If, like the necromancers of old, we possessed the power to summon the shades of the dead before us, and employed this dread authority to recall from the place of shadows the spirit of a member of the priesthood of ancient Mexico, in order that we might obtain from him an account of the faith which he had professed while in the body, it is improbable that we would derive much information regarding the precise significance of the cult of which he was formerly an adherent without tedious and skilful questioning. He would certainly be able to enlighten us readily enough on matters of ritual and mythology, calendric science and the like; but if we were to press him for information regarding the motives underlying the outer manifestations of his belief, he would almost certainly disappoint us, unless our questionary was framed in the most careful manner. In all likelihood he would be unable to comprehend the term “religion,” of which we should necessarily have to make use, and which it would seem so natural for us to employ; and he would scarcely be capable of dissociating the circumstances of his faith from those of Mexican life in general, especially as regards its political, military, agricultural, and artistic connections.

Nor would he regard magic or primitive science as in any way alien to the activities of his office. But if we became more importunate, and begged him to make some definite statement regarding the true meaning and import of his [2]religion ere he returned to his place, he might, perhaps, reply: “If we had not worshipped the gods and sacrificed to them, nourished them with blood and pleasured them with gifts, they would have ceased to watch over our welfare, and would have withheld the maize and water which kept us in life. The rain would not have fallen and the crops would not have come to fruition.”1 If he employed some such terms as these, our phantom would outline the whole purport of the system which we call Mexican religion, the rude platform on which was raised the towering superstructure of rite and ceremony, morality and tradition, a part of which we are about to examine.

The writer who undertakes the description of any of the great faiths of the world usually presupposes in his readers a certain acquaintance with the history and conditions of the people of whose religion he treats. But the obscurity which surrounded all questions relating to Mexican antiquity until the beginning of this century formerly made it essential that any view of its religious phase should be prefaced by an account of the peoples who professed it, their racial affinities, and the country they occupied. This necessity no longer exists. The ground has been traversed so often of late, and I have covered it so frequently in previous works,2 that I feel only a brief account of these conditions is necessary here, such, in a word, as will enable the reader to realize circumstances of race, locality, and period.

The people whose religious ideas this book attempts to describe were the Nahua of pre-Colombian Mexico, a race by no means extinct, despite the oft-repeated assertions of popular novelists, and which is now usually classed as a branch of the great Uto-Aztecan family of the North American Indian stock. They spoke, and their descendants still speak, a language known as the Nahuatl, or Nahuatlatolli (“speech of those who live by rule” or “by ritual observance”). At the era of the Spanish invasion of their country in 1519 [3]they had succeeded in overrunning and reducing to their dominion practically all that part of modern Mexico which lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. They were, in all probability, immigrants from the north, and their art-forms, no less than their physique and beliefs, have led certain writers to form the opinion that they came originally from the neighbourhood of British Columbia, or that they had a common origin with the Indian tribes which inhabit that region at the present time.

However this may be, the first Nahua immigrants would appear to have entered the Valley of Mexico at some time during the eighth century of our era. But the Aztecâ, part of a later swarm of Nahua, do not seem to have descended upon it until the middle of the thirteenth century, or to have founded the settlement of Mexico-Tenochtitlan until about the year 1376. At the period of their arrival in the valley they were a barbarous tribe of nomadic hunters, wandering from place to place in search of fresh hunting-grounds, precisely as did many North American Indian tribes before reservations were provided for them. Gradually, by virtue of their superior prowess in war, they achieved the hegemony of the Plateau of Anahuac, which boasted a tradition and civilization at least five hundred years old. These they proceeded to assimilate with marvellous rapidity, as is not infrequently the case when a race of hunters mingles with a settled agricultural population. Indeed, in the course of the century and a quarter which intervened between the founding of Mexico and the period of the Spanish Conquest, they had arrived at such a standard of civilization as surprised their Castilian conquerors. When the Aztecâ, abandoning their wandering life, finally settled in the Valley of Anahuac, upon the site of Tenochtitlan, now the city of Mexico, they embarked upon a series of conflicts with their neighbours, which ended in the complete subjection of these peoples.

The races over whom they exercised a kind of feudal sway were many and diverse, and only the more important of these can be mentioned here. To the north [4]dwelt the hunting Chichimecs, a related people, and the Otomi, a semi-barbarous folk, probably of aboriginal origin, and speaking a distinct language. To the west dwelt the Tarascans, whose racial affinities are unknown, or, at least, dubious. South of the Rio de las Balsas were situated the Mixtecs and Zapotecs, whose language somewhat resembled that of the Otomi and who possessed a larger measure of civilization. On the East Coast were found the Huaxtecs and Totonacs, races of Maya origin, and south-east of these lay the Olmecs, Xicalancas, and Nonoualcas, of older precedence in the land. Beyond the Isthmus of Tehuantepec were found the Maya, a people of relatively high civilization, whose origin is obscure, and into the question of whose relationship I do not propose to enter in this place.

Until the beginning of the present century most Americanists held that Mexican civilization and consequently Mexican religion were the outcome of but a few generations of native progress. It is true that the Nahua people had behind them a relatively brief history of national and tribal life, but modern research has shown that they were undoubtedly the heirs of a civilization having early foundations and of considerable achievement and complexity, the religious aspect of which had arrived at a high state of development.3 Evidences of the archaic character of this faith are rapidly accumulating, but many years must yet be dedicated to the examination and comparison of the data concerning it before it is possible to speak with any degree of certainty regarding the causes which contributed to its formation and evolution.

Although we must necessarily regard Mexican religion as having had a progressive history spread over many generations, we are at present almost ignorant of the gradual changes which accompanied its growth. An effort will be made to outline the probable nature of these mutations, but the endeavour will not receive any great measure of [5]assistance from the abundant but chaotic and unclassified material amassed by Americanists during the last twenty years, which in its present condition is not of much value as regards this particular branch of the subject, but which it is the writer’s intention to employ, so far as it is capable of illustrating the question before us.

It is necessary at this stage to deal briefly with the sources of Mexican religious history. A literature, bewildering in its scope and variety, has grown up around the subject of Mexican antiquity as a whole, and it is perhaps well for the student if he approaches it with only a partial realization of the spacious character of the material he must review. I have thought it best in such a work as this to relegate most of the bibliographical matter to an appendix, where an endeavour has been made to supply the student with a trustworthy catalogue of such manuscripts and works as are essential to the study of Mexican religion. It is hoped that this may prove of guidance and assistance and spare much initial toil. But for the present I will confine my remarks to such general observations upon the sources from which we partly glean our knowledge of the ancient Mexican faith as will serve the immediate purpose. These sources are four in number: (I) The native codices or paintings; (II) the native annals; (III) native art-forms in architecture, sculpture, pottery, and mural painting, depicting gods and other divine beings; and (IV) the writings of the Spanish conquerors of Mexico.

