Egyptian priesthood. Meanwhile, the Teocallis, or temples of Mexico, gave hospitable shelter to this mixed multitude of divinities. Hard by Huitzilopochtli was Tezcatlipoca (Tezcatepuca, Bernal calls him), whose chapel "stank worse than all the shambles of Castile." He had the face of a bear and shining eyes, made of mirrors called Tezcut. He was understood by Bernal to be the Mexican Hades, or warden of the dead. Not far off was an idol, half-human and half-lizard, "the god of fruits and harvest, I remember not his name," and all his chapel walls dripped blood.
In the medley of such a Pantheon, it is difficult to arrange the deities on any principle of order. Beginning with Huitzilopochtli, as perhaps the most famous, it is to be observed that he indubitably became and was recognised as a god of battles, and that he was also the guide and protector who (according to the Aztec painted scriptures) led the wandering fathers through war and wilderness to the promised land of Mexico. His birth was one of those miraculous conceptions which we have seen so frequently in the myths and märchen of the lower and the higher races. It was not by swallowing a berry, as in Finland, but by cherishing in her bosom a flying ball of feathers that the devout woman, Coatlicue, became the mother of Huitzilopochtli. All armed he sprang to the light, like Athens from the head of Zeus, and slew his brothers that had been born by natural generation. From that day he received names of dread, answering to Deimos and Phobos.[1] By another myth, euhemeristic
- ↑ Clavigero, Storia Ant. del Mexico, ii. 17, 19; Bancroft, iii. 290.
