MEXICAN MAGIC

Manawatu Times, 4 May 1926, Page 10

MEXICAN MAGIC

THIS WITCH DOCTORS. SOME STRANGE BELIEFS. Mr Lewis Spence contributes to the periodical “Discovery” an article of absorbing interest on the subject of sorcery and witch doctors in ancient Mexico. It is an amazing story and he declares that when Mexican magic comes to be written in full it will constitute one of the most enthralling chapters in the mysterious annals of the Black Art “rivalling in interest the chronicles of mediaeval sorcery and the secrets of the grimoires.” Some Resemblances. “The missionary friars from Spain and Italy,” he says, “found their chief opposition from that popular species of diabolism almost universally known as witchcraft.” The cult of the witch, indeed, appears to have been as general in ancient Mexico as it was in Europe and Asia, and in its American form it bore so startling a resemblance to the witchcraft of the old world, that it is difficult not to believe that both can be referred back to a common origin. Indeed, more than one of the zealous missionaries, arrived at such a conclusion. “These women,” says one, "are such as w G in Spain call witches.” But curiously enough in old Mexico, as in Burma, the Sabbath or convention of the witches was engaged in by the dead as well as the living, the evil ghosts who attended it being recruited from deceased women who had left their young children behind them, and who, in consequence of their bereavements, wore supposed to be particularly vindictive, wreaking their spite and disappointment on all who were so unlucky as to cross their path. They are represented in the ancient paintings as wearing black skirts on which cross-bones were depicted, and round their heads a fillet or band of unspun cotton, the symbol of the earth goddess. They carried the witch’s broom of dried grass, and they ar G frequently accompanied by owls, snakes and other creatures of ill-omen. Their faces were thickly powdered with white chalk, and sometimes the cheeks were painted with the figure of a butterfly, the emblem of the departed soul. One of the most trustworthy observers Of native customs says of them: “They vented their wrath on people and bewitched them. When anyone is possessed by the demons with a wry mouth and disturbed eyes . . they say he has linked himself to a demon. “The Ciutetoo (haunting mothers) housed by the crossways, have taken his form.” An Exact Parallel. The divine patroness of those witches, who flow through the air upon their broomsticks and met at cross roads, was tho earth goddess. Tlazoltcotl. The broom is her especial symbol, and in one of the native paintings she is depicted as tho traditional witch, naked, wearing a peaked hat made of bark, and mounted upon a broom-stick. In other places she is scon standing at the door of a house accompanies by an owl, the whole representing the witch’s dwelling, with medicinal herbs drying beneath the caves. Thus tho evidence of tho Haunting Mothers an f i their patroness presenting an oxac paralled with the witches of Europe seems complete and should provide those who regard witchcraft as a thing essentially European with considerable food for thought. Mexican sorcery cult known as Nagualism was also permeated with practices similar to those of European witchcraft, and we read of its adherents smearing themselves with ointment resembling the “witch butter” of the European hags, which was thought to aid flight through the air, engaging in wild orgies and dances, precisely as did tho adherents of Vauldcrio in Southern Franco, and casting spells on man and boast alike. But there is plenty of proof that living women desire to associate themselves with Haunting Mothers. A monkish writer tells us that these betook themselves to cross-roads by night, and throwing aside their garments, drew blood from their tongues (o sacrifice to the Father of Evil, leaving their clothes behind them as an offering. Like their European sisters, the Mexican witches were in the habit of intoxicating themselves with some potent drug, so that they might in spirit traverse great distances or prophesy coming events. Says Acosta: “To practice this art the witches, usually old women, shut themselves to the verge of losing their reason. The next day they are ready to reply to questions. Some of them take any shape they choose, and fly through the air with wonderful rapidity, and for long distances. They will tell what is taking place In remote localities, long before tho news could possibly arrive. The Spaniards have known them to report mutinies, battles, revolts and deaths occurring 200 or 300 leagues distant, on the very day they took place or the day after.”

