as some compensation for their early detachment from the earth-life, were permitted to accompany the sun in his course from noon to sunset, just as the dead warriors did from sunrise to noon. At night they left their occidental abode, the Ciutlampa, or “Place of Women,” and revisited the glimpses of the moon in search of the feminine gear they had left behind them—the spindles, work-baskets, and other articles used by Mexican women. The Ciuateteô were especially potent for evil in the third quarter of the astrological year, and those who were so luckless as to meet them during that season became crippled or epileptic. The fingers and hands of women who had died in bringing forth were believed by magicians, soldiers, and thieves to have the property of crippling and paralysing their enemies or those who sought to hinder their nefarious calling, precisely as Irish burglars formerly believed that the hand of a corpse grasping a candle, which they called “the hand of glory,” could ensure sound sleep in the inmates of any house they might enter.
Says Sahagun: “It was said that they vented their wrath on people and bewitched them. When anyone is possessed by the demons, with a wry mouth and disturbed eyes, with clenched hands and inturned feet, wringing his hands and foaming at the mouth, they say that he has linked himself to a demon; the Ciuateteô, housed by the crossways, have taken his form.”
From this and other passages we may be justified in thinking that these dead women were also regarded as succubi, haunters of men, compelling them to dreadful amours, and that they were credited with the evil eye is evident from the statement that their glances caused helpless terror and brought convulsions upon children, and that their jealousy of the handsome was proverbial.
The divine patroness of these witches (for “witches” they are called by the old friar who interprets the Codex Telleriano-Remensis), who flew through