(I) The Native Codices.—These are paintings executed by native Mexican artists upon agave paper, leather, or cotton. Through the misguided zeal of the early Spanish religious authorities, who regarded them as of diabolic character, only some twelve of these remain to us, the greater number of which possess a mythological or religious significance. In their pages we find representations of many of the principal deities of the Mexican pantheon, as well as illustrations of [6]several passages in Mexican myth, and they frequently depict the tonalamatl or priestly Book of Fate, with its highly complex symbolism.4 Close familiarity with these manuscripts is indispensable, as they constitute one of the few original sources of our knowledge of the aspect, costume, and insignia of the Mexican deities. All of them have been handsomely, if expensively, reproduced, and these are detailed in the bibliography.

Here it is only necessary to remark upon the several theories which have regard to their place of origin. Dr. H. J. Spinden, in his valuable Study of Maya Art, objects that “most of the detailed accounts of religious beliefs and ceremonies that have come down to us refer primarily to the Valley of Mexico, while nearly all the really elaborate codices of a religious nature come from either the Zapotecan-Mixtecan area or from the Maya.”5 We are not here concerned with the Maya manuscripts, and with regard to the Zapotec and Mixtec examples we have the assurance of Seler,6 which is founded upon critical evidence of value, that an entire group of these manuscripts—and that by far the most important, the Codex Borgia group—“belongs to a Mexican-speaking people” who inhabited the districts of Teouacan, Cozcatlan, and Teotitlan del Camino, and who, though separated from the Nahua of the Valley of Anahuac at an early period, yet in great measure retained the ancient beliefs common to both. Nearly all of the deities represented in this group of manuscripts so closely resemble in their aspect, costume, and general symbolism the drawings and descriptions of gods known to have been worshipped in the Mexican area proper, as to make it positively certain that they represent the same divine beings with merely trifling differences of detail due to local environment. The separation of the Nahua of the Plateau of Mexico and those of the more southerly region was of such duration as to justify the belief that their religious ideas had diverged considerably. But the subsequent conquest of the southern area by the Northern [7]Nahua must have resuscitated old common beliefs among their kindred in the south, and weakened the ideas they had adopted or developed in that environment. This is proved by the considerable variation in type between the oldest southern pottery representing what are presumably divine forms and the pictures of the gods in the later manuscripts of the Codex Borgia group.

(II) The Native Writings.—These “annals,” as they are sometimes called, the work of natives who wrote in Spanish, constitute a mine of aboriginal information of nearly equal value with that contained in the codices, but considerable discrimination is necessary in using them in view of the tendency of their authors to corrupt traditional material when inspired by patriotic or other motives. This, however, manifestly does not apply with equal force to accounts of a mythical or ritual nature and to historical events, which offer a much greater temptation than the former to scribes manifestly ignorant of the virtues of literary integrity. The Mexican annals are of two classes: those which represent the historical or traditional relics of native communities, such as the Annals of Quauhtitlan, also known as the Codex Chimalpopocâ; and those which are the work of educated Mexicans or half-breeds, prone to magnify the splendour of the ancient races. Ranking almost as a third or separate class are the sacred songs or hymns included in the Mexican MS. of Sahagun’s Historia General, which that most unwearied of workers received at first hand from approved native scribes. The several native writings will be found described in the appendix, and the hymns, or rather a translation of them into English prose, will be met with in the descriptions of the several deities to which they apply.

(III) Native Art-forms.—Mexican architectural motifs, mural paintings, and especially sculpture and pottery, frequently afford reliable material upon which to form conclusions regarding the aspect and costume of the gods, and reproductions of the most important of these illustrate the descriptions of the several Mexican deities.

(IV) Writings of the Spanish Conquerors of Mexico.—If [8]the representatives of the Church in Mexico must be condemned for their narrow and illiberal action in destroying all native manuscripts and paintings bearing upon the ancient religion of the country, certain more enlightened individuals among them laboured strenuously to remove this reproach by their zealous, if frequently unskilful, attempts to reconstruct a knowledge of the popular faith by unremitting researches into native tradition. This attitude met with but little countenance from their ecclesiastical superiors, and at times they laboured under conditions the reverse of favourable for the collection of traditional material. But it would be ungrateful not to pay a meed of respect to the self-sacrifice of those enlightened and resourceful men, but for whose endeavours our knowledge of Mexican antiquities would be all the poorer.

Undoubtedly the most valuable collection of evidence relative to the Mexican religion compiled by a Spanish churchman is the Historia General of Bernardino Sahagun, whose work, composed with scholarly care and an almost prophetic knowledge of the correct methods to be pursued in the collection of traditional material, was completed about the middle of the sixteenth century, but remained unpublished until 1830. This work has been described so repeatedly as to require no further mention here, and other notable works are included in the bibliography. Some allusion should also be made here to the works known as the Interpretative Codices, compiled by Pedro de Rios and other monks, who retained the services of native painters to execute drawings of Mexican deities or, as some believe, drew these figures themselves, the symbolism and general meaning of which they endeavoured to make plain and interpret, only too often in the light of their knowledge of the Scriptures.

