Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/88

74 paste image of an ox after discovering the forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid. But this view can hardly be maintained in face of the frequent cannibalism of the Aztecs. Such was then the general course of their ritual, the cruel details may be omitted.

From the special ritual of Huitzilopochtli Mr. Tylor conjectures that this "inextricable compound parthenogenetic" god may have been originally "a nature deity, whose life and death were connected with the year." This theory is based on the practice at the feast called Panquetzaliztli. "His paste idol was shot through with an arrow," says Mr. Tylor, "and being thus killed, was divided into morsels and eaten; wherefore the ceremony was called Teoqualo, or 'god-eating,' and this was associated with the winter solstice." M. Réville says that this feast coincided with our month of December, the beginning of the cold and dry season. Huitzilopochtli would die with the verdure, the flowers, and all the beauteous adornments of spring and summer; but like Adonis, like Osiris, and