Jacinto
de la Serna also describes this ceremony,
to which he gives the name tlecuixtliliztli,
"which means that they pass the infant over the fire;" and
elsewhere he adds "The worship of fire is the greatest stumbling-block
to these wretched idolaters."[107]
27. Other ceremonies connected with fire worship took place in connection with the manufacture of the pulque, or octli, the fermented liquor obtained from the sap of the maguey plant. The writer just quoted, de Vetancurt, states that the natives in his day, when they had brewed the new pulque and it was ready to be drunk, first built a fire, walked in procession around it and threw some of the new liquor into the flames, chanting the while an invocation to the god of inebriation, Tezcatzoncatl, to descend and be present with them.
This was distinctly a survival of an ancient doctrine which connected the God of Fire with the Gods of Drunkenness, as we may gather from the following quotation from the history composed by Father Diego Duran:
"The
oath was a favorite offering to the gods, and especially to the God
of Fire. Sometimes it was placed before
a fire in vases, sometimes it was scattered upon the flames with a brush,
at other times it was poured out around the fireplace."[108]
28.
The high importance of the fire ceremonies in the secret rituals of
the modern Mayas is plainly evident from
the native Calendars, although their signification
has eluded the researches of students, even of the laborious Pio Perez,
who was so intimately acquainted with their language and customs. In
these Calendars the fire-priest is constantly referred to as ah-toc,
literally "the fire-master." The rites he celebrates recur
at regular intervals of twenty days (the length of one native month)
apart. They are four in number. On the first he takes the fire; on the
second he kindles the fire; on the third he gives it free play, and
on the fourth he extinguishes it. A period of five days is then allowed
to elapse, when these ceremonies are recommenced in the same order.
Whatever their meaning, they are so important that in the Buk Xoc,
or General Computation of the Calendar, preserved in the mystic "Books
of Chilan Balam,"
there are special directions for these fire-masters to reckon the proper
periods for the exercise of their strange functions.[109]
29. What now was the sentiment which underlay this worship of fire? I think that the facts quoted, and especially the words of Father de Leon, leave no doubt about it. Fire was worshiped as the life-giver, the active generator, of animate existence. This idea was by no means peculiar to them. It repeatedly recurs in Sanskrit, in Greek and in Teutonic mythology, as has been ably pointed out by Dr. Hermann Cohen.[110] The fire-god Agni (ignis) is in the Vedas the Maker of men; Prometheus steals the fire from heaven that he may with it animate the human forms he has moulded of clay; even the connection of the pulque with the fire is paralleled in Greek mythos, where Dionysus is called Pyrigenes, the "fire-born."
Among the ancient Aztecs the god of fire was called the oldest of gods, Huehueteotl, and also "Our Father" Tota, as it was believed from him all things were derived.[111] Both among them and
[107] His frequent references to it show this. See his Manual de Ministros, pp. 16, 20, 22, 24, 36, 40, 66, 174, 217, etc. The word tlecuixtliliztli is compounded of tlecuilli, the hearth or fireplace, and ixthiluia, to darken with smoke.
[108] Duran, Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España, Tom. ii, p. 240. Sahagun adds that the octli was poured on the hearth at four separate points, doubtless the four cardinal points. Historia de Nueva España, Lib. i, cap. 13. De la Serna describes the same ceremony as current in his day, Manual de Ministros, p. 35. The invocation ran:—"Shining Rose, light-giving Rose, receive and rejoice my heart before the God."
[109] A copy of these strange "Books of Chilan Balam" is in my possession. I have described them in my Essays of an Americanist (Philadelphia, 1890).
[110] See his remarks on "Apperception der Meuschenzeugung als Feuerbereitung," in the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, Bd. vi, s. 113, seq.
[111] Sahagun, Historia de Nueva España, Lib. i, cap. 13. The Nahuatl text is more definite than the Spanish translation.
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