Chapter II: Mexico (2)

The most famous and picturesque of New World mythic figures is that of Quetzalcoatl, although primarily his renown is due less to the undoubted importance of his cult than to his association with the coming and the beliefs of the white men. According to native tradition, Quetzalcoatl had been the wise and good ruler of Tollan in the Golden Age of Anahuac, lawgiver, teacher of the arts, and founder of a purified religion. Driven from his kingdom by the machinations of evil magicians, he departed over the eastern sea for Tlapallan, the land of plenty, promising to return and reinstitute his kindly creed on some future anniversary of the day of his departure. He was described as an old man, bearded, and white, clad in a long robe; as with other celestial gods, crosses were associated with his representations and shrines. When Cortez landed, the Mexicans were expecting the return of Quetzalcoatl; and, according to Sahagun, the very outlooks who first beheld the ships of the Spaniards had been posted to watch for the coming god. The white men (perhaps the image was aided by their shining armour, their robed priests, their crosses) were inevitably assumed to be the deity, and among the gifts sent to them by Montezuma were the turquoise mask, feather mantle, and other apparel appropriate to the god. It is certain that the belief materially aided the Spaniards in the early stages of their advance, and it is small wonder that the myth which was so helpful to their ambitions should have appealed to their imaginations. The missionary priests, gaining some idea of native traditions and finding among them ideas, emblems, and rites analogous to those of Christendom (the deluge, the cross, baptism, sacraments, confession), not unnaturally saw in the figure of the robed and bearded reformer of religion a Christian teacher, and they were not slow to identify him with St. Thomas, the Apostle. When an almost identical story was found throughout Central America, the Andean region, and, indeed, wide-spread in South America, the same explanation was adopted, and the wanderings of the Saint became vast beyond the dreams of Marco Polo or any other vaunted traveller, while memorials of his miracles are still displayed in regions as remote from Mexico as the basin of La Plata. Naturally, too, the interest of the subject has not waned with time, for whether we view the Quetzalcoatl myth in relation to its association with European ideas or with respect to its aboriginal analogues in the two Americas, it presents a variety of interest scarcely equalled by any other tale of the New World.

The name of the god is formed of _quetzal_, designating the long, green tail-plumes of _Pharomacrus mocinno_, and _coatl_ ("serpent"); it means, therefore, "the Green-Feather Snake," and immediately puts Quetzalcoatl into the group of celestial powers of which the plumed serpent is a symbol, among the Hopi and Zuñi to the north as well as among Andean peoples far to the south. Sahagun says that Quetzalcoatl is a wind-god, who "sweeps the roads for the rain-gods, that they may rain." Quetzal-plumes were a symbol of greening vegetation, and it is altogether probable that the Plumed Serpent-God was originally a deity of rain-clouds, the sky-serpent embodiment of the rainbow or the lightning. The turquoise snake-mask or bird-mask, characteristic of the god, is surely an emblem of the skies, and like other sky-gods he carries a serpent-shaped spear-thrower. The beard (which other Mexican deities sometimes wear) is perhaps a symbol of descending rain, perhaps (as on some Navaho figures) of pollen, or fertilization. Curiously enough, Quetzalcoatl is not commonly shown as the white god which the tradition would lead us to expect, but typically with a dark-hued body; it may be that the dark hue and the robe of legend are both emblems of rain-clouds.

