The double-headed serpent forming a vase containing a flower (no. 12) is particularly interesting because the flower=xoch-itl in Nahuatl, seems to suggest an intentional likeness to the Maya word for “vase, vessel or cup in general,” ho-och (Arte de la lengua Maya, Fray Pedro Beltran de Santa Rosa, ed. Espinosa, Mérida, 1859) as well as hoch or o-och=“food and maintenance.” The symbolical vase-like opening in the core of the agave plant, (no. 8) is such as is made to this day, in order to collect the juice, which, when fermented, constitutes the sacred wine of the ancient Mexicans, octli, now better known as pulque.[8] As will be shown the Mexicans considered this as “the drink of life.” Its use was rigidly regulated and supervised by the “octli-lords” or “rain-priests” who distributed it at certain dances, in order to induce a state of mild intoxication amongst the participants.
As in the case of the Zuñis and Tarahumari Indians of the present day, referred to by W J McGee, in his valuable and instructive article on “The beginning of Marriage” (the American Anthropologist, vol. ix, no. 11, p. 371), “certain ceremonials typifying the fecundity of the earth and of the leading people thereof” were performed by the ancient Mexicans. These public ceremonials had also been “apparently developed to the end that the tribes and peoples might be encouraged to increase and multiply and possess the fecund earth.” They took place at the period of the year when the heaven and earth were also supposed to unite, i. e., at the beginning of the rainy season. During this the ordinary out-door occupations of the agriculturist and hunter were forcibly interrupted and the regular and periodical transportations of produce and tribute [pg 102] to the capital became impossible, owing to torrential rain, swollen rivers and impassable roads. This period of enforced shelter and confinement indoors seems to have become the definite mating season of the aborigines. At the same time the union of the sexes had obviously assumed a sort of consecration since it was intimately associated with the cosmical, philosophical and religious ideas and coincided with what was regarded as the annual union of the elements or of the Above and Below, the heaven and earth.
At that period of its history, when the Aztec race was jointly governed by a priest, personifying the heaven and a priestess, “his wife and sister,” who personified the earth, some form of sacred marriage rite must have been annually performed. The consecrated character of their union must have naturally caused their offspring to be regarded as of a holy and almost divine origin. It is easy to realize, therefore, how, in ancient Mexico, the artificial idea of “superior birth” came into existence, how a family or caste of rulers gradually developed, the members of which were entitled “teotl”=divine, whilst the men were regarded as “the sons of Heaven” and the women “the daughters of Earth.” It is obvious from this that the periodical union of the sexes, accompanied as it was, by sacred dances and the distribution of sacred wine, must have gradually assumed a semi-religious character, whilst the ritual nuptials of the “divine” rulers, typifying, as it obviously did, the grand and impressive phenomenon of the rainy season, must have caused this marriage to assume the character of a hallowed rite and surrounded it with the most elevated and intense religious sentiments of which the native mind was capable.
After this recognition of the diverging influences which guided the development of primitive marriage institutions, we will return to the rain-priests or “octli-lords,” of whom it is repeatedly stated that there were four hundred, a number corresponding to an assignment of 100 or 5×20 to each of the four provinces or divisions of the commonwealth. Their emblem was the sacred vase or receptacle and in the “Lyfe of the Indians” this will be seen figured on their mantas and shields (no. 6a). A small gold plate, of the same shape, is represented as worn by these “lords,” attached to the nose (no. 6b); and, in the same MS., the symbolical ornament is also carried by the “sister of Tlaloc.” It was evidently [pg 103] worn, like similar ornaments in other countries, hanging from the septum of the nose, and seems to have indicated a consecration of the breath as the substance of life. As an inference, merely based on an insight gained into the native modes of thought, I suggest that the explanation for the adoption of this ornament may have been the religious idea that the breath of life, dividing itself as it issues through the nostrils and uniting when inhaled, appeared to the native thinkers as a marvellous illustration of unity and duality, both ideas having constantly been present in their minds.
Figure 32.
