Page:Native Religions of Mexico and Peru.djvu/79

62 upon on these occasions, and no mortal would have dared to occupy them. At the same time a terrible and cruel subtlety in the means he employed to accomplish his ends was attributed to him; and the legend about him, which is far less brilliant than that of his brother Uitzilopochtli, led several Europeans to believe that he was simply an ancient magician who had spread terror around him by his sorceries. All this we see exemplified in his conflicts with a third great deity whom we shall next describe. In any case we may define Tezcatlipoca as another determination of the Sun, and specifically of the winter Sun of the cold, dry, sterile season.

The third great deity is Quetzalcoatl, that is to say "the feathered serpent," or "the serpent-bird;" and it is specially noteworthy, in connection with the elevated rank which he occupied in the Mexican pantheon, that he was not an Aztec deity, but one of the ancient gods of the invaded country. He