The tradition of his whiteness may come from his stellar associations, for though he is sometimes shown with emblems of moon or sun, he is more particularly identified with the morning star. According to the _Annals of Quauhtitlan_, Quetzalcoatl, when driven from Tollan, immolated himself on the shores of the eastern sea, and from his ashes rose birds with shining feathers (symbols of warrior souls mounting to the sun), while his heart became the Morning Star, wandering for eight days in the underworld before it ascended in splendour. In numerous legends Quetzalcoatl is associated with Tezcatlipoca, commonly as an antagonist; and if we may believe one tale, recounted by Mendieta, Tezcatlipoca, defeating Quetzalcoatl in ball-play (a game directly symbolic of the movements of the heavenly orbs), cast him out of the land into the east, where he encountered the sun and was burned. This story (clearly a variant of the tale of the banishment of Quetzalcoatl told in the _Annals of Quauhtitlan_ and by Sahagun) is interpreted by Seler as a myth of the morning moon, driven back by night (the dark Tezcatlipoca) to be consumed by the rising sun. A reverse story represents Tezcatlipoca, the sun, as stricken down by the club of Quetzalcoatl, transformed into a jaguar, the man-devouring demon of night, while Quetzalcoatl becomes sun in his place. Normally Quetzalcoatl is a god of the eastern heavens, and sometimes he is pictured as the caryatid or upbearer of the sky of that quarter.

Perhaps it is in this character that he was conceived as a lord of life, a meaning naturally intensified by his association with the rejuvenating rains and with the wind, which is the breath of life. A woman who had become pregnant was praised by the relatives of her husband for her faithfulness in religious devotions. "It is for these," they said, "that our lord Quetzalcoatl, author and creator, has vouchsafed this grace--even as it was decreed in the sky by that one who is man and woman under the names Ometecutli and Omeciuatl." Moreover the new-born was addressed: "Little son and lord, person of high value, of great price and esteem! O precious stone, emerald, topaz, rare plume, fruit of lofty generation! be welcome among us! Thou hast been formed in the highest places, above the ninth heaven, where the two supreme gods dwell. The Divine Majesty hath cast thee in his mould, as one casts a golden bead; thou hast been pierced, like a rich stone artistically wrought, by thy father and mother, the great god and the great goddess, assisted by their son, Quetzalcoatl." The deity also figures as a world creator, as in the Sahagun manuscript in the Academia de la Historia, from which Seler translates:

"And thus said our fathers, our grandfathers,
They said that he made, created, and formed us
Whose creatures we are, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl;
And he made the heavens, the sun, the earth."

It is in another character, however, that Quetzalcoatl is romantically of most interest. His cult was less sanguinary than that of most Aztec divinities, though assuredly not antagonistic to human sacrifice, as some traditions say. He was a penance-inflicting god, perhaps particularly a deity of priests and their lore; yet he was also associated with education and the rearing of the young. He is named as the patron of the arts, the teacher of metallurgy and of letters, and in tradition he is the god of the cultured people of yore from whom the Aztec derived their civilization. A part of the story, as narrated by Sahagun, has been told: how Quetzalcoatl was the aged and wise priest-king of Tollan, driven thence by the magic and guile of Tezcatlipoca and his companions. The tale goes on to tell how Quetzalcoatl, chagrined and ailing, resolved to depart from his kingdom for his ancient home, Tlapallan. He burned his houses built of shell and silver, buried his treasure, changed the cacao-trees into mesquite, and set forth, preceded by servants in the form of birds of rich plumage. Coming to Quauhtitlan, he demanded a mirror and gazing into it, he said, "I am old," wherefore he named the city "the old Quauhtitlan." Seating himself at another place and gazing back upon Tollan, as he wept, his tears pierced the rock, which also bore thenceforth the marks where his hands had rested. He encountered certain magicians, who demanded of him, before they would let him pass, the arts of refining silver, of working in wood, stone, and feathers, and of painting; and as he crossed the sierra, all his companions, who were dwarfs and hump-backs, died of the cold. Many other localities received memorials of his passage: at one place he played a game of ball, at another shot arrows into a tree so that they formed a cross, at another caused underworld houses to be built--all clearly cosmic symbols--and finally coming to the sea, he departed for Tlapallan on his serpent-raft. In Ixtlilxochitl's history, Quetzalcoatl first appeared in the third period of the world, taught the arts, instituted the worship of the cross--"tree of nourishment and of life"--and ended the period with his departure. Tradition names the last king of the Toltec "Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl," and it may be assumed as not improbable that stories of the disasters attending the fall of Tollan, under a king bearing the name of the ancient divinity, represent an historical element, confused with nature elements, in the myths of Quetzalcoatl,--such an assumption accounting for the heroic glamour surrounding the god, who, like King Arthur, is half kingly mortal, half divinity. In Cholula, whither many of the Toltec were said to have fled with the fall of their empire, was the loftiest pyramid in Mexico, dedicated to Quetzalcoatl and even in the eyes of Aztec conquerors a seat of venerable sanctities--the emblem of the culture whose conquest had conquered them.

