Skirts and Scorpions: Female Power and Poisonous Creatures

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the Tratado de supersticiones (1626) Hernando Ruíz de Alarcón documented invocations and prayers to pre-Hispanic divinities to assure a good catch/hunt or to protect against poisonous/painful bites/stings. This confirmed that these divinities remained important the local consciousness even 100 years after the arrival of Europeans. Ruíz de Alarcón included an intriguing account about the creation of the scorpion in this collection. In this legend three female Aztec divinities Citlalicue (Star-her-skirt), Chalchihuitlicue (Jade-her-skirt) and Xochiquetzal (Flower-quetzal) interacted with a warrior-priest, Yappan, who was serving penance to improve his military prowess. As a result of contact with the divinities, Yappan was transformed into a deadly scorpion; however, one of the divinities interceded to lessen the power of the poison. Ruíz de Alarcón documented that the common practice for curing scorpion stings was to tie off the afflicted body part, to cover the victim with a huipil, and to invoke the divinities for healing. This study will examine the associations between these three divinities and images of scorpions and other poisonous creatures from Post-Classic and colonial sources.  

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23011