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Rh de Alvarado was marching through Guatemala in 1524, took her stand at the summit of a pass with her familiar in the shape of a dog, to prevent his approach by spells and Nagualistic incantations. In 1713, too, an Indian girl, known to the Spaniards as Maria Candelaria, headed a revolt of 70,000 Nagualists, over whom she had the power of life and death. After a revolt characterised by the most merciless brutality, she succeeded in making her escape into the forest. Mr. E. G. Squier, travelling in Central America about the third quarter of the nineteenth century, met a woman called by the Indians Asukia, who lived amid the ruins of an old Maya temple. The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg encountered another such witch in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, who was dressed in the most magnificent manner. He described her as a person of the most fascinating appearance. Her eyes, he says, were intensely bright, but there were moments when they became fixed and dead like those of a corpse. Was it, he asks, a momentary absence of soul, an absorption of her spirit into its nagual?

These facts seem sufficient for the establishment of the hypothesis that Nagualism was not merely a belief in a guardian spirit. From other sources we know that the Nagualists had meetings—the dances and ceremonies of which remind one of the Witches' Sabbath—and there is little doubt that it was a powerful secret organisation extending over a wide area, bound together by mystic rites and necromantic or occult doctrines.

It is nearly forty years since the disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. Several deputations from the Papal Authorities have since then visited Mexico diplomatically, but to no purpose. Advanced thought in Mexico is fiercely opposed to any reinstatement of ecclesiastical authority. Religious processions are not permitted to pass through any public thoroughfare. In some localities even the Church bells may not be rung. If the Church desires