294 



DISCOVERY 



native calendar. For example, in the Xagualist 

 calendar for January-, the first day of the month was 

 represented by a puma, the second b}- a snake, the 

 eighth by a rabbit, the fourteenth by a toad, the 

 nineteenth by a jaguar, and so on. The animal of 

 the day was invoked by the priest, who offered up 

 sacrifice to it, implored its good offices for the child, 

 and then instructed the infant's mother to carry it 

 to a certain lonely spot, where the nagual would appear 

 and become attached to it for the remainder of its life. 



of a particularly vindictive and disgruntled nature. 

 Strangely enough, the same notion is to be met with 

 in present-day Burma, where the spirit of the woman 

 who leaves a new-born babe behind her is regarded 

 as a peculiarly malevolent ghost. These witches are 

 represented in the native paintings as dressed in the 

 garments and insignia of the goddess Tlazolteotl, the 

 Mexican patroness of witches. They wore a skirt on 

 which cross-bones were woven, they carried the witch's 

 broom of stiff grass, and their faces were smothered in 



ONE OF THE CIU.\TETEO, OR MEXICAN WITCHES, FROM THE CODEX BORGIA. 

 She is about to sacrifice a child, and stands before an um filled with human hearts. She wears the cotton spindle of the 

 earth-goddess, her skirt is decorated with lunar emblems and she is adorned by the lunar nose-plate. 



The " Haunting Mothers " 



Many of the worshippers of these beast-gods pre- 

 tended to have the power of transforming themselves 

 into the bodily shapes of their patrons, just as the 

 witches of medieval Europe claimed the ability to take 

 animal shape. It is indeed strange how closely the 

 rites of Nagualism resembled those of the European 

 witches' Sabbath. But it seems to have been an orgy 

 in which the living and the dead mingled, for it was 

 attended not only by those women who dabbled in 

 unhoty rites, but by the great company of those 

 deceased women who had in their da}' practised black 

 magic. Those were known as Ciuateteo, or " Haunting 

 Mothers." Some of them were merely unhappy 

 mothers who had died leaving young children behind 

 them, and who for this reason were supposed to be 



white chalk decorated with the figure of a butterfly, 

 the emblem of the disembodied soul. 



These furies were supposed to inhabit the region 

 of the west. At midnight they descended to earth 

 and mingled with the living witches in horrid festival. 

 The Aztecs believed that many complaints, par- 

 ticularly epileps^^ were sown broadcast by these 

 strigs, and so that no evil emanations might enter 

 their houses, they stopped up the chinks in the doors 

 and windows, and even the chimneys, on certain nights 

 of the year which were peculiarly associated with the 

 dead witches. 



A picture of their queen and patroness in the Codex 

 Fejervary-Mayer in the Free Public Museums at 

 Liverpool bears an extraordinary resemblance to the 

 European witch of tradition. She is represented as 



