Mexica
Xipe Totec
Our Lord the Flayed
Spring, goldsmiths, the new skin of the year
Maize sheds a husk. Snakes shed a skin. Xipe is that turn: the dry year torn so the green year can stand. His feast, Tlacaxipehualiztli, was one of the hardest in the Mexica year, and Spanish writers never let it go. Under the shock is an agricultural god, patron of goldworkers, whose new skin is the field after harvest husks.