Xipe Totec: The Flayed Skin God

Xipe Totec is a vampire demonic being and god from the Aztec lore and mythology. His other names are “Our lord, the flayed one,” “Our lord with the flayed skin,” Tlatlauhea, Tlatlauhqui, Tezcatlipoca, “night drinker.”

Appearances:

In statues and codices from Aztec cultures, Xipe Totec is shown wearing flayed human skin with the hands of the skin loosely hanging from his wrists. His body is tanned on one side with the other side painted yellow while his legs, hands, lips, and neck are occasionally painted red. His mouth is open, eyes not seen and ears perforated. This form may bear cryptic meanings of some sort.

Abilities:

• As a god of agriculture, he causes crops to grow readily and abundantly for farmers.
• Xipe Totec aids warriors in fighting their enemies.
• As a god associated with plague and other bodily afflictions, he causes and cures ailments like smallpox, eye sickness, blisters, inflammation, pimples and plague.
• As a vampire demon, he sucks the blood of souls of the dead who drop off to sleep in the underworld instead of serving the punishment given to them to do.
• As a trickster, he can manipulate people to do what he desires.

 About:

Xipe Totec is the Aztec god of spring, the patron god of seed and planting, patron god of metal worker (including gemstone carvers and goldsmiths), the god of agriculture and even the patron of the eagle. He bears a rattle staff and a pointed cap. This is also a witness to his role and status as a war god.

Origin:

His true origin is unknown but there are suggestions that he is from the Olmec ancient god called Vi, from the Yope civilization of the South Highlands of Guerrero.

Xipe Totec is well known for his flayed skin, and it is believed that he flayed his own skin to feed all of mankind. The removal of his skin symbolizes rebirth or renewal just as a snake sheds its skin to become anew or the loss of the outer skin of a maize seed before it’s growth.

An Aztec art depicts Xipe Totec holding a yellow shield and carrying a container full of seed. Another depicts him as a man standing on a small pedestal while another shows a man with vertical stripes running down from his forehead to his chin and through his eyes.

According to the Mesoamerican Lore, Xipe Totec is the son of Ometeotl, an ancient androgynous divine being. The Aztecs even say that Xipe Totec is the brother to a trinity of major gods who are Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli, and Quetzacoatl. He is the god of death, and those who want to be free from all sorts of bodily afflictions give offerings to him.

Worshipping Xipe Totec

The worship of this spirit involves a human sacrifice in a ritual of flaying human skin called Tlacazipehualizli. This was practiced on the second ritual month of the Aztec year and involved the killing of people through the removal of their hearts.

The bodies were flayed, and the skins dyed yellow to make Teocuitlaquemitl. Another inhumane form of this sacrifice had the priest fasten the unfortunate souls to a frame and have them shot with arrows for their blood to drip down like the “fertile springs rains.”

Xipe Totec is called the “night drinker” because he feeds heavily on the blood of the souls of people who go to rest or who fall asleep while serving their punishment in the underworld. He sacrifices prisoners gotten from war and can trick people into doing things that are detrimental.

There’s a popular story from the lore where Xipe Totec manipulated the inhabitants of a village to believe that their sins had become a monster who was living outside the village. He convinced them to bind the monster (which was obviously not real) and cast it over a cliff. The villagers obeyed him and went to the cliff to see the monster, and suddenly they fell off the cliff to their painful deaths.

The Tlacaxipehualiztli festival for the Aztecs was one which was not void of fun and gruesome entertainment hence the emergence of a secondary activity made to “spice up the festive activities.” This second event in the Tlacazipehualiztli was known as the Tlahuahuanaliztli gladiator contest.

Like it’s original-mother-festival, it was all shades of inhumane and involved the displaying of prisoners of war on a stone platform with a circular shape popularly known as a Temalacatl. Like all gladiator contest, the Tlahuahuanaliztli was a complete activity which featured manslaughter and brutality to its fullest.

These captives were forced to fight the Eagle and Jaguar warriors of the village. The gladiator match was a sure loss for the captives who fought with bound hands while the warriors carried hardwood sword which had a sharp razor obsidian edge; this weapon is called a Macuauhuitl.

The Tlacaxipehualiztli or the “snake festival” was held on every spring during the third month. Before the festival, an individual is dressed in sparkling golden jewels and bright red spoonbill feathers to look like Xipe Tote. He is asked to walk around for forty days and will be sacrificed promptly on the day of the festival at dawn along with others who were dressed as the eight gods like Quetzalcóatl himself. Their skins would be removed from their bodies, dyed yellow and given to the priests as clothing.