Xōchipilli
Template:Short description Template:Cleanup lang Template:Infobox deity {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} {{#invoke:IPA|main}} is the god of beauty, youth, love, passion, sex, sexuality, fertility, arts, song, music, dance, painting, writing, games, playfulness, nature, vegetation and flowers in Aztec mythology. His name contains the Nahuatl words Template:Wikt-lang ("flower") and Template:Wikt-lang (either "prince" or "child") and hence means "flower prince".
AssociationsEdit
As the patron of writing and painting, he was called {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} the "Seven-flower", but he could also be referred to as {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} "Five-flower". He was the patron of the game patolli. He is frequently paired with Xochiquetzal, who is seen as his female counterpart.<ref name="Thompson1932">Template:Cite journal</ref> {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} has also been interpreted as the patron of both homosexuals and male prostitutes, a role possibly resulting from his being absorbed from the Toltec civilization.<ref name = "Castillo"> Diaz del Castillo, Bernal. The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Library Reprints, 2008. ISBN 1-4227-8345-6; Trexler, Richard C. Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas. Paperback ed. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8014-8482-0; Keen, Benjamin. The Aztec Image in Western Thought. Paperback ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8135-1572-6; Idell, Albert. The Bernal Diaz Chronicles. New York: Doubleday, 1956. </ref><ref name="Mendelssohn">Mendelssohn, Kurt. Riddle of the Pyramids. Paperback ed. New York: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 1986. ISBN 0-500-27388-X; Estrada, Gabriel S. "An Aztec Two-Spirit Cosmology: Re-sounding Nahuatl Masculinities, Elders, Femininities, and Youth." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 24:2 & 3 (2003).</ref><ref name="Taylor">Taylor, Clark L. "Legends, Syncretism, and Continuing Echoes of Homosexuality from Pre-Columbian and Colonial Mexico." In Male Homosexuality in Central and South America. Paperback ed. Stephen O. Murray, ed. San Francisco: Instituto Obregon, 1987. ISBN 0-942777-58-1</ref><ref name="Greenberg1990p165">Template:Cite book</ref>
He, among other gods, is depicted wearing a talisman known as an {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, which was a teardrop-shaped pendant crafted out of mother-of-pearl.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Xochipilli statueEdit
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In the mid-19th century, a 16th-century Template:Citation needed Aztec statue of Xochipilli was unearthed on the side of the volcano Popocatépetl near Tlalmanalco. The statue is of a single figure seated upon a temple-like base. Both the statue and the base upon which it sits are covered in carvings of sacred and psychoactive organisms including mushrooms (Psilocybe aztecorum), tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum), Ololiúqui (Turbina corymbosa), sinicuichi (Heimia salicifolia), possibly cacahuaxochitl (Quararibea funebris), and one unidentified flower.
Laurette Séjourné has written: "The texts always use the flower in an entirely spiritual sense, and the aim of the religious colleges was to cause the flower of the body to bloom: This flower can be no other than the soul. The association of the flower with the sun is also evident. One of the hieroglyphs for the sun is a four-petalled flower, and the feasts of the ninth month, dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, were entirely given over to flower offerings."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The figure himself sits on the base, head tilted up, eyes open, jaw tensed, with his mouth half open and his arms opened to the heavens. The statue is currently housed in the Aztec hall of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.Template:Citation needed
Entheogen connectionEdit
Lombards Museum
It has been suggested by Wasson,<ref name="Wasson1980p58">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Schultes,Template:Full citation needed and HofmannTemplate:Full citation needed that the statue of Xochipilli represents a figure in the throes of entheogenic ecstasy. The position and expression of the body, in combination with the very clear representations of hallucinogenic plants which are known to have been used in sacred contexts by the Aztec support this interpretation. The statue appears to have hugely dilated pupils, suggesting an effect of hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Wasson says that in the statue's depiction Xochipilli "is absorbed by temicxoch, 'dream flowers', as the Nahua say describing the awesome experience that follows the ingestion of an entheogen. I can think of nothing like it in the long and rich history of European art: Xochipilli absorbed in temicxoch".<ref name="Wasson1980p58"/>
See alsoEdit
ReferencesEdit
External linksEdit
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- J. Paul Getty Museum's in-depth interactive exploring the Museo Nacional de Antropología's 15th-century basalt figure of Xochipilli. Includes a detailed exploration of psychotropic plants depicted.
- Erowid's Xochipilli Vault