Profit Without Honor White Collar Crime and The Looting of America 6th Edition Rosoff Test Bank
Profit Without Honor White Collar Crime and The Looting of America 6th Edition Rosoff Test Bank
Profit Without Honor White Collar Crime and The Looting of America 6th Edition Rosoff Test Bank
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TEST BANK
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
1. Which governor was convicted on charges of political corruption and was the fourth governor
from the state of Illinois to be incarcerated since 1970?
a. Jesse Ventura
b. John Kasich
c. Rod Blagojevich
d. George Ryan
Answer: c
Page number: 2
Level: Basic
6. Which of the following has not contributed to the initial examination of white-collar crime?
a. Exposure of monopolistic practices
b. Increasing power of corporations
c. Muckraking journalists
d. Agricultural society values
Answer: d
Page number: 5
Level: Intermediate
7. Based on the 1907 book Sin and Society, which of the following refers to a pillar of
society/paragon of virtue who in reality was interested only in personal gain using any means?
a. Atavist
b. Robber baron
c. Criminaloid
d. Elite deviant
Answer: c
Page number: 5
Level: Intermediate
10. ________ of scams using spam mailings on the Internet are really Ponzi schemes.
a. 40%
b. 50%
c. 60%
d. 80%
Answer: d
Page number: 8
Level: Basic
11. Which year brought the close of 500 different banks in the United States?
a. 1913
b. 1923
c. 1933
d. 1943
Answer: c
Page number: 8
Level: Basic
12. What decade saw renewed interest in the study of white-collar crime?
a. 1950s
b. 1960s
c. 1970s
d. 1980s
Answer: c
Page number: 9
Level: Basic
13. The 1980s saw a dramatic increase in the incidence of white-collar crime. One of the reasons
for the increase may have been:
a. support for collective welfare ideals.
b. increase in the quality of public schools.
c. government deregulation.
d. focus on non-material goals.
Answer: c
Page number: 10
Level: Intermediate
14. Barry Minkow regarded money generated from stock sales as:
a. a source of working capital to be used to buy new equipment.
b. money he could use to invest in other companies.
c. money he could use to pay some creditors without other creditors finding out.
d. a great source of revenue that did not have to be paid back.
Answer: d
Page number: 12
Another random document with
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Itzcoliuhqui. (From Codex Bologna, sheet 12.)
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheet 19: He looks out from the open jaws of a stone knife,
which is designed with teeth and the socket of an eye above them. Otherwise he is
pictured as a black Tezcatlipocâ with the yellow cross-bands on his face. The
smoking mirror, the badge of Tezcatlipocâ, is clearly to be discerned. The clouds of
incense reach a great height, and are set with feather-work. He wears the blue nose-
rod from which a little plate falls over the mouth, and he has a white breast-ring.
Codex Borgia.—Sheet 14: In this place he is represented with his hair brushed up on
one side, over the brow, the warrior’s hairdressing, and the forked heron-feather
ornament in his hair, part of the warrior’s dancing attire. The smoking mirror at the
temple is given with great clearness.
[Contents]
Codex Borgia.—The god is indicated by a bundle having a peculiar object with two
black, longitudinal stripes for a head. At the eye-level a bandage is worn, and the
whole is crowned with a hair wig and bound with a double-jewelled fillet. The crown of
the “head” is also indicated by two longitudinal stripes which terminate in an involuted
peak, curving backwards. Two malinalli (grass) stripes are worn as a breast-
ornament, and the lower extremities are draped with a flowing cloth.
General.—The head is more elaborately shown in the Mexican MSS. proper. Through
the peak is thrust a carefully inserted arrow and its anterior edge is evenly notched.
In Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Codex Borbonicus the face of this personage,
who is called by the interpreters “the curved [338]sharp stone,” Itztlacoliuhqui, is
decorated with the gold crescent nasal ornament of Tlazolteotl and the octli-gods.
That this figure is the god of avenging justice is indicated by its bandaged eyes,
which recall the appearance of Tezcatlipocâ-Ixquimilli, or Tezcatlipocâ as god of the
thirteenth day-count. The stone and club were used for punitive purposes, so the
figure symbolic of “justice” was thus represented as a hard stone.
Codex Fejérváry-Mayer.—Itztlacoliuhqui is shown here as of a blue colour, and his
face is painted with blue and white cross-bands instead of yellow and black, like
Tezcatlipocâ. He wears Tezcatlipocâ’s breast-ornament, while in his hair is the forked
adornment of heron-feathers.
