30 May 2025 / 10 House
Article suitable for older students
Find out moreItzpapalotl and her Chichimec origins
Stone sculpture of Itzpapalotl or Obsidian Butterfly, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Xochipapalotl: I have a question regarding Itzpapalotl. I myself am a Chichimec Nahua person whose religion centers a lot around her. Would any of you all happen to know of any sculptures that exist of her. Or anything about her history pre and post colonization? Especially having to do with her origins in Chichimeca communities. Thank you for your consideration and time! Actually I stumbled upon you all myself. And while I have some slight disagreements here and there. I find the information here very reliable for the most part! (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore).
The simplest image to show you in terms of stone sculptures of Itzpapalotl (‘Obsidian Butterfly’) we think is the one above, called the Altar of Itzpapalotl, in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City. It probably represents ‘the importance of sacrificial death to maintain a balance in life and the tzitzimime (female monsters of destruction) (Aguilar-Moreno 2006: 200).
As for her role in the story of the Chichimec people, she features in the opening section of the Anales de Cuauhtitlan, the first part of the document (the original is now lost) known as the Codex Chimalpopoca, which relates the emergence in the seventh century of the Chichimeca from the legendary Place of Seven Caves, Chicomoztoc. However, she comes quickly to a sticky end:-
She instructs the Chichimec people to go hunting and to offer the spoils of the hunt to the Old Fire God Xiuhtecuhtli, by placing three hearthstones to guard the fire. These three, all supernaturals, are named Mixcoatl, Tozpan and Ihuitl (learn more by following the link below). They remain sacred in homes throughout Mesoamerica to this day.
However, from the underworld appear the 400 Mimixcoa (‘Cloud Snakes’, plural of Mixcoatl), kinsmen who refuse to worship the sun god. They are killed - and consumed - by Itzpapalotl, but one, Itztamixcoatl (White Mixcoatl), escapes, hides in a barrel cactus and in turn shoots Itzpapalotl with arrows, followed by the Mimixcoa who are resuscitated and proceed to burn Itzpapalotl, subsequently rubbing themselves with her ashes, blackening their eye sockets.
Clearly Itzpapalotl was a fearsome female deity, associated not only with the Chichimecs but with fire, war, knife sacrifice, with the paradise of Tamoanchan, with the souls of brave dead warriors, with Mixcoatl and with the calendrical day sign Vulture. When she was killed, her body burst into a shower of coloured stones - one source suggests just five flint knives (one of which becomes White Mixcoatl).
Like Tezcatlipoca (whose double was the vulture) and other powerful deities, she could transform or morph into equally powerful predator birds such as the eagle - indeed the eagle was her nahual or animal spirit guide. Transformation is key to her cosmic power. Depicted with blades - and (jaguar) claws (her name may in fact be translated as ‘Clawed Butterfly’) - all over her body (pic 3), the materials themselves carry symbolic weight. This is explained by Michel Graulich:-
’Nothing illustrates the transmutation of the goddess in a better way: from obsidian (‘Obsidian Butterfly’ is her name) considered as cold, nocturnal and coming from the underworld, she becomes a white stone of celestial origin, containing a divine sparkle... Thus the goddess in a way becomes energy, the double, the nahualli [of Mixcoatl]’ (Olivier 2003: 112).
Not surprisingly, with her body bedecked with sharp knives, her association with human sacrifice is self-evident. Book VI of the Florentine Codex spells out prayers offered by brave warriors to Tezcatlipoca, which invoke the goddess:-
’May all, the eagle warrior, the ocelot [jaguar] warrior, merit a little... may his heart falter not in fear. May he savour the fragrance, the sweetness of death by the obsidian knife. With his heart may he gladden... Itzpapalotl. May he desire, may he long for the flowery death by the obsidian knife. May he savour the scent, savour the fragrance, savour the sweetness of the darkness, the din of battle, the roar of the crowd...’
The Florentine Codex goes on to stress her role as the protective deity of obsidian miners, the ‘patron goddess of stonecutters’ (Klein) (pic 5). (Protective) figurines of gods associated with obsidian (Tezcatlipoca, Itzpapalotl, Itzli...) have been found both in mines themselves and in obsidian workshops above ground (learn more by following the second link below).
But it is her association with the famed tzitzimime which all scholars tend to stress. Whilst most of these star demons were male, the Codex Telleriano-Remensis makes it clear that not only is Itzpapalotl one of the few female tzitzimime, she is the principal one.
