Note 24 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY

The amalgamation of the solar cult and of the Quetzalcoatl cult (representing the later and earlier “civilized” elements in Mexican religion) with the rain-cult is not an isolated phenomenon in the world’s religious history. The analogy of the fusion of the Osirian cult of Egypt with that of Ra will occur to everyone in this connection, and as the theology of the priests of the more aristocratic faith became in the event subsidiary in real importance to that of the far more popular Osirian worship, in the same manner the Quetzalcoatl cult, and in some measure the solar, were of much less real significance in Mexican life generally than the earlier popular belief. The solar worship seems to have successfully and naturally identified itself with the rain-cult, as also did the Quetzalcoatl religion. The myth which described Quetzalcoatl as the founder or inventor of the tonalamatl or Book of Fate24 probably records an effort on the part of his priesthood to identify their cult with the popular agricultural religion or to systematize or reduce to symbolic form an idea which until that time had probably existed in an uncertain and chaotic condition in the popular mind. For even if the tonalamatl were introduced from the Zapotec or Mixtec country or the Maya region, as is generally supposed, it required skilful arrangement to make it subserve the purposes of Aztec religion. The priesthood and cultus of Quetzalcoatl were widespread throughout Central America and Mexico, and its ministers appear to have adapted themselves with skill and patience to the conditions of the various regions to which they penetrated, the result of their labours never being quite the same in any two regions. It is remarkable, too, that, probably by reason of the superior erudition and ability of its priesthood, the caste of Quetzalcoatl held chief sway in Mexican ecclesiastical government.25 But a partial, though by no means complete, hostility to human sacrifice and ceremonial cannibalism, a grudging acquiescence in what it had, in all likelihood, denounced in earlier times, gave it in later days a somewhat aloof and separate character.