MYTHS
“Ytzlacoliuhqui signifies the lord of sin or of blindness, and for this reason they paint
him with his eyes bandaged. They say that he committed sin in a place of the highest
enjoyment and delight, and that he remained naked; on which account his first sign is
a lizard, which is an animal of the ground naked and miserable. He presided over
these thirteen signs, which were all unlucky. They said likewise that if false evidence
should be adduced on any one of these signs it would be impossible to make the
truth manifest. They put to death those who were taken in adultery before his image if
the parties were married; as this not being the case, it was lawful for them to keep as
many women or concubines as they pleased. Ytzalcoliuhqui is a star in heaven which
as they pretend proceeds in a reverse course; they considered it a most portentous
sign, both as concerned with nativities and war. This star is situated at the south.”
“Ytzlacoliuhqui, the lord of sin. Ytzlacoliuhqui was the lord of these thirteen days.
They say he was the god of frost. They put to death before his image those who were
convicted of adultery during these thirteen days; this was the punishment of married
persons both men and women, [339]for, provided the parties were unmarried, the men
were at liberty to keep as many concubines as they pleased.
“Ytzlacoliuhqui was the lord of sin or of blindness, who committed sin in paradise;
they therefore represented him with his eyes bandaged, and his day was accordingly
the lizard and, like the lizard, he is naked. He is a star in heaven which … proceeds
in a backward course with its eyes bandaged. They considered it a great prognostic.
“All these thirteen days were bad, for they affirmed that if evidence should be
adduced in these days it would be impossible to arrive at justice, but they imagined
that justice would be perverted in such a manner that unjust condemnations would
ensue, which was not the case in the days immediately following, when if evidence
was adduced they supposed that justice would be made apparent. They believed that
those who were born on the sign dedicated to him would be sinners and adulterers.”
NATURE AND STATUS
This deity is a variant of Tezcatlipocâ in his character of the obsidian knife, the god of
the stone and therefore of blood, avenging justice, of blinding, of sin, of cold. The
obsidian stone was regarded as the instrument of justice, as has already been stated
in the section on Tezcatlipocâ. The figure became a general symbol of all things hard,
and is therefore explained by the authors of the Interpretative Codices as “the god of
cold.” Frost, ice, or low temperature is in the Sahagun MS. symbolized by a man
wearing the headdress of this deity, which was also worn by Uitzilopochtli at the
ochpanitztli festival, when the knife of sacrifice had such free play. The manner in
which the god is represented in Codex Borbonicus as blindfolded is probably a late
conception of him as the god of justice. But he seems also to have had a stellar
connection which is a little vague.
[Contents]
[340]
Sahagun MS.—He has the stellar face-painting, and wears a many-pointed crown of
yellow feathers, the lower part of which is white. The front of this white portion ends in
three small globes or bells. At the back is a bow, and he is furnished with an ear-plug
and nose-plug of turquoise. On the head he wears a shell ring like Uitzilopochtli and
Quetzalcoatl, and he holds a narrow striped banner ending in a sort of fleur-de-lis
motif. The shield is blue, inlaid with turquoise mosaic. He has a peculiar skirt with a
train marked with cross-hatchings. The banner he carries is a golden one, and he
also bears the fire-drill. On his face is painted a chaffinch, which composes his face-
mask.
FESTIVAL
See Uitzilopochtli.
Seler identifies the god with the morning star. Sahagun calls him “the messenger” or
“page” of Uitzilopochtli. He acted as “forerunner” of that god at the panquetzalitztli
festival, thus perhaps signifying the manner in which the morning star precedes the
sun. But I think the chaffinch painted upon his face and his general birdlike
appearance may justify us in concluding that he was developed from some such
form. The myth which alludes to Uitzilopochtli as a “little bird” which led the Aztecâ
into Mexico may be a confused form of an older story in which a hero of the name of
Uitzilopochtli may have been spoken of as accepting the augury and following the
flight of a little bird.
