Xōchipilli

() is the god of beauty, youth, love, passion, sex, sexuality, fertility, arts, song, music, dance, painting, writing, games, playfulness, nature, vegetation and flowers in Aztec mythology. His name contains the Nahuatl words ('flower') and (either 'prince' or 'child') and hence means 'flower prince'.

Associations As the patron of writing and painting, he was called ('Seven-flower'), but he could also be referred to as ('Five-flower'). He was the patron of the game patolli. He is frequently paired with Xōchiquetzal, who is seen as his female counterpart. has also been interpreted as the patron of both psychedelie and nature, a role possibly resulting from his being absorbed from the Toltec civilization. Diaz del Castillo, Bernal. The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Library Reprints, 2008. ISBN 1-4227-8345-6; Trexler, Richard C. Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas. Paperback ed. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8014-8482-0; Keen, Benjamin. The Aztec Image in Western Thought. Paperback ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8135-1572-6; Idell, Albert. The Bernal Diaz Chronicles. New York: Doubleday, 1956. Mendelssohn, Kurt. Riddle of the Pyramids. Paperback ed. New York: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 1986. ISBN 0-500-27388-X; Estrada, Gabriel S. "An Aztec Two-Spirit Cosmology: Re-sounding Nahuatl Masculinities, Elders, Femininities, and Youth." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 24:2 & 3 (2003).Taylor, Clark L. "Legends, Syncretism, and Continuing Echoes of Homosexuality from Pre-Columbian and Colonial Mexico." In Male Homosexuality in Central and South America. Paperback ed. Stephen O. Murray, ed. San Francisco: Instituto Obregon, 1987. ISBN 0-942777-58-1

He, among other gods, is depicted wearing a talisman known as an , which was a teardrop-shaped pendant crafted out of mother-of-pearl.

Statue

In the mid-19th century, a 16th-century Aztec statue of Xōchipilli was unearthed on the side of the volcano Popocatépetl near Tlalmanalco. The statue is of a single figure seated upon a temple-like base. Both the statue and the base upon which it sits are covered in carvings of sacred and psychoactive organisms including mushrooms (Psilocybe aztecorum), tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum), (Turbina corymbosa), (Heimia salicifolia), possibly (Quararibea funebris), and one unidentified flower. Laurette Séjourné has written:

The figure himself sits on the base, head tilted up, eyes open, jaw tensed, with his mouth half open and his arms opened to the heavens. The statue is currently housed in the Aztec hall of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.

Entheogen connection

Robert Gordon Wasson, Richard Evans Schultes, and Albert Hofmann suggest that the statue of Xōchipilli represents a figure in the throes of entheogenic ecstasy. The position and expression of the body, in combination with the very clear representations of hallucinogenic plants which are known to have been used in sacred contexts by the Aztec support this interpretation. The statue appears to have hugely dilated pupils, suggesting an effect of hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Wasson says that in the statue's depiction Xōchipilli "is absorbed by , 'dream flowers', as the Nahua say describing the awesome experience that follows the ingestion of an entheogen. I can think of nothing like it in the long and rich history of European art: Xōchipilli absorbed in .

Xōchipilli

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