s analogy did
not fail to strike the early missionaries, and they saw in the Indian
priest selecting the _nagual_ of the child a hideous and diabolical
caricature of the holy rites.

But what was their horror when they found that the similarity proceeded
so far that the pagan priest also performed a kind of baptismal
sacrament with water; and that in the Mexican picture-writing the sign
which represents the natal day, the _tonal_, by which the individual
demon is denoted, was none other than the sign of the cross, as we have
seen. This left no doubt as to the devilish origin of the whole
business, which was further supported by the wondrous thaumaturgic
powers of its professors.

=41.= How are we to explain these marvelous statements? It will not do to
take the short and easy road of saying they are all lies and frauds. The
evidence is too abundant for us to doubt that there was skillful
jugglery among the proficients in the occult arts among those nations.
They could rival their colleagues in the East Indies and Europe, if not
surpass them.

Moreover, is there anything incredible in the reports of the spectators?
Are we not familiar with the hypnotic or mesmeric conditions in which
the subject sees, hears and feels just what the master tells him to feel
and see? The tricks of cutting oneself or others, of swallowing broken
glass, of handling venomous reptiles, are well-known performances of the
sect of the Aissaoua in northern Africa, and nowadays one does not have
to go off the boulevards of Paris to see them repeated. The phenomena of
thought transference, of telepathy, of clairvoyance, of spiritual
rappings, do but reiterate under the clear light of the close of the
nineteenth century the mystical thaumaturgy with which these children of
nature were familiar centuries ago in the New World, and which are
recorded of the theosophists and magicians of Egypt, Greece and
Rome.[61-*] So long as many intelligent and sensible people among
ourselves find all explanations of these modern phenomena inadequate and
unsatisfactory, we may patiently wait for a complete solution of those
of a greater antiquity.

=42.= The conclusion to which this study of Nagualism leads is, that it
was not merely the belief in a personal guardian spirit, as some have
asserted; not merely a survival of fragments of the ancient heathenism,
more or less diluted by Christian teachings, as others have maintained;
but that above and beyond thes