"My beloved little daughter, precious as sapphire and jade, tender and
generous! Our Lord, who dwells everywhere and rains his bounties on whom
he pleases, has remembered you. The God now wishes to give you the fruit
of marriage, and has placed within you a jewel, a rich feather. Perhaps
you have watched, and swept, and offered incense; for such good works the
kindness of the Lord has been made manifest, and it was decreed in Heaven
and Hell, before the beginning of the World, that this grace should be
accorded you. For these reasons our Lord, Quetzalcoatl, who is the author
and creator of things, has shown you this favor; thus has resolved He in
heaven, who is at once both man and woman, and is known under the names
Twice Master and Twice Mistress."[1]

[Footnote 1: Sahagun, _Historia_, Lib. vi, cap. xxv. The bisexual nature
of the Mexican gods, referred to in this passage, is well marked in many
features of their mythology. Quetzalcoatl is often addressed in the
prayers as "father and mother," just as, in the Egyptian ritual, Chnum was
appealed to as "father of fathers and mother of mothers" (Tiele, _Hist. of
the Egyptian Religion_, p. 134). I have endeavored to explain this
widespread belief in hermaphroditic deities in my work entitled, _The
Religious Sentiment, Its Source and Aim_, pp. 65-68, (New York, 1876).]

It is recorded in the old histories that the priests dedicated to his
service wore a peculiar head-dress, imitating a snail shell, and for that
reason were called _Quateczizque_.[1] No one has explained this curiously
shaped bonnet. But it was undoubtedly because Quetzalcoatl was the god of
reproduction, for among the Aztecs the snail was a well known symbol of
the process of parturition.[2]

[Footnote 1: Duran, in Kingsborough, vol. viii, p. 267. The word is from
_quaitl_, head or top, and _tecziztli_, a snail shell.]