Otomi of Xaltocan (Valley of Mexico). The Anales de Cuauhtitlan relate that during the wars between Otomi Xaltocan and Cuauhtitlan the goddess Acpaxapo used to rise from the lagoon as a great serpent with the face and long hair of a woman, telling the Xaltocameca whether they would take captives, die or be captured, and when the enemy would come out, and that offerings were made to her in the waters at the place named after her, Acpaxapocan. Modern scholarship treats her as a lacustrine and lunar divinity of the lake-dwelling Otomi, comparable to the serpent-women and sirens of the central Mexican lakes and to the Cihuacoatl complex.
Domains
prophecy and oracles
lakes and springs
Powers
to foretell the fortunes of war
to rise from the lake as a great serpent with a woman's face
Sources
Anales de Cuauhtitlan, in John Bierhorst (tr.), History and Mythology of the Aztecs: The Codex Chimalpopoca (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992).
Carrasco Pizana, Pedro (1950). Los otomíes: cultura e historia prehispánicas de los pueblos mesoamericanos de habla otomiana. México: UNAM.
Béligand, Nadine (1998). "Les trois âges d'un couple de déités lacustres: éclosion, renaissance et disparition des sirènes du lac de Chicnahuapan, vallée de Toluca (Mexique)." Journal de la Société des Américanistes 84(1): 45-72.