Baron Samedi as depicted in his standard design in the Smite video game from the fan wiki

(17) XIPE TOTEC & BARON SAMEDI

“It’s going to be a beautiful day, heh heh heh, yes sir, a b-e-a-u-tiful day” – Baron Samedi in the James Bond film “Live and Let Die”.

Just as I felt that these pantheons needed some representation in the special mentions for my top mythological heroes, so too I felt they needed representation among the special mentions for my top mythological villains.

Ironically, that was as strange as nominating heroes from the pantheons. Sure, the whole Aztec and voodoo pantheons might seem villainous to those not familiar with them, although it might be more accurate to describe them as anti-heroic or alien in their morality.

Still, these two deities seemed to me the best nominations as mythological villains for their respective pantheons.

I mean, who else among the Aztec pantheon than Xipe Totec, whose name means Our Lord the Flayed One?

Sure, he earned this special mention on the back (or is that skin?) of his adaptation in Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles – one whose modus operandi seemed to be wearing the skin of his victim’s faces on his own – but there’s his portfolio as a deity.

“In Aztec mythology, Xipe Totec…was a life-death-rebirth deity, god of agriculture, vegetation, the east, spring, goldsmiths, silversmiths, liberation, deadly warfare, the seasons, and the earth”.

All but the deadly warfare seems benevolent – except that he connected agricultural renewal with warfare and indeed was believed to be the god that invented war. He also had a strong association with disease – so potentially he had the means to be all Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse wrapped up as one.

Baron Samedi – which translates in English as Baron Saturday – is probably the most famous voodoo loa or deity. It’s a little unfair to rank him as villain rather than the antihero or trickster that he more accurately is.

Apart from his fame and his role as a god of death, what earns him villainous special mention is more by way of adaptation – the first is as the model for the cult of personality by Haitian dictator Papa Doc, and the second is his role as villainous henchman for James Bond in the film Live and Let Die, strikingly played by Geoffrey Holder and perhaps the only genuinely supernatural antagonist for Bond, if his post-credits appearance is anything to go by.

RATING:

X-TIER (WILD TIER)