Coatlicue

She wears a skirt of writhing snakes and a necklace of human hearts, for she is the womb and the tomb of the entire cosmos. "Can you love a mother who wants to eat you?" is the question posed by the goddess of the earth, she who birthed the sun and the stars only to demand their return. She is the terrifying source of all life, a mountain of stone and blood that reminds us our bodies are merely borrowed from her soil. She represents the "Cycle of Destruction," the realization that to create, one must first devour. She is the patroness of the midwives and the dead, the one who stands at the beginning and the end of every breath. In her, the concept of a "loving mother" is replaced by the reality of a primordial force.