The religious cult of one-half of the Mexican hierarchy was distinctly nocturnal. The chief duties of certain priests were astronomical observation and the supervision of the sacred fire, which was kept perpetually burning on the summit of each temple-crowned pyramid, in what was termed “the sacred or divine brazier” of [pg 065] sculptured stone. Two priests jointly watched by night and day and received and transmitted to the flames the incense offerings of the devout. The temple fires were extinguished only at the expiration of a cycle of fifty-two years and were then rekindled by the high priest at midnight precisely, with impressive solemnity.
In ancient Mexico, it should however be observed, although the logical association of women with the hidden forces of nature, the underworld and the Below, had exerted a certain influence over her practical existence, it had not yet given rise to the idea of her inferiority as compared to man, the associate of the Heaven, the Above, the visible and active forces of nature. The native sages did not identify her so intimately with the earth as to deny her the possession of a soul—the celestial spark. On the other hand it is curious to note that the Nahuatl word for wife is Cihua-tlan-tli and for husband is Te-o-quichtli. Is it possible that the particle tlan in the first and Teo in the second may have contributed to strengthen the association of the woman with earth=tlalli (tlan=land of) and the man with Teotl, the sun, something divine and celestial? In course of time it doubtlessly would have transpired, in Mexico as elsewhere, that the set of primitive ideas which, during untold centuries, imposed upon women seclusion, obscurity and inactivity and thus hindered her development of strength of body and mind, would have directly induced an inferiority. This has been subsequently proclaimed, as we know, in many countries, as a direct proof of her lower nature and of her affinity with the element earth. The assumed and actual inferiority of woman may therefore be regarded as the logical, inevitable but artificial result of primordial classification and association. Suggested by the same natural phenomena which were visible to all inhabitants of the same latitudes, these ideas occurred to all people at a certain stage of their development and exerted a dominating influence over the subsequent growth of their intelligence. It is but now, that, unconsciously, mankind is beginning to emerge from the leading strings of its infancy, which became an iron bondage to its prolonged childhood. In Mexico, at the period of the Conquest, the absolute equality of the male and female principles was theoretically maintained. At the same time it is possible to discern certain agencies at work which were tending to connect the Below, the female principle, with harm and evil. From time immemorial [pg 066] it had been the custom of the Chichimecs, who, according to Sahagun (book xii, chap. 12, par. 5), inhabited an extremely poor and barren region of Mexico, to sacrifice the first animal killed in a hunting expedition and to offer it to “the Sun whom they called father and to the earth their mother.” They severed its head and raised this as though offering it to the sun. They then tilled the earth where the blood had been spilt and left the animal which had been sacrificed, on the spot (Ixtlilxochitl, Historia Chichimeca chap. vi and Relaciones p. 335). This passage, establishing the cultivation of the soil where the blood had been spilt, sheds a flood of light on the origin of the offerings of human blood and the sacrifices of human life, which were such a prominent and hideous feature of the Aztec religion.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, instead of the blood being spilt directly upon the earth, to insure and increase the fruitfulness of the soil, a human being was stretched across a conical stone which became thus the image of the earth-mother, his heart was extracted and offered to the sun, the Above, and his blood was then smeared on the mouth of certain idols representing the Below. In the B. N. MS. an interesting illustration and account are given of an idol of the earth-mother who is figured as standing on a pedestal adorned with skulls and cross-bones with outstretched tongue which signified, “that she always had great thirst for human blood” and “never refused sacrifices offered to her.”
Two priests are likewise pictured in the act of offering bowls containing human blood to the idol and a third, mounted on a ladder, is pouring the contents of another bowl over its head. It is obvious how the constant associations of the earth-mother with sanguinary sacrifices and bloodthirstiness would, in time, give rise to the idea of a hostile, maleficent power, linked with darkness and devouring fire, who, under the aspect of the serpent-woman, waged an eternal warfare on the human race and clamored for victims and bloody sacrifices. The natural sequence to the above associations is that in ancient Mexico the powers exerting fatal influence upon the human race are all represented as female, viz.: the Cihuacoatl or woman-serpent, the Ciuapipiltin and the Tzit-zime, etc. These and various other personifications of the female principle are described in detail in my notes and commentary to the B. N. MS.
After considering the foregoing data it seems impossible not to [pg 067] conclude that it must have taken centuries of time for the idea of duality, or of the Above and Below to have taken such a deep hold upon the native mind and to have produced such a growth of symbolism and association in so many ramifications of thought. Let us endeavor to obtain a further insight into the native mode of thought by carefully studying some significant details concerning the social organization of the Mexicans from the time of Acamapichtli to that of Montezuma and the influences it had been subjected to gradually. This, the first ruler, unquestionably ruled as the Cihuacoatl, a name which means either Woman-serpent or Female-twin. This fact in itself testifies to an epoch-making change in the organization of the Mexican government, in the making of which a concession was made to a previously existing order of things, by the retention of the female title by a male ruler.