This article was uploaded to Mexicolore on 19th. January 2023
Sources:-
• Aguilar-Moreno, Manuel (2006) Handbook to Life in the Aztec World, Facts on File Inc., New York
• Codex Chimalpopoca translated by John Bierhorst (1992), University of Arizona Press
• Florentine Codex, Books 6 and 9 - (Bernardino de Sahagún) (1959-1970), translated by Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, School of American Research and University of Utah
• Klein, Cecelia F. (2000) ‘The Devil and the Skirt: An iconographic inquiry into the pre-Hispanic nature of the tzitzimime’, Ancient Mesoamerica vol. 11, i, Jan. 2000, pp. 1-16
• Miller, Mary & Taube, Karl (1993) The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, Thames & Hudson Ltd., London
• Olivier, Guilhem (2003) Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God, University Press of Colorado
• Quiñones Keber, Eloise (1995) Codex Telleriano-Remensis, University of Texas Press
• van Zantwijk, Rudolph (1985), The Aztec Arrangement, University of Oklahoma Press.
Picture sources:-
• Main: photo by Ana Laura Landa/Mexicolore
• Pic 2: illustration commissioned by Mexicolore from and © Felipe Dávalos
• Pic 3: image from the Codex Borgia scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1976
• Pix 4 & 5: Images from the Florentine Codex (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994
• Pic 6: image scanned from our own copy of the Codex Borbonicus (ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1974).
Comments (6)
Xuchilbara
4th May 2024
Is there anything covering that Itzpapalotl may be the dead form of Cihuacoatl? There’s a lot of implications across sources and there seems to be a deep connection.
Mexicolore
We haven’t ourselves come across any references to her being the ‘dead form’ of Cihuacoatl. However, yes there is a deep connection: both are aspects of supreme female deity Tonacacihuatl
A.J. Hodes
8th Jun 2023
I also read somewhere that in one interpretation she was one of the patrons of Cuscatlán ( El Salvador) along with Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl. Is this true?
Mexicolore
Very likely, since her associated calendar sign was Vulture - ‘Cozcacuauhtli’ (‘Jewelled Eagle’) in Nahuatl. Cozcatlan means ‘Place of the [Jewelled] Necklace’, with the same root.
Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, according to the ‘Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas’, after ruling Tollan, was persuaded by Tezcatlipoca to journey with the commoners of Tollan to a place called Tlapallan towards Honduras - this was to be his final resting place. On the way he left some of his band in, amongst other places, Cozcatlan, which at the time was an important Nahuatl-speaking community.
Taytay
15th May 2023
Awesome!! Thank you! :D
Taytay
13th May 2023
Oh okay! Might I ask who Ce Acatl Topiltzin and Yayauhqui are?
Mexicolore
The former’s full name was Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl (‘1-Reed, Our Prince Plumed Serpent’) - the legendary semi-divine high priest of the Toltec people. Learn more about him here -
https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/ask-us/ce-acatl-topiltzin-quetzalcoatl.
Yayauhqui means dark or black, so he was the Black Tezcatlipoca, brother of Red Tezcatlipoca.
Taytay
13th May 2023
Hi! I’ve read in some places that Mixcoatl was killed by his brothers, Apanecatl, Zolton, and Cuilton, and that Quetzalcoatl killed them to avenge him. I was wondering if this was truly an Aztec myth or a fictional story that was made up for fun?
Mexicolore
As far as we understand Apanecatl, Zolton, and Cuilton were three of the ‘mimixcoa’ (see above), not his brothers (who were Yayauhqui Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli). It was actually his semi-divine son, Ce Acatl Topiltzin, who on hearing of his father’s murder went to Xaltitlan, where he was buried, unearthed the remains and took them to rebury them in Huizachtépetl (now known as the Hill of the Stars, where the New Fire Ceremony used to take place). He then avenged his father’s death by killing one of the assassins with a heavy clay jar blow to the head; the other two were sacrificed. Ce Acatl Topiltzin proceeded to erect a temple dedicated to Mixcoatl on the Hill - the start of a cult dedicated to the deity, who in the name of Camaxtli became the principal god of the people of Tlaxcala.
Xōchipapalol
26th Mar 2023
Hello! I found the information here very useful and it goes along with the stories I’ve heard of her as well. It’s unfortunate to not see any other depictions of her in sculptures but it’s very nice we at least have the altar. As for her Nahual, hearing about it being an eagle is new to me. It’s probably a difference between Native groups but I often hear of stories of her Nahual being a deer, usually of her turning into one to lure hunters, so would the eagle be something distinctly Mexica?
Mexicolore
Thanks for writing in. You may well be right, we’re not sure. Obviously the eagle had/has huge symbolic meaning throughout Mesoamerica, not just to the Mexica...
Stone sculpture of Itzpapalotl or Obsidian Butterfly, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City
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