“The act of baptism is always inserted in their records of battles and massacres. Everywhere it conveys the same idea,--making evident to the reader that the pretext for all the military expeditions of the Spaniards was the enforced conversion to Christianity of the natives; a pretext on which the Spaniards seized in order to possess themselves of the land and its treasure, to rob the Indians of their wives and daughters, to enslave them, and to spill their blood without remorse or remission. One of these documents, dated in 1526, adds a trait of savage irony. A Spanish soldier is represented dragging a fugitive Indian from a lake by a lasso around his neck; while on the shore stands a monk ready to baptize the recreant on his arrival!”[27-*] No wonder that the priests of the dark ritual of Nagualism for centuries after the conquest sought to annul the effects of the hated Christian sacraments by counteracting ceremonies of their own, as we are told they did by the historian Torquemada, writing from his own point of view in these words: “The Father of Lies had his ministers who aided him, magicians and sorcerers, who went about from town to town, persuading the simple people to that which the Enemy of Light desired. Those who believed their deceits, and had been baptized, were washed on the head and breast by these sorcerers, who assured them that this would remove the effects of the chrism and the holy oils. I myself knew an instance where a person of prominence, who resided not far from the City of Mexico, was dying, and had received extreme unction; and when the priest had departed one of these diabolical ceremonialists entered, and washed all the parts which had been anointed by the holy oil with the intention to destroy its power.”[27-†] Similar instances are recorded by Jacinto de la Serna. He adds that not only did the Masters prescribe sacrifices to the Fire in order to annul the effects of extreme unction, but they delighted to caricature the Eucharist, dividing among their congregation a narcotic yellow mushroom for the bread, and the inebriating pulque for the wine. Sometimes they adroitly concealed in the pyx, alongside the holy wafer, some little idol of their own, so that they really followed their own superstitions while seemingly adoring the Host. They assigned a purely pagan sense to the sacred formula, “Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” understanding it to be “Fire, Earth and Air,” or the like.[28-*]