Chalchiuhtlicue- Aztec GodDeity"She of the Jade Skirt"

The Jade Skirt

In the codices, streams pour from Chalchiuhtlicue's garments carrying fish and jade beads and tiny human figures swept along by the current. Her jade-green skirt is the color of living water. While her consort Tlaloc commands the rain from the mountain peaks where he stores it in great vessels, Chalchiuhtlicue rules what happens once that rain touches the ground: every river that carves a valley, every lake that sustains a city.

The Florentine Codex names Huixtocihuatl, goddess of salt and the sea, as her elder sister. Between them they divided the world's waters: fresh and salt, sweet and bitter. Together with Tlaloc, Chalchiuhtlicue shared sovereignty over Tlalocan, the paradise of the water dead, a place of eternal springtime where those chosen by drowning or lightning dwelt among flowers and sweet water forever.

The Fourth Sun

Chalchiuhtlicue ruled the Fourth Sun, Nahui Atl, "Four Water." She took her place after the Third Sun ended in a catastrophic rain of fire. For 676 years humanity flourished under her reign, the rivers running clear, the lakes full of fish.

But no sun lasts forever. Tezcatlipoca struck her from the sky. Chalchiuhtlicue wept, and her tears were not the tears of a woman. They fell as rain without end, rising as floods that swallowed villages, then cities, then the mountains themselves. Springs burst from below. Rivers overflowed their banks. The earth dissolved into the waters she commanded. For fifty-two years the waters climbed until nothing remained above the surface.

The people of that age were transformed into fish so they would not be annihilated entirely. Their lives survived in altered form. From this destruction the gods would kindle the Fifth Sun at Teotihuacan.

The First Bath

When a child was born in Aztec society, the midwife prepared the first bath, a ritual that placed the infant under the water goddess's protection. As she bathed the child, the midwife spoke directly to the water: "May this water wash away all ill, for the water is our mother, Chalchiuhtlicue." She addressed the infant too, explaining that the water would purify and strengthen it for the life ahead. Every Aztec who had ever lived had been touched by Chalchiuhtlicue's hands before they were an hour old.

The Whirlpool

Fishermen and boatmen prayed to Chalchiuhtlicue before every journey across the lakes of the Valley of Mexico. A whirlpool could seize a canoe at any moment, and whirlpools were the goddess herself, pulling the unwary down into her underwater domain. Those who drowned did not make the dark journey to Mictlan. They were claimed for Tlalocan. To die by water was to be chosen.

Etzalcualiztli

Chalchiuhtlicue was honored during Etzalcualiztli, a festival held in the sixth month of the Aztec calendar when the rains were needed most. For four days the priests fasted and drew blood from their ears and limbs with maguey spines. They waded into lakes and marshes to gather tule reeds and water plants, weaving them into ceremonial mats and garments for use in the temple. Anyone who disturbed the priests during their gathering faced severe punishment.

The etzalli, a thick porridge of maize and beans that gave the festival its name, was prepared in vast quantities and shared throughout the city. At the festival's climax, a woman dressed as the goddess and adorned with her jade ornaments was sacrificed atop the temple, her death an offering to ensure that the rivers would run and the springs would flow.

The City on the Lake

Tenochtitlan was Chalchiuhtlicue's city. Built on an island in Lake Texcoco, connected to the mainland by causeways, the Aztec capital existed within the waters she governed. The chinampas, floating gardens where farmers grew maize and beans on rafts of woven vegetation, floated in her domain. Aqueducts carried fresh spring water from Chapultepec across the lake to the city, and every drop passed under her blessing. When the sun rose over the lake and gilded the water around the pyramids and palaces, the city gleamed on the surface of her jade-green skirt.