A ready way of getting a view of the Mexican Pantheon is to study Sahagun's two books on the feasts of the gods, with their ritual. It will become manifest that the worship was a worship, on the whole, of departmental gods of the elements, of harvest, of various human activities, such as love and commerce, and war and agriculture. The nature of the worship, again, was highly practical. The ceremonies, when not mere offerings of human flesh, were commonly representations on earth of desirable things which the gods were expected to produce in the heavenly sphere. The common type of all such magical ceremonies, whereby like is expected to produce like, has been discussed in the remarks on magic (chapter iv.). The black smoke of sacrifice generates clouds; the pouring forth of water from a pitcher (as in the Attic Thesmophoria) induces the gods to pour forth rain. Thus in Mexico the rain-god (Tlaloc, god of waters) was propitiated with sacrifices of children. "If the children wept and shed abundant tears, they who carried them rejoiced, being convinced that rain would also be abundant."* The god of the maize, again (Cinteotl, son of the maize-goddess), had rites resembling those of the Greek Pyanepsion and Eiresione. The Aztecs used to make an image of the god, and offer it all manner of maize and beans.** Curiously enough, the Greeks also regarded their Pyanepsion as a bean-feast. A more remarkable analogy is that of the Peruvian Mama Cora, the figure of a goddess made of maize, which was asked "if it hath strength sufficient to continue until the next year," and of which the purpose was, "that the seed of the maize may not perish".*** This corn image of the corn goddess, preserved through all the year and replaced in the next year by a fresh image, is the Attic (--------), a branch of olive hung with a loaf and with all the fruits of the season, and set up to stand for all the year in front of each house. "And it remains for a year, and when it is dry and withered next year they make a fresh one."**** * Sahagun. ii. 2, 3. ** Ibid., ii. 4, 24. *** Acosta, Hist Nat., 1604, p. 413. **** See Schol. in Aristoph. Plut., 1054, and other texts, quoted by Mannhardt, _Arntike Waldund Feld Cultus_, ii. 221, note 3.