#codex chimalpopoca

A book list for people who want to study more of the Aztecs. (I linked them to their Amazon listing in the states.)

Daily Life of the Aztecs

The Broken Spears: The Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico

Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions

The Illustrated dictionary of the gods and symbols of ancient Mexico and the Maya

Codex Chimalpopoca

Codex Borgia

The Dialogue of the Earth and Sky

The war of Witches: A Journey into the underworld of the contemporary Aztecs (I have not read this one yet, I've read all the others or have had them. I heard this one is a must read, especially if you're into Aztec magic/witchcraft. It's made by the same ethnographer, Timothy Knab who did Dialogue.)

Itzpapalotl is a goddess whose name means "Obsidian Butterfly" or "Clawed Butterfly". Miller and Taube believe it is closer to "clawed" as she, in the form depicted, as jaguar claws for hands. She is either depicted as a scary women dressed in as a warrior (She is a female warrior.) with a skull head and Mixcoatl's stripes, or as a beautiful woman, who powders her face white.

Itzpapalotl doesn't just rule over dead women and children, she is also considered "dead". As a night goddess she rules over the demonic and skeletal Tzitzimime, who devour people at solar eclipses and are said to descend from the heavens like spiders descend from their threads. She is thought to have died in childbirth, thus she is a divine cihuateteo. ("Divine women" who died in childbirth and were thought to come back as powerful malevolent spirits.)

Her nahualli (Essentially, a spirit animal or twin animal soul that shares it's soul with you.) is a deer. The codex Chimalpopoca considers her to be the mother of Mixcoatl ("cloud serpent"-god of hunting), a title that belongs to Cihuacoatl,("serpent woman") the wife of Quetzalcoatl. There are so many similarities to Cihuacoatl, that a lot of scholars consider Itzpapalotl to be the dead form of Cihuacoatl. (Although not outright stated in any Aztec source, but implied heavily. Coincidentally,  Cihuacoatl rules over the Cihuateteo.)

Since she rules over dead children, she takes the souls of infants to a heaven called Tamoanchan, which she rules over as well. Unless the child dies of a lighting or water related death, in which case s/he is ushered to Tlaloc's domain of Tlalocan.

The Aztec's pantheon was a merging of the nomadic Chichimecs and the civilization of the Toltecs, Itzpapalotl comes from the Chichimec.

Credits:

Image:

Top, Codex Borgia

Middle, Codex Magliabechiano

References: 

An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya

http://www.azteccalendar.com/god/Itzpapalotl.html

Social Memory in Ancient and Colonial Mesoamerica

History and Mythology of the Aztecs: The Codex Chimalpopoca