Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 18:54:52 -0700 From: beswick (beswick@scf-fs.usc.edu) Subject: Origins of Serpentskirt Since there is no longer a Cocteau Twins list...I thought I'd post this here instead.... Jerome Rothenberg's "Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas" features an Aztec poem entitled "A Poem to the Mother of the Gods". The explanation of the poem in the appendix includes the For the power of the imagination (Indian, Aztec, etc.) to give a face to its gods, the reader should check again the art of the ancient codices and such overwhelming statues as _la Gran Coatlicue_, that "Lady-of-the-Serpent-Skirt" and mother of the gods, "whose head is twin serpents, whose necklace human hands and hearts, whose feet and hands are claws, whose skirt is made of writhing snakes," etc. but depicted elsewhere as a mother carrying a baby in her arms. Garibay's [Angel Maria Garibay K.] note to this poem gives the name of the mother goddess as Teteo innan, but he points also to her many other names and aspects. Her worship was sumamente antiguo in Anahuac. ..."And the costume of Teteu innan was as follows: there was liquid rubber on her lips and a circle of rubber on each cheek. She had cotton flowers. She had a ball with palm strips. She had a shell-covered skirt, called a star-skirt. She had the star-skirt. Eagle feathers were strewn over her skirt--it was strewn with eagle feathers; it had white eagle feathers, pointed eagle feathers. Her shield had a golden disc in the center. She car the medicinal herb, totoicxitl. She used a broom; she carried a broom." (Sahagun, _Florentine Codex_, Book Two: "The Gods," 8th Chapter.)