[Contents]
[341]
Sahagun MS. (Biblioteca del Palacio).—The ground of the face-painting is white, but
portions of the face, especially the forehead, nose, and chin, and the region in front of
the ears, are brilliantly coloured. The hair is puffed up and is bound with bands of
quetzal-feathers. The ear-plugs are of gold. The large mantle which almost covers
the body is decorated with the cross-hatching symbolic of water and has the red rim
of the eye-motif. The shield bears the Greek key motif, such as is seen in the tribute-
lists of the Codex Mendoza. In his hand the god bears the bamboo staff of the
merchant or traveller, which typifies his nature and which was worshipped, as being
symbolic of him, by all traders.
FESTIVAL
Arrived at the place where they were to pass the night, the merchants laid their
staves in a heap and drew blood from their ears and limbs, which they offered to it,
burning incense before it, and praying for protection from the dangers of the road. At
the festival of panquetzalitztli, thousands of members of the powerful Pochteca, or
merchant guild, proceeded to the vicinity of Tochtepec, where they invited the
Tlatelolcans of that place to a festival in honour of Yacatecutli. They decorated his
temple and spread mats before his image. Then they opened the bundles in which
they had brought presents and ornaments for the god, and placed them, along with
their staves, before his idol. If a merchant laid two [342]staves at the feet of the god,
that signified that it was his intention to sacrifice two slaves, a man and a woman, in
his honour; if four, he would devote two wretched creatures of either sex. These
slaves were covered with rich mantles and paper. If the staff represented a male
slave, it was also equipped with the maxtli, or loin-cloth, but if a female, the uipilli, or
chemise, and the cueitl, or skirt.
The Mexican merchants then accompanied their Tlatelolcan confrères to the villages,
where they feasted, drank cocoa, and smoked. Quails were then decapitated, their
heads thrown into the fire, and incense was offered to the four cardinal points. An
address was delivered by one of their number practised in oratory. The magnificence
of this festival, with its richly jewelled accessories, was probably unsurpassed in
Mexican ritual, as on this occasion the Pochteca employed their entire stock of
trinkets and ornaments for the temporary decoration of the victims. Yacatecutli was
also associated in worship with Coyotlinauatl, god of the guild of feather-workers of
the quarter of Amantlan.
Bancroft 2 connects Yacatecutli with the Fire-god, with whom, indeed, Clavigero would
seem to equate him, and in describing the return of the gods in the twelfth month,
Sahagun makes both deities arrive together. Xiuhtecutli was certainly the god who
was believed to settle disputes at law, but I am unable to connect Yacatecutli with him
in any satisfactory manner. Yacatecutli, “the lord who guides,” seems to me a mere
deification of the merchant’s staff, an artificial deity invented as the patron of a caste
in an environment where it was not difficult to invent gods. By this I do not mean to
convey the impression that the staff was necessarily his earliest form, but that,
whatever his primitive shape, the merchant’s stick came to symbolize him.
[Contents]
XOLOTL = “DOUBLE”
Codex Borgia.—In the picture of Xolotl on the left side of the middle lower part
of sheet 55 a resemblance to Quetzalcoatl is noticeable. On his head is the
peculiar wedge-shaped Huaxtec hat, painted half-red and half-blue, which is
one of Quetzalcoatl’s characteristics. The bone dagger symbolic of self-torture
and penance, and the snail-shell armlets he wears, are also reminiscent of
Quetzalcoatl’s insignia. His face-painting, however, differs from that usually
worn by Quetzalcoatl in Codex Borgia, as the front portion of his face is blue
and the part near the ears red. His body-paint is blue. Nor does he have a large
beard or fan-shaped nape-ornament, but is shown wearing the Wind-god’s
breast-ornament made from a sliced snail-shell. He also shows a likeness to
Quetzalcoatl in the manner in which his loin-cloth and fillet are rounded off. As a
travelling god, Xolotl is depicted in Codex Borgia as holding a fan similar in its
three-flapped wedge-shape to that of the other peripatetic deities, except that it
has a handle shaped like a bird’s head [345]and is seemingly composed of blue
cotinga-feathers. His travelling pack is symbolized by a flowering tree, which he
bears on his back, while his travelling staff is painted turquoise colour, is
decorated with the chalchihuitl ornament, and is completed with a flower. In the
picture to the right of sheet 36 Xolotl presents almost a new aspect, although
certain of his attributes bear some resemblance to those which we have already
observed as being peculiar to him. He still carries a travelling-staff with a
jewelled head, but in this representation its general character is more that of the
rattle-stick. His body-paint remains the same and he retains his blue feather fan.
