Key Info

- Assists with child birth and medicine creation

- Violent and vicious protector

Brief Bio

In the 1500s, Diego de Landa called Ixchel “the Goddess of making children”. He also mentioned her as the goddess of medicine, as shown by the following. In the month of Zip, the feast Ihcil Ixchel was celebrated by the physicians and shamans (hechiceros), and divination stones as well as medicine bundles containing little idols of "the Goddess of medicine whom they called Ixchel" were brought forward. 

Ixchel was already known to the Classical Maya. As Taube has demonstrated, she corresponds to Goddess O of the Dresden Codex, an aged woman with jaguar ears. A crucial piece of evidence in his argument is the so-called "Birth Vase", a Classic Maya container showing a childbirth presided over by various old women, headed by an old jaguar Goddess, the codical Goddess O; all have weaving implements in their headdresses. On another Classic Maya vase, Goddess O is shown acting as a physician, further confirming her identity as Ixchel. The combination of Ixchel with several aged midwives on the Birth Vase recalls the Tzʼutujil assembly of midwife goddesses called the "female lords", the most powerful of whom is described as being particularly fearsome.