[53] Hist. Mex., English translation, vol. i, bk. vi, p. 243. [↑]
[54] Hist. Gen., bk. iii, c. vi–ix. [↑]
[55] These both mean the same thing, “shield of precious stones.” [↑]
[56] Diccionario Universal, Appendix, s.v. [↑]
[57] See ante, Aspect and Insignia. [↑]
[58] Commentary C. Fejérváry-Mayer, p. 34. [↑]
[59] See the Stone of Tizoc for examples of this practice. [↑]
[60] This figure conventionally represents the turkey and strikingly exhibits the large red wattles and lobe of that bird. In most of the MSS. it wears Tezcatlipocâ’s smoking mirror at the temple, the warrior’s headdress of heron-feathers, and in Codex Borbonicus it appears as a naualli or disguise of the god, having his crown painted with stars and his anauatl or ring of mussel-shell. On sheet 6 of Codex Fejérváry-Mayer the bird appears as an image of Tezcatlipocâ and is represented along with the signs of mortification and blood-letting, as it is on sheet 17 of the Aubin tonalamatl, where it wears the bone-piercer in its ears and a red robe edged with blue and brown. Indeed, it represents the blood-offering connected with the worship of Tezcatlipocâ. The turkey-cock’s foot, too, is sometimes symbolic of the god, and the interpretative codices tell us that “of the demons we often see nothing more than a cock’s or eagle’s foot.” The turkey-cock is to be conceived as representative of rain, which was believed by the Nahua to be nothing else than the magically altered blood he shed in penitence or sacrifice. It may be that the red wattles and lobe of the turkey suggested the idea of blood, and that the shades in his plumage were equally suggestive of water. Thus it would come to be regarded as the blood shed by the stone knife of sacrifice. It is also obvious that Tezcatlipocâ’s patronage of slaves, who were strictly regarded as his property, arose out of the idea that those unfortunates, whenever used for the purposes of sacrificial ritual, constituted the “food” of the obsidian knife. [↑]
[62] Bernal Diaz also states that the eyes of Tezcatlipocâ’s idol were “mirrors.” See ante, “Aspect and Insignia.” [↑]