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Xochipilli was the god of art, games, beauty, dance, flowers, maize, and song in Aztec mythology. His name contains the Nahuatl words xochitl ("flower") and pilli (either "prince" or "child"), and hence means "flower prince". He is also referred to as Macuilxochitl, which means "five flowers".
His wife was the human girl Mayahuel and his twin sister was Xochiquetzal. As one of the gods responsible for fertility and agricultural produce, he was associated with Tlaloc, god of rains, and Cinteotl, god of maize.
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Xochipilli Statue
In the mid-1800s, a 16th-century 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 plants including mushrooms (Psilocybe aztecorum), tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum), Ololiúqui (Rivea corymbosa), sinicuichi (Heimia salicifolia), possibly cacahuaxochitl (Quararibea funebris), and one unidentified flower. The figure himself kneels on the base, head tilted up, eyes open, jaw tensed, with his mouth half open and his arms raised to the heavens. The statue is currently housed in the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.
Entheogen Connection
It has been suggested by Wasson, Schultes, and Hofmann 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.
Wasson says "He is absorbed in temicxoch, 'the flowery dream', as the Nahua say in 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" of the statue of Xochipilli. 1
References
- ^ Wasson, R. Gordon (1980) The Wondrous Mushroom
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- This page was last modified on 17 November 2008, at 17:27.
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