Xilonen

Xilonen is the first meal of the new year's maize. Her festival sits at the point in the agricultural calendar where the old stores have run down and the new ears are just barely edible — the hungry gap closing — and the Mexica marked it by eating green corn and by killing a girl who had been dressed as the goddess. The registry held Centeotl and nothing else from a set of at least three deities covering one plant through its life.

Domains

• harvest

Relations

• counterpart of: ChicomecoatlThe same crop eight weeks earlier. The pairing is the point: a goddess of the green ear and a goddess of the grown stand are one plant told as two lives.Reference treatment naming Xilonen as the deity most commonly related to Chicomecoatl. (secondary)

Sources

• Xilonen is the Mexica goddess of the tender young ears of maize, closely associated with Chicomecoatl, honoured at the midsummer festival when the new crop was first eaten.: Reference treatments of Xilonen and of the Mexica maize deities. (secondary)