Xochipilli statue construction

[Agamemnon]

I'm attempting to make a pottery replica of the Xochipilli statue which was found over 100 years ago near the volcano Popocatepetl in southern Mexico and was probably created about the end of the 14th century.

Xochipilli was the "Prince of Flowers" and it is believed that the statue shows him undergoing a psychedelic experience.

Im going to "fire" him in a wood kiln so in that respect he will be forged in a primitive and earthly manner. What I really need is clear images of the original from many different angles and a scale to go by. If anybody can assist I would be very grateful!

[-YT-]

What a great idea Agamemnon, cant wait to see how it turns out :D

Heres a link to Erowid's Xochipilli page including several shots from diferent angles http://www.erowid.org/entheogens/xochi/xochi.shtml

[apothecary]

If you make more than one, please PM me. Me and Xochi...well...let's just say I have a crush on him.

[Qhorakuna tantani]

I've thought about doing this for a while... its a great idea. I also thought about putting flat ceramic or similar replicas of the plant images that appear on him around my garden with Xochipilli in the middle. I'll put replicas of the 6 stylized plants images that appear on the statue at different positions and then grow that particular plant underneath its representation, where legal and available. If you do work out the scale and find any new pictures please PM me as well.

[teonanacatl]

if you burnished him then fired in a wood kiln he would look great. i use to good with pottery, maybe i will make one when i get time

[jasemateau]

it s a great idea Agamemnon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i might have a go time permitting,

used to be o at hand moulding clay some years ago, now days it's with chocolate.

googled the name in a images search, some good results however now reference to size.

wait hold that thought!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

if i could get or make a statue of saya chocolate egg size i may be able make moulds for those whose would put there own herbal ingredents in the chocolate for fun's sake.

Xochipilli chockys.

of course i WOULD NOT make any chocky's just the moulds.

Agamemnon look what you started !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

now i'm thinking about it hmmmmmmmmmmmm

[Agamemnon]

it s a great idea Agamemnon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i might have a go time permitting,

used to be o at hand moulding clay some years ago, now days it's with chocolate.

googled the name in a images search, some good results however now reference to size.

wait hold that thought!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

if i could get or make a statue of saya chocolate egg size i may be able make moulds for those whose would put there own herbal ingredents in the chocolate for fun's sake.

Xochipilli chockys.

of course i WOULD NOT make any chocky's just the moulds.

Agamemnon look what you started !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

now i'm thinking about it hmmmmmmmmmmmm

Now that would be such a coool idea!!!!!!!! The number of 'additives' to the chocolate would be boundless and any number of liquid interiors could be included. Why a whole ceremony could be created around consuming him!

Ive found the museum in mexico http://www.mna.inah.gob.mx/ where the statue is housed and if I knew spanish I could e-mail them and ask for dimensions. Does anybody on this forum speak/write spanish???

There is nothing worse than a fat/squat out of proportion statue!

[jasemateau]

i had a look at the site, in english, perhaps there's alot details missing in english.

silly really coz i do understand some spanish, so send em to me and see what i can make of it.

but i have friend who is fluent in spanish so perhaps she can have a look at the details too.

[M S Smith]

To late!

This statue was made in Mexico and was found by me at one of those indian stores you can get arrow heads at and other indian/western paraphenalia.

A few years ago there where three of them. This fall I saw only this one. I didn't buy it.

~Michael~

[apothecary]

[apothecary]

http://www.botanic-art.com/product_info.ph...cc18f405a86fbaa

For those of us with more money than we know what to do with.

[Agamemnon]

http://www.botanic-art.com/product_info.ph...cc18f405a86fbaa

For those of us with more money than we know what to do with.

He He! Gives a whole new incentive to "do-it-yourself"

[jasemateau]

any updates guys?

[Agamemnon]

any updates guys?

Still trying to find accurate dimensions

[jasemateau]

dido, seems difficult.

i bought some clay to begin with, but hav'nt touched it yet

[jasemateau]

ok i had a go,

its been 15 years since i have used clay, but have used other things for moulding objects.

its a hard piece but its my first go, i cant give on it yet, i'm not satisfied with it at this stage, good object to learn from!

this was the reference

[apothecary]

Looks like a good try to me!