The question of the origin of Mexican religion, like that of the civilization of which it was perhaps the most salient characteristic, has afforded matter for ardent controversy [9]from the period of the discovery and conquest of the country until the present day. But, even so, it is still unsafe to dogmatize upon Mexican religious origins. At the time of the Conquest we observe Mexican religion as a highly complex faith, with a ceremonial of the most elaborate nature, a priesthood with nicely defined gradations in office, and a pantheon which had obviously been formed by the collocation of the deities of provincial and dependent tribes and peoples around a nucleus composed of the national and departmental gods of the Aztecâ. The great temple-area of Mexico-Tenochtitlan harboured a bewildering array of gods, many of which possessed separate shrines and ministrants. An intensive examination of the alien elements represented, however, tends to prove the identity of many of them with the gods of the Aztecâ, a similarity which, in numerous instances, was manifest to that people themselves and which was the result of tribal affinity or basic resemblance in religious conception. Nevertheless a residuum of unrelated deities remained, which might, perhaps, be accounted for by positing the existence of two markedly different cultures or tendencies in Mexico, barbarous and civilized. This may imply that the opposing influences which gave rise to these variations were alien to each other racially, or it may indicate that, whereas one had remained in an environment of barbarism, the other had developed and enlarged its theological and even its mythical conceptions in the light of the necessities of an advancing material civilization. Whence the seeds of that civilization came is, as has been said, matter of controversy. The existence of a system of monachism in Mexico would seem to indicate a non-American origin. Elements common to both aspects of this interesting faith were sufficiently numerous in Mexican religion. Thus the so-called Chichimecs, or rude hunters of the steppes to the north of the Valley of Mexico, retained in their pristine form the simple beliefs and the ungraded pantheon, which in the case of the more advanced tribes of cognate origin rapidly took shape as a great State religion under the influences of a more complex social system, [10]the stimulus of alien religious conceptions, and above all, of a priesthood skilled in the reduction of theological and mythical material to dogma. This cult, although composed of elements perhaps at first conflicting in aim and character, had yet arrived at a comparative degree of homogeneity and had evolved an intricate and exacting ritual and a symbolism of great richness and artistic complexity, the extensive and bewildering nature of which can be verified by a cursory inspection of the native codices.

The myths which relate to the earliest religious influences in Mexico are for the most part connected with the pre-Aztec “Toltec” civilization and the more ancient and sacred sites of Tollan and Teotihuacan. They chiefly refer to a god or culture-hero called Quetzalcoatl, whose myths and attributes will be described elsewhere in this work, and who was regarded as the prototype of the Mexican priesthood and one of the inventors of the tonalamatl or Book of Fate. The type of religion founded by him differs greatly from that practised by the Mexicans at the period of the Conquest, as it eschewed, or was, perhaps, originally innocent of, human sacrifice or ceremonial cannibalism, and practised purification and penance by the drawing of blood. In certain myths its founder is described as a native of the country, in others as the offspring of divine beings, while still others regard him as a foreigner who introduced his cult from the east. It is noteworthy that this cult is closely connected with monachism7 and that in later times it was, perhaps, regarded as more intimately bound up with pietistic and “civilized” ritual practice than that of any other Mexican deity. Ultimately, the myths relate, Quetzalcoatl left the country because of the machinations of “enchanters.”8 This may mean that the older and less barbarous cult was forced into a secondary place by the ruder and more popular beliefs of a tribe of lower culture, but there are evidences that the [11]religion of Quetzalcoatl assuredly assisted in the building-up of the rain-cult of Mexico. In any case little information is to be gleaned from the myth of Quetzalcoatl for our present purpose of illustrating the primitive type of Mexican religion, and it must probably be regarded as pointing to the existence of an early monachism and a developed ritual in ancient Mexico.9

The myths relating to the great tribal gods, if faithfully examined, assist us in forming a definite idea of the character of early religious conceptions in Anahuac. The hymns to the gods are, perhaps, a surer indication of the trend of popular faith and probably date from a more archaic period than do the myths, which, as we possess them, nearly all exhibit signs of priestly alteration. In several of these chants we assuredly arrive at the whole significance of Mexican religion, which in its essence, and as seen at the Conquest period, was nothing more than a vastly elaborated rain-cult, similar in its general tendency to that still prevalent among the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico and Arizona, yet broader in outlook, of a higher complexity and productive of a theology and an ethical system of greater sophistication and scope. The religion of the Pueblo peoples is, indeed, the poor and degenerate descendant of the bizarre and picturesque ritual of the Mexicans, or, more probably, had a common origin with it. Through the researches and personal exertions of many well-equipped Americanists the entire ritual of this modern pluvial cult is now well known and deserves the closest study from students of Mexican religion, as providing them with comparative and analogical material of the first importance.10

We shall keep on the trail of a very definite clue if we attempt to descry in such evidences as we possess of archaic Mexican faith the signs of an incipient rain-cult, having its origin in a settled agricultural existence. If we glance at [12]the general characteristics of the numerous members of the Mexican pantheon, we find that very readily and quite naturally they group themselves into three great classes: (a) creative deities, which may be regarded as the outcome of late theological speculation, and which may, accordingly, be passed over in this place; (b) gods of growth; and (c) gods developed from specific objects and deified heavenly bodies, some of which latter were developed from gods of the chase. The “original” deities of Mexico would seem, therefore, to have presided over vegetable growth and conferred on their votaries good luck in the hunt. But as time passed, these latter also took on the attributes of gods of the cereal and vegetable food-supply, and, indeed, often seriously contested the status of the true growth-gods in the elaborate nature of the symbolic vegetal ceremonial with which their festivals were celebrated.

It is not surprising that the Valley of Mexico became the centre of a cult of which the appeal for rain was the salient characteristic. A copious supply of rainfall for the purposes of irrigation is, indeed, a necessity to the Mexican agriculturist, and a dry year in ancient Anahuac brought with it famine and misery unspeakable. Inexpressibly touching are the fervent prayers to Tlaloc, god of water, that he should not visit his displeasure upon the people by withdrawing the pluvial supply. “O our most compassionate lord … I beseech thee to look with eyes of pity upon the people of this city and kingdom, for the whole world, down to the very beasts, is in peril of destruction and disappearance and irremediable end … for the ridges of the earth suffer sore need and anguish from lack of water … with deep sighing and anguish of heart I cry upon all those that are gods of water, that are in the four quarters of the world … to come and console this poor people and to water the earth, for the eyes of all that inhabit the earth, animals as well as men, are turned towards you, and their hope is set upon you.”11 [13]

The elements of growth, in the mind of primitive man, are four in number, the earth, grain, rain, and solar heat, and it is not remarkable that all of these came to be regarded as deified powers, and were latterly personalized in anthropomorphic form. It does not appear that the sun was at first looked upon as an agency of growth. There is, indeed, proof that in early times he was not regarded as of any importance from a calendric point of view, and that the time and festival-counts were designed upon a lunar basis.12 It is not unlikely that, in a region where his torrid heat, if unaccompanied by rainfall, resulted in famine, he was at first regarded, if not unfavourably, at least with no special predilection. If this conclusion is correct, and we can afford to discount solar influence in the primitive Mexican cultus—or rather that adopted by the aboriginal peoples on embracing a settled agricultural existence—there remain to us the three elements of earth, grain, and rain from which to reconstruct the prototypes of the Mexican pantheon.

