ixtab

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Called the 'Rope Woman', the Mayan goddess of suicide. In Yucatec Mayan society, suicide, especially suicide by hanging, was under circumstances considered an honorable way to die. Ixtab would accompany such suicides to paradise (thus playing the role of a psychopomp). The picture of a dead woman with a rope around the neck in the Dresden Codex is often taken to represent the goddess. However, since it occurs in a section devoted to eclipses of sun and moon, it might as well symbolize a lunar eclipse and its dire consequences for women. (Wikipedia)

August 7, 2008