Coatlicue: A Myth for Our Times

Abstract

The Coatlicue myth of Meso-America is currently represented by the huge basalt statue of the Earth goddess on display at the National Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City. The Spanish invaders who unearthed the statue were so terrified that they promptly reburied the goddess, who did not again see the light of day until 1803. Today she commands attention both as a singular work of art and as a reminder that Earth is both a loving mother and an insatiable monster, one who ultimately devours those to whom she has given birth.

Introduction

The mythology and art of the ancient Mexican cultures are unique because for thousands of years they, like the Inca Empire of the south and the tribal civilizations of the north, were isolated from events in the rest of the world. There was considerable interplay between Greco-Roman culture and the philosophies of Egypt and Persia, between the Buddhist texts of both China and India, and somewhat later between Judeo-Christian and Muslim monotheism. Roman mythology adopted a number of Egyptian deities, the Slavs adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, and several of the same characters appear in the Talmud, the Old Testament, and the Koran. In the Americas, there was nothing resembling the impact of Babylonian astronomy on the Phoenician alphabet. Over the centuries, the basic worldviews and mythologies were the same throughout Meso-America (Paz, 1990).

In contemporary English, the word “myth” is equated with superstition and falsehood, but its anthropological meaning is more profound. Myths can be conceptualized as statements or stories that express and explain ambiguous observations and existential issues, thus having an impact on human behavior and comportment. Myths were pre-scientific attempts to describe and explain some practice, institution, or natural phenomenon as well as the underlying forces that direct it (Schwaller de Lubicz, 1949/1978). Joseph Campbell (1999) has written extensively about the many functions of myth, one of which was to make sense out of the workings of nature. If a mythological description appeared to be reliable, it could be repeated and measured. The mythological tales of celestial bodies led to the surprisingly accurate calendars of the Mayan astronomers; the Meso-American shamans who determined the amount of time needed to germinate corn seeds or to build a pyramid initiated a process by which myth was transformed into science and magic into technology (Krippner, 2016).

Using ancient Babylonia as an example, Francesca Rochberg (2016) has argued that to separate magic from science neglects the sophistication of the culture’s knowledge of mathematics and astronomy. An examination of surviving cuneiform scripts (the world’s oldest writing system) demonstrates that divination by sacrificed animal entrails (ridiculed by contemporary scientists) followed principles of inference and analogy. In the same vein, myth and magic permeated all aspects of the Meso-American cultures before the Spanish invasion (Nichols, Brumfield, Neff, Hodge, Charlton, & Glascock, 2002). The official justification for the Conquest was evangelical, to save the souls of the pagans encountered by the Europeans. Adopting a new religion is accompanied by a change in social structures, community and personal behavior, and mythologies and worldviews. J.A. Manrique (1990) calls this “the first great extension of the European tradition outside its geographical bounds” (p. 237).

The Discovery

In 1790, the Spanish conquerors unearthed a five-ton basalt statue of an ancient Aztec goddess during an excavation of the major plaza of what is today Mexico City. Although the image was worshipped by the conquered populace, it terrified the Spaniards. The Roman Catholic priests feared what they thought were its demonic powers, and it was reburied (Leas, 2004). Octavio Paz (1990) described the monuments and sculptures of ancient Mexico as “works that at once are marvelous and horrible” (p. 5). Roman Catholic priests admired these practices but claimed that they were “inspired by the devil” (p. 6). For Paz, these works of art reflect the omnipresent dualities of Meso-American civilization: life and death, sun and moon, sacrifice and survival. Yet these dualities were not antithetical as they were forever engaging in a circular cosmic dance.

The buried statue, a portrayal of the goddess Coatlicue, was discovered again by the explorer Alexander von Humboldt in 1803. This time it was put on public exhibition and today is one of the prize displays of the National Museum of Anthropology and History (Reed, 1966). The massive image of the Earth Mother fertility deity presents a horrifying physiognomy, its “face” formed by the masterful joining of two serpents’ heads in profile. Centuries later, Picasso experimented with similar full-face profile combinations in his surrealistic work (Krippner & Grossman, 1972; Rubin, 1980, p. 139).