[Agamemnon]

Well done! Ok you've shamed me into giving it a go even though I havent got the measurements. I should still be able to do a ratio comparison from the photos and transpose that to the height I want my 'creation' to be

[C12H16N2]

Awsome work!!

Check out this mecixan 100 peso note....

[Hagakure]

croation graff scene

http://www.zgbkaos.com/news/index.php?id=961

think theres a link?

im saying yes

btw its pretty cool that the mexicans have a tripper on their money. good stuff.

[apothecary]

That's just the lotus position Hag, or do you mean "link" as in universal vibratory coincidence link?

[Hagakure]

lotus position has feet on your thighs.

there is a type of meditation where you have your knees up in the air like that but i think they usually use a belt for support. to me that stencil bears a striking resemblence to the xochipilli statue. lke some tripper has copied pose and drawn himself in it.

the biggest argument against there being a link between the statue and the stencil would be the different position of the hands. and the face looking at the viewer rather than out to heavens.

okay yeah there may be no direct link.

but dammit im making a stencil with one. :D

[C12H16N2]

Stumbled over this text and found it interesting since it contains some info about Xochipilli.

Anyway, its pretty long but worth while for anyone interested.

Cheers

Source: Whole Earth Review, Summer 1992 n75 p38(6).

Title: Xochipilli: a context for ecstasy. (psychoactive drugs and religious or artistic experience)

Author: Laura Fraser

Abstract: Artist LordNose! has put together a booklet containing basic

information on psychedelic drugs and plants. The inspirations for his effort

included the disinformation circulating on MDMA (ecstasy) and the Aztec god

Xochipilli, and the Indians' use of psychedelics for religious ceremonies.

Subjects: Psychotropic drugs - Usage

MDMA (Drug) - Social aspects

Aztecs - Religion

Magazine Collection: 64L5253

Electronic Collection: A12244924

RN: A12244924

Full Text COPYRIGHT Point Foundation 1992

A FEW YEARS AGO, BACK WHEN "designer drugs" were still too new to be illegal,

an artist who calls himself LordNose! went to a party. The people there were

(or considered themselves to be) the current cognoscenti of

techno-consciousness: computer hackers, psychologists, writers. LordNose!

found himself caught up in a conversation with a couple of journalists talking

about the latest hot topic, new psychedelics, which he knew by their more

intimate names, "Adam," "Eve," "Escaline."

The first journalist, holding a drink, told LordNose! that "Ecstasy" (that's

MDMA or "Adam") causes a loss of spinal fluid. The second, with a cigarette,

reported that MDMA causes Parkinson's disease. Absolutely: He'd heard it on

the news.

The context for ecstasy -- the body of knowledge, belief, story, art, and

ritual that supports the occasional practice of getting out of one's mind and

out into the rest of the universe -- is strangely central to many of the

problems we are facing in the global technologolopolis. Something's happening

on the planet, and those of us who have the most to do with making it happen

know the least about it. Those of us in cities have very few sensors left to

perceive the natural world, and few dues to ways of feeling any personal

relationship to even small pieces of the living planet. The developed world

since the industrial revolution has been the first civilization (that it knows

of) out of the countless civilizations that have come and gone, that has had

to deal with technology as well as human behavior and the natural world. In

the process of creating a marvelously godlike machinery, a civilization has

arisen where ecstasy has no sanctioned context. A few other civilizations,

almost all of them extinct, did have such contexts. These other civilizations

left messages for us, carved in stone.

LordNose! came to us with a story of ethnobotanical adventure, ancient

spiritual traditions, and digital art -- an irresistible combination -- but

he's an image artist, not a writer, so we teamed him up with Laura Fraser to

tell the story of his quest. Fraser is a freelance San Francisco writer;

LordNose! is a wandering minstrel and digital historian of ecstatic states.

--Howard Rheingold

LordNose! understood that MDMA, an empathogen-entactogen, was a substance that

promotes the communication of feelings both with others and within oneself. It

did have a few unpleasant side effects, and wasn't to be taken lightly. You

had to do a little research to know you should avoid taking MDMA with unknown

combinations of drugs, particularly certain antidepressants called monoamine

oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs). This combination may cause dangerous elevation of

body temperature and blood pressure. If you are taking an antidepressant and

are unsure as to whether it is an MAOI, stop and find out before exploring.

