What Aztec god was worshipped with flaying and wearing human skin?

The Aztec god associated with flaying and wearing human skin was Xipe Totec, whose Nahuatl name is commonly translated as “Our Lord the Flayed One.” He represented renewal, agriculture, vegetation, and the changing seasons.

Xipe Totec’s disturbing imagery carried an agricultural meaning. Aztec religious thought connected the removal of a victim’s skin with seeds shedding their outer covering before germination and with the earth receiving a new covering of vegetation after the rains. Artists often depicted the god wearing a flayed human skin, with the hands hanging loosely at the wrists.

His principal festival was Tlacaxipehualiztli, usually translated as “the flaying of men.” Captives or enslaved people could be sacrificed, and priests or ritual impersonators wore their skins for a period of ceremonies. Xipe Totec was also associated with warfare, goldsmiths, disease, and healing, making him more complex than a simple death deity.

A common mix-up is Tezcatlipoca, another major Aztec god who sometimes appears in related myths. Xipe Totec, however, is the specific deity identified with ritual flaying and bodily renewal.