Figures from the _Codex Borgia_, representing cosmic tutelaries.

The upper figure represents the tree of the Middle Place rising from the body of the Earth Goddess, recumbent upon the spines of the crocodile from which Earth was made. The tree is encircled by the world sea and is surmounted by the Quetzal, whose plumage typifies vegetation; two ears of maize spring up at its roots. The attendant deities are Quetzalcoatl and Macuilxochitl, both symbols of fertility. In the figure they are apparently nourishing themselves on the up-flowing blood, or vital saps, of the body of Earth. The figure should be compared with the Palenque Cross and Foliate Cross tablets (Plate XVIII _a, b_). See, also, pages 57, 68, 77.

The lower figure represents one of the four caryatid-like supporters of the heavens, Huitzilopochtli, as the Atlas of the southern quarter. See page 57.

4. TLALOC AND CHALCHIUHTLICUE[36]

The rain-god, Tlaloc, was less important in myth than in cult. He was a deity of great antiquity, and a mountain, east of Tezcuco, bearing his name, was said to have had from remote times a statue of the god, carved in white lava. His especial abode, Tlalocan, supposed to be upon the crests of hills, was rich in all foods and was the home of the maize-goddesses; and there, with his dwarf (or child) servants, Tlaloc possesses four jars from which he pours water down upon the earth. One water is good and causes maize and other fruits to flourish; a second brings cobwebs and blight; a third congeals into frost; a fourth is followed by dearth of fruit. These are the waters of the four quarters, and only that of the east is good. When the dwarfs smash their jars, there is thunder; and pieces cast below are thunderbolts. The number of the Tlaloque was regarded as great, so that, indeed, every mountain had its Tlaloc.

Like Quetzalcoatl, the god was shown with a serpent-mask, except that Tlaloc's was formed, not of one, but of two serpents; and from the conventionalization of the serpentine coils of this mask came the customary representation of the god's eyes as surrounded by wide, blue circles, and of his lip as formed by a convoluted band from which are fanglike dependencies. The double-headed serpent--a symbol no less wide-spread than the plumed serpent--is frequently his attribute. His association with mountains brought him also into connexion with volcanoes and fire, and it was he who was said to have presided over the Rain-Sun, one of the cosmogonic epochs, during which there rained, not water, but fire and red-hot stones.

The worship of Tlaloc was among the most ghastly in Mexico. Perhaps for the purpose of keeping up the number of his rain-dwarfs, children were constantly sacrificed to him. If we may believe Sahagun, at the feast of the Tlaloque "they sought out a great number of babes at the breast, which they purchased of their mothers. They chose by preference those who had two crowns in their hair and who had been born under a good sign. They pretended that these would form a more agreeable sacrifice to the gods, to the end that they might obtain rain at the opportune time.... They killed a great number of babes each year; and after they had put them to death, they cooked and ate them.... If the children wept and shed tears abundantly, those who beheld it rejoiced and said that this was a sign of rain very near." No wonder the brave friar turns from his narrative to cry out against such horror. Yet, he says, "the cause of this cruel blindness, of which the poor children were victims, should not be directly imputed to the natural inspirations of their parents, who, indeed, shed abundant tears and delivered themselves to the practice with dolour of soul; one should rather see therein the hateful and barbarous hand of Satan, our eternal enemy, employing all his malign ruses to urge on to this fatal act." Unfortunately, it is to be suspected that the rite was very far-spread, for in the myths of many of the wild Mexican tribes and even in those of the Pueblo tribes north of Mexico the story of the sacrifice of children to the water-gods constantly recurs--though, perhaps, this was but the far-cast rumour of the terrible superstition of the south.