His pack is distinguished by a flower to serve as a connection with the
florescent tree carried by him, as described elsewhere. In this sheet he is
represented as wearing a long beard and his face-paint in the region of the
mouth is white. His face is altered by a peculiar type of nose, which gives him a
disfigured appearance. The god of monstrosities on sheet 10 of Codex Borgia
has a similar patch of white about his mouth, resembling in shape a human
hand, a symbol which also characterizes the face-painting of Macuil Xochitl.
Elsewhere in this MS. he is represented as crooked-limbed and blear-eyed.
Codex Vaticanus B.—In this MS. Xolotl is represented as having a dog’s head
and again appears in the garb and ornaments of Quetzalcoatl. In Codex Borgia
his ears have a rim of yellow, evidently intended to represent dead flesh, while
in Codex Vaticanus the canine character is indicated by the cropped ears. In the
nostrils is a blue plug, the ornament of the deceased warrior, denoting that this
is the dog which accompanies his master to Mictlampa, Place of the Dead, and
assists him to swim the river which encircles it. This distinguishing plug is seen
in Codex Vaticanus, but not in Codex Borgia. The rest of the god’s attire is
exclusively that worn by Quetzalcoatl, as described in the space devoted to that
god.
Ixtlilton. (From the
Sahagun MS.)
(See p. 349.)
(See p. 352.)
Xolotl. (From the Codex Borgia.)
MINOR DEITIES.
WALL-PAINTINGS
POTTERY FIGURES
Two small pottery figures of Xolotl found in the Valley of Mexico insist strongly
upon his animal character, but in neither of these is the precise bestial type
ascertainable. [347]The first shows a face ending in a blunt snout and
surmounted by a kind of wig, with ear-pieces rising on either side. What seems
to be a collar of feathers surrounds the neck. In the other he is represented as a
little bear, or dog, without clothing, but having Quetzalcoatl’s sliced snail-shell
breast-ornament. A stone head of him found in the Calle de las Escalerillas in
Mexico City on 29th October 1900 shows a blunt, almost ape-like animal face
with large powerful molar teeth, dog-like canines, and large, sharp fangs, not
unlike those with which Tlaloc was usually represented. Incised lines represent
powerful muscular development in the region of the nose and jaws. The type is
only generally and not particularly bestial, and it would seem that it was the aim
of the sculptor to represent a ferocious animal countenance without laying
stress upon the peculiarities of any one species.
MYTHS
The most important of the myths relating to Xolotl are those given by Sahagun
and Olmos, which have already been described at length in the chapter on
Cosmogony. The Codex Vaticanus A says of him: “They believe Xolotle to be
the god of monstrous productions and of twins, which are such things as grow
double. He was one of the seven who remained after the deluge, and he
presided over these thirteen signs which they usually considered unlucky.” The
Codex Telleriano-Remensis describes him in verbiage almost identical.
One of the hymns or songs given in the Sahagun MS. says of Xolotl:
The Mexican game of tlachtli symbolized the movements of the moon (but more
probably of both sun and moon). This, perhaps the favourite Mexican
amusement, was a ball-game, played with a rubber ball by two persons one at
each end of a T-shaped court, which in the manuscripts is sometimes
represented as painted in dark and light colours, or in four variegated hues. In
several of the MSS. Xolotl is depicted striving at this game against other gods.
For example, in the Codex Mendoza we see him playing with the Moon-god,
and can recognize him by the sign ollin which accompanies him, and by the
gouged-out eye in which that symbol ends. Seler thinks “that the root of the
name olin suggested to the Mexicans the motion of the rubber ball olli and, as a
consequence, of ball-playing.” It seems to me to have represented both light
and darkness, as is witnessed by its colours. Xolotl is, indeed, the darkness that
accompanies light. Hence he is “the twin” or shadow, hence he travels with the
sun and the moon, with one or other of which he “plays ball,” overcoming them
or losing to them. He is the god of eclipse, and naturally a dog, the animal of
eclipse. Peruvians, Tupis, Creeks, Iroquois, Algonquins, and Eskimos believed
him to be so, thrashing dogs during the phenomenon, a practice explained by
saying that the big dog was swallowing the sun, and that by whipping the little
ones they would make him desist. The dog is the animal of the dead, and
therefore of the Place of Shadows. 1 Thus also Xolotl is a monster, the sun-
swallowing monster, like the Hindu Rahu, who chases the sun and moon. As a
shadow he is “the double” of everything. The axolotl, a marine animal found in
Mexico, was confounded with his [349]name because of its monstrous
appearance, and he was classed along with Quetzalcoatl merely because that
god’s name bore the element coatl, which may be translated either “twin” or
“snake.” Lastly, as he was “variable as the shade,” so were the fortunes of the
game over which he presided.
