Mexica

Coatlicue

She of the Serpent Skirt

The great basalt Coatlicue in Mexico's national museum is not a pretty earth mother. Skirt of rattlesnakes, a necklace of hands and hearts, a dual-serpent head. She is the ground that eats and the ground that bears. Sweeping a temple on Coatepec she conceived Huitzilopochtli from a ball of feathers. Her children — the moon and the stars — tried to kill her for it. She is the mountain and the grave.