The basalt statue of Coatlicue is one of several that have been unearthed, but this one contains the most detail. Coatlicue is wearing a necklace of severed human hands and hearts, with a large skull pendant. Her skirt is made from entwined snakes, giving rise to her sobriquet, “Serpent Skirt.” Her name in the classical Nahuatl language is generally translated as “skirt of snakes.” Coatlicue’s face is gone, but the stump of her head contains 13 tresses of hair, probably symbolic of the 13 months and 13 heavens of the Aztec cosmology. Her hands and feet are marked by huge claws, used to rip up human bodies before she eats them. A primal Earth Mother, Coatlicue gives birth to humans but also devours them once they die. The Aztecs believed that there would be a mass extermination if the sun failed to rise, during which time the star demons would consume humanity. This lurking doom might be symbolized by the monster found at the base of the statue, an image that cannot ordinarily be seen.

A temple was created to commemorate Coatlicue and her son’s victory in Templo Mayor, the center of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. The temple took the form of a giant pyramid, covered with snake sculptures. The shadows cast by its steps were designed to reflect Mt. Coatepetl. Large stones placed at the base of the pyramid depict the dismembered goddess Coyolxauhqui, the estranged daughter of Coatlicue. Despite the disloyalty of all but one of her children, Coatlicue is the goddess of childbirth as well as agriculture and governance (Boone, 1999).

Coatlicue was originally a pre-Aztec Mexica goddess and there is an account of Moctezuma II sending a delegation of his advisors to visit her in her ancestral home. Laden with gifts, the delegation found themselves bogged down in a sandhill. This was an unfortunate omen because the delegation had come to seek esoteric knowledge. Coatlicue’s response to their question was to foretell the demise of the Aztec Empire, with its cities falling to invaders, a prophecy that was fulfilled shortly after the delegation returned. However, Coatlicue also foretold that the demise of the Aztecs would allow her son Huitzilopochti to rejoin her in their ancestral homeland, her head and face having been restored.

To more fully understand the impact of this sculpture, it is necessary to appreciate the context, especially the nature of the goddess herself. It is generally agreed that Coatlicue was originally a pious temple priestess who maintained a shrine atop a sacred mountain Coatepetl, or Snake Mountain. One day, while cleaning the shrine, a ball of feathers fell from the sky. Being very conscientious, and wanting to keep the temple clean, Coatlicue tucked the feathers into her belt. Their power seeped through to her uterus and impregnated her. Soon, she gave birth to Huitzilopochtli (sometimes referred to as Vitzilopuchtli), who later became the Aztec war god. However, Coatlicue’s daughter, Coyolxauhqui, already a powerful goddess, was shocked by this outrageous pregnancy and sought support from her 400 brothers, the Huitznaua. They planned to murder their mother but one of the brothers had second thoughts and warned his unborn brother about the plot. The warning came too late as the rebellious children had already beheaded their mother; the two coral snakes in the basalt statue represent flowing blood coming from the stump of Coatlicue’s head. Huitzilopochtli arrived on the scene, grown and fully armed, and butchered his rebellious siblings (Klein, 2008; Miller, 2012).

As is often the case when myths are told and retold, there are several versions of the story. In one of them, Huitzilopochtli emerges from his mother’s womb immediately after, not before, her decapitation. He slays the other children and is especially vengeful to Coyolxauhqui, chopping her into several chunks and tossing them down a hillside. In yet another variation, Huitzilopochtli throws his sister’s head into the sky where it becomes the moon. Huitzilopochtli becomes identified with the sun, and his treacherous brothers are re-envisioned as the stars. Huitzilopochtli’s victory over the moon and the stars symbolizes the daily victory of the sun over the moon and the stars. In yet another version of this myth, the sun already existed at the time of Huitzilopochtli’s birth, the result of a gathering of deities during which they immolated themselves. In this version, the moon also emerged from this mass suicide (Franco, 2004).

The eminent artist Leo Katz (1945) was intrigued by the manner in which ancient myths reflected contemporary issues and dilemmas. An acquaintance of Sigmund Freud, Katz agreed with the founder of psychoanalysis that complex personal and social problems had been vividly represented in classical mythology. Katz took a special interest in Coatlicue, noting that her image was not created only for art’s sake but to have a masterful, lasting impact upon the beholder. Katz went on to say, “No matter how much most Pre-Colombian sculptures…seem to defy our powers of interpretation, one can hardly escape the impact of the inedible vitality and creative passion [that] these carved stones emanate” (Katz, 1945, p. 134). However, contrary to Freud’s description of the oedipal complex and the guilt sons feel when lusting after their mothers, Huitzilopochtli did not disguise his devotion to his mother. Instead of being overcome with guilt (as was Oedipus when he discovered he had slept with and married his birth mother), Huitzilopochtli champions Coatlicue and wreaks vengeance on the rest of the family. Having emerged from her womb with no father as his rival, it is his siblings who feel his wrath.