The goddess of flowing waters, of springs and rivulets, Chalchiuhtlicue, was regarded as sister of the Tlaloque and was frequently honoured in rites in connexion with them. Like Tlaloc, she played no minor _rôle_ in the calendric division of powers, and she also ruled over one of the "Suns" of the cosmogonic period. Serpents and maize were associated with her, and like the similar deities she had both her beneficent and malevolent moods, being not merely a cleanser, but also a cause of shipwreck and watery deaths. At the bathing of the new-born she was addressed: "Merciful Lady Chalchiuhtlicue, thy servant here present is come into this world, sent by our father and mother, Ometecutli and Omeciuatl, who reside at the ninth heaven. We know not what gifts he bringeth; we know not what hath been assigned to him from before the beginning of the world, nor with what lot he cometh enveloped. We know not if this lot be good or bad, or to what end he will be followed by ill fortune. We know not what faults or defects he may inherit from his father and mother. Behold him between thy hands! Wash him and deliver him from impurities as thou knowest should be, for he is confided to thy power. Cleanse him of the contaminations he hath received from his parents; let the water take away the soil and the stain, and let him be freed from all taint. May it please thee, O goddess, that his heart and his life be purified, that he may dwell in this world in peace and wisdom. May this water take away all ills, for which this babe is put into thy hands, thou who art mother and sister of the gods, and who alone art worthy to possess it and to give it, to wash from him the evils which he beareth from before the beginning of the world. Deign to do this that we ask, now that the child is in thy presence." It is not difficult to see how this rite should have suggested to the first missionaries their own Christian sacrament of baptism.

V. THE POWERS OF LIFE[37]

Universally Earth is the mythic Mother of Gods and Men, and Giver of Life; nor does the Mexican pantheon offer an exception to the rule, although its embodiments of the Earth Mother possess associations which give a character of their own. Like similar goddesses, the Mexican Earth Mothers are prophetic and divinatory, and in various forms they appear in the calendric omen-books. They are goddesses of medicine, too, probably owing this function primarily to their association with the sweat-bath, which, in its primitive form of earth-lodge and heated stones, is the fundamental instrument of American Indian therapeutics. It is here, possibly, that these goddesses get their connexion with the fire-gods, of whom they are not infrequently consorts, and with whom they share the butterfly insignia--a symbol of fertility, for the fire-god, at earth's centre, was believed to generate the warmth of life. Serpents also are signs of the earth goddesses, not the plumed serpents of the skies, but underworld powers, likewise associated with generation in Aztec symbolism. A third animal connected with generation, and hence with these deities, is the deer--the white, dead Deer of the East denoted plenty; the stricken, brown Deer of the North was a symbol of drought, and related to the fire-gods. The eagle, also, is sometimes found associated with the goddesses by a process of indirection, for the eagle is primarily the heavenly warrior, Tonatiuh, the Sun. Frequently, however, the earth goddess is a war-goddess; Coatlicue, mother of the war-god Huitzilopochtli, is an earth deity, wearing the serpent skirt; and it was a wide-spread belief among the Mexicans that the Earth was the first victim offered on the sacrificial stone to the Sun--the first, therefore, to die a warrior's death. When a victim was dedicated for sacrifice, therefore, his captor adorned himself in eagle's down in honour, at once, of the Sun and of the goddess who had been the primal offering.

Among the earth goddesses the most famous was Ciuacoatl ("Snake Woman"), whose voice, roaring through the night, betokened war. She was also called Tonantzin ("Our Mother") and, Sahagun says, "these two circumstances give her a resemblance to our mother Eve who was duped by the Serpent." Other names for the same divinity were Ilamatecutli ("the Old Goddess"), sometimes represented as the Earth Toad, Tlatecutli, swallowing a stone knife; Itzpapalotl ("Obsidian Butterfly"), occasionally shown as a deer; Temazcalteci ("Grandmother of the Sweat-Bath"); and Teteoinnan, the Mother of the Gods, who, like several other of the earth goddesses, was also a lunar deity. In her honour a harvest-home was celebrated in which her Huastec priests (for she probably hailed from the eastern coast) bore phallic emblems.

