Description
ITZPAPALOTL ("Obsidian Butterfly" in Nahuatl) is a fearsome goddess from traditional Nahua cosmology, and one of the Tzitzimimeh (plural of Tzitzimitl, a category of "star demons" said to appear during an eclipse), also associated with the Cihuateteoh ("divine women") - spirits of women who died in childbirth, who resided in the far west, and who occasionally returned to earth to terrorize travelers in the night. In Nahua cosmology, the souls of those who died drowning went to Tlalocan, those who died in battle followed the path of the Sun from the East, and women who died in childbirth in the west. The Tzitzimimeh were also feared as protectors of midwives and women in labor.
Itzpapalotl was said to have once ruled over a paradise, Tamoanchan, where the first humans were created, and also home for the victims of infant mortality, where there was a tree known as Chichihuacuauhco, the "wet-nurse tree". In some accounts she was expelled from Tamoanchan.
According to the Tlamachilliztlatolçaçanilli ("Wisdom-Discourse Fables"), a manuscript from 1558, the Centzonmimixcoa ("four hundred alike Mixcoatl - the Cloud Serpent"), also known as "400 hundred northerners" (referring to the stars of the northern sky hemisphere, as well to part of the ancestors of the Mexica, who came north from the valley of Mexico towards Tenochtitlán. These ancestors were part of a larger group of semi-nomads also known by the Mexica as Chichimeca), were some of the first groups of ancestors to come out of the caves in the Fifth Sun Era (the current era, after four different eras, with different suns, have ended in catastrophes).
The ancient mother of the Centzonmimixcoa was Iztacchalchiuhtlicue ("White Jade Skirt"). The sun, Tonatiuh, gifted them arrows, darts and shields, and demanded them to satisfy his thirst for blood. Over time, however, the sun grew unsatisfied with them, for whenever they hunted, they didn't offer their victims to the sun, and preferred to party, get laid and drunk. So the sun called five out of the Centzonmimixcoa: Quauhtli-Icohuauh ("Eagle's twin"), Mixcoatl ("Cloud Serpent" - a.k.a the god of the hunt), Cuitlachcihuatl ("Wolf Woman"), Tlotepetl ("Hawk Mountain") and Apantecuhtli ("Lord of the River") to ambush and destroy their brothers and sisters "who offered nothing to their father and their mother", and then offer them to the sun, and that was done.
Two Centzonmimixcoa, Xiuhnel and Mimich, who survived the ambush, went out in the north, hunting a couple of two headed deers. In the sunset, while building their hut, they found the two deers transforming into women, who seduced them.
"Then she said to him, "Won't you drink, dear Xiuhnel!"
And so then Xiuhnel drank the blood
And then immediately lay down with her;
She lay down with him
and then turned herself face down upon him,
then devoured him, tore open his breast.
And then Mimich said, "She has actually eaten my elder brother!"
And the other woman was still standing and calling, "Lover, won't you come and eat!"
But Mimich did not call her.
And then instead he took the fire-drill and lit a fire,
And when it was lit, Mimich ran and threw himself into it.
The woman, pursuing him, also entered the fire. She followed him there the entire night, until noon of the following day.
And then he descended into a thorny barrel cactus, fell into it, and the woman fell down after him.
And when he saw the star-demon had fallen, he shot her repeatedly.
Only then could he turn back.
Then he returned, parting and tying up his hair, painting his face and weeping for his elder brother who had been eaten.
Then the fire gods heard it and they went to bring the woman, Itzpapalotl, Obsidian Butterfly.
Mimich went in the lead.
And when they took her, they burned her and she burst into bloom.
First she blossomed into the blue flint; The second time she blossomed into the white flint, and they took the white and wrapped it in a bundle".
The white flint knife eventually was taken by Mixcoatl and became a symbol of power among groups of the Chichimeca.
In the Tonalpohuali, the Nahua version of the 260 days cycle calendar, Itzpapalotl rules over the day sign Cozcacuauhtli (vulture) and the period of 13 days that start with Ce Calli (1 House). Her wings are inspired by those of the Rothschildia orizaba moth from Mexico.
Original drawing, digital painting and animation by Zamahel. My 2nd contribution to the #DarkTez event in October 2022.
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