But otherwise, to his knowledge, MDMA's side effects were mainly limited to

some mild jaw-clenching and an embarrassing tendency to call up ex-lovers and

casual acquaintances to tell them how much you love them. The jaw-clenching

part, at least, could be alleviated by taking a little calcium and magnesium

before the MDMA and plenty of fluids during the session to prevent

dehydration.

But where did the journalists -- folks who were supposed to be in the know,

with reliable "expert" sources -- come up with these apocryphal tales? As it

turned out, the spinal-fluid story came from a study of MDMA by Dr. George

Ricaurte at Stanford to determine if there were any residual effects of the

MDMA. In fact, no effects were found, and the only spinal fluid lost was what

the researchers took out of the subjects' bodies themselves. The Parkinson's

Disease rumor came in the aftermath of a bad batch of a synthetic opiate that

contained the neurotoxin MPTP, which people were shooting on the street as a

heroin substitute, and which did, sadly, cause a few individuals to get the

disease. The media were indiscriminately calling both MPTP and MDMA "designer

drugs," despite the fact that they come from entirely different chemical (and

spiritual) universes.

There was a bad batch of information out there. As far as the media and even a

few intelligent partygoers were concerned, one "designer drug" was the same as

another. Most of the information circulating in magazines was erroneous,

emphasizing either the simple hedonistic aspects of particular substances or

warning of the ominous consequences of their use. (This year's undocumented

newspaper accounts of numerous deaths due to MDMA in England are the latest

rash of unexamined rumors about MDMA.) Much of the scientific literature on

the traditional psychedelics and the newer compounds, such as MDMA, that are

more appropriately classified as empathogens-entactogens, was hidden in

relatively obscure journals, and often tainted with the usual

government-approved biases that tend to distort reality. Recent pronouncements

by scientists such as Dr. Stephen Peroutka at Stanford University School of

Medicine that MDMA may have damaging effects on the human brain also go

unchallenged. "The more (MDMA) you take, the more negative it becomes," he

claims, without distinguishing reduced benefits from negative effects. As for

damaging nerve cells, as Peroutka suggests, pharmacologist and chemist Dr.

Alexander T. Shulgin says MDMA probably doesn't have that effect. "The most

damning statement is that there is some damage to axons, bitty projections

that are associated with neurons, but which seem to eventually repair." The

scientific disinformation that was widely reported supported the government's

ban on psychedelic drugs based on their abuse potential, not their

neurotoxicity.

All this misinformation, thought LordNose!, needed to be countered with a

healthy dose of something better. So he and a few scientists set out to create

a benchmark of reliable information that they hoped would spread like

wildfire. They synthesized the available information on psychedelics, bringing

together experiential observations and suggestions with hardheaded scientific

research. "We've avoided telling people, `take this, and that will happen,'

"says LordNose!. "We're not advocating illegal drug use. We just want to give

some factual grounding to the population that uses drugs and to counter some

of the poisonous propaganda out there."

It proved challenging, however, to present that information in a concise,

user-friendly form. Much of it is difficult to explain, simply because we have

so few words to describe experiences outside our consensus reality. In order

to describe the effects of psychedelics, it's necessary to put them into some

kind of cultural context we can read: Are these compounds used for healing?

Exploration? Divination? Recreation? But in the midst of a just-say-no social

outlook, there is no widespread context other than abuse, no concept of

appropriate "set and setting." As Shulgin put it in his new book, PIHKAL: A

Chemical Love Story (WER #72, p. 22), "This society has made self-exploration

against the law."

To communicate about psychedelics, then, it became necessary to communicate

something of a culture that put these substances in a different light, that

viewed their use as sacred and healing. LordNose! found such a symbol of that

culture, a communication of its spirit, when he was paging through The

Wondrous Mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoarnerica (McGraw-Hill, 1980), by the late

ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson, a Morgan Bank vice-president. Inside was a

photo of the awesome statue of the Aztec deity Xochipilli, "Prince of

Flowers."

