Nagualism Part 7

_Nauatlato_, an interpreter.

=38.= I believe that no one can carefully examine these lists of words, all taken from authorities well acquainted with the several tongues, and writing when they still retained their original purity, without acknowledging that the same radical or syllable underlies them all; and further, that from the primitive form and rich development of this radical in the Zapotec, it looks as if we must turn to it to recognize the origin of all these expressions, both in the Nahuatl and the Maya linguistic stocks.

The root _na_, to know, is the primitive monosyllabic stem to which we trace all of them. _Nahual_ means knowledge, especially mystic knowledge, the Gnosis, the knowledge of the hidden and secret things of nature; easily enough confounded in uncultivated minds with sorcery and magic.[57-*]

It is very significant that neither the radical _na_ nor any of its derivatives are found in the Huasteca dialect of the Mayan tongue, which was spoken about Tampico, far removed from other members of the stock.

The inference is that in the southern dialects it was a borrowed stem.

Nor in the Nahuatl language--although its very name is derived from it[58-*]--does the radical _na_ appear in its simplicity and true significance. To the Nahuas, also, it must have been a loan.

It is true that de la Serna derives the Mexican _naualli_, a sorcerer, from the verb _nahualtia_, to mask or disguise oneself, "because a _naualli_ is one who masks or disguises himself under the form of some lower animal, which is his _nagual_;"[58-] but it is altogether likely that _nahualtia_ derived its meaning from the custom of the medicine men to wear masks during their ceremonies.

Therefore, if the term _nagual_, and many of its a.s.sociates and derivatives, were at first borrowed from the Zapotec language, a necessary corrollary[TN-6] of this conclusion is, that along with these terms came most of the superst.i.tions, rites and beliefs to which they allude; which thus became grafted on the general tendency to such superst.i.tions existing everywhere and at all times in the human mind.

Along with the names of the days and the hieroglyphs which mark them, and the complicated arithmetical methods by means of which they were employed, were carried most of the doctrines of the Nagualists, and the name by which they in time became known from central Mexico quite to Nicaragua and beyond.

The mysterious words have now, indeed, lost much of their ancient significance. In a recent dictionary of the Spanish of Mexico _nagual_ is defined as "a witch; a word used to frighten children and make them behave,"[58-] while in Nicaragua, where the former Nahuatl population has left so many traces of its presence in the language of to-day, the word _nagual_ no longer means an actor in the black art, or a knowledge of it, but his or her armamentarium, or the box, jar or case in which are kept the professional apparatus, the talismans and charms, which const.i.tute the stock in trade or outfit of the necromancer.[59-*]

Among the Lacandons, of Mayan stock, who inhabit the forests on the upper waters of the Usumacinta river, at the present day the term _naguate_ or _nagutlat_ is said to be applied to any one "who is ent.i.tled to respect and obedience by age and merit;"[59-] but in all probability he is also believed to possess superior and occult knowledge.

=39.= All who have any acquaintance with the folk-lore of the world are aware that the notion of men and women having the power to change themselves into beasts is as wide as superst.i.tion itself and older than history. It is mentioned in the pages of Herodotus and in the myths of ancient a.s.syria. It is the property of African negroes, and the peasantry of Europe still hold to their faith in the reality of the were-wolf of Germany, the _loup-garou_ of France and the _lupo mannaro_ of Italy. Dr. Richard Andree well says in his interesting study of the subject: "He who would explain the origin of this strange superst.i.tion must not approach it as a national or local manifestation, but as one universal in its nature; not as the property of one race or family, but of the species and its psychology at large."[59-]

Even in such a detail as the direct connection of the name of the person with his power of change do we find extraordinary parallelisms between the superst.i.tion of the red man of America and the peasant of Germany.

