tivities that weleome inthe New Year. But in antiquity 
and in virtually all the other cultures of the world the 
mask takes on serious purport. It shows the salient trait 
of character that the bearer means to portray, a personi- 
fication of that trait. In the Nochipilli statue obviously 
the mask dramatically emphasizes the ecstatic man, and 
does so with the power of genius. Here is a man who is not 
seeing, not living as ordinary mortals see and live, who is 
seeing directly with the eves of the soul. This man is 
not with us, is ina far off world. (See Plate NNVIIL.) 
I like to think that the eye-sockets were empty from 
the beginning, intentionally so. In this hieratic carving 
with mask and formal head dress, we are given the op- 
portunity to perceive to the full the role played by rap- 
turein pre-Columbian Mesoamerican culture, the gravity 
with which the hallucinogenic experience was instinct. 
Let us now examine the bas-reliefS that adorn the body 
of the man and the base on which he rests. And here 
we come on surprising facts. As Il am no botanist, I in- 
voked the help of Professor Richard Evans Schultes, 
Director of the Botanical Museum of Harvard Univer- 
sity, and the following identifications largely reflect his 
thinking and that of his students, Mr. ‘Timothy Plow- 
manand Mr. Tommie Lockwood and his colleague, the 
scientific artist Mr. Elmer W. Smith. Certainly many 
of the carvings, and probably all, are of hallucinogenic 
plants familiar to the Aztecs, and thus they clinch my 
initial response to the pose of the statue. So that the 
reader may judge the identifications, the distinguished 
artist Margaret Seeler has drawn the series of figures 
that we now show in our text. 
The base and the man are separate stones but clearly 
they were made for each other. The carvings are stylized 
in varying degree and one or two of them seem to be 
but roughly finished. [et us begin with the base. 
[ 310 | 
