"The body is the
temple of the soul. The face is the
temple of the body. And when the body breaks, the soul has no other shrine
except the face". Carlos Fuentes
The Aztec world, a
sacrificial theocracy, wanted to wed the promises of peace and creativity
symbolized by the Feathered Serpent, Quetzalcoatl, with the bellicose
necessities demanded by the blood-thirsty god of war, Huitzilopochtli. Therefore the starkly ambiguous character of
the Aztec universe: great artistic and moral achievements side by side with
execution, blood rites, and terror.
Pain… resists
becoming an object of language.
[Frida Kahlo]
reminds one of the Aztec goddesses of Birth and Earth, but even more of the
flagellant deity, Xipe Totec, Our Lord of the Flayed Skin, the dualistic
divinity whose skin was never his own, whether he wore that of the sacrificial
victim as a macabre cloak, or whether he himself was shedding his own skin, as
a serpent does, to signify a rite of renewal, even of resurrection.
