ABSTRACT
The image or figure of this idol [Xipe Totec] was of stone, about as tall as a man. His mouth was open like a man speaking. He was dressed in the skin of a sacrificed man, and on his wrists hung the hands of the skin … He also wore an elaborate, splendid breech cloth, which seemed to be part of the human skin in which he was attired. This was the dress he always wore … Forty days before the feast [of Tlacaxipehualiztli] the people dressed a man as a representation of the idol with his same adornments, so that this live Indian slave should be an image of the idol. Once he had been purified, they honored and glorified him during the forty days, exhibiting him in public as if he had been the god himself … Each ward honored and revered this man who personified the deity, just as in the main temple … After the god impersonators had been sacrificed, all of them were skinned very rapidly in the way I have described. When the heart had been removed and offered to the east, the skinners (whose task it was) cast the dead body down and split it from the nape of the neck to the heel, skinning it as a lamb. The skin came off complete. After the skinning had taken place … other men donned the skins immediately and then took the names of the gods who had been impersonated. Over the skins they wore the garments and insignia of the same divinities, each man bearing the name of the god and considering himself divine. 1
