuaztli is not the exclusive property of Xipe Totec: in the codices it can be found in the hands of several other deities, including Xilonen (Book 2 of the Florentine Codex describes how a fire priest carried a large mist rattle stick on his shoulders and then set up and shook it in front of her impersonator just before she was sacrificed), Chalchiuhtlicue, Xochiquetzal, Centeotl, Chicomecóatl (see pic 13), and, perhaps most predictably, Tlaloc, god of rain (pic 7).
In Sahagún’s description of the Etzqualiztli festival dedicated to Tlaloc, there is a specific reference to the leading fire priest in the Temple of Tlaloc using the ayauhchicahuaztli: ‘And when he had scattered [yauhtli - Mexican marigolds] then they gave him the mist rattle board. He rattled, he shook it; he raised it in dedication [to the god]’ (Book 2, p. 87) - see pic 7.

Notice that the rattle stick in the hands of Tlaloc or one of his servant priests is snake-shaped. Tlaloc was firmly associated not only with rain but also with storms, and specifically with lightning - a jagged force, conceived as a giant fire-serpent (his messenger?) shooting down from sky to earth (also depicted on vertical war drums). Like many creatures, snakes are most active (and also mate) in the rainy season, and in particular rattlesnakes - only found in the Americas - make a highly evocative sound with their rattles that is distinctly reminiscent of falling rain. This sound is easy to reproduce with hundreds of seeds pitter-pattering down over little wooden pegs studded along the length of rainsticks, a sound described by one of Mexico’s most famous musicologists, Samuel Martí, as ‘unos sonidos ligados, muy sugerentes y misteriosos, que nos recuerda el rumor del agua o de la lluvia’ (1968: 56). Such sounds served to add what Arnd Adje Both calls ‘magical support’ to ritual practices.
Moreover, rattle sticks accompanied summer rain dances, involving snake-shaped choreography, in which ‘leaping, with its vertical design, was associated with rain’ (Kurath & Martí 1964: 88).

It cannot have escaped the reader’s attention that the shape and contents of the chicahuaztli make it very much a male symbol of rain (Neumann 1976, Kurath & Martí 1964, Matos Moctezuma 2002, Izikowitz 1970), associated with fertilisation, procreation and reproduction. It can clearly be seen as such in codex representations, where it is projected in between a human couple engaged in union (pic 10). In this it provides a parallel symbol to the rays of the sun penetrating and fertilising the surface of the earth. Ironically, though, the instrument is often mentioned - several times in the Florentine Codex alone - as being the domain of (and carried on the shoulders by) old men; perhaps we should rephrase this as ‘senior priests’? To give just one example, in Book 2 of the Codex, in the context of the Tlacaxipehualiztli festival, we read ‘Only they, the old men of the calpulli [community]... sat singing, sat rattling their rattle sticks until the day was done’.

It may be significant that a number of researchers (Contreras, Neumann, Izikowitz...) have labelled the chicahuaztli a ‘spear rattle’ or ‘rattling lance’, focussing on its weapon-like appearance. This reflects not only its shape but its actual use in ritual combat - specifically in the context of gladiatorial sacrifice in honour of Xipe Totec (see pic 14). Book 2 of the Florentine Codex describes how fights were deliberately provoked among victims due to be sacrificed to Xipe (called xipeme): ‘And if some of the interceptors were taken, the xipeme beat them repeatedly with the rattle sticks’ (pic 11).
Considering there are no known archaeological examples of ancient Mexican rattle sticks in existence - Guillermo Contreras laments the fact that one such apparently original instrument, in fine condition, was indeed found by peasant farmers in a coastal cave between Michoacán and Colima but subsequently they were persuaded to hand it over to a dealer in artefacts who rumour has it then sold it in the USA (1988: 40) - we know a considerable amount about this venerable ritual object.

There remains one aspect of the ayauhchicahuaztli that we hinted at above that needs elaboration: magic. By a happy coincidence, the English term for the instrument ‘stick for strengthening the mist’ allows us to play with words and suggest that the rainstick has a ‘mistical’ quality and purpose. In the Hymn to Tlaloc - one of the Twenty Sacred Hymns of the Nahua researched by Gordon Brotherston and Edward Dorn - the chorus repeats constantly ‘With rattles of mist he [the sacrificial victim offered to Tlaloc] is taken to Tlalocan’ (1999: 14).
Something in the nature of seeds has since ancient times created an association with magic in general and ritual medicine in particular. ‘The rattle is primarily magic in its function... and its magic properties are first of all to be found in its peculiar and characteristic sound’ (Izikowitz 1970: 149) - something picked up on and eloquently expressed by D H Lawrence in The Plumed Serpent referring to the names of ancient Mexican gods - ‘the names are like seeds, so full of magic, of the unexplored magic... I believe in the fertility of sound’ (1992: 68).

Frank Neumann has written an entire academic article on ‘The Flayed God and his rattle-stick: a shamanic element in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican religion’, in which he documents how several investigators have noted ‘the importance of the rattle-stick as an item of shamanic equipment’ (1976: 253) and he gives examples of its use in shamanic ritual not only in Mexico, past and present, but ‘throughout the entire hemisphere’ (op cit: 260). In one instance, quoting the Mexican chronicler Alvarado Tezozomoc, he records how ‘such a rattle was used in connection with drums to imbue the [Aztec] warriors with power and incite them to fight’ (op cit: 258); it is still used today in Zinacantan in the form of a ‘summoner gourd’ to restore power to the patient in curing rituals. Interestingly, the gourd is filled with exactly 52 grains of corn (13 each of white, yellow, red and black) - sacred numbers in ancient Mesoamerica.
Izikowitz (1970: 122) too traces the common shamanic use of gourd rattles through South America, noting that it coincides loosely with the spread of maize culture round the Americas.

