Xolotl was the dog god of the Mexica people, commonly known as the Aztecs. He is represented in codices, statuary, and other extant examples of Aztec art as a dog or a god with the head of a dog. While this figure might seem obscure, his name and role echo into the present day through a critically endangered amphibian, a scruffy but loyal companion on an adventure to the afterlife, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, a breed of hairless dog.
Etymology & Associations
The name Xolotl comes from the Nahuatl language and is pronounced “SHOH-lot”, with the emphasis on the penultimate syllable as is usual with words in Nahuatl. Xolochaui, another word in the Nahuatl language, means “to wrinkle or double over,” and Xolotl himself is often depicted in art with deep grooves in the skin of his face.
His name was synonymous with the Nahuatl term for twin, xolotl, and appeared in the word for the double maguey, mexolotl, a plant that had a number of uses in Aztec culture, including bloodletting rituals, the creation of fibrous rope, and the brewing of pulque.
While twins were generally seen as a bad omen and viewed with trepidation in the Aztec civilization, Xolotl was the patron god of twins and individuals with physical abnormalities, which were a subject of fascination in Mesoamerican cultures. “In Olmec art representations of dwarves and hunchbacks abound. Rather than being objects of derision, these individuals are often portrayed with great supernatural powers” (Miller & Taube, 75). According to one source, individuals with physical abnormalities were referred to as xolome. Indeed, xolotl is also the Nahuatl name for courtly pages. These pages were often individuals with physical abnormalities, some of whom, like those in the court of Motecuhzoma II (commonly known as Montezuma), entertained the tlatoani and sometimes advised him on matters pertaining to Aztec religion and government. Likely referencing Xolotl, two-headed dogs and figures with hunched backs and dwarfism appear frequently in the Protoclassical ceramic art of West Mexico.
Psychopomp & Companion to Quetzalcoatl
While dogs were primarily bred in Mesoamerica for use as food and were considered by the Aztecs to be unclean and unvirtuous creatures, they were also regarded as companions and guides to their masters in death. As Miller and Taube note, “In both Aztec and Maya belief, dogs, perhaps embodying the role of Xolotl, guided their masters into the Underworld after death and were of particular use in crossing bodies of water” (80).
As the canine companion to the powerful god Quetzalcoatl, also known as Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl in his manifestation as a wind god, Xolotl is depicted in art wearing the wind god’s emblematic conch shell pectoral, which was known in Nahuatl as ehecailacacozcatl, “wind jewel.” Through this relationship, Xolotl was associated with the evening star, mirroring Quetzalcoatl’s identification with the morning star under which role he was called Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, “Lord of the Dawn.” According to Manuel Aguilar-Moreno in his book Handbook to Life in the Aztec World, Xolotl accompanied Quetzalcoatl on his mission to retrieve bones from the underworld in order to create humanity, a role consistent with his canine nature in the Mesoamerican imagination.
Creation of the Fifth Sun
Xolotl also appears as a reluctant sacrifice in the Aztec myth of the creation of the fifth sun. After the destruction of the four preceding suns, the gods come together at Teotihuacan to witness a sacrifice that will create a new sun and moon. This fifth sun – Nahui Ollin, meaning 4 Motion – and its moon are born from the sacrifice of two gods, Nanahuatzin and Tecciztecatl, respectively. But even after the sun and moon are created, the gods find that they will not move without further sacrifice, at which point they begin to line up to give their lives to the cause. Aguilar-Moreno writes, “While both celestial bodies had appeared, neither moved. Understanding this as a sign of their fate, the gods freely accepted death, sacrificing themselves…and offering their own blood, or chalchiuatl (precious water) to generate movement of the Sun” (Aguilar-Moreno 2006, 161)
Whether in the form of a Pokémon, psychopomp, or puppy, Xolotl has left a small legacy in the modern world, providing an opportunity for those aware of his unique history to look into the living likeness of an Aztec god.
