compound tlahuipuchtli , “wizard who spits fire,” instanced by Torquemada, who states that some persons derived the god’s name from that word, combined with uitzilinin , “a humming-bird.” It is easy to see how the god came to be associated with the humming-bird, which suspends its nest from the foliage of the maguey . It would appear to the Mexicans to emerge from the leaves of that plant, and would come to be regarded as the form which the maguey -spirit took. Indeed, the humming-bird dress or disguise is that in which Uitzilopochtli is almost invariably represented in the codices. It was in the shape of a humming-bird that the god was said to have led the Aztecâ from their ancient home to the Valley of Anahuac, and his flights would probably be considered ominous and suggestive to augurs, like those of the Latin Picus. But it is possible that a certain degree of confusion arose between the elements uitzilinin (humming-bird) and uitztli (thorn), that this assisted the belief that he took the shape of a humming-bird and that the explanatory myth of the hero-god Uitziton refers to this bird in an anthropomorphic shape.
These facts lead me to infer that the name implies “Humming-bird Wizard,” for Uitzilopochtli was, as Sahagun says,30 “a necromancer and friend of disguises,” and wizards are universally conceived of as “sinister,” which English word means both “on the left hand” and “inauspicious,” and “malign,” as does the Latin word from which it is derived. The same holds good of the Mexican word. The sub-titles of the god, Uitznauatl and Magueycoatl, show—the first, that the ideas of sorcery and oracular speech were connected with him; and the second, that he was of a serpentine or venomous disposition, like the liquor distilled from the plant over which he presided, the intoxicating qualities of which