Wasson himself was intrigued with the statue, which sits in the Museo Nacional

de Antropologia in Mexico City, because no other culture he knew of dedicated

a divinity to flowers. But he was also suspicious of those flowers: "Do the

`flowers' of which Xochipilli is Prince mean flowers?" he wondered. The deity,

he noted, isn't looking earthward, toward any flowers, but ecstatically

upward, toward his heaven or visions or sky. Nor is the deity showing his

plain face to the sky; it is covered with a mask, which, Wasson surmised,

indicates that the god is not seeing with ordinary eyes, but with the

nonordinary eyes of the soul. He is in ecstasy, "in a far-off world."

Wasson took a closer look at the flowers, which hadn't yet been fully

identified by modern botanists. The first thing that caught his attention were

what seemed to be mushrooms (naturally, since he was an amateur mycologist).

These were eventually identified as Psilocybe aztecorum, or the renowned

psilocybin mushrooms that grow only on the sacred volcano Popocatepetl in

southern Mexico, near where Xochipilli was unearthed. Carved on Xochipilli's

stone body are moths feasting on the mushrooms -- not ordinarily moth food.

However, these moths seem to represent departed spirits feasting on "the food

of the gods," as Wasson put it, "to whose world the mushrooms transport for a

brief spell the people of this sad workaday world."

Wasson enlisted the help of Harvard ethnobotanist Dr. Richard Evans Schultes

[author of Plants of the Gods -- EWEC, p. 220] to identify the other botanical

species represented on Xochipilli's stone body. One is Turbina corymbosa, a

morning glory endowed with lysergic acid derivatives. Another is Heimia

salicifolia, or "sinicuichi" of the Mexican highlands, a mild auditory

hallucinogen. Xochipllli, Wasson concluded, is a god undergoing an intense,

spiritual, ecstatic experience. "The artist who carved Xochipilli was giving

us reality transfigured, was giving us what the Indian would feel that he was

living through, was giving us Rapture petrified."

Mesoamerican nobility, said Wasson, considered these entheogenic "flowers"

sacred; sacred enough to devote one of their finest works of art to this

deity.

LordNose! and a friend went down to Mexico City to see Xochipilli for

themselves and to photograph him for their project. They had walked through

the anthropology museum for about an hour, gradually becoming more attuned

with the people, masks and deities around them, when they reached the Mixtec

room where Xochipilli and the famous Aztec calendar stone reside. At that

point they were flying higher than eagles, says LordNose!- earlier they had

prepared by ingesting a modern entheogen. LordNose! approached Xochipilli and

offered him a little tobacco in homage. Suddenly, he says, "everything became

alive." Spirits paraded by in a passing show of civilizations -- streams of

ancient and otherworldly beings electrifying the air.

LordNose! was alternately drawn to Xochipilli, sitting in quiet and stately

rapture, and to a statue of Coatlicue, the earth goddess, with her wondrous

and terrifying death's head and skirt of living, squirming serpents. He was

awestruck by the spirits, in a state of knowing and wonder, lightening his

consciousness, when another tour group walked through. "On your left," intoned

the tour guide, "is a diablo." The tourists glanced at the stone statue. "We

don't really know what it means."

"XOCHIPILLI is the depiction of a being undergoing a psychedelic experience,"

says LordNose!. "It's a knowing that was absolutely reinforced by my being in

an altered state with him. He was imbued with a spirit, a spirit manifest. I

knew full well that these were not just artistic treasures, but spiritual

treasures."

While awaiting permission to photograph Xochipilli, LordNose! and his friend

went out to wander amongst the buildings and murals of Mexico City's Zocalo

district. In the patio of a huge building, the Secretariat of Public

Education, they came upon frescoes of Mexico's history, painted by Diego

Rivera between 1923 and 1927. Tucked away in the stairwell leading to the

second floor was a jungle scene depicting Xochipilli, perched on top of a

giant mushroom cap, surrounded by four naked Indian maidens ! Delighted at

finding Rivera's Xochipilli, they were astonished to see him with the

mushroom. "Diego Rivera must have understood the significance of the statue,

and chose, like the Aztecs, to emphasize that meaning in his art as well,"

says LordNose!. "Great artists do not choose their subjects arbitrarily."