Katz recalled that the Aztecs were conquerors from the North who inherited an advanced astronomy and other sciences and arts, translating this into their philosophy that they were a warrior people, destined to rule. Aztec art, as represented by the Coatlicue monolith, mirrors this belief system. Therefore, this art has no use for sugar-coated tastes. It revels in its ability to face the stark and cruel realities of life and death without a whimper. Tragedy, human or celestial, did not frighten these people. Katz (1945) continues:

Terror, manmade or terrestrial, held no ultimate threat….Mythology never takes the risk of turning truth into a lie by separating details from the ensemble from which they are a part….We know enough to recognize a sun-myth in the story of Vitzilopuchtli [Huitzilopochtli] rising out of the terrestrial womb as a result of an immaculate conception….His appearance and career could not be anything else but one of a warrior hero, since the artist belonged to a nation of savage fighters with their typical war-psychology and their education for death in contrast to other pre-Colombian philosophies of an agrarian background. (pp. 136-137)

For Katz (1945), the Coatlicue story is a more direct example of these unconscious archetypes than the Greek myths employed by Freud. Oedipus is not aware that the man he killed is actually his father or that the woman he married is his birth mother. These acts do not spring from a conscious act of hating one’s father or desiring to possess one’s mother. Thus the Oedipus myth is not a direct description of a child’s supposed primordial feelings toward one’s parents.

Huitzilopochtli, on the other hand, acted as a lover and protector of his mother even before his birth. For Katz (1945), the surrealistic power of the sculpture represents a cosmic struggle more powerfully than the Greek, Roman, and Christian statues that represent an idealized form of humanity. Meso-American artists produced images such as Coatlicue with her ponderous breasts, her writhing serpent skirt, and her petrifying physiognomy. Yet the myth maintains that there is a unity in the universe, one that emerges from the seemingly conflicting messages that come from ordinary waking consciousness. The inner and outer psyches are one, humanity and the cosmos are one, life and death are one, joy and terror are one.

In true postmodern perspective, the human being who can sense this unity and flow along with it will live a more fulfilling life than those who, like Coyolxauhqui, and the Spaniards who reburied Coatlicue’s statue, attempt to superimpose their egotistical constructs upon a universe whose design is beyond their ability to comprehend rationally. Postmodernists are able to live with seeming contradictions and to engage in ways of being that are non-rational if not irrational. From a postmodern and feminist perspective, Coatlicue represents one aspect of the Divine Feminine, dark in fury for having been ignored, dismissed, and subjugated too long.

Her story is reminiscent of the ancient Greek myth of Demeter, goddess of the harvest, and her daughter Persephone. When Persephone was abducted by Pluto and taken to the Underworld, her mother was grief-stricken and the crops dried up until a compromise was reached allowing mother and daughter to spend half the year together (Rivers Norton, 2016). But from a postmodern and feminist perspective, the myth can be recast to highlight Demeter’s righteous anger as she curses Zeus, the father of Persephone, for facilitating the abduction as a favor to his brother Pluto.

Rather than the sorrowful figure who appears in many literary treatments, there is an aspect of Demeter that resembles Kali, the violent Hindu Mother Goddess who is both a destroyer and a protector. Like Earth itself this goddess is a loving mother but also an insatiable monster, one who ultimately devours those to whom she has given birth. Kali’s stomach is a void, one that can never be filled. But her womb is constantly giving birth to all aspects of Nature. She is commonly depicted brandishing a knife dripping with blood, wearing a necklace made of the skulls of demons she had eradicated. Like Athena who emerged in full armor from the head of Zeus, Kali (in one of several accounts of her birth) burst from the head of another deity (Campbell, 1962; Hackin, 1963). She is portrayed in black, a color that symbolizes the capacity to destroy as well as to create.

This description also resonates with the Babylonian Tiamat, the monstrous goddess of primordial chaos who was also the goddess of creation and mother of numerous other deities. In addition, this myth resembles the Egyptian lion goddess Sekhmet, the goddess of both warfare and healing, who almost destroyed humanity during one of her rages. These paradoxes helped ancient people make sense of their Universe but were foreign to the less nuanced worldview of the Spaniards, a schema in which there was only good and evil, only light and darkness.

