Xipetotec

Xipetotec America
Literally, ‘the flayed lord’. An enigmatic Aztec deity. Xipetotec possessed two aspects: he was the newly planted seed, a god of agriculture and vegetation, the one who gave food to mankind by having himself skinned alive just as the maize seed loses its skin when the young shoot begins to burst forth; he was also the lord of penitential torture, the symbol of sacrifice, the way of spiritual liberation. The latter aspect was made explicit in the illnesses Xipetotec sent to mankind: smallpox, plague, scabs, blindness. Like Quetzalcoatl, the flayed lord had a profound interest in mictlan, the underworld.