ef encircled her head like the calantica of the
ancient Egyptians. Never in my life have I seen a more striking
figure of an Isis or a Cleopatra.

"There was something strange in her expression. Her eyes were the
blackest and the brightest in the world; but there were moments
when she suddenly paused, leaned against the billiard table or the
wall, and they became fixed and dead like those of a corpse. Then a
fiery glance would shoot from beneath her dark lashes, sending a
chill to the heart of the one to whom it was directed. Was it
madness, or was it, as those around her believed, a momentary
absence of soul, an absorption of her spirit into its _nagual_, a
transportation into an unknown world? Who shall decide?"[37-*]

=24.= It would be a mistake to suppose that Nagualism was an incoherent
medley of superstitions, a mass of jumbled fragments derived from the
ancient paganism. My study of it has led me to a widely different
conclusion. It was a perpetuation of a well-defined portion of the
native cult, whose sources we are able to trace long anterior to the
period of the conquest, and which had no connection with the elaborate
and bloody ritual of the Aztecs. The evidence to this effect is cogent.

Wherever in later days the Catholic priests found out the holy places
and sacred objects of the nagualists, they were in-caves or deep
rock-recesses, not in artificial structures. The myths they gleaned, and
the names of the gods they heard, also point to this as a distinguishing
peculiarity. An early instance is recorded among the Nahuas of Mexico.
In 1537 Father Perea discovered a cavern in a deep ravine at Chalma,
near Mallinalco (a town famous for its magicians), which was the
sanctuary of the deity called _Oztoteotl_, the Cave God (_oztotl_, cave;
_teotl_, god), "venerated throughout the whole empire of
Montezuma."[38-*] He destroyed the image of the god, and converted the
cavern into a chapel.

We cannot err in regarding Oztoteotl as merely another name of the
Nahuatl divinity, Tepeyollotl, the Heart, or Inside, of the Mountain,
who in the Codex Borgia and the Codex Vaticanus is represented seated
upon or in a cavern. His name may equally well be translated "the Heart
of the Place," or "of the Town."

Dr. Eduard Seler has shown beyond reasonable question that this divinity
did not originally belong to the Aztec Pantheon, but was introduced from
the South, ei