The gods of Mexico

The type and evolution of Mexican religion—The antiquity of Mexican religion—The literature of Mexican religion: I, The native codices; II, The native writings; III, Native art-...

The “ages” of Mexican cosmogony—The making of the earth—The peopling of the earth—Creation of the sun and moon—The Historia de los Mexicanos—Deluge myths—The “Coxcox” fallacy—Th...

Day-signs—Model tonalamatl—The day-gods—Gods of the “weeks”—Lords of the night—Lords of the day-hours—Tonalamatl festivals— Recapitulation—The calendar round—The nemontemi—The V...

If, like the necromancers of old, we possessed the power to summon the shades of the dead before us, and employed this dread authority to recall from the place of shadows the sp...

Accounts of the creation of the world and of man, even as handed down to us by those writers on Mexican mythology who had the best opportunities for collecting them, are prone t...

In the section descriptive of the gods, each divinity is dealt with separately. The need for system and orderly arrangement in the study of Mexican Mythology is clamant. In the...

Minor Names: Ometecutli = “Twofold lord.” Tlachinale = “Lord of Creation.” Tlatecque = “Lord of the Earthly World.” Teotlale = “Lord of the Steppe.” Matlaua = “Lord of the Net.”...

So numerous were the manifestations and variants of the Earth-goddess conceived by the Nahua or adopted into their pantheon, that this has been the cause of considerable misconc...

The gods of rain proper are clearly to be distinguished from the gods of grain and growth, although they were regarded by the ancient Mexicans as stimulating vegetable plenteous...

Minor Names: Tzoncaztli = “The Yellow-haired.” In Xiuhtetzaqualco maquitoc = “He who enters the Blue Stone Pyramid.” Yei itzcuintli = “Three Dog.” Cuezaltzin = “The Flame.” Chic...

(1) A two-coloured face-painting, the front half of the facial profile (i.e. the middle part of the face) being painted red in its entire length, both sides at the temples black...

Codex Borgia.—Sheet 9: His nose-plug has the colours of the chalchihuitl. The ornament attached to the nape and back is a large rosette or disk painted in the chalchihuitl colou...

Calendar Places: Lord of the tenth day-count, ce tecpatl, and of the tenth week. Eleventh of the thirteen lords of the day and fifth of the nine lords of the night.

Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 19: He looks out from the open jaws of a stone knife, which is designed with teeth and the socket of an eye above them. Otherwise he is pictured as a bl...

Codex Borgia.—In the picture of Xolotl on the left side of the middle lower part of sheet 55 a resemblance to Quetzalcoatl is noticeable. On his head is the peculiar wedge-shape...

Torribio de Benavente (Motolinia), Historia de los Indios de Nueva-España. In Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico, vol. ix, pp. 469 ff.; see also L. G. Pimentel, Memoriales de...

This great compilation is admirable as a painstaking précis of the extensive sources relating to Mexican and Mayan history and religion, but its author and his assistants confin...