NAGUALISM

The Zapotecs were one of those nations who voluntarily submitted themselves to the Spaniards, not out of love for the Europeans, but through hatred of the Aztecs, who had conquered them in the preceding century. Their king, Coyopy, and his subjects accepted Christianity, and were generally baptized; but it was the merest formality, and years afterwards Coyopy was detected secretly conducting the heathen ritual of his ancestors with all due pomp. He was arrested, sent to the city of Mexico, deprived of his power and wealth, and soon died; it is charitably supposed, from natural causes. There is no question but that he left successors to the office of pontifex maximus, and that they continued the native religious ceremonies.

12. The sparse notices we have of the astrology of the Mixtecs, neighbors and some think relatives of the Zapotecs, reveal closely similar rites. The name of their king, who opposed Montezuma the First some sixty years before the arrival of Cortez, proves that they made use of the same or a similar calendar in bestowing personal appellations. It is given as Tres Micos, Three Monkeys.

Unfortunately, so far as I know, there has not been published, and perhaps there does not exist, an authentic copy of the Mixtec calendar. It was nevertheless reduced to writing in the native tongue after the conquest, and a copy of it was seen by the historian Burgoa in the Mixtec town of Yanhuitlan.^[33] Each day was named from a tree, a plant or an animal, and from them the individual received his names, as Four Lions, Five Roses, etc. (examples given by Herrera). This latter writer adds that the name was assigned by the priests when the child was seven years old (as among the Tzentals), part of the rite being to conduct it to the temple and bore its ears. He refers also to their auguries relating to marriage.^[34] These appear to have been different from among the Zapotecs. It was necessary that the youth should have a name bearing a higher number than that of the maiden, and also "that they should be related;" probably this applied only to certain formal marriages of the rulers which were obliged to be within the same gens.

13. I have referred in some detail to the rites and superstitions connected with the Calendar because they are all essential parts of Nagualism, carried on far into Christian times by the priests of this secret cult, as was fully recognized by the Catholic clergy. Wherever this calendar was in use, the Freemasonry of Nagualism extended, and its ritual had constant reference to it. Our fullest information about it does not come from central Mexico, but further south, in the region occupied by the various branches of the Mayan stock, by the ancestors of some one of which, perhaps, this singular calendar, and the symbolism connected with it, were invented.

One of the most important older authorities on this subject is Francisco Nuñez de la Vega, a learned Dominican, who was appointed Bishop of Chiapas and Soconusco in 1687, and who published at Rome, in 1702, a stately folio entitled "Constituciones Dioxesanas del Obispado de Chiappa," comprising discussions of the articles of religion and a series of pastoral letters. The subject of Nagualism is referred to in many passages, and the ninth Pastoral Letter is devoted to it. As this book is one of extreme rarity, I shall make rather lengthy extracts from it, taking the liberty of condensing the scholastic prolixity of the author, and omitting his professional admonitions to the wicked.

He begins his references to it in several passages of his Introduction or Preambulo, in which he makes some interesting statements as to the use to which the natives put their newly-acquired