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Xōchipili & Xōchiquetzal

Xōchipili & Xōchiquetzal are twin deities who share a unique and benevolent quality. When most of the Aztec pantheon possessed a duality of creation and destruction, these two were pure givers, making them the most beloved and uniquely revered.

Xōchipilli (meaning “Prince of Flowers” in Nahuatl) was a god associated with pleasure, flowers, sexuality, and the arts of poetry, painting, writing, and song. As one of the fertility gods, he was a deity linked with agriculture and the cultivation of staple crops such as maize. Many archeologists believe he was first worshipped during the years of the Teotihuacan civilization, but was later adopted by the Aztecs. Xōchipilli has also been interpreted as the patron of both homosexuals and male prostitutes, a role possibly resulting from his being absorbed from the Toltec civilization.

To the Aztecs, the Flower Prince was seen as a god capable of lighthearted mischief and practical jokes. However, unlike his fellow gods, he wasn’t conceived of as being a malicious or vengeful deity, making him rather popular and beloved. One of the strongest associations with this god was with alcoholic drinks. A summer celebration called the Festival of Flowers took place every year in honor of Xochipilli and his twin sister Xochiquetzal. Dances were performed, poetry was recited, and music was played. During such festivities, worshippers drank Pulque and consumed mushrooms known as teonanácatl (“flesh of the gods”). 

Xōchiquetzal was a goddess who certainly knew how to enjoy herself, and she wanted to share all the pleasures with humans. As a goddess of love, she was the patron not only of romantic love but also the patron of sexual love and sexual relations. Xōchiquetzal’s name incorporates the word xochitl, or “flower.” Flowers were, in fact, central to her imagery. She is usually shown adorned or surrounded by flowers, a symbol of feminine fertility in Mesoamerican cultures.

She was also shown with other hallmarks of female beauty. Xochiquetzal was depicted in rich garments and luxurious jewelry. She wore a colorful, detailed gown, a mantle of precious quetzal feathers, and sandals that were indicative of the upper classes.

She also wore a large number of bracelets and necklaces. She usually had large earrings, another symbol of status in Mesoamerican cultures. One of Xochiquetzal’s most defining attributes was a large, often exaggerated, nose piercing. Like many aspects of her iconography, this also emphasized her high status.

Colson Whitehead on Writing
The Underground Railroad

GROSS: That’s from the opening of Colson Whitehead’s new novel “The Underground Railroad.” Why did you want to write a novel about slavery and escaped slaves? Had something happened in your life that made you want to immerse yourself in that history?

WHITEHEAD: Actually, I was pretty reluctant to immerse myself into that history. It took 16 years for me to finish the book. I first had the idea in the year 2000, and I was finishing up a long book called “John Henry Days,” which had a lot of research. And I was just sort of, you know, getting up from a nap or something (laughter) and thought, you know, what if the Underground Railroad was an actual railroad? You know, I think when you’re a kid and you first hear about it in school or whatever, you imagine a literal subway beneath the earth. And then you find out that it’s not a literal subway, and you get a bit upset. And so the book took off from that childhood notion. And that’s a premise, not that much of a story. So I kept thinking about it. And I thought, well, what if every state our hero went through - as he or she ran North - was a different state of American possibility? So Georgia has one sort of take on America and North Carolina - sort of like “Gulliver’s Travels.” The book is rebooting every time the person goes to a different state.

Neil Gaiman on Writing
American Gods

RT: Representative of the mix of cultures making up America, American Gods tells the many tales of immigrants who came to this country and brought with them their gods. Little by little, the gods become dysfunctional and their mortal manifestations turn into prostitutes, grifters, criminals, and the forgotten elderly. Is this a political fable for you—is this the story of the decay of values, American or otherwise?

NG: I would not describe myself as a political writer except in the sense that the personal is political, which is something that I do strongly believe. And in that sense American Gods is a very personal novel and a political novel. I was trying to describe the experience of coming to America as an immigrant, the experience of watching the way that America tends to eat other cultures. It’s very interesting going to Canada because that doesn’t happen. If you’re wondering around Toronto, whatever, you feel that there’s no attempt to turn any of these other cultures into a Canadian thing. As a result of which, you have a much more interesting, to my mind, mixture. In America, to quote Michael Moorcock “Art aspires to a condition of muzak”—everything homogenizes, it blends. I think I was trying to talk about both the blanding of other cultures, the way the rough edges get knocked off very quickly and the way the things that make them special and unique get forgotten or lost or abandoned or subsumed into the “American Dream.” In addition to that I wanted to talk about future shock: the way that we are currently slamming into the future incredibly fast and what that means, and what it means that the future that we were heading for in 1984 now feels incredibly dated. For that matter, 2001 feels incredibly dated. Where does that come from? So trying to take all of that and put it into a framework that would also let me write about the House on the Rock, and do these little historical short stories as well, which were such a joy to write.