Ixtab

Ix Tab is the female form of ah tab, "hangman". The function of Ix Tab as a benevolent "hangwoman" could derive from a basic association with snares. Landa (Tozzer 1941: 155) mentions the hunting deity [Ah] Tabay ("Ensnarer" or "Deceiver"), possibly a patron of hunting with snares, including such that hoist the prey into the air. Animals hoisted by such snares are found depicted in the Dresden and Madrid Codices, the Madrid Codex (MC45c) personifying one of those traps by a male hunting deity. Ix Tab could be understood as a specialized, female form of such a deity, luring the human quarry into the hanging rope personified by her. Suicides freely putting their heads into the "snare" (prompted perhaps by a dream) could then be seen to consecrate themselves to her. On the other hand, the Xtabay of contemporary folklore is a seductive female demon "ensnaring" or "deceiving" her male human preys to madden and destroy them.

The Dresden Codex picture (DC53b) of a dead woman with a rope around the neck, suspended from a celestial bar, is often, and without further proof, taken to represent Ix Tab. However, since the picture occurs in a section devoted to eclipses of sun and moon, it may rather have been used to symbolize a lunar eclipse and its dire consequences for women or the Moon Goddess.

It has been claimed that the pre-Spanish Maya did not have a suicide goddess or a significant narrative of suicide by hanging. Originally, Ix Tab may only have been a hunting goddess (see above, Comparisons). Today, the sensationalist idea of a "cult of Ix Tab" appears to be invoked by popular Yucatecan media to portray suicide as an indigenous problem, given that Yucatán has a suicide rate more than twice that of Mexico at large. The inflammatory language goes as far back as Diego de Landa, whose account made it seem like seem like a rampant issue amongst the Maya population.