Note 4 — Chapter V · DEITIES OF THE EARTH AND GROWTH PROPER

This indicates that the goddess, one of the Ixcuiname, was regarded as the inventress of that especial mode of sacrifice by which the victim was tied to a framework and shot to death with arrows. We have no classical statement that such a proceeding took place at her festival, however, but it is known that it formed part of the ritual at the festival of Xipe (q.v.). The expression, “We wish to couple the earth with you,” when taken along with the straddling attitude of the victim on his frame, has given rise to the assumption4 that such a sacrifice was intended to symbolize a sexual connection between the victim and the earth or earth-mother. It appears to me as more probable that its intention was to draw down rain by sympathetic magic, the dropping blood from the arrow wounds symbolizing the rain, and the tear which the victim sheds in the representation of this sacrifice in the Codex Nuttall and Codex Telleriano-Remensis, combined with the fact that such sacrifices are supposed to have been made in years of drought, strengthens my belief in the soundness of this theory.