In connection with shamanism, it is interesting to note that at least two scholars (Robelo 1904: 96 and Contreras 1988: 40) draw attention to the association the chicahuaztli has with deers’ antlers (universally recognised as spiritual symbols): Robelo claims that Tezozomoc described the instrument’s serrated top as ‘cuernos de venado aserrados como dientes de perro’, whilst Contreras focuses on the term chicahuaztli which he suggests can also refer to ’instrumentos hechos de cuernos de venado, ejecutados por ludimiento’.
We leave the last word to Karl Izikowitz, who, in his classic (1934), pioneering and extensive study of indigenous sound instruments in the Americas, wrote this:-
’It is the magic power of the sound which is essential; the rhythm, the ornamentation, the feathers, the sculptures on the stick rattles, their sacred wood, the song and its words, the dance with its suggestive body movements, etc. - all these, magic in themselves, are contributing factors intended to increase and intensify the magic effect together with the rattling sound, and all this is merely a part of all the other ceremonies which man has devised and performs in his struggle for existence in order to get help from the good powers and to protect himself from the evil ones’ (1970: 150).

Sources/References:-
• Both, Arnd Adje (2006) ‘On the Context of Imitative and Associative Processes in Prehispanic Music’, downloaded from http://www.mixcoacalli.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/both_2006.pdf
• Caso, Alfonso (1958) The Aztecs: People of the Sun, University of Oklahoma Press
• Collaer, Paul (1973) Music of the Americas: an Illustrated Music Ethnology of the Eskimo and American Indian Peoples, Curzon Press, London
• Contreras Arias, Juan Guillermo (1988) Atlas Cultural de México: Música, SEP/INAH, Mexico City
• Dorn, Edward & Brotherston, Gordon (1999) The Sun Unwound: Original Texts from Occupied America, North Atlantic Books, California
• Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1981), Book 2 - The Ceremonies, translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, School of American Research/University of Utah
• Ditto (1970), Book 1 - The Gods
• Lawrence, D. H. (1992) The Plumed Serpent, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Martí, Samuel (1968) Instrumentos Musicales Precortesianos, INAH, Mexico
• Mendoza, Vicente T. (1959) ‘La Música y la Danza’ in Esplendor del México Antiguo, Eds. Raúl Noriega, Carmen Cook de Leonard, Julio Rodolfo Moctezuma, Centro de Investigaciones Antropológicas de México, Mexico
• Mikulska, Katarzyna (2022) ‘The Deity as a Mosaic: Images of the God Xipe Totec in Divinatory Codices from Central Mesoamerica’, Ancient Mesoamerica, vol. 33, no. 3, 432 - 458, Cambridge University Press
• Neumann, Franke J. (1976) ‘The Flayed God and his rattle-stick: a shamanic element in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican Religion’, History of Religions vol. 15 no. 3, 251-263, University of Chicago Press
• Izikowitz, Karl Gustav (1970) Musical and Other Sound Instruments of the South American Indians: a Comparative Ethnographical Study, S. R. Publishers Ltd., Wakefield (first published in Sweden, 1934)
• Kurath, Gertrude Prokosch & Martí, Samuel (1964) Dances of Anáhuac: the Choreography and Music of Precortesian Dances, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York
• López Austin, Alfredo (1996) The Rabbit on the Face of the Moon: Mythology in the Mesoamerican Tradition, University of Utah Press
• Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo (2002) ‘Chicahuaztli’ in Aztecs, Royal Academy of Arts, London
• Primeros Memoriales by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1997), Paleography of Nahuatl Text and English Translation by Thelma D. Sullivan, University of Oklahoma Press
• Robelo, Cecilio A. (1904) Diccionario de Aztequismos, Mexico City
• Stevenson, Robert (1968) Music in Aztec and Inca Territory, University of California Press.

Picture sources:-
• Main: photo (Templo Mayor Museum, Mexico City) by Ana Laura Landa/Mexicolore
• Pic 1: image scanned from Izikowitz (1970) - see above
• Pic 2: image scanned from Códice Durán - Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e Islas de Tierra Firme, Arrendedora Internacional, Mexico City, 1990
• Pix 3, 10 & 12: images from the Codex Borgia scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1976
• Pic 4: image scanned from Collaer (1973) - see above
• Pix 5 & 11: images from the Florentine Codex scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994
• Pix 6 & 14: images scanned from our own copy of Primeros Memoriales by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Facsimile Edition, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1993
• Pix 7 & 9: images from the Codex Borbonicus (original in the Bibliotheque de l’Assembée Nationale, Paris) scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1974
• Pic 8: photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Pic 13: photo (Creative Commons) downloaded from https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/65131
• Pic 15: image scanned from Músicos e instruments musicales indígenas antiguos: libro para colorear by Agustín Pimentel, CADEMAC, Guanajuato, Mexico, 1990.

Aztec Limerick no. 44 (ode to the rainstick):-
Ritual force in the Mexica rattleboard
Corresponded to that of a battle sword;
Penetrating the ground,
Its stone-rattling sound
Spurred on Tlaloc who life-giving atl poured.

‘Did it work?! [Shaking rainsticks at the clouds to invoke rain, using sympathetic magic]’ - read Professor Alan Sandstrom’s answer

Comments (1)

John R Wood

2nd Mar 2025

Pic 6 is from the Cuahuitlehua veintena, not Tlacaxipehualiztli

Mexicolore

Thanks for correcting us on this. In fact the original image (of which we feature here the top section) covers three veintenas, including Tlacaxipehualiztli, which appears lower down. This section, at the top, is, as you say, Cuahuitlehua. Thanks for pointing this out.

Aztecs

Maya

Chicahuaztli (rattle staff)

Comments (1)

More Aztec Artefacts