especial respect is the ceiba, the silk-cotton tree, the ytzamatl (knife-leaved paper tree) of the Nahuas, the yax che (green, or first tree) of the Mayas, the Bombax ceiba of the botanists. It is of great size and rapid growth. In Southern Mexico and Central America one is to be seen near many of the native villages, and is regarded as in some way the protecting genius of the town.
Sacred trees were familiar to the old Mexican cult, and, what is curious, the same name was applied to such as to the fire, Tota, Our Father. They are said to have represented the gods of woods and waters.[118] In the ancient mythology we often hear of the "tree of life," represented to have four branches, each sacred to one of the four cardinal points and the divinities associated therewith.
The
conventionalized form of this tree in the Mexican figurative paintings
strongly resembles a cross. Examples of
it are numerous and unmistakable, as, for instance, the cruciform tree
of life rising from a head with a protruding tongue in the Vienna Codex.[119]
32.
Thus, the sign of the cross, either the form with equal arms known as
the cross of St. Andrew, which is the oldest Christian form, or the
Latin cross, with its arms of unequal length, came to be the ideogram
for "life" in the Mexican hieroglyphic writing; and as such,
with more or less variants, was employed to signify the tonalli
or nagual, the sign of nativity, the natal
day, the personal spirit.[120]
The ancient document called the Mappe Quinatzin
offers examples, and its meaning is explained by various early writers.
The peculiar character of the Mexican ritual calendar, by which nativities
were calculated, favored a plan of representing them in the shape of
a cross; as we see in the singular Codex Cruciformis of the Boturini-Gonpil
collection.
33. But the doctrines of Nagualism had a phase even more detestable to the missionaries than any of these, an esoteric phase, which brought it into relation to the libidinous cults of Babylon and the orgies of the "Witches' Sabbaths" of the Dark Ages. Of these occult practices we of course have no detailed descriptions, but there are hints and half-glances which leave us in no doubt.
When
the mysterious metamorphosis of the individual into his or her nagual
was about to take place, the person must strip to absolute nudity;[121]
and the lascivious fury of bands of naked Nagualists, meeting in remote
glades by starlight or in the dark recesses of caves, dancing before
the statues of the ancient gods, were scenes that stirred the fanaticism
of the Spanish missionaries to its highest pitch. Bishop Landa
informs us that in Yucatan the dance there
known as the naual was one of the few in which both men and women
took part, and that it "was not very decent." It was afterwards
prohibited by the priests. We have excellent authority that such wild
rites continued well into the present century, close to the leading
cities of the State,[122] and it is highly likely that they
are not unknown to-day.
34. Moreover, it is certain that among the Nagualists one of their most revered symbols was the serpent; in Chiapas, one of their highest orders of the initiated was that of the chanes, or serpents. Not only is this in Christian symbolism the form and sign of the Prince of Evil and the enemy of God, but the missionaries were aware that in the astrological symbols of ancient Mexico the serpent represented the phallus; that it was regarded as the most potent of all the
[118] Dingo Duran, Historia de los Indios de Nueva España, Tom. ii, p. 140.
[119] In Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, Vol. ii, p. 180. On the cross as form derived from a tree, see the observations of W. H. Holmes, in the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 270, 271.
[120] "An Mexique, le cadre croisé, la eroix en sautoir, comme celle de St. André aven quelques variantes, representait le signe de nativité, tonalli, la fête, le jour natal;' M. Aubin, in Boban, Cataloque Raisonuée de la Collection Goupil, Tom. i, p. 227. Both Gomara and Herrera may be quoted to this effect.
[121] See a curious story from native sources in my Essays of an Americanist, pp. 171, 172. It adds that this change can be prevented by casting salt upon the person.
[122] Benito Maria de Moxó, Cartas Mexicanas, p. 257; Landa, Cosas de Yucatan, p. 193.
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