In Mexican myth the earth is represented as a monster known as cipactli, the pictures of which have given rise to the assumption that it is either a crocodile, a swordfish, or a dragon. We shall probably not err if we place it in the last category and see in it that great earth-monster common to the mythologies of many races, and which is most conveniently called the “earth-dragon.”13 This sign cipactli became the first in the tonalamatl or Book of Fate, where it is connected with the creative deities and the Earth-mother, who was known by many names. Circumstances exist which seem to lend colour to the assumption that, as in other countries, the Mexican Earth-mother had at one time been regarded as forming the earth, the soil. At the terrible and picturesque festival of the Xalaquia (“She who is clothed with the sand”), the sacrificed virgin was supposed to enrich and recruit with her blood the frame of the worn-out goddess, who had [14]been, says Seler, “merged in the popular imagination with the all-nourisher, the all-begetter, the earth.”14

Perhaps the best evidence that the idea of the Earth-mother was associated with the conception of the earth-dragon is afforded by the colossal stone figure of Coatlicue, one of her manifestations, which once towered above the entrance to the temple of Uitzilopochtli in Mexico and is now housed in the Museo Naçional in that city. In this figure, as in a similar if less massive statue from Tehuacan, the characteristics of the cipactli earth-animal obtrude themselves in a wealth of scale, claw, and tusk, which although frequently described as serpentine, is only partially so, and shows traces that more than one idea was in the mind of the artist who chiselled its symbolic intricacies. In the latter of these sculptures the appearance of ferocity is most marked and is accompanied by the same dragon-like claws on hands and feet. In the mythologies of many lands the Earth-mother is represented as ferocious, insatiable, as slaying those who take part in her amours, as a riotous and outrageous demon, unnatural and destructive in her lusts and appetites, and it would seem that her Mexican phase throws light upon the reasons for this savage wantonness. In the sculpture first alluded to, and in the carving on its base, we can perceive a close resemblance to the earth-monster of the Maya peoples, especially as represented in the carvings at Copan and in the Temple of the Cross at Palenque. These afford almost irrefragable proof of the correctness of the supposition regarding the fusion of the concepts of the earth-beast and the earth-mother which has been outlined.15

The deification of the grain is so universal a phenomenon as to require but little explanation, especially in regard to a country where it formed the staple alimentary supply. It appears to have received divine honours in many districts in Mexico and to have been worshipped under a variety of names, but there was little difference between the characters [15]of these several cults, and the absence of this is well exemplified by the readiness with which they amalgamated and the fusion of their central figures.

The deification of the rain, as apart from the idea of a mere rain-god, is perhaps a circumstance of more novelty to the student of Comparative Religion. Tlaloc, the god of rain or moisture, is one of the most striking examples of this process in any mythology. A god of great antiquity, his pluvial character is obvious and undoubted. But he is also the life-giver, the nourisher, who from his home in the green uplands of Tlalocan sends the vivifying rains to fill the deep fissures in the hard, cracked soil of the Valley of Anahuac. In the courtyard of his dwelling stood four jars of water, typifying the four different “kinds” of rainfall which corresponded to the four quarters of the heavens, and these were distributed by his progeny, the Tlaloquê. There is the best evidence that the aspect of Tlaloc was evolved from the idea of the rain itself. His face is formed from the interlacings of two serpents, his face-paint is black and blue, or dirty yellow like the threatening cloud which holds the thunder-shower. The garments he wears are splashed with ulli rubber-gum, evidently intended to symbolize rain-spots. Indeed, his robe is called the anachxechilli or “dripping garment,” and is frequently depicted as set with green gems to represent the sparkling raindrops. Few rain-gods, even the Vedic Indra himself, whom Tlaloc somewhat resembles, are so frankly symbolic of the moisture which falls from above.16 But his serpentine or dragon-like form renders it probable that, although he was regarded in later times as a personification of the rain, in earlier times he was looked upon as the “Water Provider,” the great serpent or dragon which dwelt among the hills and which must be defeated by a hero or demi-god ere it will disgorge the floods which ensure the growth of vegetation.

We may now examine the elements just described for traces [16]of the early constituents of religion. The conception that the earth itself was a monster gifted with life is evidently the outcome of a belief in “animism” or “personalization,” and merits little further notice because of its obvious character. Although the grain was also personalized, there are evidences of its “fetishtic” nature in early times. The great stone figure of Coatlicue already alluded to, besides affording evidence of the dragon-like character of the Earth-mother, exhibits many of the attributes of the primitive fetish manufactured from bundles of maize, large beans representing the eyes and pumpkin pips the teeth, while strips of paper form the mouth and labret. True, these early characteristics have been overlaid by the abounding symbolism of later and more complex ideas—the skin of the sacrificial victim, the serpent-heads, representing perhaps the spouting of that victim’s blood from the severed trunk and the skirt of serpents with which myth credited the goddess—but in the clumsy amorphousness of this wondrously carven block we can readily perceive the outline of the maize-sheaves from which its idea was drawn. Indeed the ears and leaves of the maize-plant descend from underneath the skirt of serpents and decorate the knot which secures it behind.17

More than one of the great gods exhibit the signs of fetishtic origin. Uitzilopochtli, the great tribal patron deity of the Aztecâ of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, was described in tradition as leading them from the mythical northern country of Aztlan in the form of “a little bird.” He is usually represented in the pictorial MSS., where his appearance is infrequent, as wearing a mantle made from humming-birds’ [17]feathers. Later legend spoke of him as the vindicator of his mother, a goddess of vegetation, and as slaying her detractors, his own half-brothers, while in historical times the whole business of war was arranged through the instrumentality of his oracular image and was carried out chiefly in view of the necessity for human sacrifice which characterized his especial cult. But if we examine the roots of the beliefs which cluster around him, we shall find much to convince us that he was, after the entrance of his people into the Valley of Anahuac, identified with the maguey plant, which forms so familiar an object in the Mexican landscape. Extended proof of this lowly origin will be found in the section which deals with the god.

Quite as humble are the beginnings of the god Tezcatlipocâ, perhaps the most universally dreaded among the Mexican deities. Regarding his precise significance nothing very definite has been arrived at by modern authorities. As will be shown later, the early significance of Tezcatlipocâ arises out of his connection with obsidian, which had an especial sanctity for the Mexicans.

