Xipe Totec

Xipe Totec as depicted in the Codex Borgia, notice the bloody weapon and the flayed human skin he wears as a suit with the hands hanging down.

In Aztec mythology, Xipe Totec ("our lord the flayed one") was a life-death-rebirth deity, god of agriculture, the west, disease, spring, goldsmiths and the seasons. He flayed himself to give food to humanity, symbolic of the maize seed losing the outer layer of the seed before germination and of snakes shedding their skin. Without his skin, he was depicted as a golden god.^[1]

Annually, slaves were selected as sacrifices to Xipe Totec. These slaves were carefully flayed to produce a nearly whole skin which was then worn by the priests during the fertility rituals that followed the sacrifice. Some accounts indicate that a thigh bone from the sacrifice was defleshed and used by the priest to touch spectators in a fertility blessing. Paintings and several clay figures have been found which illustrate the flaying method and the appearance of priests wearing flayed skins.

In pop culture

In the Hellraiser film series, Xipe Totec inhabits the body of Captain Elliott Spencer, which turns him into the cenobite Pinhead.

In the comic The Invisibles, Xipe Totec is a recurring villain, also known as Orlando. He has the habit of killing people and wearing their flayed faces.

American writer Christopher Ebert formerly published under the pen name Xipe Totec.

References

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