of a certain snake, who is marked in a peculiar way over the whole body, and held in great esteem. Every year some young girls are seized by force and taken to this priestess, who marks them artistically, initiates them in religious songs and dances, marries them in a manner to the snake, and consecrates them as priestesses of that divinity. With others again the priesthood is hereditary, the consecration in this case being imprinted once for all on certain families, and not imparted, as in the instances given above, by rites affecting only the individual who undergoes them. A peculiar modification of the hereditary principle is where the preference is given to him, among several sons, who dares to pull certain grains (which have been previously put in) out of the teeth of his deceased father, and place them in the mouth of the corpse. Here the consecration is partly inherited, partly personal. Elsewhere a priest or fetich-maker is made "by all sorts of silly ceremonies at a meal," and a string with consecrated objects is hung round his neck in token of his condition (G. d. M., p. 328).
Both principles, the hereditary and the personal, were known in Mexico. The priests of Vitziliputzli succeeded by right of birth; the priests of other idols by election or by an offering made in their infancy. Priests were consecrated to their holy office by an unction which, as Father Acosta justly observes, resembled that of the Catholic Church. They were annointed from head to foot, and the hair was left to hang down in tresses moist from the application of the ointment. But when they were going to perform the offices of their sacred calling on mountains, or in dark caves, they were annointed with an altogether different substance, compounded by a peculiar process from certain venomous reptiles. This was supposed to give them courage (H. I., b. 5, ch. 26).
The consecration of the Levitical priesthood, originally personal, descended from father to son, and was moreover confined to the members of this single tribe. It could not be repeated after its first performance. Hence we have in this case an interesting example, not only of an hereditary priesthood, but also of the manner in which its exclusive sanctity was supposed to have been originally established. Moses, who derived his appointment directly from Jehovah, was employed to consecrate