In our gropings for the roots of the Mexican faith we must not fail to notice those elements which stand apart from agricultural religion and are eloquent of the concepts of a still earlier time. Agricultural theology is as old as agriculture, and no older. The food-supply of the savage prior to that period depends upon the successful conduct of the chase. His gods are therefore often precisely of the species of animal by hunting which he gains a livelihood, and which he frequently regards as placed at his disposal by a great eponymous beast-god of the same kind.18 Again, for some reason which has never been satisfactorily explained and for which no solution can be found at present, in view of the rather dubious nature of what is known as “totemism,” primitive man adores, or in some manner exalts, certain [18]animals on the flesh of which he does not live. But although gods evolved from animal shapes are frequently to be met with in the Mexican pantheon, I can recall no instance of the taboo of the flesh of any animal as an article of diet in Anahuac, or Mexico proper, although this may be found in the cultus of several of the tribes of the more outlying regions.

Uitzilopochtli has the characteristics of a humming-bird, and, indeed, all of the thirteen gods which governed the hours of the day are figured in the tonalamatl of the Aubin Collection with bird-disguises, and one of the thirteen heavens of the Mexicans is set apart for bird-gods, while certain other deities appear in animal forms. For example, Tepeyollotl is figured as a jaguar, Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl have serpentine characteristics, Itzpapalotl is a butterfly-dragon, Tezcatlipocâ a spider, a jaguar, or a turkey, Mixcoatl takes deer shape, and so on. But some of these forms are probably symbolic rather than “totemic.” The cult of Nagualism,19 a degraded post-Colombian form of the old religion, was insistent upon the connection of its votaries with an animal spirit or familiar from an early period of their lives—that is, to each individual a personal “totem” was assigned, precisely as is the case among many North American tribes at the present time and as among the Lacandone of Yucatan.

Enough has been said in view of the restricted nature of the evidence, to prove that Mexican religion passed through much the same primitive conditions as other faiths. Further evidence on this point will be adduced as the gods are severally described. We may now proceed to examine such proof as we possess of the onward and upward progress of the cult of rain and growth in Mexico. We may, perhaps, imagine the institution of tribal or village rain or grain fetishes, which in course of time would attain godhead by reason of popularity or supposed auspiciousness. The ministers of these would probably bear a strong resemblance [19]to the medicine-men of North American Indian tribes. Warfare undoubtedly played a great part in the fortunes of these local cults. Thus, did the people of a certain tribal god triumph in feud or battle, his worship would almost certainly be enlarged in a territorial sense. But such a triumph would be a small incentive to further conquest when compared with the absolute necessity for war engendered by the holy law that captives must be obtained for purposes of sacrifice to the tribal deities.

The origins of the institution of human sacrifice in Mexico are obscure. Native mythology attributed its invention to a group of earth-goddesses headed by Teteo innan or Tlazolteotl, who in the Calendar year “eight-rabbit” came to the city of Tollan or Tula from the Huaxtec country and, summoning the captives whom they had taken in that land, said to them: “We want to couple the earth with you, we want to hold a feast with you, for till now no battle-offerings have been made with men.”20

This myth is, perhaps, ætiological, but it would seem to have some historical basis. Deeply rooted in the Mexican mind was the idea that unless the gods were abundantly refreshed with human blood they would perish of hunger and old age and would be unable to undertake their hypothetical labours in connection with the growth of the crops. Whence came this idea? Undoubtedly from that process of barbaric reasoning through which Mexican man had convinced himself that the amount of rainfall would be in ratio to the amount of blood shed sacrificially. Seler21 has indicated his belief in such a process of reasoning by stating that “the one was intended to draw down the other, the blood which was offered was intended to bring down the rain upon the fields.” This, then, is the precise nature of the compact between Mexican man and his gods, Do ut des, “Give us rain, and we shall give you blood.” Once this is understood the basic [20]nature of Mexican religion becomes clear, and all the later additions of theology and priestly invention can be viewed as mere excrescences and ornaments upon the simple architecture of the temple of the rain-cult.

The evolution of a higher cultus is frequently identified with a more intimate acquaintance with the heavenly bodies, but it is not generally appreciated or understood by students of Comparative Religion that at least two different kinds of conception underlie the general idea. A luminary, sun, moon, or star, may be deified and achieve godhead by reason of striking natural characteristics, or, on the other hand, it may be identified with some god already known. Thus Mexican myth, as related to Sahagun by the natives, asserted that the gods met at Teotihuacan and told how two of their number, Nanahuatl and Tecciztecatl, sacrificed themselves by leaping into a great fire, becoming the sun and moon respectively. The remaining gods, sacrificing themselves also, “conferred life upon the stars,” that is they became identified with the several stellar constellations, becoming known as the Centzon Mimixcoa and Centzon Uitznaua, or “Four hundred Northerners” and “Four hundred Southerners,” as they occupied the sky on its northern or southern side.22

Although this myth and a version of it current at Texcuco and given by Mendieta in his Historia Ecclesiastica23 both represent Nanahuatl as the sun-god, he was not so known in Mexican popular religion and priestly practice, and was indeed a form of the god Xolotl, a deity of obscure characteristics. Tecciztecatl certainly was regarded as the moon-god, but the solar luminary was known as Tonatiuh or Piltzintecutli. As has already been stated, there are sound reasons for the belief that the solar cult was a relatively [21]late institution in Mexico, although in some parts of the country it may have flourished for generations before it became popular in Tenochtitlan. Slightly elaborating our former reasons for this statement, we may indicate: (1) The name Tonatiuh appears in the myths of the origin of the sun as that of the luminary, but not of a god. (2) The circumstance that Tonatiuh was regarded by the Mexicans as a “heaven,” a Valhalla, to which the warriors slain in sacrifice betook themselves after death, and therefore represented a place of reward, a class of myth which is nearly always of comparatively late origin, and is the fruit of mature speculation. (3) The fact that Tonatiuh was closely identified with the warrior caste and therefore with human sacrifice, which was a late introduction and the paramount reason for the existence of that caste. (4) That the original Calendar was a lunar one. But these and other considerations will be dealt with more fully when we undertake the elucidation of the sun-god’s characteristics.