Persephone, in the meantime, escapes her overly-protective mother and comes into her own as the Queen of the Underworld, a position of eminence that few other mythological maidens ever attained. Her marriage to Pluto is a happy one, and together they welcome the dead into their realm. The Spaniards had nothing comparable in their own pantheon; Mother Mary, St. Catherine, St. Barbara, and the other female saints were benevolent, matronly, and often virginal. The Spanish reburial of Coatlicue is symbolic of their rejection of a concept of femininity that violated the idealized woman of their era. However, a mythic theme of the conquered populace was sacrifice and survival. This found expression in the legendary tale of an image of the mother of the sacrificed Jesus appearing on the cloak of an Indian laborer. The priests used this so-called “miraculous” occurrence as an instrument of conversion. But even in contemporary times, the “Virgin of Guadalupe” is commonly referred to as Tonantzin, an Earth goddess (Paz, 1990, p. 37).
The Coatlicue myth is especially pertinent in the 21st century. Using the United States as an example, Kathleen Fine-Dare (2018), Melinda Gates (2018), and others have described how far women have come yet how far they deserve to go. Women’s talents and ambitions are still met with hostility in many quarters. Women have made impressive gains in many areas, yet many of those who were sexually abused in the workplace felt too intimidated to complain until the second decade of the century, as attested to by the #Me Too movement. But then, like Coatlicue, Kali, Demeter, and similar mythological figures, they lashed out against their oppressors. Demeter’s angry outburst against Zeus, the supreme deity, can be likened to women who made public accusations against omnipotent male executives who never thought their prerogatives would be called into question. Coatlicue shifted from a pious temple priestess to a vengeful warrior; Demeter morphed from a gentle mother to an aggressive protestor; many contemporary women who were sexually violated transformed from powerless victims to instigators of lawsuits (Carbonell, 1999; Franco, 2004; Rivers Norton, 2016).

Indeed, times have changed. Women and their status have transformed in much of the world and are still transforming in the rest. By reviving the Divine Feminizer’s righteous fury and incorporating it into their lives, and by using the symbols emerging from art, dreams, and mythology, humans can become reconciled with the turbulent, ever-changing cosmos that, for better or for worse, is their home.

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The preparation of this essay was supported by the Saybrook University Chair for the Study of Consciousness.

Stanley Krippner, PhD, is a professor of psychology at Saybrook University, in Oakland, California. He is a Fellow in five APA divisions, and the past-president of two divisions (30 and 32). Formerly, he was director of the Maimonides Medical Center Dream Research Laboratory, in Brooklyn, New York. Krippner is a pioneer in the study of consciousness, having conducted research for over 50 years in the areas of dreams, hypnosis, shamanism, and dissociation, often from a cross-cultural perspective, and with an emphasis on anomalous phenomena that seem to question mainstream paradigms. He is co-editor of The Shamanic Powers of Rolling Thunder (Bear/Inner Traditions, 2016), Working with Dreams and PTSD Nightmares(Praeger, 2016), Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence, 2nd ed. (APA, 2014), Mysterious Minds (Praeger, 2010), and Debating Psychic Experience (Praeger, 2010); and co-author of Demystifying Shamans and Their World (Imprint Academic, 2011), Perchance to Dream (Nova Science, 2009), Extraordinary Dreams and How to Work with Them (SUNY, 2002), and many other books. He has written over 1200 scholarly articles, chapters, papers, and publications.​

Stanley has conducted workshops and seminars on dreams and/or hypnosis in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Cyprus, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, Panama, the Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Venezuela, and at the last four congresses of the Interamerican Psychological Association. He is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Indian Psychology and Revista Argentina de Psicologia Paranormal, and the advisory board for International School for Psychotherapy, Counseling, and Group Leadership (St. Petersburg) and the Czech Unitaria (Prague). He holds faculty appointments at the Universidade Holistica Internacional (Brasilia) and the Instituto de Medicina y Tecnologia Avanzada de la Conducta (Ciudad Juarez). He has given invited addresses for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, and the School for Diplomatic Studies, Montevideo, Uruguay. He is a Fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and has published cross-cultural studies on spiritual content in dreams.

Dr. Krippner has long been a part of Coreopsis Journal as a peer reviewer and a mentor the staff and editors. He was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Ritual Arts in early 2019 and will be the keynote speaker. For further information, please go here: http://societyforritualarts.com/home/society-gatherings-and-events-for-201718/