In the Vienna Codex there is a remarkable picture of the earth-vase resting on a slab with five divisions. A profusion of puffs or breaths of air or vapor issue from it and, branching off in two directions, form what is like the conventional tree of life, also met with in Maya bas-reliefs and documents. At the extremities of the branches which turn downwards, a serpent's eye is visible and a forked-tongue issues above the middle (fig. [32], no. 1). The intention to express an exuberant vitality and growth issuing from the symbolical vase in the centre of the earth, seems obvious. This idea is still more clearly conveyed, however, in two symbolic pictures on pp. 21 and 29 of the Codex Borgia, which are reproduced as nos. 1 and 4 in fig. [1] of this publication. The first represents the vase overflowing with water and containing a flint-knife, the generator of the vital spark. The central group is surrounded by water and by sun-rays and obviously symbolizes the union of air, light and water, constituting the Above, with the flint the emblem of the earth-mother and of Tezcatlipoca, the lord of the Under-world. Fig. [1], no. 4, represents the vase overflowing with a liquid, which is designated as being the sacred octli or earth-wine by the presence of the rabbit, which expresses the sound of its [pg 104] name=tochtli. This rebus is surrounded by the nocturnal heaven strewn with stars and the reference to the union of rain or earth-wine with earth and darkness is evident. It has been generally assumed that these images of the vase, containing the rabbit or flint-knife, represented the moon. As the latter was intimately associated with the cult of night, of the earth-mother and ideas of growth, it is not impossible that by an extension of symbolism, this was the case, but only in the same way as the sun was the emblem of the cult of the Above. On the other hand the native drawings of the moon in Sahagun's Academia MS. represent it as a crescent with a human profile on the inner side, and in a specimen preserved at the Trocadéro Museum, Paris, it is similarly carved in rock crystal.
Before proceeding to investigate the symbol further, I would point out the general resemblance of the vase, especially as a conventionalized serpent's jaw, to the “horse-shoe” shape of the problematical stone “yokes” which have been so thoroughly studied by Dr. Hermann Strebel of Hamburg (Studien ueber Steinjoche aus Mexico and Mittel-Amerika. Internationales Archiv, bd. III, 1890). Mr. Francis Parry has advanced a view concerning the meaning of these curious “sacred stones.”[9] This is somewhat corroborated, as will be shown, by my recent studies, which seem to indicate pretty clearly that these symbolical objects pertained to the cult of the earth-mother. A fact of unquestionable importance, cited by Mr. Parry, is the certified existence and use, amongst southern Californian Indians of the present day, of a rudely worked stone of the same shape, in a native religious rite. The owner of one of these stones, Mr. Horatio Rust, a pioneer resident of Pasadena, southern California, exhibited it in the Anthropological Section of the World's Columbian Exposition, at Chicago, 1893, and informed me how he had observed that, occasionally, a native assembly took place at a certain spot on a mountain side, during which invocations and offerings were made. He ascertained that the ceremony on one occasion was the equivalent of the puberty-dances of similar California tribes. Having visited and examined the spot after one of these celebrations, in which six young girls, decorated with garlands of flowers, were the chief participants, he found the “sacred stone,” concealed and surrounded [pg 105] by offerings of corn, meal and pieces of money. The version published by Mr. Parry is slightly different to this account, which was given me by Mr. Rust himself.
In order fully to appreciate the close analogy between the Californian ceremonial offering of maize and meal to the emblematic stone and the ancient Mexican ritual offerings of seeds to an idol, holding a bowl or vase, it is necessary to read the following data. At the same time I would like to mention here that amongst the Hupa Indians of California, who have been termed “the Romans of Northern California by reason of their valour and far reaching dominions,” we find that “flakes or knives of obsidian or jasper, sometimes measuring 15 inches or more in length, are employed for sacred purposes and are carried aloft in the hand in certain ceremonial dances, wrapped with skin or cloth. Such knives are esteemed so sacred that the Indians would on no account part with them, and Mr. Stephen Powers found that they could not be purchased at any price.”[10]