Tōnacācihuātl
Template:Short description Template:Infobox deity In Aztec mythology, Template:Lang (Template:IPA) was a creator and goddess of fertility, worshiped for peopling the earth and making it fruitful.Template:Sfn Most Colonial-era manuscripts equate her with Template:Lang.Template:Sfn Template:Lang was the consort of Template:Lang.Template:Sfn She is also referred to as Ilhuicacihuātl or "Heavenly Lady."Template:Sfn
Tonacacihuatl is depicted in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis.<ref name="tonaca">Template:Cite book</ref>
Etymology
[edit]The god's name is a compound of two Nahuatl words: Template:Lang and Template:Lang.Template:Sfn While Template:Lang can be translated "woman" or "lady", Template:Lang presents several possible interpretations. Some read this root as Template:Lang (without the long 'o'), consisting of Template:Lang, meaning "human flesh" or "food", with the possessive prefix Template:Lang ("our"). By this etymology, Template:Lang would mean "Lady of Our Food" or "Lady of Our Flesh", most commonly rendered "Lady of Our Sustenance."Template:Sfn The word Template:Lang simply means "abundance", giving Template:Lang the alternate reading "Lady of Abundance."Template:Sfn
Origin and role
[edit]Template:Lang was the Central Mexican form of the creator goddess common to Mesoamerican religions.Template:Sfn According to the Codex Ríos, the History of the Mexicans as Told by Their Paintings, the Template:Lang, and the Florentine Codex, Template:Lang and her counterpart Template:Lang resided in Template:Lang, the 13th, highest heaven, from which human souls descended to earth.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Template:Lang is associated with procreation, appearing in pre-Columbian art near copulating humans. In the Florentine Codex, Template:Lang relates that Aztec midwives would tell newborns after bathing them, "You were created in the place of duality, the place above the nine heavens. Your mother and father—Template:Lang and Template:Lang, the heavenly lady—formed you, created you."Template:Sfn
In 1629, Template:Lang also reported the use of the goddess's name in ritual planting prayers, in which a seed of corn is entrusted to the earth deity Template:Lang by a shaman who calls the kernel Template:Lang ("my sister, the Lady of Abundance").Template:Sfn
In the Codex Chimalpopoca, Template:Lang and Template:Lang are listed as one of several pairs of gods to whom Quetzalcoatl prays.Template:Sfn
Nauhtzonteteo
[edit]Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, or Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacihuatl govern the divine nature divided into two gods (it is convenient to know man and woman; the man, who created and governed everything that is of the masculine gender and the woman everything that belonged to the feminine gender). Omecihuatl, for her part, gave birth to many children on the Thirteen Heavens with Ometecuhtli, and after all these births she had given birth to a flint, which in their language they call tecpatl, from which the other gods were amazed and frightened, their children agreed to throw it out of the heavens to the said flint, and thus they put into action, and that it fell in a certain part of the earth, called Chicomoztoc, which means 'Seven Caves', and that then one thousand and six hundred gods and goddesses came out of it, the Nauhtzonteteo that spread over the face of the earth, the sea, the underworld, and the heavens.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>