The amalgamation of the solar cult and of the Quetzalcoatl cult (representing the later and earlier “civilized” elements in Mexican religion) with the rain-cult is not an isolated phenomenon in the world’s religious history. The analogy of the fusion of the Osirian cult of Egypt with that of Ra will occur to everyone in this connection, and as the theology of the priests of the more aristocratic faith became in the event subsidiary in real importance to that of the far more popular Osirian worship, in the same manner the Quetzalcoatl cult, and in some measure the solar, were of much less real significance in Mexican life generally than the earlier popular belief. The solar worship seems to have successfully and naturally identified itself with the rain-cult, as also did the Quetzalcoatl religion. The myth which described Quetzalcoatl as the founder or inventor of the tonalamatl or Book of Fate24 probably records an effort on the part of his priesthood to identify their cult with the popular agricultural religion or to systematize or reduce to symbolic form an idea which until that time had probably [22]existed in an uncertain and chaotic condition in the popular mind. For even if the tonalamatl were introduced from the Zapotec or Mixtec country or the Maya region, as is generally supposed, it required skilful arrangement to make it subserve the purposes of Aztec religion. The priesthood and cultus of Quetzalcoatl were widespread throughout Central America and Mexico, and its ministers appear to have adapted themselves with skill and patience to the conditions of the various regions to which they penetrated, the result of their labours never being quite the same in any two regions. It is remarkable, too, that, probably by reason of the superior erudition and ability of its priesthood, the caste of Quetzalcoatl held chief sway in Mexican ecclesiastical government.25 But a partial, though by no means complete, hostility to human sacrifice and ceremonial cannibalism, a grudging acquiescence in what it had, in all likelihood, denounced in earlier times, gave it in later days a somewhat aloof and separate character.

We must now glance briefly at such evidences as we possess of the distinct racial or cultural elements which assisted in the development of Mexican religion. Three such elements appear to be indicated. It would seem that from an early period a people of settled and agricultural habits occupied the Mexican Plateau. These were probably relatively aboriginal to the Toltecs and may have been of Otomi or Tarascan blood, and to them I would refer the original foundation of a rain-cult having Tlaloc as its principal deity. Tlaloc was unquestionably one of the most venerable gods of Mexico, indeed he is the only god who can be identified with certainty in the remains of pre-Nahuan date at Teotihuacan. Tradition spoke of the finding of an ancient idol representing him by the early Chichimec immigrants.26 At least five of the yearly festivals were celebrated in his honour, and ancient sculptured representations of him have [23]been found in Tarascan territory, in Michoacan, Teotihuacan, Teotitlan, in the Zapotec country and in Guatemala, thus affording irrefragable testimony to his antiquity. Rather later than the culture which probably founded the rain-cult (a religion necessary and indeed inevitable in Mexico) was the Toltec civilization, which regarded Quetzalcoatl as its chiefest divinity, and which probably was brought from the Huaxtec country. But the Toltec are said to have been of Nahua blood, and may have been composed of a Nahua populace and a Huaxtec or proto-Maya aristocracy. The later hordes of Nahua (Chichimecs, Aztecâ, etc.) found these elements already settled upon the land, but brought with them a religion which, if it was destined to have a powerful effect upon the faith of the agricultural folk with whom they came into contact, was also to be quite as strongly influenced by it.

Reverting to the conditions prevailing in Mexico prior to the entry of the Chichimec Nahua, we may regard the rain-cult of the Tlaloc religion as in some measure resembling that of the Pueblo Indians of Northern Mexico and Arizona at the present time. The serpentine character of its principal deity, the appeal for rain which composes the basis of most of the prayers to him, provide strong proofs of such a similarity, and, as has been said, the antiquity of the rain religion is proved by the discovery of early sculptured forms and the facts adduced above. The Tlaloc religion had also been able in some degree to retain its own sacrificial customs, the drowning of victims being practised in addition to the Nahua method of slaughter on the stone of sacrifice. The date of the introduction of the religion of Quetzalcoatl is generally placed at the middle of the eighth century of our era, so that we are perhaps justified in assuming that the faith of the greater portion of Anahuac27 before that time had as its basis the rain-cult, as represented by Tlaloc.

The religious customs of those peoples who were relatively aboriginal to the Nahua support the theory of the predominance of the rain-cult in Mexico from a very early period, [24]and Torquemada states that during seasons of drought the Otomi sought to propitiate the rain-gods by sacrificing a virgin on the top of a hill.28 Espinosa says that the Tarascans sacrificed snakes rather than human beings—possibly for the same reason as the Esquimaux beat their dogs during an eclipse, in order that the Great Dog which causes the undesirable phenomenon may desist, the Tarascans probably killing the reptiles in question in order that the Great Snake might relent and send rain.29 The towns about Chapala paid divine honours to the spirit of the adjacent lake. Late though these survivals may have been at the era of the Conquest, yet they seem to have enshrined the memory of an early rain-cult among the peoples with whom they were found, and many others could be adduced.

The appearance of the Quetzalcoatl cult in Mexico, which would seem to have entered the country at some time about the middle of the eighth century, must have caused very considerable alterations in the simple and probably as yet uninfluenced rain religion which it found in occupancy. From whatever portion of the Isthmian tract it came, one thing regarding it is positively certain—that it introduced into Mexico the rudiments of the calendric computation evolved in Central America. In its phase as imported by the apostles of the Quetzalcoatl religion, it seems fairly certain that the tonalamatl was of the nature of a lunar time-count, and the probabilities are that its protagonists discovered on their arrival in Anahuac that a count similar in character was in use among the priesthood of the Tlaloc worshippers, who as an agricultural people could hardly have been without some such system of computation. The Quetzalcoatl faith, however, was manifestly of a considerably higher status than that which it encountered, as is obvious not only by the numerous and extraordinary traditions [25]regarding the Toltec civilization, but the actual remains it has left. It is clear that, whether it found a calendar or time-count already existing, it placated aboriginal opinion by the amalgamation of the several festivals of the rain-god with its own. The fact that the day-signs of the Mexican calendar or tonalamatl are almost identical with those of the Maya tonalamatl is good proof that the former was developed from the latter; and if only a small proportion of Toltec deities find a place in its monthly festivals, that would seem to be due to the circumstance that later Nahua demands for the inclusion of their tribal deities were acceded to. We may, perhaps, imagine the early tonalamatl of the Quetzalcoatl missionaries to have been similar in form to that of the Maya—that is, it must have been almost wholly concerned with the festivals of deities of a purely agricultural kind.

But the religion of Quetzalcoatl, as observed in his Yucatec form of Kukulkan and his Guatemalan variant of Gucumatz, bore a close resemblance to that of Tlaloc. In Yucatan Quetzalcoatl was regarded by priests and people as the great rain-making priest, the god of moisture, whereas in Mexico he is merely the sweeper of the ways to the Tlaloc deities of rain. This is surely eloquent of the fact that the Tlaloc religion was not only of greater antiquity in Mexico, but that its ministers were disinclined to permit the deity of the new religion to adopt a status similar to that of their own god. With true priestly diplomacy, then, it would seem that they temporized by affording Quetzalcoatl a status as the great rain-making priest, a character which he retained to the last. Myth certainly alludes to Tlaloc as the supplanter of Quetzalcoatl in the affections of the goddess Chalchihuitlicue and as robbing the peaceful culture-hero of the maize-plant which he had discovered. This does not necessarily signify the defeat of an older religion by a more novel faith, but may relate to a successful defence by the more ancient cultus and its absorption of the other.