That came as something of a surprise. Wasson is widely credited as being the

first gringo to discover "magic" mushrooms, aided by the shaman Maria Sabina

in 1955, and to describe the psychedelic meaning of Xochipilli. However,

Rivera must have known about "magic" mushrooms in the 1920s. Dr. BIas Pablo

Reko, an Austrian anthropologist working in Mexico, wrote about hallucinogenic

mushrooms in the 1920s, but was widely discredited. Reko and Rivera traveled

in the same circles, though, and it seems highly unlikely that Rivera didn't

taste the "flesh of the gods."

More striking to LordNose! than his discovery was the idea of how the

psychedelic vision might have infused Rivera's work. It may help explain, he

says, the magical spatial feeling of Rivera's work, where a vast array of

elements are harmoniously composed. As an artist, he says, he has seen how

psychedelics can define magical spaces, confronting the mind with a multitude

of views simultaneously. So too can they help open an "inner eye" that expands

an artist's vision. For LordNose!, both the ancient Xochipilli and Rivera's

interpretation of him were inspirations.

He and his friend returned across the border to create a Xochipilli of their

own, as a vehicle through which to present information about psychedelics.

They decided to re-create Xochipilli in a modern image, via computer. They

wanted to use the latest technology to depict this ancient deity, giving

Xochipilli an electronic feel, reinterpreting him in a completely new artistic

medium and a transfigured reality.

They decided to display Xochipilli on a poster, together with concise,

up-to-date scientific information on a dozen compounds, each represented by a

"3-D" rendering of its structure. These energy-minimized molecular models were

created by Drs. David Nichols and Robert Pfaff, medicinal chemists at Purdue

University. They are "flowers" created by computer, not carved in stone. In

that way, they integrate the ancient meaning of Xochipilli into a modern

context.

Everything about their Xochipilli was created from new material. They started

by scanning LordNose!'s 8"x10" black-and-white photo of Xochipilli into a

Silicon Graphics Personal Iris, then filtered the image through a sequence of

visual filters, manipulating the incoming data so that the picture elements

were transformed into new, odd-sized shapes instead of uniform dots. "We

pushed the machine to create something we couldn't do any other way," says

LordNose!. "We wanted to create something unique. We didn't want to give the

computer a simple command and use predigested material."

The imagery was exported to a Macintosh, so as to take advantage of all

available software. Using PhotoShop, Xochipilli was extracted from his museum

setting and placed onto a nightsky background. Accurate placement of the

imagery was not possible on the small-screen Macintosh, due to the large

poster size (24"x36") -- so they did everything in pieces. For increased text

legibility, they modified an existing typeface and set the type using

PageMaker. All this electronic data was then combined on a Scitex workstation

by ReproMedia of San Francisco, generating color-separated film ready for the

lithographer. The process, which probably would have taken a month using

"traditional" mechanical methods, took more like ten months because of the

advanced technology and learning involved. It was a way of creating original

art, in homage to a deity, using new tools. The resuit, as LordNose! says, is

itself "something nonordinary."

Accompanying the poster will be a 16-page booklet, "A Guide to the

Psychedelics," which contains background information that wouldn't fit on a

24"x 36" poster format. It includes descriptions of what psychedelics do for

the mind, soul, and body politic; sections on psychedelics, taxonomy, set and

setting, routes of administration, side effects, urine testing, nutritional

support; and other topics. Also included are bibliographies of popular and

scientific resources for some of what we've learned about psychedelics since

Aztec times.

The "Xochi Speaks" poster and "A Guide to the Psychedelics" are available for

$25 postpaid (Californians please add local tax), or $30 foreign,from

LordNose!, P.O. Box 170473, San Francisco, CA 94117-0473. For a preview, see

our back cover.

[spiders]

An awesome idea and one that ive often fantasised about.

I remember seeing a large cyanescens patch in one of Paul Stamets books with a fantastic wood carving standing beside them - it was truly awesome.

[prier]

funny i was just thinking today whether it was possible to get replica statues of Xochipilli.

such a great idea to do it yourself, wish i had the artistic talent to do something like that.