30 May 2025 / 10 House
Article suitable for older students
Find out moreAn image of Citlalicue?
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Sitlail: Hi I have been searching and searching for an image of Citlalicue. I was wondering if you are able to help me. I have many books about the Aztecs and I have yet to find anything. The reason I am looking is because I want this as a tattoo for me and my mother. (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
Scholars believe that this goddess, with her skirt resembling a clear turquoise-blue sky with tiny stars embroidered on it is Tonacacíhuatl, Our Lady of Sustenance, consort of the Lord of Sustenance, mother of gods and grandmother of the first humans. Her name means ‘She With Skirt of Stars’, or ‘Lady of the Luminous Starry Skirt’. She represents the night sky full of stars - in other words, the Milky Way. She is the female aspect of the greatest of all deities, Ometeotl (god and goddess of duality, from whom all other gods were descended). Her name is also sometimes written as ‘Citlalinicue’.
The images shown here are the only ones given of her in the aptly named Enciclopedia Gráfica del México Antiguo: Los Dioses Supremos by Salvador Mateos Higuera (Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, Mexico City, 1992). The images are taken from the Codex Borbonicus and the Codex Aubin. As you’re looking for ‘clear’ sources of imagery for a tattoo, we’re uploading these rather than going back to the original manuscripts. Hope they help: let us know if and when you create your tattoos...!
Comments (4)
Taytay
22nd Nov 2023
Hi There!
I was wondering, how would one pronounce Citlalicue?
Mexicolore
‘SeetlaLEEkway’.
Citlali
14th Apr 2014
Hey, I have also been searching for a legit depiction of Citlalicue. Just out of curiosity, where could I find the original manuscripts?
Claudia Micher
10th Nov 2010
Coatlicue has no stars in her skirt... it’s made of snakes, as her name says... Coatlicue means “the one with the skirt/dress/garment of snakes”...
Mexicolore
Fair point, Claudia, thanks for this. It’s worth noting too that there’s a very similar statue to the Coatlicue one known as Yollotlicue - this deity wears a skirt of hearts instead of snakes...
Gael Ollivier
13th May 2010
I just wanted to add in here that a “Citlalinicue” is also a distinctive element of fertility/earth/death divinities, in the form of a “starry skirt”. This garment is formed by a series of braided leather belts with small shells hanging from the tips. Some two examples: the well known Coatlicue statue, and the recently found Tlaltecuhtli. Sending the pictures via e-mail. I don’t know if the info will be suitable for this particular page, but just thought you’d like to hear about it. Specially, since the Tlaltecuhtli monument seems to be (so far) the only known depiction of the Citlalinicue worn as a full skirt, instead of a back hanging ornament (according to López Lujan in “Escultura Monumental Mexica”).
Cheers! Gael
Mexicolore
Many thanks for this, Gael, and for the two images that you kindly sent in. We’re posting them here for others to see exactly what you’re referring to...
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