Xochipilli

Xochipilli holds everything the Mexica thought of as delight, which in their arrangement is one category: flowers, song, dance, painting, writing, games, sex, and the state of being beautifully young. The famous statue of him — seated cross-legged, head tipped back, mouth open — has flowers carved all over its body and plinth, and when botanists went through them they turned out to be a specific list of psychoactive plants. Whether the sculptor intended that as a catalogue is argued about; that the flowers are identifiable and are those flowers is not.

Domains

• flowers
• music

Relations

• sibling: Ixtlilton
• sibling: Macuilxochitl
• counterpart of: Xochiquetzal

Sources

• Reference treatments of Xochipilli, his spheres and his brothers.