Ixchel

Ixchel or Ix Chel (Mayan: [iʃˈt͡ʃel]) is the 16th-century name of the aged jaguar goddess of midwifery and medicine in ancient Maya culture. She corresponds, more or less, to Toci Yoalticitl "Our Grandmother the Nocturnal Physician", an Aztec earth goddess inhabiting the sweatbath, and is related to another Aztec goddess invoked at birth, viz. Cihuacoatl (or Ilamatecuhtli). In Taube's revised Schellhas-Zimmermann classification of codical deities, Ixchel corresponds to the Goddess O.

Identification

Referring to the early 16th-century, Landa calls Ixchel “the goddess of making children”. He also mentions her as the goddess of medicine, as shown by the following. In the month of Zip, the feast Ihcil Ixchel was celebrated by the physicians and shamans (hechiceros), and divination stones as well as medicine bundles containing little idols of "the goddess of medicine whom they called Ixchel" were brought forward. In the Ritual of the Bacabs, Ixchel is once called 'grandmother'. In their combination, the goddess's two principal qualities (birthing and healing) suggest an analogy with the aged Aztec goddess of midwifery, Tocî Yoalticitl.