Xipe Totec The Flayed Lord
Xipe Totec The Lord of Spring
Xipe Totec layed sleeping beneath the earth. In the year of One Rabbit there was a great famine. The cries of people dying of starvation awoke Xipe Totec from his slumber. He caused a great tree to grow and climbed up it. With his sacrificial knife he cut off his own skin and dropped it down to the earth. The land grew lush greenery and maize for the food deprived people. Without Xipe Totec's skin to hold his body together his body fell apart down to the flat land creating the valleys and mountains of Mexico.
Xipe is depicted wearing the skin of a flayed man. The skin's face appears as a mask over his own and the hands of the flayed skin hang from his wrists. He holds the sacrificial knife that was used to flay his own skin in one hand and a staff of rattles in the other. The gentle rattle sounds announce the coming of the rain.
In pre-Hispanic Mexico Xipe Totec was worshipped in a ceremony called Tlacaxipehualiztli, which means “to wear the skin of the flayed one” in the indigenous Nahuatl language. Sacrificial victims, usually prisoners of war, were killed either through gladiator combat matches or by being shot with arrows, before being flayed to glorify Xipe Totec. Their skins were later buried at the foot of his altars.
Xipe Totec is referred to as the God of Corn. Every year he sheds his skin to reveal true life when the corn is reborn. Peeling off the husk of the corn is related to Xipe shedding his skin. On a deeper level he isn't just the "God of Corn" but is the corn itself. He sacrificed himself so we could take him into our own bodies for nourishment and to give life for our existence.
Xipe Totec goes by many names, "The Flayed Lord" or "The Bearer of Skin". He is known for the changing of the seasons. Although in Mexico there are only two seasons, the dry winter when the corn dies and the rainy summer when the corn returns. Xipe Totec is the earth in the dry season which appears dead, like the skin he wears. The man wearing the skin underneath is alive, full of seeds waiting to grow a new skin with the coming of the rain.
Xipe also goes by:
The Flayed Lord
The Bearer of Skin
God of Corn
God of Vegetation
Lord of Spring
Bearer of Golden Skin
Corn Deity
Xipe Totec Symbols:
Flayed Skin
Staff of Rattles
Feathers
Xipe Represents:
Earth ❇️ Rebirth ❇️ Fertility ❇️ Spring ❇️ Change of Seasons ❇️ Duality of Life & Death
Sources: Corazon Mexica Archeology
📷: Mexicolore.co.uk