The diviner is called _h’men_, a male personal form of the verb _men_, to understand, to do. He is one who knows, and who accomplishes. His main instrument is the _zaztun_, “the clear stone” (_zaz_, clear, transparent; _tun_, stone). This is a quartz crystal or other translucent stone, which has been duly sanctified by burning before it gum copal as an incense, and by the solemn recital of certain magic formulas in an archaic dialect passed down from the wise ancients. It is thus endowed with the power of reflecting the past and future, and the soothsayer gazes into its clear depths and sees where lost articles may be recovered, learns what is happening to the absent, and by whose witchery sickness and disaster have come upon those who call in his skill. There is scarcely a village in Yucatan without one of these wondrous stones. The wise men have also great influence over the growing crops, and in this direction their chiefest power is exercised. By a strange mixture of Christian and pagan superstition, they are called in to celebrate the _misa milpera_, the “field mass” (_misa_, Spanish, “mass”; _milpera_, a word of Aztec derivation, from _milpa_, “cornfield”). In the native tongue this is called the _tich_, which means the offering or sacrifice. It is a distinct survival of a rite mentioned by Diego de Landa, one of the earliest bishops of the diocese of Yucatan.[192] The ceremony is as follows: On a sort of altar constructed of sticks of equal length the native priest places a fowl, and, having thrown on its beak some of the fermented liquor of the country, the _pitarrilla_, he kills it, and his assistants cook and serve it with certain maize cakes of large size and special preparation. When the feast is ready, the priest approaches the table, dips a branch of green leaves into a jar of _pitarrilla_, and asperges the four cardinal points, at the same time calling on the three persons of the Christian Trinity, and the sacred four of his own ancient religion, the _Pah ah tun_. These mysterious beings were before the conquest and to this day remain in the native belief the gods of rain, and hence of fertility. They are identical with the winds, and the four cardinal points from which they blow. To each is sacred a particular color, and in modern times each has been identified with a saint in the Catholic calendar. Thus Father Baeza tells us that the red Pahahtun is placed at the East, and is known as Saint Dominic; to the North the white one, who is Saint Gabriel; the black, toward the West, is Saint James; the yellow is toward the South, and is a female, called in the Maya tongue _X’Kanleox_, “the yellow goddess,” and bears the Christian name of Mary Magdalen.