Ix Tab, the 'Rope Woman,' is the Yucatec Maya goddess of the hanged and the patroness of those who take their own lives by the noose. Diego de Landa records that the Maya so honored death by hanging that Ix Tab came in person to lead such souls to the paradise beneath the sacred ceiba, the world-tree Yaxche, where the blessed rested in shade and were free of pain and want. In an image reproduced from the Dresden Codex she is shown as a corpse suspended by a rope knotted around her neck, her body marked with the black spots of decay. Her cult reflects the Yucatec belief that certain forms of death, like death in childbirth or in war, opened the way directly to a favored afterlife.