mentioned, took up then her abode in a place called Xochitla, and began to roast maize: and the odour of the roasted maize reached all the cities round about. The starving people set out immediately, and with one accord, to go where the old woman was. They reached her instantly, for here it may be again said, that the Toltecs were exceedingly light of foot, and arrived always immediately whithersoever they wished to go. As for the Toltecs that gathered to the mock sorceress, not one of them escaped. She killed them every one.”
These feats of Tezcatlipocâ against the Toltecs seem to have reference to the various species of charm wielded by the enchanter; the love-charm, the charm by music, by disease, by destruction of victuals. The rain of stone signified barrenness, drought, which was implied by the nature of the god, the deity of obsidian and of tempests.
For other myths regarding Tezcatlipocâ see the chapter on Cosmogony.
NATURE AND STATUS
In my opinion the early significance of Tezcatlipocâ arises out of his connection with obsidian. This stone had an especial sanctity for the Mexicans, as it provided the sacrificial knives employed by the priests, and we possess good evidence that stone in its fetish form was worshipped even so late as the eighteenth century by the Nahuatl-speaking Chotas, who comprised it in a trinity with the Dawn and the Serpent.56
From a passage in Acosta57 we are justified in assuming that Tezcatlipocâ’s idol was of obsidian, and, like the Quiche god Tohil, mentioned in the Popol Vuh, he wore sandals of obsidian, as is witnessed by one of his representations in Codex Borbonicus, where his footgear is painted with the zigzag line of the obsidian snake.
Tezcatlipocâ was unquestionably the god of the itztli (obsidian) stone, and Seler58 has identified him with Iztli, the