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.

Her glyphic names in the (Post-Classic) codices have two basic forms, one a prefix with the primary meaning of "red" (chak) followed by a portrait glyph ("pictogram"), the other one logosyllabic.

In the past, it was common to take Ix Chel as the Yucatec name of the moon goddess because of a shared association with human fertility and procreation.

An entwined serpent serves as Ixchel's headdress, crossed bones may adorn her skirt, and instead of human hands and feet, she sometimes has claws.

Being a jaguar goddess, the Classic Ixchel (or 'Chak Chel') could equally be imagined as a fearsome female warrior equipped with shield and spear,[13] not unlike Cihuacoatl in the latter's capacity of Yaocihuatl ('Warrior Woman').

[16] Ixchel figures in a Verapaz myth related by Las Casas, according to which she, together with her spouse, Itzamna, had thirteen sons, two of whom created heaven and earth and all that belongs to it.

[20] On the other hand, in Qʼeqchiʼ Sun and Moon myth, an aged Maya goddess (Xkitza) who would otherwise appear to correspond closely to the Oaxacan Old Adoptive Mother, does not appear to be connected to the sweatbath.

[21] In the early 16th century, Maya women seeking to ensure a fruitful marriage would travel to the sanctuary of Ix Chel on the island of Cozumel, the most important place of pilgrimage after Chichen Itza, off the east coast of the Yucatán peninsula.

The Spanish conqueror, Hernán Cortés, tells us about another place in Acalan where unmarried young women were sacrificed to a goddess in whom "they had much faith and hope", possibly again Ixchel.