Closely connected with the earth goddesses are their children, the vegetation-deities. Of these the maize-spirits are the most important, maize being the great cereal of the highland region, and, indeed, so much the "corn" of primitive America that the latter word has come to mean maize in the English-speaking parts of the New World. Cinteotl was the maize-god, and Chicomecoatl ("Seven Snakes"), also known as Xilonen, was his female counterpart, their symbol being the young maize-ear. Because of the use of maize as the staff of life, a crown filled with this grain was the symbol of Tonacatecutli ("Lord of our Flesh"), creator-god and food-giver. Pedro de Rios says[38] of him that he was "the first Lord that the world was said to have had, and who, as it pleased him, blew and divided the waters from the heaven and from the earth, which before him were all intermingled; and he it is who disposed them as they now are, and so they called him 'Lord of our Bodies' and 'Lord of the Overflow'; and he gave them all things, and therefore he alone was pictured with the royal crown. He was further called 'Seven Flowers' [Chicomexochitl], because they said that he divided the principalities of the world. He had no temple of any kind, nor were offerings brought to him, because they say he desired them not, as it were to a greater Majesty." This god was also identified with the Milky Way.

Of all Mexican vegetation-deities, however, at once the most important and the most horrible was Xipe Totec ("Our Lord the Flayed"), represented as clad in a human skin, stripped from the body of a sacrificed captive. He was the god of the renewal of vegetation--the fresh skin which Earth receives with the recurrent green--and his great festival, the Feast of the Man-Flaying, was held in the spring when the fresh verdure was appearing. At this time, men, women, and children captives were sacrificed, their bodies eaten, and the skins flayed from them to be worn by personators of the god. That there was a kind of sacrament in this rite is evident from Sahagun's statement that the captor did not partake of the flesh of his own captive, regarding it as part of his own body. Again, youths clad in skins flayed from sacrificed warriors were called by the god's own name, and they waged mimic warfare with bands pitted against them; if a captive was made, a mock sacrifice was enacted. The famous _sacrificio gladiatorio_ was also celebrated in the god's honour, the victim, with weak weapons, being pitted against strong warriors until he succumbed. The magic properties of the skins torn from victims' bodies is shown by the fact that persons suffering from diseases of the skin and eye wore these trophies for their healing, the period being twenty days. Xipe Totec was clad in a green garment, but yellow was his predominant colour; his ornaments were golden, and he was the patron of gold-workers--a symbolism probably related to the ripening grain, for with all that is horrible about him Xipe Totec is at bottom a simple agricultural deity. At his festival were stately _areitos_, and songs were chanted, one of which is preserved:[39]

"Thou night-time drinker, why dost thou delay?
Put on thy disguise--thy golden garment, put it on!

"My Lord, let thine emerald waters come descending!
Now is the old tree changed to green plumage--
The Fire-Snake is transformed into the Quetzal!

"It may be that I am to die, I, the young maize-plant;
Like an emerald is my heart; gold would I see it be;
I shall be happy when first it is ripe--the war-chief born!

"My Lord, when there is abundance in the maize-fields,
I shall look to thy mountains, verily thy worshipper;
I shall be happy when first it is ripe--the war-chief born!"

Stone mask of Xipe Totec. The face is represented as covered by the skin of a sacrificed victim, flaying being a rite with which this god was honored. The reverse of the mask bears an image of the god in relief. The original is in the British Museum.

