Coatlicue

Today's entry is on the Aztec goddess Coatlicue. She is known as the mother of all gods and also she is the goddess who gave the world the moon and the stars. Our story begins in centuries ago in a large Aztec village. Coatlicue  was not the most attractive of  women but she was the mother of half the village. She birthed over 400 children and was still fertile.

One day she was sweeping the village temple when a ball of feathers floated down and touched her bare stomach. She had not noticed at the time but the ball of feathers had impregnated her. Her pregnancy was quicker than normal and this was because her womb was not occupied by a mortal but by gods. She gave birth to the gods Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl.

One of her daughters, Coyolxauhqui, was embarassed that her mother did not know who impregnated her so she led her other 400 siblings on a crusade to murder their mother. One day when she was cleaning the temple she was ambushed by her children. They cut her flesh and eventually decapitated her.

The minute she was dead there was a rumbling inside of her womb. Her children began to back away slowly as her stomach began to extend. Just then the god Huitzilopotchli sprung forth from her womb full grown and armed for battle. The brothers and sisters began to run, but before many of them could escape Huitzilopotchli began a killing spree. He would cut off someone's head and then turn and take out someone's heart. When he was done most of Coatlicue's children lay dead on the temple floor.

When all was done and over with he collected the body parts of the fallen and made a necklace which he placed around the neck of his fallen mother. Once the necklace was in placed around her neck the spurts of blood from her neck began to form two gigantic serpents.

She is always portrayed as having two serpents looking at each other as her head. Her necklace, which consists of hands, hearts, and skulls, lays over her breasts which are flaccid from pregnancy. She is viewed as the devouring mother, in which both the womb and the grave exists.