The theory of the amalgamation of the Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl cults appears to me to be in some measure assisted by [26]the circumstance that the devotees of both placed a high value upon minerals of a green colour. The word chalchihuitl (“green stone”), of such common occurrence in the works of the Spanish authors who wrote on Mexican affairs, must be taken as applying with equal force to jadeite, nephrite, turquoise, emerald, chlormelanite, green quartz, precious serpentine, or, indeed, any mineral of a green shade. A tradition existed that Quetzalcoatl brought the use and manipulation of jadeite into Mexico, but green was a salient hue in the insignia of Tlaloc, and the name of his consort Chalchihuitlicue (“greenstone skirt”) is eloquent of his connection with the several kinds of stones which the Mexicans grouped under the name chalchihuitl. Whatever significance attached to the colour of these stones, apart from their nature as precious stones, whether or not they were symbolic of water or verdure, or metal, or of all of these agencies, which are regarded as so potent by primitive peoples, it is apparent that both cults employed them symbolically or pseudo-scientifically, and it therefore seems probable that each of these religions was originally connected with the worship of water, and therefore the influence associated with and contained in water, and that this belief would render their amalgamation a process of little difficulty.

If, however, such similarities eventually made for the union of the cults, traditions were not lacking regarding their early differences or hostilities. As has been said, myths survived into historical times, which stated that although Quetzalcoatl had succeeded in discovering maize, Tlaloc had stolen it from him and had also succeeded in alienating from him the affection of Chalchihuitlicue, who had originally been regarded as the wife of Quetzalcoatl.30 But these myths are undeniably of late origin. Quetzalcoatl’s status as a celibate god or priest would scarcely allow his name to be connected with matrimony, and it is plain that Chalchihuitlicue, the water goddess, is in a sense merely a personification of the chalchihuitl stone, which was, perhaps, originally one of the symbols of the Quetzalcoatl cult and which later [27]became personified in female form, thus giving rise to the myth in question. Nor do these tales necessarily prove the priority of the Quetzalcoatl cult, which was indeed regarded as responsible for practically all Mexican civilization and which would naturally be credited with the introduction of the use of the sacred stones.

But if the later Nahua immigrants also came to regard these chalchihuitl stones with reverence, at the period of their entrance to the Mexican plateau they paid devotion to a mineral of a very different kind. And this it is which helps us to regard their faith as differing entirely from those other faiths which already flourished in the land. The mineral with which their cult was so closely connected was obsidian, a vitreous natural glass found in the upper volcanic strata of Mexico and northern California, which flakes readily from the core by pressure and gains by mere fracture a razor-like edge of considerable penetrative power. The principal quarry of this volcanic glass was the mountain known as the Cerro de las Navajas (“hill of the knives”) near Timapan, and from this centre the itztli, by which name obsidian was known to the Mexicans, was widely distributed by barter over a very considerable area. There would seem to be proof that this mineral, so suitable for the purposes of the nomadic hunter, was anciently known far to the north of Mexico. The observations of Dr. G. M. Dawson31 in British Columbia satisfied him that trading intercourse was engaged in by the coast tribes with those of the interior along the Frazer River Valley and far to the south. From the remotest times embraced in their native traditions, the Bilqula of Dean Inlet have possessed a trade route by way of the Bella Coola River to the Tinné country, along which trail broken implements and chips of obsidian have been found. Many of the routes in British Columbia have also [28]yielded chips and flakes of obsidian, which, the Tinné Indians stated, was obtained from a mountain near the headwaters of the Salmon River (about long. 125° 40′, lat. 52° 40′), formerly resorted to for the purpose of procuring the mineral. The Indian name of this mountain is Bece, which, Dr. Dawson suggested, is the same with the “Mexican” name for knife, itztli, an etymology which may be of Nahuatlac origin. Mr. T. C. Weston, of the Geological Survey, also noted in 1883 the finding of a flake of obsidian in connection with a layer of buffalo bones occurring in alluvium, and evidently of considerable antiquity, near Fort McLeod, Alberta. The nearest source of such a material is the Yellowstone Park region. The coast tribes of British Columbia have been traders for untold generations, exchanging oolactin oil for such material as they could make implements from, and there seems to be no doubt that the Mound-builders of Ohio, Wisconsin, and Kentucky were also acquainted with obsidian, which they could only have obtained by the process of barter. It was thus either to be found in the regions from which the Nahua are thought to have come, or else obtainable through the channels of trade.

If, then, it be granted that the Chichimec Nahua were acquainted with obsidian and its properties before their entrance upon the Plateau of Anahuac (a hypothesis which is strengthened by the material differences of workmanship between their tools and weapons made of this material and those of the aboriginal peoples of Mexico), sufficient time had elapsed for their development of a cult, which, at the era of the Conquest, exhibited traces of a very considerable antiquity. It was, naturally, as a hunting people that they employed weapons of obsidian. The herds of deer on the flesh of which they chiefly lived roamed the steppes, and proof abounds that the customs of the chase strongly influenced the religious ideas of the early Nahua. Certain of their gods, indeed, seem to have been developed from cervine forms, for among barbarous races the animal worshipped is that which provides the tribe with its staple food, [29]or, more correctly, a great eponymous figure of that animal is adored—for example, the Great Deer, who sends the smaller deer to keep the savage in life. In like manner barbarous fisherfolk are wont to worship the Great Fish, which sends them its progeny or its subjects to serve as food. These deer gods or hunting gods in some way connected with the deer—Itzpapalotl, Itzcuêyê, Mixcoatl, Camaxtli—had also stellar or solar attributes. The deer was slain by the obsidian weapon, which, therefore, came to be regarded as the magical weapon, that by which food was procured. In the course of time it assumed a sacred significance, the hunting gods themselves came to wield it, and it was thought of as coming from the stars or the heavens where the gods dwelt, in precisely the same manner as flint arrowheads were regarded by the peasantry of Europe as “elf-arrows” or “thunder-stones”—that is, as something supernatural, falling from above.

