1894.] v)7 [Brinton. 



armamentarium, or the box, jar or case in which are kept the 

 professional apparatus, the talismans and charms, which consti- 

 tute the stock in trade or outfit of the necromancer.* 



Among tlie Lacandons, of Mayan stock, who inhabit the 

 forests on the upper waters of the Usuraacinta river, at the 

 present day the term naguate or nagutlat is said to be applied to 

 any one " who is entitled to respect and obedience by age and 

 merit ;"f but in all probability he is also believed to possess 

 superior and occult knowledge. 



39. All who have any acquaintance with the folk-lore of the 

 world are aware that the notion of men and women having the 

 power to change themselves into beasts is as wide as supersti- 

 tion itself and older than history. It is mentioned in the pages 

 of Herodotus and in the myths of ancient Assyria. It is the 

 property of African negroes, and the peasantry of Europe still 

 hold to their faith in the reality of the were-wolf of Germany, 

 the loiqy-garou of France and the lujyo mannaro of Italy. Dr. 

 Richard Andree well says in his interesting stud^^ of the subject : 

 " He who would explain the origin of this strange superstition 

 must not approach it as a national or local manifestation, but as 

 one universal in its nature ; not as the property of one race or 

 family, but of the species and its psychology at large." | 



Even in such a detail as the direct connection of the name of 

 the person with his power of change do we find extraordinary 

 parallelisms between the superstition of the red man of America 

 and the peasant of Germany, As in Mexico the nagual was as- 

 signed to the infant by a form of baptism, so in Europe the 

 peasants of east Prussia hold that if the godparent at the time of 

 naming and baptism thinks of a wolf, the infant will acquire the 

 power of becoming one ; and in Hesse to pronouncethename of the 

 person in the presence of the animal into which he has been 

 changed will restore him to human shape. § 



40. I need not sa}^ that the doctrine of personal spirits is 

 not especially Mexican, nor 3'et American ; it belongs to man in 



*" Nagual— e\ liigar, rincon, cajon, nambira, etc., donde guarda sus talismanes y 

 trajes de encanta la bruja." Berendt, La Lengna Castellana dc Nicaragua, MS. 

 t Emetorio Pineda, Descripcion Geografica de Chiapas y Soconusco, p. 23 (Mexico, 1S45). 

 I See his article " Wer-wolf," in his Ethnographische Puralklen tind Vergleicfie, p. 62, seq. 

 g Richard AndriJe, ibid., ss. 63, 64. 