Less unattractive is the group of deities of flowers and dancing, games and feasting--Xochipilli ("Flower Lord"), Macuilxochitl ("Five Blossoms"), and Ixtlilton ("Little Black-Face"). Xochipilli is in part a divinity of the young maize, probably as pollinating, and is sometimes viewed as a son of Cinteotl. As is natural, he and his brothers are occasionally associated with the pulque-gods, the Centzontotochtin, of whom there were a great number--among them Patecatl, lord and discoverer of the _ocpatli_ (the peyote) from which liquor is made, Texcatzoncatl ("Straw Mirror"), Colhuatzincatl ("the Winged"), and Ometochtli ("Two Rabbit")--deities who were supposed to possess their worshippers and to be the real agents of the drunken man's mischief. The more especial associate of the flower-gods, however, is Xochiquetzal ("Flower Feather"), who is said to have been originally the spouse of Tlaloc, but to have been carried away by Tezcatlipoca and to have been established by him as the goddess of love. Her throne is described as being above the ninth heaven, and there is reason to think that in this _rôle_ she is identical with Tonacaciuatl, the consort of the creator-god, Tonacatecutli.[40] Her home was in Xochitlicacan ("Place of Flowers") in Itzeecayan ("Place of Cool Winds"), or in Tamoanchan, the Paradise of the West--the region whence came the Ciuateteo, the ghostly women who at certain seasons swooped down in eagles' form, striking children with epilepsy and inspiring men with lust. Xochiquetzal was, indeed, the patroness of the unmarried women who lived with the young bachelor warriors and marched to war with them, and who sometimes, at the goddess's festival, immolated themselves upon her altars. In a more pleasing aspect she was the deity of weaving and spinning and of making all beautiful and artistic fabrics, and she is portrayed in bright and many-coloured raiment, not forgetting the butterfly at her lips, emblem of life and of the seeker after sweets. In a hymn[41] she is named along with her lover, Piltzintecutli ("Lord of Princes"), who is presumed to be the same as Xochipilli:

"Out of the land of water and mist, I come, Xochiquetzal--
Out of the land where the Sun enters his house, out of Tamoanchan.

"Weepeth the pious Piltzintecutli;
He seeketh Xochiquetzal.
Dark it is whither I must go."

Seler suggests that this lamentation is perchance the expression of a Proserpina myth--of the carrying off into the underworld of the bright goddess of flowers and of the quest for her by her disconsolate lover.

Of far darker hue is the goddess whom Sahagun[42] calls "another Venus," Tlazolteotl ("Goddess of Uncleanliness"), the deity in particular of lust and sexual sin. To her priests confession was made of carnal sins and drunkenness, and by them penance was inflicted, including as a feature piercing the tongue with a maguey thorn and the insertion therein of straws and osier twigs. Sahagun remarks that the Indians awaited old age before confessing carnal sins, "a thing easy to comprehend, since, although they had committed their faults during youth, they would not confess before an advanced age in order not to find themselves obliged to cease from disorderly conduct before age came upon them; this, because of their belief that one who fell into a sin already once confessed could receive no absolution. From all of which," he continues, "it is natural to reach the conclusion that the Indians of New Spain believed themselves obliged to confess once in their lifetime, and that _in lumine naturali_, with no knowledge of the things of the faith." One of the titles of Tlazolteotl is "Heart of the Earth," and since she is represented in the same attire as the great mother of the gods, it is presumed that she is a special form of the Earth Mother, Teteoinnan, with emphasis upon her character as deity of fertility. Sometimes she is spoken of as Ixcuiname ("the Four-faced") and is regarded plurally as a group of four sisters who, according to Sahagun, represent four ages of woman's maturity. In the _Annals of Quauhtitlan_ it is related that the Ixcuiname came to Tollan from Huasteca. "And in the place called Where-the-Huaxtec-weep they summoned their captives, whom they had taken in Huaxteca, and explained to them what the business was, telling them that, 'We go now to Tollan, 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. We want to make a beginning of it, and shoot you to death with arrows.'" In Aztec paintings of the arrow sacrifice the victim is shown suspended from a ladder-like scaffold, whence the blood from the arrow wounds drips to earth. This blood was the emblem of the fertilizing seed, dropped into the womb of the goddess; and it is at least worthy of remark that the form of the Skidi Pawnee fertility sacrifice, in honour of the Morning Star, was identical, scaffold and all, with that in vogue in Mexico.

