paste image of an ox after discovering the forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid.[1] But this view can hardly be maintained in face of the frequent cannibalism of the Aztecs. Such was then the general course of their ritual, the cruel details may be omitted.[2]
From the special ritual of Huitzilopochtli Mr. Tylor conjectures that this "inextricable compound parthenogenetic" god may have been originally "a nature deity, whose life and death were connected with the year."[3] This theory is based on the practice at the feast called Panquetzaliztli.[4] "His paste idol was shot through with an arrow," says Mr. Tylor, "and being thus killed, was divided into morsels and eaten; wherefore the ceremony was called Teoqualo, or 'god-eating,' and this was associated with the winter solstice." M. Réville says that this feast coincided with our month of December, the beginning of the cold and dry season. Huitzilopochtli would die with the verdure, the flowers, and all the beauteous adornments of spring and summer; but like Adonis, like Osiris, and
- ↑ See many examples of gods made of flour and eaten in Liebrecht's Zur Volkskunde, "Der aufgegessene Gott," p. 436.
- ↑ Copious details as to the sacraments, human sacrifices, paste figures of gods, and identity of god and victim, will be found in Sahagun's second and third books. The magical character of the ritual deserves particular attention. It will be noted that the feasts of the corn goddess, like the rites of Demeter, were celebrated with torch-dances. The ritual of the month Quecholli (iii. 33, 144) is a mere medicine-hunt, as Tanner and the Red Indians call it, a procuring of magical virtue for the arrows, as in the Zuni mysteries to-day. Compare Report of Bureau of Ethnology, vol. ii., "Zuni Prey Gods."
- ↑ Primitive Culture, ii. 307; Clavigero, Messico, ii. 17, 81.
- ↑ Sahagun, ii. 15, and Appendix, iii. 2–3.
