propriate exorcisms, among
which the reading aloud certain passages of the Bible is deemed to be
one of the most potent.[10-Sec.]

The learned historian, Orozco y Berra, speaks of the powers attributed
at the present day to the _nahual_ in Mexico among the lower classes, in
these words:

"The _nahual_ is generally an old Indian with red eyes, who knows
how to turn himself into a dog, woolly, black and ugly. The female
witch can convert herself into a ball of fire; she has the power of
flight, and at night will enter the windows and suck the blood of
little children. These sorcerers will make little images of rags or
of clay, then stick into them the thorn of the maguey and place
them in some secret place; you can be sure that the person against
whom the conjuration is practiced will feel pain in the part where
the thorn is inserted. There still exist among them the
medicine-men, who treat the sick by means of strange contortions,
call upon the spirits, pronounce magical incantations, blow upon
the part where the pain is, and draw forth from the patient thorns,
worms, or pieces of stone. They know how to prepare drinks which
will bring on sickness, and if the patients are cured by others the
convalescents are particular to throw something of their own away,
as a lock of hair, or a part of their clothing. Those who possess
the evil eye can, by merely looking at children, deprive them of
beauty and health, and even cause their death."[11-*]

=7.= As I have said, nowhere in the records of purely Mexican, that is,
Aztecan, Nagualism do we find the word _nagual_ employed in the sense
given in the passage quoted from Herrera, that is as a personal guardian
spirit or tutelary genius. These tribes had, indeed, a belief in some
such protecting power, and held that it was connected with the day on
which each person is born. They called it the _tonalli_ of a person, a
word translated to mean that which is peculiar to him, which makes his
individuality, his self. The radical from which it is derived is _tona_,
to warm, or to be warm, from which are also derived _tonatiuh_, the sun.
_Tonalli_, which in composition loses its last syllable, is likewise the
word for heat, summer, soul, spirit and day, and also for the share or
portion which belongs to one. Thus, _to-tonal_ is spirit or soul in
general; _no-tonal_, my spirit; _no-tonal in ipan n