i and Atl, moon and water, are constantly confounded in Aztec
theology. Their attributes were strikingly alike. They were both the
mythical mothers of the race, and both protect women in child-birth, the
babe in the cradle, the husbandman in the field, and the youth and
maiden in their tender affections. As the transfer of legends was nearly
always from the water to its lunar goddess, by bringing them in at this
point their true meaning will not fail to be apparent.

We must ever bear in mind that the course of mythology is from many gods
toward one, that it is a synthesis not an analysis, and that in this
process the tendency is to blend in one the traits and stories of
originally separate divinities. As has justly been observed by the
Mexican antiquarian Gama: "It was a common trait among the Indians to
worship many gods under the figure of one, principally those whose
activities lay in the same direction, or those in some way related among
themselves."[131-1]

The time of full moon was chosen both in Mexico and Peru to celebrate
the festival of the deities of water, the patrons of agriculture,[131-2]
and very generally the ceremonies connected with the crops were
regulated by her phases. The Nicaraguans said that the god of rains,
Quiateot, rose in the east,[131-3] thus hinting how this connection
originated. At a lunar eclipse the Orinoko Indians seized their hoes and
labored with exemplary vigor on their growing corn, saying the moon was
veiling herself in anger at their habitual laziness;[132-1] and a
description of the New Netherlands, written about 1650, remarks that the
savages of that land "ascribe great influence to the moon over
crops."[132-2] This venerable superstition, common to all races, still
lingers among our own farmers, many of whom continue to observe "the
signs of the moon" in sowing grain, setting out trees, cutting timber,
and other rural avocations.

As representing water, the universal mother, the moon was the
protectress of women in child-birth, the goddess of love and babes, the
patroness of marriage. To her the mother called in travail, whether by
the name of "Diana, diva triformis" in pagan Rome, by that of Mama
Quilla in Peru, or of Meztli in Anahuac. Under the title of
Yohualticitl, the Lady of Night, she was also in this latter country the
guardian of babes, and as Teczistecatl, the cause of generation.[132-3]

Very different is another aspect of the moon goddess, and well might the