X: Xelhua to Xochiquetzal 297
Xochiquetzal
The Aztec mother of mankind after the Fourth Sun, or Age, when a former
humanity was exterminated by the Great Flood. She was said to have been its only
survivor, together with a mortal man, Coxcoxtic, with whom they repopulated the
world. Their offspring were born without any capacity for speech, however, so
Xochiquetzal called down the birds of the sky to lend their voices to her mute
children. Her sons and daughters eventually grew up to wander all over the world,
a myth that was used to explain the different languages of mankind.
Her sacred flower, the marigold, was a souvenir of the solar worship that
mankind observed before the Deluge. In this, she suggests the antediluvian Golden
Age mentioned by the Greek mythologist Hesiod. The Atlantean deification of
the sun that Hesiod describes is the same veneration found in the Aztec myth of
Xochiquetzal. Her name means “Feather Flower,” and she was believed to have
preserved some pre-Flood dances, music, and crafts, so that they might be restored
in Mesoamerican culture. If so, then some Aztec performing arts may have been
handed down directly from their Atlantean forebears.
(See Coxcoxtic)At the southern tip of Isla Mujeres, off the coast of Yucatan, stands a shrine
to Ixchel, the Mayas’ flood heroine.