As in Mexico the _nagual_ was a.s.signed to the infant by a form of baptism, so in Europe the peasants of east Prussia hold that if the G.o.dparent at the time of naming and baptism thinks of a wolf, the infant will acquire the power of becoming one; and in Hesse to p.r.o.nounce the name of the person in the presence of the animal into which he has been changed will restore him to human shape.[59--]

=40.= I need not say that the doctrine of personal spirits is not especially Mexican, nor yet American; it belongs to man in general, and can be recognized in most religions and many philosophies. In ancient Greece both the Platonicians and later the Neo-Platonicians thought that each individual has a particular spirit, or _daimon_, in whom is enshrined his or her moral personality. To this _daimon_ he should address his prayers, and should listen heedfully to those interior promptings which seem to arise in the mind from some unseen silent monitor.[60-*]

Many a member of the Church of Rome subst.i.tutes for the _daimon_ of the Platonists the patron saint after whom he is named, or whom he has chosen from the calendar, the hagiology, of his Church. This a.n.a.logy did not fail to strike the early missionaries, and they saw in the Indian priest selecting the _nagual_ of the child a hideous and diabolical caricature of the holy rites.

But what was their horror when they found that the similarity proceeded so far that the pagan priest also performed a kind of baptismal sacrament with water; and that in the Mexican picture-writing the sign which represents the natal day, the _tonal_, by which the individual demon is denoted, was none other than the sign of the cross, as we have seen. This left no doubt as to the devilish origin of the whole business, which was further supported by the wondrous thaumaturgic powers of its professors.

=41.= How are we to explain these marvelous statements? It will not do to take the short and easy road of saying they are all lies and frauds. The evidence is too abundant for us to doubt that there was skillful jugglery among the proficients in the occult arts among those nations.

They could rival their colleagues in the East Indies and Europe, if not surpa.s.s them.

Moreover, is there anything incredible in the reports of the spectators?

Are we not familiar with the hypnotic or mesmeric conditions in which the subject sees, hears and feels just what the master tells him to feel and see? The tricks of cutting oneself or others, of swallowing broken gla.s.s, of handling venomous reptiles, are well-known performances of the sect of the Aissaoua in northern Africa, and nowadays one does not have to go off the boulevards of Paris to see them repeated. The phenomena of thought transference, of telepathy, of clairvoyance, of spiritual rappings, do but reiterate under the clear light of the close of the nineteenth century the mystical thaumaturgy with which these children of nature were familiar centuries ago in the New World, and which are recorded of the theosophists and magicians of Egypt, Greece and Rome.[61-*] So long as many intelligent and sensible people among ourselves find all explanations of these modern phenomena inadequate and unsatisfactory, we may patiently wait for a complete solution of those of a greater antiquity.

=42.= The conclusion to which this study of Nagualism leads is, that it was not merely the belief in a personal guardian spirit, as some have a.s.serted; not merely a survival of fragments of the ancient heathenism, more or less diluted by Christian teachings, as others have maintained; but that above and beyond these, it was a powerful secret organization, extending over a wide area, including members of different languages and varying culture, bound together by mystic rites, by necromantic powers and occult doctrines; but, more than all, by one intense emotion--hatred of the whites--and by one unalterable purpose--that of their destruction, and with them the annihilation of the government and religion which they had introduced.

FOOTNOTES:

[4-*] These words occur a number of times in the English translation, published at London in 1822, of Dr. Paul Felix Cabrera's _Teatro Critico Americano_. The form _nagual_ instead of _nahual_, or _naual_, or _nawal_ has been generally adopted and should be preferred.

[4-] For instance, in "The Names of the G.o.ds in the Kiche Myths," pp.

21, 22, in _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_, 1881; _Annals of the Cakchiquels_, Introduction, p. 46; _Essays of an Americanist_, p. 170, etc.

[5-*] _Historia de las Indias Occidentales_, Dec. iv, Lib. viii, cap. 4.

[5-] More especially it is the territory of the Chorti dialect, spoken to this day in the vicinity of the famous ancient city of Copan, Honduras. Cerquin lies in the mountains nearly due east of this celebrated site. On the Chorti, see Stoll, _Zur Ethnographie der Republik Guatemala_, pp. 106-9.

[6-*] Bernardino de Sahagun, _Historia de la Nueva Espana_, Lib. x, cap.

9.

[6-] Derived from _teciuhtlaza_, to conjure against hail, itself from _teciuh_, hail. Alonso de Molina, _Vocabulario Mexicano_, sub voce.

