Well, I haven’t heard anybody squawk about my going another couple weeks without a new posting.  Site stats show very few visits to this blog, though a respectable number of visitors every day to my earlier Aztec deity and calendar images.  Usually somebody even takes a look at my Indian mound photos or drawings of Pre-Columbian artifacts.  I guess this erratic blog is simply a matter of writing, as we used to say, to hear myself talk.  So be it.

This time I’ve been quiet for other than busy-ness, though there’s been plenty of that in any case.  Now I’ve simply not been able to spend much time online because my grandson visited a couple weeks ago and in one evening of YouTube managed to use up most of the monthly data allotment on my wireless connection—a subject you don’t want to read about, I assure you.

Writing on my memoir is moving along into Chapter 5, so that’s progress.  Drawing for the free coloring book is proceeding at its usual slow pace.  For sanity’s sake, I try to switch back and forth between the subjects every week or so and am now closing in on the sixth Aztec icon of Huehuecoyotl, the Old Coyote.  There are only a few vignettes and musical details to finish.  The problem is not thinking about the next icon for Huitzilopochtli, the Hummingbird of the South, which will also show the legendary migration of the Aztecs from Aztalan to Tenochtitlan.  Please be patient, all you colorists out there.  I’m working as fast as I can.

Meanwhile, here’s the second icon for the coloring book:  CHALCHIUHTLICUE, the goddess of flowing (fresh) water as in rivers, streams, and lakes.  (The goddess of the sea or salt water is Huixtocihuatl.)  To download this icon as a pdf file with a page of caption and model images from the Aztec Codices, just right click here and select “Save Target (or Link) As.”  You can also download freely sizable vector drawings from the coloring book page.

ICON #2:  CHALCHIUHTLICUE

(She of the Jade Skirt) {chal-chewh-tłee-kwe}

Chalchiuhtlicue, The Jade Skirt, Goddess of Flowing Water

CHALCHIUHTLICUE is goddess of flowing water, rivers, and streams, as well as of youthful beauty and ardor with a birth day-name of Ce Atl (One Water).  She is patron of women in labor, childbirth, children, and motherhood.  Certain of her purification rites struck Spanish clergy as similar to the sacrament of baptism.  As goddess of storms and forces of nature, she can be dangerous.  She is the 6^th lord of the night (which has 9 hours), and the 3^rd lord of the day (of the 13-day week).  The wife of TLALOC and/or possibly XIUHTECUHTLI and mother of TECCIZTECATL and/or the twins QUETZALCOATL and XOLOTL, she destroyed the Third Sun (Four Rain) and ruled the Fourth Sun (Four Water).

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