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Ixchel or Ix Chel is the Maya goddess mostly connected with medicine, fertility and pregnancy and therefore she is considered to be the guardian of doctors, midwives, healers and shamans. She is associated with the moon (particularly its waning phase), earth, water especially in the form of rain, weaving, divination and war. Her name probably comes from the stem ‘chel’ meaning rainbow, it was written with a pictogram signifying ‘red’ and that is why she is called Lady of the Rainbow.
She was mostly worshipped on the islands of Cozumel and Isla Mujeres. On Cozumel there are many evidences of women’s pilgrimages aiming to ask the goddess for good marriages and offspring. Ruins of her temples remained till modern times and it is considered that the priests hidden in a huge statue were announcing the messages of the oracle. The second island was famous for small statues of the goddess which were left there as a thank you gift. They were so numerous that Hernandez de Cordoba, a Spanish conquistador, called this place Isla Mujeres meaning ‘The Island of Women’. Ixchel was also worshipped in Acalan and not much is known about the specific cult but there is a supposition that certain rituals were taking place during the sixth day of the moon phase and after childbirth when a woman was having a bath.
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She was presented as an old woman with the ears of a jaguar or a serpent entwined around her head and sometimes she had claws instead of feet and hands. Jaguars and serpents together with eagles were the most important animals for the Maya because a powerful and persistent jaguar was able to trespass the barrier between the world of the day and the night** while a serpent crawling on the soil and shedding its skin was the symbol of earth (as it was already mentioned in the blog entry about Gaia a serpent symbolizes wisdom, life cycles and renewal, you can also read about the sign of Ouroboros ). As a guardian of women and children she was also depicted with a rabbit, the symbol of fertility and large families.
One of her symbols was an inverted jug resembling a womb and thus being the symbol of menstruation, dryness and the time of growing old (similarly to the waning phase of the moon). An inverted jug was also the symbol of rain and rainy season therefore Ixchel was considered to cause floods. Crossed bones were traditionally attributed to her and she was believed to wear a skirt with this image which was a connection with the world of the dead and had purifying abilities (e.g. when someone died because of plague their bones were put on the crossroads to make the disease go away from people’s homes). Ixchel also carried a spear and a shield during wars.
Article adapted and excerpted from: https://landofgoddesses.wordpress.com/2012/01/
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