SKETCH-OF-THE-DAY 068

I is for Ixchel

The malevolent moon goddess in the Mayan pantheon, Ixchel was often shown as a withered old woman crowned with a snake and wearing a skirt decorated with crossed bones (actually that sounds like normal attire for girls at rock concerts - those crazy youths).  In her clawed hands she held a vessel filled with destruction which she not-so-nicely pours out onto the Earth.

I almost did the Mayan goddess of suicide, Ixtab - I'm not kidding, they had a goddess of friggin' suicide!  Even better, the goddess of suicide is a partially decomposed corpse hanging in a noose from a tree limb.

Ya gotta give it to those Mayans, even their least morbid gods probably ate brains and pulled teeth and wore flayed human skins.