Cihuacoatl

Cihuacóatl, National Anthropology Museum.

Cihuacóatl (from Nahuatl: Siwakoatl 'female serpent''being siwatl, 'woman'; and koatl —or kowatl—, 'snake') or Ciuhcóatl in Mexica mythology is the collector of souls who, in the same way, is considered the protector of women who died while giving birth. The term was also used in Aztec society to refer to the head of the armies, this position was the second in importance in the political structure of the Mexica Empire, similar to that of a prime minister.

She was also called Quilaztli, Yaocíhuatl (warrior woman and lover of warriors), Tonantzin (our mother) and Huitzilnicuatec (hummingbird head). She is related to the northern tribes. She is described as a mature woman with her face painted half red and half black, on her head she wears a crown of eagle feathers, dressed in a red blouse and a white skirt with snails. In her right hand she carries a weaving tool and in her left hand a shield that matches her crown. According to Aztec mythology, this warrior entity gave her victory over her enemies. On the other hand, it is supposed that she was the one who ground the bones that Quetzalcóatl brought from Mictlán to create humanity.

Etymology, meaning and metaphorical senses of the word cihuacoátl

Etymology

In Rémi Simeon's dictionary it appears as "snake woman", however it would be more appropriate to translate it simply as "snake" or "female snake". The preposition of the noun cihuatl indicates that it refers to a female snake. If we wanted to express the idea of "half woman and half snake", the word would be cihua tlacacohuatl.

Sometimes words don't mean exactly what their etymology suggests. For example, the Spanish word mass means offering (of bread and wine), sacrifice or ceremony, something far removed from what its etymology suggests. Probably, the word mass derives from the Latin missa which means dismissal. It corresponds to the phrase that ended the celebration of the Euxarist in the Latin Roman rite of the Catholic Church ite, missa est with which the community was dismissed.

Meaning

From the word cohuatl

Coin Shield, official medals, stamps, official paper and similar

We have to go to the national coat of arms of Mexico to find out what the Nahua word cihuacoatl means. Collect the legend of the founding of Mexico City, which stands where the eagle captures a snake on a nopal.

Scholars tend to emphasize that the eagle represents the sun, the main deity of the Mexicans, and especially the God Huitzilopochtli, considered God of war. It is rarely mentioned that the serpent represents the captives.

The Nahuatl word coatl means in Spanish captive or subjugated. And we find it with such meaning in Bernardino de Sahagún, when he offers a list of the buildings of the great temple of Mexico, referring to the fourteenth building called cohuacalco': «it was a grated room, like a prison: in it they had locked up, all the gods of the peoples, which they had taken for war: they had them there as captives".

From the word cihuatl

The word cihuatl means woman in Spanish, but also consort. In this last meaning it is equivalent to the words companion, partner or partner and has no gender connotations.

Metaphorical meanings

The word cihuacoatl refers to the Goddess Tonantzin

Bernardino de Sahagún says of her that "at night, bozcava, and bramava, in the air".

Like the captives, it would yell, yell, yell, and equally hiss, howl, or bellow at night. It is easy to suppose that this is why they gave her the epithet the captive.

The goddess was depicted in writing as a serpent woman. The Mexica used pictograms in writing. We must not jump to the wrong conclusion that she was a half-woman, half-serpent being.

The word cihuacoatl as military chief

For example, and thinking of the God Quetzalcóatl, whose most popular translation is feathered serpent, refers to Venus (planet) and means precious twin, according to Alfonso Caso, because he believes it to be a twin star (it is of itself, as it appears in the firmament at two different times, as the Morning Star and as the Evening Star).

Similarly, the term cihuacoatl was the consort twin. It probably accompanied or replaced the tlacateuctli in military campaigns.

The tlacateuctli was the living God, the emperor. The Mexicans had a theocratic political system. Pre-Hispanic Mexico was a theocracy. We have said above that in the coacalco they locked up the gods of the towns they had taken as captives.

Speech of the story

The four priests waited expectantly, their lively little eyes went from the starry sky where the great white moon ruled, to the Argentine mirror of Lake Texcoco, where the flocks of silent ducks descended in search of the fat axolotls. Then they compared the movement of the stellar constellations to determine the time, with their deep knowledge of astronomy. Suddenly the scream broke out. It was a pitiful, hurtful, overwhelming scream. A sharp sound as if escaping from the throat of a woman in agony. The cry spread over the water, bouncing off the mountains and curling up on the rafters and the slopes of the temples, rebounding off the Great Teocali dedicated to the God Huitzilopochtli, who began building Tizoc in 1481 and finished it Ahuízotl in 1502 if the Ancient chronicles have been well interpreted and it seemed to remain floating in the marvelous palace of the then emperor Moctezuma Xocoyótzin.

―It's Cihuacoatl! exclaimed the oldest of the four priests who awaited the portent.

―The creature has come out of the waters and come down from the mountain to warn us again,‖ added the other interrogator of the stars and the night.

