[2.3] Unveiling the Cosmic Rebels: IXCHEL 🌙🌊🌈🐍🐯

sister, mother, friend, wise elder - Ixchel is the bestie by your side through it all

Ixchel is the mother of Mayan mythology and revered as a multifaceted goddess. She’s likely a composite portrait of many goddesses from the Aztec and Mayan tradition, a lot like the many versions of Shakti we’ve explored here. Ixchel then is a glittery kaleidoscope vision of the beauty and multi-facetedness of divine femininity 🤩🍃🐍✨

The Moon Goddess has many associations with the archetypal feminine - love. fertility, healing, weaving. She embodies the life-death-rebirth cycle of nature. She is ruler of weather and water, both benevolent protectress and chaotic destroyer through floods and storms.

Ixchel’s vivid imagery and mythology beautifully personifies the bounty and chaos of mother nature. Ixchel is so viscerally relatable to us because the continental American mythological tradition throughout time has done such a good job of centering Nature in the transition from Great Mother to Great Goddess .

The mythology and symbology is vivid and accessible to us because of its sensuality. And by sensual here, I mean something we literally feel through our five senses (six if we add our “6th sense”, our energetic or intuitive sensing) simply through our relationship with nature.

The Myth of the Moon Goddess 🌙🐍🐰

Ixchel emerged around 1500 BC in the Yucatan Peninsula. Her story is ancient and storied, and like Persephone’s, tragic.

Kinich Ahau the Sun God is mesmerized by Ixchel’s weaving. Because her Grandfather is possessive, the two lovers escape and elope. When Ixchel’s Grandfather learns of their escape, he sends a lightning storm after them, killing Ixchel.

For 13 days hundreds of dragonflies hum and sing over Ixchel’s body, healing and bringing Ixchel back to life. Triumph! She returns happily to Kinich Ahau. But the honeymoon does not last very long.

Just like her Grandfather, Kinich Ahau too has a violent and abusive streak. When the Sun God’s brother comes to visit and is clearly enraptured with Ixchel’s beauty and grace, Kinich Ahau becomes jealous and blames Ixchel as a temptress (classic). As the story continues, Ixchel escapes her abuser and unexpectedly finds herself with the Vulture King, a kind and sweet man.

But Kinich Ahau finds Ixchel and begs her to return. I’m sure many of us can see ourselves in Ixchel’s shoes - our lover has returned! They’ve promised to change their ways! We fall victim to hope and healing lost love.

Ixchel’s downfall is cemented when she chooses to her first love Kinich Ahau and his pattern of abuse renewed. This time Ixchel had learned her lesson. She escaped into the sky among the stars, now only coming out in the safety of night. She also turned her attention to those she was meant to serve, providing healing and protective aid to women especially during the reproductive journey.

This myth is the ancients whispering us to stand on business!!! This story is less a judgment on young Ixchel, and likely a more functional myth shared by wise elders to teach young women how to spot and evade potentially abusive partners.

The epilogue contains insight for us as well. Those of us who identify with the Divine Feminine can sometimes lose ourselves to our loves outside of ourselves- our lovers, our family, our work, our children. The ending of the story teaches us that our strength and power resides in our relationship to self, that which resides in us internally - our intuition, sensitivity, emotions. And it is our sacred responsibility to protect ourselves! Like the oxygen masks on a flight, we can’t help others until we’re grounded and secure in ourselves. Self-love and self-protection then is holy, because it is what enables us to abundantly share our gifts in sincere service to our communities.

Do you have a familial or personal connection to Ixchel? Share in the comments what I’ve missed! How do you relate to this Goddess? Was she a part of your family’s spiritual tradition or have you come to her through your own journey of spirituality?

Ixchel & the Divinity of a Woman’s Love & Friendship

Here Ixchel is represented as the Triple Goddess, an archetypal motif that spans cultural mythologies. As Maiden, Ixchel is the Goddess of Weaving and accompanied by a rabbit or snake around her neck representing her medicine power and intuitive wisdom. As Mother, she is Goddess of fertility, the moon, and childbirth. She is traditionally called upon by midwives for safe pregnancies and births. As Grandmother or Crone, she wears a serpent crown and can be seen emptying a jug of water onto the earth, which can bring both divine rainstorms for fertile lands and storms that can destroy crops.

Ixchel has a deeply intimate relationship with women. She is sister, mother, and grandmother. She is friend, confidante, protector. She’s by your side in the ups and downs of life. Historically, Mayan women and girls would make a piligrimage to Ixchel’s temple on Cozumel twice in their lives - first when a girl would go with her mother, then again after the girl became a mother she would take her daughter. This sacred pilgrimage still takes place every year at the end of May.

I see Ixchel in the Latina women I’ve loved and been loved by in my life. My high school Spanish teacher Señora Mendez, a 5 foot tall firecracker Argentinian woman who would wake up daily with a BUENOS DIAS CHICOS!!! Unlike every other class we were in, there was no dozing off here. She’d multiple times in class have us turn to a partner and dialogue, stumbling through. We’d listen to Juanes. When I was thinking about dropping Spanish because of a heavy courseload, she went out of her way to encourage me, affirm my strengths, and that my ability with the language was a natural talent to cultivate, how it would be a shame to let it go now.

I’m SO GRATEFUL because since then I’ve been lucky to have had many opportunities to travel and work in South America and I lived in Miami for most of my 20s. Through each of these life experiences there have been a line of generous, caring, brilliant Latina women who have cared for me, shown me love, taught me important lessons about being a woman, and encouraged me in my own journey of growing into my authentic self. Each unintentionally but really meaningfully healed some of my ancestral trauma and helping me learn to love myself - all from these women who embody Ixchel energy.

Working with Ixchel

Invoke Ixchel for support for any feminine ritual or practice - womb medicine, love, the arts, healing. If you are trying to connect with your Divine Feminine energy that integrates light and dark aspects, Ixchel is the deity for you. She is your compassionate and cheerleader friend - whisper to her your worries and share with her your pain. Imagine Ixchel’s healing embrace melting away your stress and anguish. Think of her as you begin creative projects and tend to your home. Embody her generosity, her fierce confidence, and attunement to nature.

Associations:

• Water Jug

• Rabbit

• Snake

• Loom

• Crossed Bones

• Offerings: Copal, Turqouise, Hand-Woven Objects