But the obsidian itself became deified as Tezcatlipocâ. I have retained the full proof of this assertion for the section which treats of that god, and must here content myself with a summary of it. The whole cult of obsidian centred in the personality of Tezcatlipocâ. His idol was made of that stone, and in Codex Borbonicus his sandals are painted with the zigzag line of the obsidian snake. In his variant of Itztli (obsidian) he was the god of the sacrificial knife of obsidian, and in certain codices he is represented as having such a knife in place of a foot. From this stone, too, divinatory mirrors were made, one of which was held by the idols of Tezcatlipocâ and served as the mirror or scrying-stone in which he witnessed the doings of mankind. Obsidian, the great life-giver, food-getter, blood-provider, became identified in the form of this god with the cause or breath of life, which, in turn, was identified with the wind, and therefore it came to be classed among those magical stones which in some mysterious manner are considered capable of raising a tempest. In this manner Tezcatlipocâ came to be regarded as a god of wind, and has been identified with the Hurakan of the Quiches of Guatemala, from whose name the expression [30]“hurricane” has been borrowed and who was probably introduced into Central America by the Nahua.

When the nomadic Chichimec adopted an agricultural condition, obsidian had doubtless been regarded as sacred for many generations. It was by virtue of this magical stone that the nourishment of the gods was maintained by the sacrifice of deer; but when the Chichimec came to embrace a more settled existence within an agricultural community where deer must certainly have been more scarce, the nourishment of the gods had necessarily to be maintained by other means. The manner in which this was effected is quite clear. Slaves and war-captives were sacrificed instead of beasts of the chase, and at the festival of Mixcoatl, the greatest of the Chichimec gods, women were sacrificed in the place of deer, and after being slain were carried down the steps of the teocalli, their wrists and ankles tied together precisely in the manner in which a deer is trussed by the hunter.32 The transition from deer-sacrifice to a human holocaust and from the hunting to the agricultural condition is well illustrated by an ancient hymn relating to the goddess Itzpapalotl (“Obsidian Butterfly”), who was associated with Mixcoatl.

The inference in these lines seems to be that whereas Itzpapalotl was formerly a goddess of the Chichimec nomads of the steppes, who sacrificed deer to her, she has now become the deity of the melon-cactus patch and an agricultural community. Her first human victim is also mentioned by Camargo,33 who states that the Chichimec, coming to the province of Tepeueuec, sacrificed a victim to her by shooting him with arrows. Itzpapalotl has more than one cervine attribute.34 [31]

Mexican tradition makes it very plain that obsidian, because of its blood-procuring properties, came to be regarded as the source of all life, as the very principle of existence. Tonacaciuatl, the creative goddess, as we shall see, gave birth to an obsidian knife from which sprang sixteen hundred demigods who peopled the earth,35 and the infant which the goddess Ciuacoatl leaves in the cradle in the market-place undergoes metamorphosis into an obsidian knife.36 As the Codices show, grain is often pictured in the form of the obsidian knife of sacrifice. Just as in many myths, both in the Old World and the New, flint was regarded as the great fertilizer because of its supposed connection with the lightning, so was obsidian. Thus all the elements which go to make for growth and life were regarded as having a connection with this mineral, even the sun itself, as we shall see, being identified with the Mirror of Tezcatlipocâ. The idea that the sun could not live without human blood was a purely Nahua conception, arising out of an earlier belief that it must be nourished upon the blood of beasts. Of the transitional process abundant proof exists. The hunter’s obsidian weapon which supplied the necessary pabulum became in turn the weapon of the warrior who procured victims for the holocaust, and the sacred knife of the priest who sacrificed them to the deity. Obsidian was thus chiefly the war weapon and the sacrificial weapon, but the traditions relating to it refer to practically all the offices of human art, industry, and activity generally.

Lest this hypothesis seem overstrained, analogies may be indicated. That which is initially sacred in a primitive cult frequently comes to have interrelations with the whole environment of its deities. Thus the worship of the oak by the Druids appears to have given an oak-like virtue to the oracular birds which dwelt in its branches, to the soil from which it grew, to the sky above it, to the priests who ministered to it and to the sacred implements they employed. The same may be said of the oak-cult of Zeus and the vine-cult [32]of Dionysos. The numerous traditions which cluster round the ceremonial use of jade in China are eloquent of such a tendency. Thus trees, plants, animals, and natural objects are all in a manner identified and connected with the beautiful jade stone in its character as an imparter of vitality. Thus in the great worship of the gods whose cult was connected with obsidian, well-nigh everything with which it had interrelations came to partake of the nature of obsidian—grain, the earth, the atmosphere, the sun, the stars, the priesthood, blood, and rain.

The process by which this Nahua cult became amalgamated with those of Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl seems fairly clear. Upon their settlement on the Plateau of Anahuac it is plain from the terms of certain myths that the Nahua did not regard the cult of Quetzalcoatl in any friendly manner. Tezcatlipocâ is spoken of as driving him from the country, and it is probable that to begin with a certain amount of persecution may have been inflicted upon his adherents. But the Nahua would undoubtedly come to recognize the value of the calendar system connected with his cult, and it is clear that they did so from the fact that we find included in it certain of their principal gods. The final process of amalgamation probably took place during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for, as seen at the Conquest period, the union of the three great cults of Mexico must have occupied several centuries. Such a duration of time was necessary for the development of a homogeneous and involved symbolism, which was obviously based on a tacit recognition of the unity of the Mexican faith. Initial disparities seem to be indicated principally by ancient traditions, of which perhaps the most notable was that which spoke of the different heavens of the three original cults, the Tlalocan of the worshippers of Tlaloc, the Tlapallan or over-sea paradise of the Quetzalcoatl cult, and the Sun-house or Valhalla of the Nahua. A striking proof of the adjustment of the chronology of the three cults may perhaps be found in the myths which speak of the existence of several “suns” or ages prior to the historical era, the “rulers” or patrons of [33]which were, according to the most trustworthy sources, Tezcatlipocâ, Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc, and Chalchihuitlicue, goddess of the Tlaloc cult.37

The attribution of higher and abstract qualities to the gods was probably of comparatively late origin. Especially is this to be observed in the case of Tezcatlipocâ, to whom, at the period of the Conquest, we find attributed such a bewildering array of qualities, both concrete and abstract, lofty and the reverse, as would seem to indicate that, had European influences failed to penetrate to Anahuac, his worship might have reached the monotheistic stage, and in time have overshadowed that of the other gods of the Mexican pantheon. Undoubtedly, too, the priesthood, and probably the nobility, fostered a more esoteric and loftier type of religion than was understood of the people, and good proof (which is by no means confined to the rather doubtful circumstance that Nezahualcoyotl of Texcuco built a temple to the “Unknown God”) is forthcoming that theological questions of greater or less complexity had begun to exercise the minds of the hierarchy.