Xolotl

Xolotl is the dog that takes you across. His name is the word for a servant and for a twin — and for the hairless dog, the xoloitzcuintli, which the Mexica buried with their dead precisely so that there would be one waiting at the river in Mictlan. He is the evening star to Quetzalcoatl's morning star: one plumed serpent announcing the sun coming up, one dog walking it down into the ground, and both of them Venus. He is also the god who is drawn deliberately ugly, with his feet on backwards, in a pantheon that mostly did not do that.

Domains

• venus
• underworld

Relations

• counterpart of: Quetzalcoatl
• twin sibling: Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli

Sources

• Reference treatments of Xolotl, of his dog form and of the Venus twinning with Quetzalcoatl.