region. The
association of darkness, concealment and secrecy, with the female
principle, is exemplified by the fact that a building in the enclosure of
the Great Temple of Mexico, named the "house of darkness," was dedicated
to the earth-mother=Cihuacoatl (Sahagun, appendix to book II). Other
temples of hers are described as being cave-like, underground, dark, with
a single low entrance, the door of which was sometimes sculptured in the
form of the great open jaws of a serpent. Only priests were allowed to
penetrate into these mysterious chambers where sacred and secret rites
were performed and a sacred fire was also kept burning in an adjoining
chamber. Evidence, which I shall produce further on, establishes that the
high-priest Cihuacoatl dwelt, at times, in a house named "place of
darkness" and annually sacrificed a human victim in honor of the lord of
the underworld, in an edifice called "the navel of the earth."

The religious cult of one-half of the Mexican hierarchy was distinctly
nocturnal. The chief duties of certain priests were astronomical
observation and the supervision of the sacred fire, which was kept
perpetually burning on the summit of each temple-crowned pyramid, in what
was termed "the sacred or divine brazier" of sculptured stone. Two priests
jointly watched by night and day and received and transmitted to the
flames the incense offerings of the devout. The temple fires were
extinguished only at the expiration of a cycle of fifty-two years and were
then rekindled by the high priest at midnight precisely, with impressive
solemnity.

In ancient Mexico, it should however be observed, although the logical
association of women with the hidden forces of nature, the underworld and
the Below, had exerted a certain influence over her practical existence,
it had not yet given rise to the idea of her inferiority as compared to
man, the associate of the Heaven, the Above, the visible and active forces
of nature. The native sages did not identify her so intimately with the
earth as to deny her the possession of a soul--the celestial spark. On the
other hand it is curious to note that the Nahuatl word for wife is
Cihua-tlan-tli and for husband is Te-o-quichtli. Is it possible that the
particle _tlan_ in the first and _Teo_ in the second may have contributed
to strengthen the association of the woman with earth=tlalli (tlan=land
of) and the man with Teotl, the sun, something divine and celestial? In
course of tim