many myths, both in the Old World and the New, flint was regarded as the great fertilizer because of its supposed connection with the lightning, so was obsidian. Thus all the elements which go to make for growth and life were regarded as having a connection with this mineral, even the sun itself, as we shall see, being identified with the Mirror of Tezcatlipocâ. The idea that the sun could not live without human blood was a purely Nahua conception, arising out of an earlier belief that it must be nourished upon the blood of beasts. Of the transitional process abundant proof exists. The hunter’s obsidian weapon which supplied the necessary pabulum became in turn the weapon of the warrior who procured victims for the holocaust, and the sacred knife of the priest who sacrificed them to the deity. Obsidian was thus chiefly the war weapon and the sacrificial weapon, but the traditions relating to it refer to practically all the offices of human art, industry, and activity generally.
Lest this hypothesis seem overstrained, analogies may be indicated. That which is initially sacred in a primitive cult frequently comes to have interrelations with the whole environment of its deities. Thus the worship of the oak by the Druids appears to have given an oak-like virtue to the oracular birds which dwelt in its branches, to the soil from which it grew, to the sky above it, to the priests who ministered to it and to the sacred implements they employed. The same may be said of the oak-cult of Zeus and the vine-cult of Dionysos. The numerous traditions which cluster round the ceremonial use of jade in China are eloquent of such a tendency. Thus trees, plants, animals, and natural objects are all in a manner identified and connected with the beautiful jade stone in its character as an imparter of vitality. Thus in the great worship of the gods whose cult was connected with obsidian, well-nigh everything with which it had interrelations came to partake of the nature of obsidian—grain, the earth, the atmosphere, the sun, the stars, the priesthood, blood, and rain.
The process by which this Nahua cult became amalgamated with those of Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl seems fairly clear. Upon their settlement on