Xipe Totec (“Our Lord the Flayed One”) was one of the vampiric gods of the Aztec people of ancient Mexico. He was described as wearing the skin of the victims who were sacrificed to him, symbolic of the “new skin” that the earth perpetually grows for itself.

The second month of the Aztec calendar was called Tlacaxipehualiztli (“Flaying of Men”). It was during this time when the priests of Xipe Totec would make their human sacrifices, ripping the still-beating hearts out of the bodies and then flaying the skin before discarding the remains. The human hide was dyed yellow and made into a garment called a teocuitlaquemitl (“golden clothes”), which was only worn by Xipe Totec’s priests. In the second part of the ceremony, additional sacrifices were tied to a framework and shot with arrows, not necessarily killing them outright. Their blood falling to the ground was symbolic of the spring and its rains, which revitalized the land.

Source: Aguilar-Moreno, Handbook to Life in the Aztec World, 151-152, 154; Cramer, The Devil Within, 154; Markman, Flayed God, 204; Myring, Vampires, Werewolves and Demons