These extracts prove the extent of this peculiar worship and the number of these subterranean temples in recent generations. The fame of some of the greater ones of the past still survives, as the vast grotto of Chalcatongo, near Achiutla, which was the sepulchral vault of its ancient kings; that of Totomachiapa, a solemn scene of sacrifice for the ancient priests; that of Justlahuaca, near Sola (Oaxaca), which was a place of worship of the Zapotecs long after the Conquest; and that in the Cerro de Monopostiac, near San Francisco del Mar.[41-*] The intimate meaning of this cave-cult was the worship of the Earth. The Cave God, the Heart of the Hills, really typified the Earth, the Soil, from whose dark recesses flow the limpid streams and spring the tender shoots of the food-plants, as well as the great trees. To the native Mexican, the Earth was the provider of food and drink, the common Father of All; so that to this day, when he would take a solemn oath, he stoops to the earth, touches it with his hand, and repeats the solemn formula: _Cuix amo nechitla in toteotzin?_ “Does not our Great God see me?” =25.= The identity of the Tepeyollotl of the Nahuas and the Votan of the Tzentals is shown not only in the oneness of meaning of the names, but in the fact that both represent the _third_ day in the ritual calendar. For this reason I take it, we find the number _three_ so generally a sacred number in the symbolism of the nagualists. We have already learned in the extract from Nuñez de la Vega that the neophytes were instructed in classes of three. To this day in Soteapan the fasts and festivals appointed by the native ministrants are three days in duration.[41-†] The semi-Christianized inhabitants of the Sierra of Nayerit, the Nahuatl-speaking Chotas, continued in the last century to venerate three divinities, the Dawn, the Stone and the Serpent;[41-‡] analogous to a similar “trinity” noted by Father Duran among the ancient Aztecs.[41-§] The number _nine_, that is, 3 x 3, recurs so frequently in the conjuration formulas of the Mexican sorcerers that de la Serna exclaims: “It was the Devil himself who inculcated into them this superstition about the number nine.”[41-‖]