182 



DISCOVERY 



The Origins of Mexican 

 Mythology 



By Lewis Spence 



Author of" The Civilisation of Ancient Mexico," " Mi/ths 0/ Mexico 

 and Peru," etc. 



The mytholog>' of the Aztec people of Ancient Mexico 

 has been unaccountably neglected by British students 

 of Comparative Religion. German, American, and 

 French scholars have been quick to grasp its import- 

 ance and significance, and their researches have suc- 

 ceeded in placing it on an equality of standing with 

 the faiths of Egypt and Babylonia. It is singular 

 that British scholarship, which has done more than 

 any other for the advancement of the science of Com- 

 parative Religion, should have disregarded a source 

 from which so many striking illustrations of the de- 

 velopment of rehgion can be drawn. 



British apathy towards the subject of Mexican 

 Archaeology and Mythology would seem to arise out 

 of the rather unusual difficulties which have hitherto 

 beset the initial efforts of those who desire to pursue 

 its study. The languages of Mexico and Central 

 America are complex and not easily mastered, and the 

 works of the older Spanish authorities upon myth and 

 ritual are numerous, expensive, and not easily obtained 

 unless in the best-equipped libraries. 



But supposing these obstacles to be overcome by 

 the enthusiastic student, he still finds himself opposed 

 by others of even greater magnitude. He must make an 

 exhaustive study of the native calendric and hierogly- 

 phic paintings or codices, which at the first bewildering 

 glance appear as a mass of wTithing figures and in- 

 extricable sj'mbols, executed with what would seem 

 to be a total disregard of all method. Towards the 

 comprehension of these, he will find a certain guidance 

 in the works of Professor Eduard Seler, of Berhn, 

 who has laboriously described and annotated them. 

 But, even so, he will meet with many disheartening 

 admissions of ignorance on passages of obvious im- 

 portance, and, if he possess independence and initiative, 

 he will, in the event, prefer to resort to a first-hand 

 examination of these manuscripts. 



However valuable the student may find a perusal of 

 the painted manuscriptsof the Ancient Mexican peoples, 

 he will soon discover that their contents are, for the 

 most part, hmited to a record of the periods at which 

 certain religious festivals were celebrated. These 

 are usually accompanied by pictures of the gods, 

 which will assist him to a comprehension of their 

 general appearance, costume, and the insignia which 

 illustrate their deeper significance. Here and there, 

 too, he will find pictorial representations of myths 



and festivals. But it is rather from the prohx and 

 elaborate works of the Spanish Colonial writers of 

 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that he will 

 first extract the material which will enable him to form 

 a just estimate of the religion of the Ancient Mexicans. 

 In the writings of Sahagun, Torquemada, Mendieta, 

 and others, and the annals of Spanish-speaking natives 

 in particular, he will encounter those facts which will 

 help him to solve the riddles of the manuscripts. 



During the last few years of a long apprenticeship 

 to the study of Mexican religion, my endeavours have 

 been directed to smoothing the progress of those who 

 will come after mc, and I hope to complete shortly 

 a volume, somewhat in the nature of a handbook, bring- 

 ing together all avaOable data concerning each of the 

 gods, especially as regards costume, symbols, etymo- 

 logies, myths, and representations in painting and 

 sculpture. But in such a brief paper as this I must 

 confine myself to that phase of it which I have recently 

 been considering more especially — the origin of the 

 more important of the Mexican gods, i.e. the original 

 forms in which these appear to have presented them- 

 selves to the Aztec mind. 



In course of time one outstanding fact will bulk 

 before the student to the diminution of all others. 

 The religion of Ancient Mexico, he will come to see, 

 was originally developed out of an urgent local need 

 — the need for rain. At the period when Cortez and 

 his Spanish cavaliers invaded Mexico, the native faith 

 of that country was nothing more than a vastly elabo- 

 rated rain-cult, similar in its general tendency to 

 that which still prevails among the Pueblo Indians of 

 New Mexico, yet broader in outlook, more complex, 

 and higher in moral endea\'our, although stained with 

 the cruelties of human sacrifice. The necessity for 

 rainfall, by which alone the parched soil of Mexico 

 could be rendered fit for the growth of maize, practically 

 obscured every other consideration in the native 

 mind. Once that salient fact is grasped, much will 

 have been done towards the understanding of Mexican 

 religion as a whole. 



At a late stage of its development, practically all 

 the gods of Mexico came to be included in the great 

 national rain-cult, but in some cases their early forms 

 show signs, if I am not mistaken, of tribal or local 

 origin quite foreign to it. This is especially the case 

 with Uitzilopochtli, who until now has been labelled 

 as a " war-god," and whose name has been translated 

 " Humming-bird-to-the-lcft " or " Humming-bird-of- 

 the-South." I beheve that this god was at first a 

 personification of the maguey plant (Agave aviericana). 

 A certain variety of this plant, so common in Mexico, 

 was known to the Aztecs as " beak of the humming- 

 bird," probably because of the resemblance its long 

 spiky thorns bear to the sharp beak of that graceful 