They climbed to the highest place in the temple and could see to the east a white figure, with hair combed in such a way that it seemed to have two small ergots on its forehead, dragging or floating a tail of fabric so vaporous that it played with the cool of the full moon night. When the cry had faded and its echoes were lost in the distance, in the direction of the Texcocan manor everything remained silent, ominous shadows fled towards the waters until the fear was broken by something that the priests first and then Fray Bernardino de Sahagún interpreted in this way:

―My children, beloved children of Anahuac, your destruction is near.

Another string of equally painful and moving laments came, to say, when it was already moving away towards the hill that covered the foothills of the mountains:

―Where will they go, where can I take them to escape such a fateful fate? My children, you are about to be lost.

Upon hearing these words that the augurs verified later, the four priests agreed that that ghostly apparition that filled the people of great Tenochtitlán with terror, was the goddess Cihuacóatl herself, the protective deity of the race, that good mother who had inherited the gods to finally deposit her power and wisdom in Tilpotoncátzin at that time holder of her priestly dignity. Emperor Moctezuma Xocoyótzin tweaked his sparse mustache that seemed to be slipping from the corner of his lips, smoothed his beard with its sparse and graying hairs with one hand, and fixed his lively but shy little eyes on the old codex drawn on the dark surface of amatl and that it was kept in the archives of the empire perhaps since the times of Itzcóatl and Tlacaelel. The Emperor Moctezuma, like all those who are not initiated into the knowledge of hieratic writing, only looked at the multicolored codices in astonishment, until the priests, after bowing, interpreted what was written there.

―Sir,‖ they told him, ―these old annuals tell us that the Goddess Cihuacoatl will appear according to the sixth prognosis of the doomsayers, to announce the destruction of your empire.

Wise men, wiser and older than us, say here that strange men will come from the East and will subjugate your people and yourself, and you and yours will be in much weeping and great pain and that your race will disappear, devoured and our gods humiliated by other more powerful gods.

―Gods more powerful than our god Huitzilopochtli, and than the great destroyer Tezcatlipoca, and than our formidable gods of war and blood? Moctezuma asked, lowering his head with fear and humility.

―So say the wise men and the priests wiser and older than we are, sir. That is why the goddess Cihuacóatl wanders through the Anahuac crying and dragging sorrows, shouting for those who know how to hear to hear, the misfortunes that will soon come to your empire.

Moctezuma remained silent and thoughtful, sunk in his great throne of alabaster and emeralds; then the four priests once again folded the astonishing codices and also withdrew in silence, to go and deposit again in the imperial archives, what the wisest and oldest had written. That is why since the times of Chimalpopoca, Itzcóatl, Moctezuma, Ilhuicamina, Axayácatl, Tizoc and Ahuízotl, the ghostly augur wandered among the lakes and temples of Anahuac, proclaiming what was going to happen to the then powerful and overwhelming race. When the Spanish arrived and the conquest began, according to the chroniclers of the time, a woman also dressed in white and with the black mane of her hair fluttering in the night wind, appeared to the southwest of the capital of New Spain and heading east, he crossed streets and squares as if driven by the wind, stopping before the crosses, temples and cemeteries and the images illuminated by votive lamps in stone ornacinas, to launch that pitiful cry that wounded the soul.

―Oh, my children, oh, oh!

The lament was repeated as many times as there were hours in the night, the dawn in which the lady in flowing garments playing in the wind, stopped in the Plaza Mayor and, looking towards the Cathedral, murmured a long and sorrowful prayer, to get up again, launch his lament again and disappear over the lake, which then reached the leaks of the City and near the plan.

There was never a brave person who dared to question her and everyone agreed that she was a wandering ghost that suffered from an unhappy love affair, bifurcating into a thousand stories the reasons for this apparition that moved to colonial times. The romantics said that she was a poor deceived woman, others that an abandoned lover with children, they had embroidered the well-known plot of a nobleman who deceives and abandons a beautiful woman without lineage. The truth is that since then she was baptized as La Llorona, due to the heartbreaking lament that she launched through the streets of the Capital of New Spain and that for many illustrious people constituted the greatest street fear, since all the people avoided leaving their homes and much less walking through the shadowy colonial streets when the curfew had already been given. Many fearful people went crazy and never forgot the horrible vision of La Llorona. Men and women "flew from the waters," and hundreds upon hundreds became sick with terror.

Little by little and over the years, the legend of La Llorona, renamed with other names, depending on the region where it was claimed she was seen, took on other nationalities and her presence was detected in the south of our unusual America where it is assured that it still appears ghostly, sheathed in its vaporous suit, launching its terrifying scream into the air, fording rivers, crossing streams, climbing hills and wandering over peaks and mountains.

This being is considered to be the first to give birth. He helped Quetzalcóatl to build the present age of humanity, grinding up bones from previous ages and mixing them with blood. She is the mother of Mixcóatl, whom she abandoned at a crossroads. Tradition has it that she returns frequently to mourn her lost son, but she only finds a sacrificial knife. She ruled over the Cihuateteo, the place where noble women who had died during childbirth perished. She also says the legend that she arose in a ghostly way to warn about the destruction of Moctezuma's empire, later taking the popular name of La Llorona, her aspect is that of Ilamatecuhtli, Toci and Tlazolteotl and she obtains the title of vice regent of Tenochtitlan.