Superstitious? (10)

Prior to his more famous Florentine Codex Bernardino de Sahagún compiled his much shorter Primeros Memoriales ethnographic study, which contains a section on Mexica superstitions and dreams. Incredibly, ten out of the fifteen ‘auguries’ (omens or superstitions) and nine out of the ten dreams predict death! Even the most innocuous of subjects (‘He who dreamed that there was singing in his home’, ‘He who dreamed that he was building himself a house’, ‘He who dreamed that he was flying’...) end with the words ‘he would soon die’.

Pictured above is the chicuatli or barn owl. As the text goes: ‘The fifth augury is this: When a barn owl struck the facade of a house it was said that the owner of the house would soon die.’

Info source:-
• Primeros Memoriales: Paleography of Nahuatl Text and English Translation by Thelma D. Sullivan (University of Oklahoma Press, 1997).

Image from the Florentine Codex (Book XI) scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994.