At the same time he seems to me to have affinities with the Zapotec and Maya
lightning-dog peche-xolo 2 and may represent the lightning which descends from
the thunder-cloud, the flash, the reflection of which arouses in many primitive
people the belief that the lightning is “double,” and leads them to suppose a
connection between the lightning and twins, or other phenomena of a twofold
kind. As the dog, too, he has a connection with Hades, and, said myth, was
dispatched thence for the bones from which man was created.
He is also a travelling god, for the shadows cast by the clouds seem to travel
quickly over plain and mountain. As the monstrous dwarf, too, he symbolized
the palace-slave, the deformed jester who catered for the amusement of the
great, and this probably accounts for the symbol of the white hand outspread on
his face, which he has in common with Xochipilli and the other gods of pleasure.
He bears a suspicious resemblance to the mandrake spirits of Europe and Asia,
both as regards his duality, his loud lamentation when as a double-rooted plant
he was discovered and pulled up by the roots, and his symbol, which may be a
reminiscence of the mandrake.
[Contents]
[350]
Sahagun MS.—The face-paint is black and the god wears a feather comb set
with flint knives. He has a collar of animal claws, most of which are those of the
jaguar, and on his back he wears a wing-fan with the sun-banner fixed on it.
Round his shoulders is a paper with the sun-signs painted on it. His feet are
ornamented with bells and shells, and he wears “sun-sandals.” On his arm he
carries a solar shield and in his hand he bears a staff with a heart.
Practically all that is known regarding this god is recounted by Sahagun, who
says of him: “They made to this god an oratory of painted planks, a sort of
tabernacle, in which his image was placed. He had in this oratory many jars full
of water, and covered with plates, and this water was called tilatl, or black water.
When an infant fell ill they took it to the temple of Ixtlilton and opened one of
these jars, made him drink it, and the malady left him. If one wished to give a
feast to the god he took his image home. This was neither painted nor
sculptured, but was a priest who wore the ornaments of the god. During the
passage he was censed with copal. Arrived at the house, he was met with
singers and dancers, which dancing is different in a manner from ours.
“I speak of that which we call areyto, and which they call maceualiztli. They
assembled in great numbers, two and two or three and three, and formed a
circle. They carried flowers in the hand, and were decorated with plumage.
They made at the same time a uniform movement with their bodies, also with
their feet and hands, in perfect combination and very worthy to be seen. All their
movements accorded with the music of the drums. They accompanied the
instruments with their sonorous voices, singing in accord the praises of the god
to whom they made the festival. They adapted [352]their movements to the
nature of their songs, for their dances and their intonation varied considerably.
“The dance continued, and the ‘god’ himself, having danced for a long time,
descended to the cave where the octli was stored in jars. He opened one of
these, an operation which was known as tlayacaxapotla (‘the new opening,’ or
‘the opening of the new’). Then he and those who accompanied him drank of
the octli. They then went to the court of the house, where they found three jars
filled with the black water, which had been covered for four days. He who
played the rôle of god opened these, and if he found them full of hairs, dust,
charcoal, or any other uncleanness, it was said that the man of the house was a
person of vicious life and bad character. Then the god went to the house, where
he was given the stuff called ixquen, for covering the face, in allusion to the
shame which covered the master of the house.” 3
From the foregoing it is clear that Ixtlilton was a god of medicinal virtue, the
deity who kept men in good health or who assisted their recovery from sickness,
therefore the brother of Xochipilli-Macuilxochitl, god of good luck and merriment.
His temple, composed of painted boards, would seem to have borne a
resemblance to the hut of the tribal medicine-man or shaman. A sacrifice was
made to him when the Mexican child first spoke.
