Xochiquetzal, Precious Flower or Flower Feather, is the Aztec goddess of flowers, of beauty, of love and pleasure, of female sexuality, and of the crafts of weaving and featherwork, a patroness of artisans and of young mothers. She is imagined as ever-young and richly adorned, attended by birds and butterflies, dwelling in a flowery paradise, and she represents the delightful and creative aspects of life, youth, beauty, art, love and the pleasures of the senses, in contrast to the harsher earth-and-death goddesses of the pantheon. She is the patron of the makers of beautiful things: of the weavers who worked the fine cloth and the amanteca, the skilled feather-workers whose brilliant featherwork was among the most prized of Aztec arts, so that the creative crafts came under the care of the goddess of flowers and beauty. As a goddess of love and sexuality she presided over marriage, courtship and the pleasures of the flesh, and also over the young women and the pleasures of the household; she was honoured at her own festival with dancing and flowers and the offering of the work of artisans' hands.
In the mythic imagination she is linked with Xochipilli, the Flower Prince, the male counterpart of flowers, music, games and pleasure, the two forming a divine pair presiding over the arts and joys of life. Xochiquetzal expresses a side of Aztec religion that is easily overlooked amid its sterner deities: a genuine delight in beauty, in flowers and song, in the skilled and lovely work of human hands, and in the pleasures of love, all gathered under the care of the ever-young goddess of the precious flower.