1 As it has been found impossible to include every illustration from the codices which is mentioned in the text, those pictures not supplied may be consulted in the reproductions of the codices themselves. A full bibliography of the codices will be found at the end. When the letter K appears with reference to a codex, its reproduction in Kingsborough’s “Mexican” antiquities is implied. ↑
2 This stellar mask is so called from being worn by the stellar deities. It is usually connected with the red-and-white striped painting of the body. The Sahagun Aztec MS. calls it “face-cage marking” and “face-star marking which is called darkness,” the former referring to stripes over the face, the latter to the mask design, which seems to me to symbolize night surrounded by the “eyes” of the stars. ↑
3 Hist. Nat. Ind., pp. 352 ff., English translation in Purchas his Pilgrimes, bk. v, c. 9. Maclehoses’ edition. ↑
5 Gage’s trans. of Herrera, in New Survey, pp. 116–117; for Spanish text, see Hist. Gen., tom. i, dec. ii, bk. vii, c. xvii. ↑
12 This custom was in vogue among certain prehistoric races, and is still practised on the death of a relative by African bushmen, who first remove a finger-joint. ↑
13 More correctly quauhxicalli, a stone vase for the reception of the hearts of victims, from quauh (tli) “eagle,” and xicalli, “cup.” ↑
18 So Uitzilopochtli addresses his half-brother. “Uncle” among the ancient Mexicans was an honorific title. ↑
23 Hist. Nat. Ind. in Purchas his Pilgrimes, bk. v, c. xiii. See also Manuel Gamio, Proc. 19th Cong. Amer., Washington, 1915, for account of discoveries when the foundations of this temple were partly laid bare in 1913. ↑
25 Sahagun, bk. ii, c. xxxiv; Uitzilopochtli himself, as we shall see, was oracular. In this case I take it that the octli distilled from the plant conferred the boon of oracular speech. ↑
26 The first pulque or octli, which was called uitztli, was offered at this festival as first-fruits to Uitzilopochtli. The spirit distilled from the pulque is still known as mexcal or mescal, and is probably identical with the fiery fluid given to the braves in the service of the god before going into battle. ↑
29 The Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas calls Uitzilopochtli omitecilt. I think this should be read ome tecitl, “twice-wizard,” but it may read ome tecutli, “twice-lord.” But the latter is certainly a title of Tonacatecutli, the creative deity. ↑
33 The Centzonuitznaua appear to be the same as the Tzitzimimê, whom Tezozomoc calls the “gods of the air who bring the rains, floods, thunderclaps, and thunders and lightnings and had to be placed round Uitzilopochtli” in order to complete the construction of the great teocalli of Mexico. These “gods of the signs and planets,” in other words the stars, were regarded as demons of darkness, thinks Seler, “only because during a solar eclipse the [87]stars became visible in the day sky.” I think it much more probable that they were looked upon as demons of darkness because they peopled the darkness every night. “These,” says the interpreter of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, “are the sons of Citlalicue.” Now, Citlalicue means “Starry-skirt,” and I think that here we are not very far from Coatlicue, “Serpent-skirt.” We know, too, that Citlalicue, like Coatlicue, was connected with the cipactli, the earth-beast, and with Chicomecoatl (“Seven Serpents”). The later fusion of Citlalicue with her husband Citlaltonac or Tonacatecutli, lord of the heavenly vault, as has been shown in the remarks on these gods, would give her stellar attributes; hence the seeming discrepancy between her and Coatlicue. ↑
36 See Rendel Harris, The Ascent of Olympus, passim. In his Ascent of Olympus Dr. Rendel Harris has shown that the sacred oak of Zeus was regarded as “the animistic repository of the thunder, and in that sense the dwelling-place of Zeus … that the woodpecker who nested in it … was none other than Zeus himself, and it may turn out that Athena, who sprang from the head of the thunder-oak, was the owl that lived in one of its hollows” (p. 57).
In the same way, it may be that the maguey plant may have been regarded by the Mexicans as a repository of thunder and the heavenly fire. Octli, its sap, was connected with fire (see octli gods, “Nature and Status”), and Uitzilopochtli was the humming-bird who dwelt among its leaves. He springs from his mother’s body fully armed, as does Athena from the head of Zeus. A similar train of thought appears to be present in both ideas. ↑
39 Maguey is an Antillean word imported into Mexico by the Spaniards, but the use of a post-Columbian word does not exclude the possibility of a synonymous pre-Columbian form. ↑
60 This figure conventionally represents the turkey and strikingly exhibits the large red wattles and lobe of that bird. In most of the MSS. it wears Tezcatlipocâ’s smoking mirror at the temple, the warrior’s headdress of heron-feathers, and in Codex Borbonicus it appears as a naualli or disguise of the god, having his crown painted with stars and his anauatl or ring of mussel-shell. On sheet 6 of Codex Fejérváry-Mayer the bird appears as an image of Tezcatlipocâ and is represented along with the signs of mortification and blood-letting, as it is on sheet 17 of the Aubin tonalamatl, where it wears the bone-piercer in its ears and a red robe edged with blue and brown. Indeed, it represents the blood-offering connected with the worship of Tezcatlipocâ. The turkey-cock’s foot, too, is sometimes symbolic of the god, and the interpretative codices tell us that “of the demons we often see nothing more than a cock’s or eagle’s foot.” The turkey-cock is to be conceived as representative of rain, which was believed by the Nahua to be nothing else than the magically altered blood he shed in penitence or sacrifice. It may be that the red wattles and lobe of the turkey suggested the idea of blood, and that the shades in his plumage were equally suggestive of water. Thus it would come to be regarded as the blood shed by the stone knife of sacrifice. It is also obvious that Tezcatlipocâ’s patronage of slaves, who were strictly regarded as his property, arose out of the idea that those unfortunates, whenever used for the purposes of sacrificial ritual, constituted the “food” of the obsidian knife. ↑
62 Bernal Diaz also states that the eyes of Tezcatlipocâ’s idol were “mirrors.” See ante, “Aspect and Insignia.” ↑
63 In the myth which recounts his discomfiture of the Toltecs it will be recalled that he rained stones upon them. See also Introduction for identification of obsidian with wind and breath. ↑
76 Sahagun’s statement that the draught would make Quetzalcoatl remember those evils is obviously a slip which even his copyist Torquemada is capable of avoiding. ↑
78 The names throughout the myth merely describe the incident which took place at the locality alluded to. ↑
87 The myths relating to him under the name of Tohil appear to me to identify Tohil more with Tezcatlipocâ. See Brassuer, Le Vuh Popol, passim. ↑
88 The circumstance that the two high-priests of Mexico, the pontiffs of the cults of Uitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, had the name Quetzalcoatl prefixed to their official descriptions merely indicates that it had passed into a sacerdotal title. They were in no special sense attached to the worship of the god. ↑