Page:Native Religions of Mexico and Peru.djvu/94

Rh remedy for every kind of disease,—Yacatecutli, "the lord guide," the god of travellers and of commerce, whose ordinary symbol was the stick with a carved handle carried by the Mexicans when on a journey, who was sedulously worshipped by the commercial and middle classes of Mexico, and in connection with whom we may note that every Mexican, when travelling, would be careful to fix his stick in the ground every evening and pay his respectful devotions to it, —and, finally, Xipe, "the bald," or "the flayed," the god of goldsmiths, probably another form of Uitzilopochtli (whose festival coincided with his), deriving his name apparently from the polishing process to which gold (no doubt regarded as belonging to the substance of the sun) had to undergo to give it the required brilliance, and to whose hideous cultus we shall have to return in our next Lecture.

I must now be brief, and will only speak further of the Tepitoton, that is to say, the "little tiny ones," minute domestic idols, the number of which was