VI. THE POWERS OF DEATH

Earth, the Great Mother, is a giver of life, but Earth, the cavernous, is Lord of Death. The Mexicans are second to no people in the grimness of their representations of this power. As Tepeyollotl ("Heart of the Mountain"), earth's cavern, it is the spotted jaguar monster which leaps up out of the west to seize the declining sun, and its roars may be heard in the echoing hills. As Tlaltecutli ("Lord of the Earth") it is the hideous Toad with Gaping Jaws, which must be nourished with the blood of sacrificed men, precisely as the Sun above must be nurtured; for the Mexican idea of warfare seems to have been that it must be waged to keep perpetual the ascending vapours and the descending flow from the hearts of sacrificed victims, that Tonatiuh and Tlaltecutli might gain sustenance in heaven and in earth.[43]

But the grimmest figure is that of Hades himself, Mictlantecutli, the skeleton God of the Dead--also called, says Sahagun, Tzontemoc ("He of the Falling Hair"). Sahagun describes the journey to the abode of this divinity. When a mortal--man, woman, child, lord, or thrall--died of disease, his soul descended to Mictlan, and beside the corpse the last words were spoken:[44] "Our son, thou art finished with the sufferings and fatigues of this life. It hath pleased Our Lord to take thee hence, for thou hast not eternal life in this world: our existence is as a ray of the sun. He hath given thee the grace of knowing us and of associating in our common life. Now the god Mictlantecutli, otherwise called Acolnauacatl or Tzontemoc, as also the goddess Mictecaciuatl, hath made thee to share his abode. We shall all follow thee, for it is our destiny, and the abode is broad enough to receive the whole world. Thou wilt be heard of no longer among us. Behold, thou art gone to the domain of darkness, where there is neither light nor window. Never shalt thou come hither again, nor needst thou concern thyself for thy return, for thine absence is eternal. Thou dost leave thy children poor and orphaned, not knowing what will be their end nor how they will support the fatigues of this life. As for us, we shall not delay to go to join thee there where thou wilt be." Similar words were spoken to the relatives: "Hath this death come because some being wisheth us ill or mocketh us? Nay, it is because Our Lord hath willed that such be his end." Then the body was wrapped, mummy-form, and a few drops of water were poured upon the head: "Lo, the water of which thou hast made use in this life"; and a vessel of water was presented: "This for thy journey." Next, certain papers were laid before the body in due order: "Lo, with this thou shalt pass the two clashing mountains." "With this thou shalt pass the road where the serpent awaiteth thee." "With this thou shalt pass the place of the green lizard." "Lo, wherewithal thou shalt cross the eight deserts." "And the eight hills." "And behold with what thou canst traverse the place of the winds that bear obsidian knives." Thus the perils of the underworld were to be passed and the soul, arrived before Mictlantecutli, was, after four years, to fare on until he should arrive at Chiconauapan, the "Nine-Fold Stream" of the underworld. Across this he would be borne by the red dog which, sacrificed at his grave, had been his faithful companion; and thence master and hound would enter into the eternal house of the dead, Chiconamictlan, the "Ninth Hell."

Green stone image of Mictlantecutli, the skeleton god of death and of the underworld. The original is in the Stuttgart Museum.

Yet not all who died pursued this journey. To the terrestrial paradise, Tlalocan, the abode of Tlaloc, rich with every kind of fruit and abundant with joys, departed those slain by lightning, the drowned, victims of skin-diseases, and persons who died of dropsical affections--a heterogeneous lot whose company is to be ascribed to the various attributes of the rain-gods. With them should be included victims sacrificed to these deities, who perhaps themselves became rain-makers and servants of the Lords of the Rain. More fortunate still were they who ascended to the mansions of the Sun--those who fell in war, those who perished on the sacrificial altar or were sacrificed by burning, and women who died in child-birth. Those warriors, it was said, whose shields had been pierced could behold the Sun through the holes; to the others Tonatiuh was invisible; but all entered into the sky gardens, whose trees were other than those of this world; and there, after four years, they were transformed into birds of bright plumage, drawing the honey from the celestial blossoms.

