Xquic
Lady Blood; daughter of the Xibalba lord Cuchumaquic; mother of the Hero Twins by posthumous saliva-conception with the severed head of Hun Hunahpu. Her flight from Xibalba — substituting coagulated croton-tree resin for her own heart, deceiving the four Owl-messengers, and escaping to the surface world — is one of the central narrative arcs of the Popol Vuh, structurally parallel to her sons' later defeat of the Xibalba court she was born into. Her arrival at Xmucane's household and the maize-stalk test that proved her motherhood-claim establish the agricultural-fertility-as-genealogical-legitimacy theme that Hun Nal Ye / Hun Hunahpu carries iconographically. The Classic Maya Moon Goddess (often paired with the Maize God in resurrection imagery) is the iconographic reflex, and the Tedlock translation "Blood Moon" makes this association explicit. She functions as the active narrative agent of Part II — Hun Hunahpu is dead and Xmucane is reluctant; Xquic's deception and persistence are what make the Hero Twins' birth and eventual cosmic-restorative victory possible. The role of feminine narrative agency in carrying agricultural-cosmic continuity through underworld-defeat is among the most thematically dense in any pre-Columbian text.
Parentage
- paternal: Cuchumaquic
Children
Powers
- Conceive the Hero Twins from the spittle of a severed head
- Conjures a sap heart-substitute
- Conjures a harvest from one stalk
Epithets
- Ixquic Lady BloodPopol Vuh (Christenson trans.), Part Three (Xkik', Blood Moon/Lady Blood) (primary)
Relations
- father relationship: CuchumaquicPopol Vuh, Part II (primary)
- lover: Hun HunahpuPosthumous union via the saliva-spat conception.Popol Vuh, Part II (primary)
- mother of: Hunahpu
- mother of: Xbalanque
- mother in law relationship: Xmucane
Sources
- existence: Popol Vuh (Ximénez ms.) (primary)
- parentage: Popol Vuh, Part II (primary)
- identification-with-Classic-Moon-Goddess: Schele & Miller, The Blood of Kings (1986) (secondary); Tedlock, Popol Vuh (1996), commentary (secondary)