Having carefully studied the question for many years, I have long considered it proven that when the Mexicans settled in the valley of Mexico they came under a series of influences emanating from an ancient and highly cultured centre of civilization situated in the south, which had followed, during untold centuries, the same lines of primitive thought which have been stated. This question of contact and influence from an older civilization is so important and the material I have collected on the subject is so extensive and complex, that it cannot be adequately treated here. Further on I shall discuss at length certain historical data throwing light on ancient contact and influences. Meanwhile I may as well state here that, having carefully weighed all testimony, I accept as amply proven and well supported, the testimony of Las Casas, Torquemada, Mendieta and others, who record that the Mexican culture-hero Quetzalcoatl was an actual person who had come to Mexico from Yucatan twice and had finally returned thither, leaving a small colony of his vassals behind him whose influence upon the religious and social organization and symbolism of the tribes, inhabiting the central plateau, can be plainly discerned. Montezuma himself, in his famous speech to Cortés, which the latter carefully reported to the Emperor Charles V, states that: “we [the Mexican rulers] were brought here by a lord, whose vassals all of our predecessors were, and who returned from here to his native land. He afterwards came here again, after a long time, during which many of his followers who had remained, had married native women of this land, raised large families and founded towns in [pg 068] which they dwelt. He wished to take them away from here with him, but they did not want to go, nor would they receive or adopt him as their ruler, and so he departed. Hut we have always thought that his descendants would surely come to subjugate this country and claim us as their vassals....” (Historia de Nueva España. Hernan Cortés, ed. Lorenzana, p. 81; see also p. 96). I do not see how it is possible to construe such plain, unadorned statements of simple, common-place facts into the assumption that Montezuma was recounting a mythical account of the disappearance of the Light-god from the sky, as upheld by some modern writers, who interpret the whole episode as a sun-myth or legend.
I have already shown that the meaning of the ocelot-skin and the spider, employed as symbols by the Mexicans, is apparent only when studied by means of the Maya language of Yucatan, the land whence the culture-hero is said to have come by the foregoing authorities. I will add here that in the Maya chronicles, it is stated that the culture-hero had ruled in Chichen-Itza, the first part of which name, Chichen, means red. In Mexican records it is described that he departed by water from the Mexican coast and travelled directly east, bound for Tlapallan—a name which means red-land. I draw attention to the fact that any one sailing from the mouth of the Panuco river, for instance, in a straight line towards the east, would inevitably land on the coast of Yucatan, not far from the modern Merida and the ancient ruins of Chichen-Itza.
I shall also produce evidence, further on, to show that the meaning of the much-discussed name of the culture-hero's home, Tullan, is also furnished by the Maya language. From more than one source, we learn, moreover, that there were several Tullans on the American continent. The conception of Twin-brothers as the personification of the Above and Below had been adopted in Yucatan and it is to the influence emanating from that source that I attribute the movement made in Mexico, to substitute male twin-rulers in the place of the man and woman, who had previously and jointly ruled the ancient Mexicans.
Let us now analyze the Maya title Kukulcan, of which Quetzalcoatl is the Mexican equivalent. As already stated, the word can means serpent and the numeral 4 and is almost homonymous with the word for sky or heaven=caan. The image of a serpent, therefore, directly suggested and expressed the idea of something quadruple incorporated in one celestial being and appropriately [pg 069] symbolized the divine ruler of the four quarters. In the word Kukulcan the noun can is qualified by the prefix kukul. In the compiled Maya dictionary published by Brasseur de Bourbourg (appendix to de Landa's Relacion) the adjective ku or kul is given as “divine or holy.” Kukulcan may therefore be analyzed as “the divine serpent” or the “Divine Four.” When Maya sculptors or scribes began to represent this symbol of the divinity they must have searched for some object, easy to depict, the sound of whose name resembled that of ku or kul. The Maya adjective “feathered” being kukum, the artists evidently devised the plan of representing, as an effigy of the divinity, a serpent decorated with feathers and to this simple attempt at representing the “divine serpent” in sculpture or pictography is due, in my opinion, the origin of the “feathered serpent” effigies found in Yucatan and Mexico, which have so puzzled archaeologists.
Of Kukulcan, the culture-hero of the Mayas, it is recounted that he had been one of four brothers who originally ruled at Chichen-Itza, over four tribes. “These brothers chose no wives but lived chastely and ruled righteously, until, at a certain time, one died or departed and two began to act unjustly and were put to death. The one remaining was Kukulcan. He appeased the strife which his brothers' acts had aroused, directed the minds of the people to the arts of peace and caused to be built various edifices. After he had completed his work at Chichen-Itza he founded the great city of Mayapan, destined to be the capital of the confederacy of the Mayas.” (See Brinton, Hero-myths, p. 162.) Friar Diego de Landa relates that the current opinion amongst the Indians of Yucatan was that this ruler had gone to Mexico where, after his return (departure?) he was named Cezalcouatl and revered as one of their gods (Relacion, ed. Brasseur de Bourbourg, p. 36). Before analyzing the Nahuatl rendering of Kukulcan's name I would point out the noteworthy coincidence that, during his reign at Chichen-Itza and Mayapan, he practically united in his person and assumed the offices formerly fulfilled by four rulers, of which he had been only one.