Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/209

Rh preserved? Dost thou know certain words with which to conjure for success in hunting, or to bring rain?

"Dost thou suck the blood of others, or dost thou wander about at night, calling upon the Demon to help thee? Hast thou drunk peyotl, or hast thou given it to others to drink, in order to find out secrets, or to discover where stolen or lost articles were? Dost thou know how to speak to vipers in such words that they obey thee?"

It is interesting to observe that, as under similar primitive social conditions elsewhere, the Mexican sorcerer is suspect of vampirism. The intoxicant peyotl which they are here said to employ is a species of the genus cocolia, having a white tuberous root, which is the part made use of. The Aztecs were said to have derived their knowledge of it from an older race which preceded them in the land and Sahagun states, that those who eat or drink of it see visions, sometimes horrible, sometimes merely ludicrous. The intoxication it causes lasts several days. In a list of beverages prohibited by the Spanish in 1784, it is described as "made from a species of vinagrilla, about the size of a billiard ball." The natives were wont to masticate it, and then place it in a wooden mortar, where it was left to ferment, after which it was eaten. Another plant employed by the naualli for the purpose of inducing ecstatic vision was the ololiuhqui, the seeds of which were made use of externally. They were one of the elements in a mysterious unguent known as teopatli, or "the divine remedy," into the composition of which they entered along with the ashes of spiders, scorpions, and other noxious insects. This ointment was smeared over the body, and was believed to constitute an efficient protection against evil agencies.

Just as the witches of mediaeval Europe were in the habit of taking drugs to assist levitation, rubbing themselves with the ointment known as "witches' butter," preparatory to setting forth on the ride to the Sabbath, so did the sorcerers of ancient Mexico intoxicate themselves by the use of some