[6-] Bautista, _Advertencias para los Confesores_, fol. 112 (Mexico, 1600).

[6--] Nicolas de Leon, _Camino del Cielo_, fol. 111 (Mexico, 1611).

[7-*] Paso y Troncoso, in _a.n.a.les del Museo Nacional[TN-7] de Mexico_, Tom. iii, p. 180.

[7-] Sahagun, _Historia de Nueva Espana_, Lib. x, cap. 29, and Lib. xi, cap. 7. Hernandez has the following on the mysterious properties of this plant: "Illud ferunt de hac radice mirabile (si modo fides sit vulgatissimae inter eos rei habendae), devorantes illam quodlibet prsaesagire praedicereque; velut an sequenti die hostes sint impetum in eos facturi? Anne illos felicia maneant tempora? Quis supellectilem, aut aliud quidpiam furto subripruerit? Et ad hunc modum alia, quibus Chichimecae hujusmodi medicamine cognoscendis." Franciscus Hernandus, _Historia Plantarum Novae Hispaniae_, Tom. iii, p. 71 (Ed., Madrid, 1790).

[7-] _Diccionario Universal_, Appendice, Tom. i, p. 360 (Mexico, 1856).

[8-*] _Confessionario Mayor y Menor en lengua Mexicana_, fol. 8, verso (Mexico, 1634).

[8-] Vetancurt, _Teatro Mexicano_, Trat. iii, cap. 9.

[8-] Hernandez, _Historia Plantarum Novae Hispaniae_, Tom. iii, p. 32.

[9-*] Dr. Jacinto de la Serna, _Manual de Min stros[TN-8] de Indios para el Conocimiento de sus Idolatrias y Extirpacion de Ellas_, p. 163. This interesting work was composed about the middle of the seventeenth century by a Rector of the University of Mexico, but was first printed at Madrid, in 1892, from the MS. furnished by Dr. N. Leon, under the editorship of the Marquis de la Fuensanta del Valle.

[9-] MSS. of the Licentiate Zetina, and _Informe_ of Father Baeza in _Registro Yucateco_, Tom. i.

[10-*] Acosta, _De la Historia Moral de Indias_, Lib. v, cap. 26.

[10-] Of the _thiuimeezque_ Hernandez writes: "Aiunt radicis cortice unius unciae pondere tuso, atque devorato, multa ante oculos observare phantasmata, multiplices imagines ac monstrificas rerum figuras, detegique furem, si quidpiam rei familiaris subreptum sit." _Hist.

Plant. Nov. Hispan._, Tom. iii, p. 272. The _chacuaco_ and its effects are described by Father Venegas in his _History of California_, etc.

[10-] "In Mictlan Tetlachihuique, in Nanahualtin, in Tlahuipuchtin."

Paredes, _Promptuario Manual Mexicano_, p. 128 (Mexico, 1757). The _tlahuipuchtin_, "those who work with smoke," were probably diviners who foretold the future from the forms taken by smoke in rising in the air.

This cla.s.s of augurs were also found in Peru, where they were called _Uirapircos_ (Balboa, _Hist. du Perou_, p. 28-30).

[10--] Von Gagern, _Charakteristik der Indianischer Bevolkerung Mexikos_, s. 125.

[11-*] _Historia Antigua de Mexico_, Tom. ii, p. 25. Francisco Pimentel, in his thoughtful work, _Memoria sobre las Causas que han originado la Situacion Actual de la Raza Indigena de Mexico_ (Mexico, 1864), recognizes how almost impossible it is to extirpate their faith in this nagualism. "Conservan los agueros y supersticiones de la antiguedad, siendo cosa de fe para ellos, los _nahuales_," etc., p. 200, and comp.

p. 145.

[11-] On these terms consult the extensive _Dictionnaire de la Langue Nahuatl_, by Remi Simeon,[TN-9] published at Paris, 1887. It is not impossible that _tona_ is itself a compound root, including the monosyllabic radical _na_, which is at the basis of _nagual_.

[11-] Sahagun, _Historia de Nueva Espana_, Lib. iv, _pa.s.sim_, and Lib.

x, cap. 9.