The high priest who presided over the Mexican witches’ revels at the cross-roads was the good Tezcatllpoca, a deity of ill-omen, who took the place of Satan in the European witch-sabbath. He discoursed music for the sport of his devotees on a pipe made of the arm-bone of a deceased woman. IS a tire Magicians. Apart from these evil women, but strikingly similar to them in practice and disposition, were the nauilli, or native magicians of Mexico. Those men wore masters of mystic knowledge, practitioners in the If lack Art, sorcerers or wizards, holding communication with the dead. They were thought to have the power or transforming themselves into animals. They were not always evilly disposed, but as a class were notoriously feared and disliked. “The nauilli,’’ says the writer who first mentions them, “is he who terrifies people and sucks the blood of children during the night." "These are magicians.” says leather Juan Baulista in his instructions to confessors, printed in Mexico in the year 1600,

“who conjure the clouds when there is a danger of hail, so that the crops may not he injured. They can also make a stick look like a serpent, a mat like a centipede, a piece of stone like a scorpion, and engage in similar deceptions. Others of them will transform themselves to all appearances into a tiger, a dog or a weasel. Others again will take the form of an owl or a cock. “The demouaic begins who ministered to the nauilli were numerous and fearsome. When night descended upon the pyramid temples and market places of old Mexico, and the bcnclicient sun god had betaken himself to the underworld, it was a grim company indeed that came from the spirit spheres to people in the darkness. The demonology of a Mexican midnight was eloquent of the harsh fatalism of a barbarian people who had but newly entered upon the possession of an ancient civilisation. From sunset to sunrise Mexico of the marshes was a city of dreadful night indeed. “Chief and most terrible of the tyrants of its dismal hours was Tezcatlipoca, ‘The Fiery Mirror,’ ‘He Who Affrights the People,’ divine master of magicians, who took upon himself many fearful shapes and grisly disguises. ‘These,’ says old Saragun, one of the missionary fathers, ‘were masks which he took to terrify the folk, to have his sport with them.’ ” Midnight Terrors. Perhaps the most menacing of the nocturnal disguises of this god, who wore the star of nig'ht upon his forehead, was the uactli bird, a species of hawk, whose cry of “yeccan, yecean,” boded a speedy death to him who heard it. Another shape in which he haunted the woods was as the “axe of the night.” As midnight approached, the watching acolytes in the temple precincts might hear a sound as of an axe being laid to the roots of a tree. Should the courageous wayfarer penetrate the wooded places whence the sound came, he was seized upon by Tezcatlipoca in the form of a headless corpse, in whose bony breast wore “two little doors meeting in the centre.” It was the opening and the closing of these, said the Aztecs, which stimulated the sound of a wood-cutter at work. A valiant man might plunge his hand into the strange aperture, and, If he could seize the heart within, might ask what ransom he chose from the demon. But the craven who encountered this awful phantom would speedily perish from fear. It is now believed that this peculiar sound’ is made by a certain nocturnal bird in the Mexican forests.

One of the most terrifying figures; in this stellar demonology is the goddess Izpapaloti, who has the attributes both of the butterfly and the dragon—a hideous mingling or the insect and the earth-monster. Another was Yaoatccutli, a personification of the merchant’s staff, to whom the pedlars of old Mexico offered nightly sacrifices of their own blood drawn from their cars and noses, and smeared over a heap of the staves or bamboo walking sticks which they generally carried. These, in the exigencies of travelling, took the place of the idol of their patron deity. Once a year, too, they celebrated this festival with sanguinary rites in their own quarter of the : city. At certain seasons of the year the natives were in the habit o£ sealing up every possible loophole in their houses, doors, windows and chimneys, lest the baleful influence of the dead witch women or stellar demons should penetrate their dwellings and injure them or their children. The beams of the stars wore dreaded perhaps more than anything else, and oven the dogs themselves were not Immune from astrological influence.

Magical enterprise and experiments wore usually timed by sorcerers to take place during the second, fifth or seventh hour of the night, which were naturally the most dreaded by the common people because they were presided over by gods of evil repute, and thus were considered favourable to tho appearance of demons or phantoms and tho assemblancc of witches. Night, too, was naturally tho heyday of tho sorcerer, or nauilli, and certain members of this caste seem to have practised vampirism and to have taken the shape of wor-woives or rather wercoyotes. Those who desired to injure an enemy by spells and other enchantments, would go by night to the dwelling of the nauilli and bargain for (lie drug or potion by means of which they hoped to be revenged. From certain passages in tho old authorities, it would seem that these sorcerers lived in huts built of

wooden planks gaily painted—perhaps a development ol the lodge o£ the medicine man with Us brightly coloured symbolism.