Xtabay

Xtabay is a seductive and dangerous female spirit of Yucatec Maya folklore who appears at night beside a ceiba tree, combing her long black hair, to entice solitary men. Those who follow her are led into the bush and destroyed, for her beautiful front conceals a back that is hollow like a dead trunk or bristling with the thorns of the pochote. In many tellings she is contrasted with a virtuous counterpart, Utz-Colel, in a moral tale about the fates of the wanton and the chaste. Sources differ on whether the name preserves a memory of the colonial rope-goddess Ix Tab, to which it is linguistically close, or represents an independent tree-and-forest spirit of the living oral tradition.

Domains

• seduction
• wilderness

Powers

• lure and destroy solitary men

Epithets

• X-Tabay — the deceiving womanAlfredo Barrera Vásquez et al., Diccionario Maya Cordemex (1980) (secondary)

Sources

• Xtabay is a female spirit of Yucatec folklore who lures men to their deaths from beside a ceiba tree, associated with the spiny pochote.: Alfredo Barrera Vásquez et al., Diccionario Maya Cordemex (1980) (secondary); J. Eric S. Thompson, Maya History and Religion (1970) (secondary)
• Scholars have proposed a historical connection between the folkloric Xtabay and the colonial rope-goddess Ix Tab, though the identification is debated.: J. Eric S. Thompson, Maya History and Religion (1970) (secondary)