[Contents]
Sahagun MS. (Biblioteca del Palacio).—The regions of the forehead, nose, and
mouth are “festively” painted. He wears a feather helmet and a crown of spear-
shafts. His overdress has the cross-hatching which usually indicates water, and
is edged with red, decorated with the eye-motif. Before him is a small shield
with a plain, white surface, its lower rim edged with white feathers or paper, and
in his hand he carries the “seeing” or “scrying” implement, that some of the
other gods, noticeably Tezcatlipocâ, possess. 4 [353]
[Contents]
CIUATETEÔ = GODDESSES
CIUAPIPILTIN = PRINCESSES
Codex Borgia.—Sheets 47–48: Five figures here represent the Ciuateteô and
are dressed in the style of Tlazolteotl, with the fillet and ear-plug of unspun
cotton, and the golden nasal crescent worn by that goddess and the octli-gods.
In each case the eye has been gouged out and hangs out of the socket, as with
Xolotl. They wear on their heads a feather ornament like the heron-feather
plume of the warrior caste, but consisting of five white feathers or strips of paper
above a bunch of downy feathers. At the nape of the neck the figures wear a
black vessel as their device, in which lies a bunch of malinalli grass. The upper
part of the body is [354]naked, and round the hips is wrapped a skirt showing
cross-bones on its surface and a border painted in the manner of the variegated
coral snake. The resemblance between all five figures is close. Only the face-,
arm-, and leg-painting is different. In the case of the first the colour is white
striped with red, in the second blue, in the third yellow, in the fourth red, and in
the fifth black. All hold in one hand a broom of malinalli grass, and in the other a
black obsidian sacrificial knife, a bone dagger, and an agave-leaf spike, both
furnished with a flower symbolic of blood. They inhale the smoke which ascends
from a black incense or fire-vessel standing on the ground before them. A
rubber ball lies in the vessel of the first figure; with the second the vessel is
replaced by a cross-way, and the ascending smoke by a centipede issuing from
the mouth of the goddess. With the third a skeleton is seated in the dish,
holding a heart in one hand and a sacrificial knife in the other. The ascending
smoke is replaced by two streams of blood passing into the mouth of a
skeleton, one of which comes from the mouth of the figure, the other from her
right breast. With the fourth figure are represented a bunch of malinalli grass
and a variegated snake. Nothing here enters the mouth of the Ciuateteô, but
from it issues a similar snake, and another hangs on each of her arms. Before
the last figure, in the dish is perched a screech-owl, and a stream of blood
passes from the mouth of the figure to that of the owl.
Codex Vaticanus B.—Sheets 77–79: Five figures are here also depicted which
bear a resemblance to Tlazolteotl, but are without the golden nasal crescent.
With the last four the same curling locks of hair are seen as in the case of the
Codex Borgia figures, but the first figure is pictured with the hair bristling up on
one side, as worn by the warrior caste. The eye too is hanging out, and the
headdresses and nape-vessels resemble those in Codex Borgia. In the majority
of cases the skirt is white with two diagonal red stripes crossing each other.
Only with the first figure is it painted red with white cross-bones. The last figure
has a skirt made of strips of malinalli grass fastened by a girdle made of [355]a
skeletal spinal column, on which is set a dead man’s skull as back-mirror. All
five wear the men’s loin-cloth besides the skirt. They carry the symbols of
sacrifice and mortification as in the Codex Borgia, and similar incense-vessels
stand before them.
MYTHS
Sahagun says of the Ciuateteô:
“The Ciuapipiltin, the noble women, were those who had died in childbed. They
were supposed to wander through the air, descending when they wished to the
earth to afflict children with paralysis and other maladies. They haunted cross-
roads to practise their maleficent deeds, and they had temples built at these
places, where bread offerings in the shape of butterflies were made to them,
also the thunder-stones which fall from the sky. Their faces were white, and
their arms, hands, and legs were coloured with a white powder, ticitl (chalk).
Their ears were gilded and their hair done in the manner of the great ladies.
Their clothes were striped with black, their skirts barred in different colours, and
their sandals were white.” He further relates (bk. vi, c. xxix) that, when a woman
who had died in her first childbed was buried in the temple-court of the
Ciuateteô, her husband and his friends watched the body all night in case
young braves or magicians should seek to obtain the hair or fingers as
protective talismans.
Says Sahagun: “It was said that they vented their wrath on people and
bewitched them. When anyone is possessed by the demons, with a wry mouth
and disturbed eyes, with [357]clenched hands and inturned feet, wringing his
hands and foaming at the mouth, they say that he has linked himself to a
demon; the Ciuateteô, housed by the crossways, have taken his form.”
