30 May 2025 / 10 House
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Find out moreThe art of magic
Aztec sculpture of a cihuateteo spirit
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to Luca Bettoni: I am an Italian magician and writer. I am conducting research for 2 years now about the origins of the art of magic. Among Pre-Columbian civilisations is it possible to find some testimonies of the use of the art of magic (like among Egyptians or Greeks)? (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
The example we recommend, which we hope will be self-explanatory, comes from the Florentine Codex, Book 6, relating to ‘how they made goddesses of those women who died in childbirth, called mociuaquetzque [’Those Who Arose as Women’]. We quote pretty well verbatim from the Codex:-
[When a woman died in childbirth] then they bathed her, they washed her head with soap, they dressed her in a good, new skirt and shift. And as they carried her, as they went to bury her, her husband bore her upon his back. Her hair went loose; it went covering her.
And the midwives, the old women, assembled to accompany her. They bore their shields; they went shouting, howling, yelling. It is said they went crying, they gave war cries. Those called the youths, those whose task was yet warfare, went encountering them, went skirmishing against them. They went skirmishing against them as they desired to seize the woman. It was not play fighting, not plundering; then they fought, they truly made war.
And as it became night they bore this little woman to bury her there before the images of their devils whom they named Ciuapipiltin, celestial princesses [pic 2].
And when they had borne her, then they buried her, they placed her in the earth. But her husband and still others helped to guard her for four nights, that no-one might steal her.
And they who were the youths, those whose duty was warfare, ardently desired her. It is said careful vigil was held over her. They considered her just like something wonderful. If along the road they wrested the body of the mociuaquetzque from the midwives, in their presence they cut off her middle finger [of the left hand]. And if they could dig her up by night, they also cut off her finger and they clipped off, they took her hair from her.
Behold the reason they diligently sought the finger, the hair of the mociuaquetzque: when they went to war they inserted the hair of the finger in their shields in order to be valiant, in order to be brave warriors, in order that no-one might stand up against them, in order that they might act boldly in war, and in order that they might overpower, might seize many of their enemies. It was said that the hair, the finger of the mociuaquetzque furnished spirit; it was said they paralysed the feet of their foes.
We hope this serves as an example of what in your email you refer to as an ‘artifice used to create miracles or something similar...’
Sources:-
• Florentine Codex by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Book Six - Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, translated by Charles E. Dibble & Arthur J.O. Anderson, School of American Research and University of Utah, Santa Fe, 1969, chapter 29
• Primeros Memoriales by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún: Paleography of Nahuatl Text and English Translation by Thelma D. Sullivan, University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
Picture sources:-
• Main: photo of a Cihuateotl (goddess) sculpture in the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City by Ana Laura Landa/Mexicolore
• Pic 1: image scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition (Graz, Austria, 1979) of the Codex Vaticanus A
• Pic 2: image scanned from our own copy of Primeros Memoriales by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Facsimile Edition, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1993
• Pic 3: photo by Graciela Sánchez/Mexicolore.
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Aztec sculpture of a cihuateteo spirit
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