- 🐻Link to all Hexbear comms https://hexbear.net/post/1403966
- 📀 Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube](https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies
- 🔥 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread https://hexbear.net/post/6148937
- ⚔ Come talk in the New Weekly PoC thread https://hexbear.net/post/6145795
- 🏳️⚧️ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the New Weekly Trans thread https://hexbear.net/post/6210835
- 👊 New Weekly Improvement thread https://hexbear.net/post/6206988
- 🧡 Disabled comm megathread https://hexbear.net/post/6211093
- ☕ Parenting Chat https://hexbear.net/post/6207612
- 🐉 Anime & Manga discussion thread https://hexbear.net/post/6011723
reminders:
- 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
- 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
- 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
- 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
Theory:
they think china isn’t socialist because they have iphones
i think china isn’t socialist because they show 0 solidarity with oppressed people around the world
Oh fuck, Maru the Japanese cat died.
RIP to a real one
in the book Patrick Bateman meets Tom Cruise in an elevator (Cruise owns the penthouse of Bateman’s building) and it makes obvious that Bateman is a massively uncool, anxious dork.
Whenever there’s American college media I’m always freaked out because none of these people are ever fucking studying. Everyone has so much free time.
The autumn feeling. We love
AI is a fun toy right. I know the consensus is AI is bad but I dunno. However I am in class and we are doing a group thing and my entire group appart from me immediately got their chat gpt and are comparing notes this feels extremely bad
the masculine urge to
a CEO just to see how i’d be portrayed by the news mediaIt’s done.
The vegans at this school don’t even know how hard i work for them. This recipe was just like “toss some tofu in some seasoning and serve cold” and im like nah i marinated it in diluted soy sauce with a vegan chicken stock, fried it, then tossed it in the seasoning, then drizzled a red pepper coulis and garnished with parsley
Then the fried okra they’ve been using turns out to not be vegan and i find out 40 minutes before we open so thankfully I had some cut okra from last week, I whipped up a vegan tempura batter and fried it in that. The sous and executive chef were just like “shhhhh just don’t tell them it’s not vegan” lol
Silksong seems to really de-emphasize the search-action genre staple of the game showing you a hundred doors that open with a key ability you get later, both visually and design-wise. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, like “that’s just what the genre is”, but it does not need them at all, and it kind of makes other games in the genre feel cheap in comparison.
New J-horror film Best Wishes to All was awesome, my exact favorite flavor of horror. Vague and underexplained enough that it taps into the nightmare-unknowable, but with enough underlying logic hinted at that it’s not totally lost in the vagueness and you can find potential literal explanations. Has clear value as a metaphor & as social commentary but doesn’t bludgeon you with it to the point it loses depth or a feeling of realness (e.g. the Babadook = grief and the resentment born from grief, not much more to look at there(I should note I do mostly like that movie)). Also the right combo of ethereal atmosphere and genuinely grisly visceral horror beats (Hereditary scratches a similar itch tone and atmosphere-wise).
This and Red Rooms r my favorite new-to-me horror movies i’ve seen this year (the latter arguably more psych thriller, but to me it goes to ghastly enough places i’d call it psychological horror-drama (ah who cares genre is semi-fake)). Oh I also vibed with Weapons though that was more of a really well done fun spooky romp, with a bit of deeper substance and something to say that you can kind of choose to engage with or not.
There should be a room where I can just sit there staring at a wall for hours on end not being perceived
Got a rejection email or something not a “we found someone better” but a “this position on hold” a first with companies not even sure if they can employ people it’s very ugh what’s the point in trying to participate if the very few jobs out there are being frozen anyway
I’m sure someone much smarter than me has observed this phenomenon, but has anyone noticed “lumpenization” of the working class?
By employers keeping small keeping every last opportunity to themselves and pushing more and more people to the ‘lumpenproletariat’ condition, they not only destroy any hope of proletariats forming any bargaining power because literally “you need the capitalist, but the capitalist doesn’t need you. You only exist because us capitalists let you.” but also sets the condition for them to be loyal reactionaries.
CREATE TABLE farts( fart_id INT, odor_description VARCHAR(1024), CONSTRAINT pk_fart_id PRIMARY KEY (fart_id) );
