The diviner is called h’men, a male personal form of the verb men, to understand, to do. He is one who knows, and who accomplishes. His main instrument is the zaztun, “the clear stone” (zaz, clear, transparent; tun, stone). This is a quartz crystal or other translucent stone, which has been duly sanctified by burning before it gum copal as an incense, and by the solemn recital of certain magic formulas in an archaic dialect passed down from the wise ancients. It is thus endowed with the power of reflecting the past and future, and the soothsayer gazes into its clear depths and sees where lost articles may be recovered, learns what is happening to the absent, and by whose witchery sickness and disaster have come upon those who call in his skill. There is scarcely a village in Yucatan without one of these wondrous stones.
The wise men have also great influence over the growing crops, and in this direction their chiefest power is exercised. By a strange mixture of Christian and pagan superstition, they are called in to celebrate the misa milpera, the “field mass” (misa, Spanish, “mass”; milpera, a word of Aztec derivation, from milpa, “cornfield”). In the native tongue this is called the tich, which means the offering or sacrifice. It is a distinct survival of a rite mentioned by Diego de Landa, one of the earliest bishops of the diocese of Yucatan.[[192]]
The ceremony is as follows: On a sort of altar constructed of sticks of equal length the native priest places a fowl, and, having thrown on its beak some of the fermented liquor of the country, the pitarrilla, he kills it, and his assistants cook and serve it with certain maize cakes of large size and special preparation. When the feast is ready, the priest approaches the table, dips a branch of green leaves into a jar of pitarrilla, and asperges the four cardinal points, at the same time calling on the three persons of the Christian Trinity, and the sacred four of his own ancient religion, the Pah ah tun. These mysterious beings were before the conquest and to this day remain in the native belief the gods of rain, and hence of fertility. They are identical with the winds, and the four cardinal points from which they blow. To each is sacred a particular color, and in modern times each has been identified with a saint in the Catholic calendar. Thus Father Baeza tells us that the red Pahahtun is placed at the East, and is known as Saint Dominic; to the North the white one, who is Saint Gabriel; the black, toward the West, is Saint James; the yellow is toward the South, and is a female, called in the Maya tongue X’Kanleox, “the yellow goddess,” and bears the Christian name of Mary Magdalen.
The name Pahahtun is of difficult derivation, but it probably means “stone, or pillar, set up or erected,” and this tallies quite exactly with a long description of the ancient rites connected with the worship of these important divinities in the old times. There are some discrepancies in the colors assigned the different points of the compass, but this appears to have varied considerably among the Central American nations, though many of them united in having some such symbolism. A curious study of it has been made by the well-known archæologist, the Count de Charencey.[[193]]
The invocation to these four points of the compass in its modern form was fortunately obtained and preserved in the original tongue by that indefatigable student, the late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, while on a visit to the plantation of Xcanchakan, in the interior of Yucatan.[[194]] The translation of it runs as follows:—
“At the rising of the Sun, Lord of the East, my word goes forth to the four corners of the heaven, to the four corners of the earth, in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.
“When the clouds rise in the east, when he comes who sets in order the thirteen forms of the clouds, the yellow lord of the hurricane, the hope of the lords to come, he who rules the preparation of the divine liquor, he who loves the guardian spirits of the fields, then I pray to him for his precious favor; for I trust all in the hands of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.”
Such is an example of the strange mixture of heathen and Christian superstition which has been the outcome of three centuries of so-called Christian instruction!
There still continue to be relics of an ancient form of fire-worship which once prevailed commonly throughout the peninsula. The missionaries refer to it as “the festival of fire,”[[195]] but the exact rites performed were so carefully concealed that we have no description of them. That they are not yet out of date is apparent from a copy of a native calendar for 1841–2, obtained by Mr. Stephens when in Yucatan. In it the days are marked as lucky or unlucky, and against certain ones such entries are made as “now the burner lights his fire,” “the burner gives his fire scope,” “the burner takes his fire,” “the burner puts out his fire.” This burner, ah toc, is the modern representative of the ancient priest of the fire, and we find a few obscure references to an important rite, the tupp kak, extinction of the fire, which was kept up long after the conquest, and probably is still celebrated in the remoter villages. The sacred fire in ancient Maya land is said to have been guarded by chosen virgins, and it appears in some way to have been identified with the force which gives life to the animal and vegetable world.
Another of the modern ceremonies which is imbued with the old notion, common to them as to all primitive people, of a soul with material wants, is that called “the feast of the food of the soul.” Small cakes are made of the flesh of hens and pounded maize, and are baked in an underground oven. Of these as many are placed on the altar of the church as the person making the offering has deceased relatives for whose well-being he is solicitous. These cakes are called hanal pixan, “the food of the soul.” Evidently they are intended to represent the nourishment destined for the soul on its journey through the shadowy lands of death.