From this and other passages we may be justified in thinking that these dead
women were also regarded as succubi, haunters of men, compelling them to
dreadful amours, and that they were credited with the evil eye is evident from
the statement that their glances caused helpless terror and brought convulsions
upon children, and that their jealousy of the handsome was proverbial.
The divine patroness of these witches (for “witches” they are called by the old
friar who interprets the Codex Telleriano-Remensis), who flew through the air
upon their broomsticks and met at cross-roads, was Tlazolteotl, a divinity who,
like all deities of growth, possessed a plutonic significance. The broom is her
especial symbol, and in Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (sheet 17) we have a picture of
her which represents her as the traditional witch, naked, wearing a peaked hat,
and mounted upon a broomstick. In other places she is seen standing beside a
house accompanied by an owl, the whole representing the witch’s dwelling, with
medicinal herbs drying beneath the eaves. Thus the evidence that the haunting
mothers and their patroness present an exact parallel with the witches of
Europe seems complete, and should provide those who regard witchcraft as a
thing essentially European with considerable food for thought. The sorcery cult
of the Mexican Nagualists of post-Columbian times was also permeated with
practices similar to those of European witchcraft, and we read of its adherents
smearing themselves with ointment to bring about levitation, flying through the
air, and engaging in wild and lascivious dances, precisely as did the adherents
of Vaulderie, or the worshippers of the Italian Aradia.
There are not wanting signs that living women of evil reputation desired to
associate themselves with the Ciuateteô. Says the interpreter of Codex
Vaticanus A: “The first of the fourteen day-signs, the house, they considered
unfortunate, [358]because they said that demons came through the air on that
sign in the figures of women, such as we designate witches, who usually went
to the highways, where they met in the form of a cross, and to solitary places,
and that when any bad woman wished to absolve herself of her sins, she went
alone by night to these places, and took off her garments and sacrificed there
with her tongue (that is, drew blood from her tongue), and left the clothes which
she had carried and returned naked as the sign of the confession of her sins.”
1 Bradford, American Antiquities, p. 333; Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, vol. i, p. 271; Von Tschudi,
Beiträge, p. 29. ↑
2 See Seler, Bull. 28, American Bureau of Ethnology, p. 94. ↑
3 Bk. i, c. xvi. ↑
4 See also Sahagun, bk. i, c. xv. ↑
5 Bk. i, c. xv. ↑
[Contents]
APPENDIX
THE TONALAMATL AND THE SOLAR CALENDAR
[Contents]
THE TONALAMATL
The word tonalamatl means “Book of the Good and Bad Days,” and it is
primarily a “Book of Fate,” from which the destiny of children born on such and
such a day, or the result of any course to be taken or any venture made on any
given day, was forecasted by divinatory methods, similar to those which have
been employed by astrologers in many parts of the world in all epochs. The
tonalamatl was, therefore, in no sense a time-count or calendar proper, to which
purpose it was not well suited; but it was capable of being adapted to the solar
calendar. It is equally incorrect to speak of the tonalamatl as a “ritual calendar.”
It has nothing to do directly with ritual or religious ceremonial, and although
certain representations on some tonalamatls depict ritual acts, no details or
directions for their operation are supplied.
DAY-SIGNS
and so on. It will be seen from this list that the fourteenth day-sign takes the
number 1 again. Each of the day-signs under this arrangement has a number
that does not recur in connection with that sign for a space of 260 days, as is
proved by the circumstance that the numbers 2 of the day-signs and [361]figures
(20 to 13), if multiplied together, give as a product 260, the exact number of
days in the tonalamatl.
The combination of signs and figures thus provided each day in the tonalamatl
with an entirely distinct description. For example: the first day, cipactli, was in its
first occurrence 1 cipactli; in its second 8 cipactli; in its third 2 cipactli; in its
fourth 9 cipactli, and so on.
No day in the tonalamatl was simply described as cipactli, coatl, or calli, and
before its name was complete it was necessary to prefix to it one of the
numbers from 1 to 13 as its incidence chanced to fall. Thus it was designated
as ce cipactli (one crocodile) or ome coatl (two snake) as the case might be.
Each of the 20 groups of 13 days (which are sometimes called “weeks”) was
known as a division by the name of the first day of the group, as ce cipactli (one
crocodile), ce ocelotl (one ocelot), ce mazatl (one deer), and so on. A model
tonalamatl would thus have appeared as follows: