[72-1]
Not alone among these barbarous tribes were the cardinal points thus the
foundation of the most solemn mysteries of religion. An excellent
authority relates that the Aztecs of Micla, in Guatemala, celebrated
their chief festival four times a year, and that four priests solemnized
its rites. They commenced by invoking and offering incense to the sky
and the four cardinal points; they conducted the human victim four times
around the temple, then tore out his heart, and catching the blood in
four vases scattered it in the same directions.[72-2] So also the
Peruvians had four principal festivals annually, and at every new moon
one of four days' duration. In fact the repetition of the number in all
their religious ceremonies is so prominent that it has been a subject of
comment by historians. They have attributed it to the knowledge of the
solstices and equinoxes, but assuredly it is of more ancient date than
this. The same explanation has been offered for its recurrence among the
Nahuas of Mexico, whose whole lives were subjected to its operation.
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