It was in the eastern heavens that the souls of warriors found their paradise. Here they met the Sun as he rose in the morning, striking their bucklers with joyous cries and accompanying him on his journey to the meridian, where they were encountered by the War Women of the western heavens, the Ciuateteo, or Ciuapipiltin, souls of women who had gone to war or had died in childbed. These escorted the Sun down the western sky, bearing him on a gorgeous palanquin, into Tamoanchan ("the House of the Descent").[45] At the portals of the underworld they were met by the Lords of Hell, who conducted the Sun into their abode; for when it ceases to be day here, the day begins in the realm below. Possibly it was from this association with the underworld powers that the Ciuateteo acquired their sinister traits, for they were sometimes identified with the descending stars, the Tzitzimime, which follow the Sun's descent and become embodied as Demons of the Dark.

But the Sun has yet another comrade on his journey. As the soul of the dead Aztec is accompanied and guided into the nether world by his faithful dog, so the Sun has for companion the dog Xolotl. Xolotl is a god who presides over the game of _tlachtli_, the Mexican ball-game, analogous to tennis, in which a rubber ball was bounced back and forth in a court, not hurled or struck by hand, but by shoulder or thigh. As with other Indian ball-games, this was regarded as symbolic of the sun's course, and Xolotl was said to play the game on a magic court, which could be nothing else than the heavens. He was, moreover, deity of twins and other monstrous forms (for twins were regarded as monstrous), and it was humpbacks and dwarfs that were sacrificed to the Sun on the occasion of an eclipse, when it was deemed that the solar divinity had need of them. A myth narrated by Sahagun possibly explains or reflects this belief. In the beginning of things there was no sun and no moon; but two of the gods immolated themselves, and from their ashes rose the orbs of night and day, although neither sun nor moon as yet had motion. Then all the gods resolved to sacrifice themselves in order to give life and motion to the heavenly bodies. Xolotl alone refused: "Gods, I will not die," he said; and when the priest of the sacrifice came, he fled, transforming himself into a twin-stalked maize plant, such as is called _xolotl_; discovered, he escaped again and assumed the form of a maguey called _mexolotl_; and evading capture a third time, he entered the water and became a larva, _axolotl_--only to be found and offered up. A second version of the legend, recorded by Mendieta, makes Xolotl the sacrificial celebrant who gave death to the other gods and then to himself that the sun might have life. In still another tale, recorded also by Mendieta, it is the dog Xolotl who is sent to the Underworld for bones of the forefathers, that the first human pair might be created; but being pursued by Mictlantecutli, Xolotl stumbled, and the bone that he carried was dropped and broken into fragments, from which the various kinds of people sprang. Tales such as these are strongly reminiscent of the coyote stories of the northern continent, and it is possible that Xolotl himself is only a special form of Coyote, the trickster and transformer, especially as Ueuecoyotl ("Old Coyote"), borrowed from the more primitive Otomi, was a recognized member of the Aztec pantheon, as a god of feasts and dances, and perhaps of trickery as well.

Of all the recorded beliefs connected with the dead the most affecting is the brief account of the limbo of child-souls reported by the clerical expositor of Codex Vaticanus A. There was, he says,[46] "a third place for souls which passed from this life, to which went only the souls of children who died before attaining the use of reason. They feigned the existence of a tree from which milk distilled, where all children who died at such an age were carried; since the Devil, who is so inimical to the honour of God, even in this instance wished to show his rivalry: for in the same way as our holy doctors teach the existence of limbo for children who die without baptism, or without the circumcision of the old law, or without the sacrifice of the natural man, so he has caused these poor people to believe that there was such a place for their children; and he has superadded another error--the persuading them that these children have to return thence to repeople the world after the third destruction which they suppose that it must undergo, for they believe that the world has already been twice destroyed." The belief in an infant paradise, with its Tree of Life whence the souls of babes draw nourishment, biding the day of their rebirth, is a pleasant relief from the nightmarelike quality of most Aztec notions--not less familiarly human than are the pious reflections of the good friar who records it.