Tlazolteotl, Eater of Filth

Tlazolteotl is the goddess of purification through confession, her name built from tlazolli, filth or refuse, a word Nahua thought extended from literal waste to sexual transgression and other moral impurity that could be named, confessed and thereby cleared. Sahagun's informants describe a rite of confession, neyolmelahualiztli, the straightening of the heart, performed typically once in a lifetime and generally reserved for later years, in which a penitent confessed serious transgressions before a priest acting in Tlazolteotl's name, who then imposed penance and declared the matter closed, an institution colonial writers found strikingly close in form to Christian confession though rooted in an entirely separate theology. She is depicted in the codices with a blackened mouth or lower face, read as the mark of having consumed the confessed filth, and she carries strong associations with midwifery and sexuality, a patron of the acts that could produce transgression as well as of the rite that cleared it, a double character consistent with how Nahua religion generally treated dangerous forces as needing address and channelling rather than simple avoidance. Her cult has roots that colonial sources trace to the Huastec region along the Gulf coast, and she is sometimes grouped with a set of related earth and fertility goddesses including Toci and Teteoinnan under the broader Tlazolteotl Ixcuina complex, the sources not fully agreeing on how sharply these figures should be distinguished from one another.