Maiden aspect of the Maya goddess Ix Chel, wearing a snake headdress. She often has the glyph sak, Mayan word for white, in her headdress to indicate visible phases of the moon. Women prayed to her for fertility and successful pregnancy, believed she was responsible for the development of the fetus and determination of its sex. They placed carved images under their bed to sustain pregnancy and provide safe childbirth. While Ix Chel is a triple goddess with three forms - maiden, mother, and crone - she wears the coiled snake headdress in only two of these. As the maiden, she is called Goddess I in the codices, the young moon goddess. She wears the coiled snake headdress to signify her powers of healing and intuitive knowledge, her skills at medicine and midwifery, and her ability to control earthly forces. Ix Chel as healer with coiled snake headdress, carved slate from San Ignacio, Belize (2003). The 260-day calendar is used to plan conception and maize planting both childbirth and harvesting are expected to occur 260 days after conception or sowing. Other connections between Ix Chel and the tzolk'in calendar include the duration of pregnancy and the timing for planting maize (corn). The Mam Maya of highland Guatemala link the earth, the moon, and maize in a sacred trinity which they call "Our Mother." Among the Quiché of Guatemala, the moon governs both women's menstrual cycles and planting the maize crop. The codices are concerned with astronomical phenomena, such as lunar and solar eclipses, calculating Venus and other planetary cycles, and the 260-day sacred calendar or tzolk'in, which interacts with the 365-day solar calendar or haab, to create repeating 52-year cycles. These almanacs relate the timing of various ritual and secular activities to different calendrical cycles, and portray women in various everyday roles in the idealized guise of goddesses. Of the thousands of hieroglyphic manuscripts painted by the ancient Maya people, only four are known to have survived: The Madrid, Dresden and Paris Codices, named after the cities where they are currently housed, and the Grolier Codex discovered in a cave in Chiapas in the 1960s. Images of these goddesses appear in both the Madrid and Dresden Codices, screen-fold books full of hieroglyphs and illustrations painted by the Postclassic Maya, probably in the 15th-17th centuries. Ix Chel appears as a healer wearing the coiled snake headdress in both young and old goddess forms.
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