We obtain, however, glimpses of the shadowy form of an invisible and venerable female ruler who is at the head of the “House of Women,” watches over the welfare of the women of the tribe and officiates as a priestess, with her assistants, at births, baptisms and marriages. In order to account for the obscurity which surrounds her, it should be noticed that the mere fact that the ideas of darkness and seclusion became indelibly associated with the female sex, would naturally and inevitably cause women to be housed up, veiled and condemned to comparative inaction and immobility. A primitive stage in the growth of the above idea is shown in the case of the Huaxtecas, the women of which tribe wore abundant covering whilst the men, on religious principle, wore none. A careful study of the conditions surrounding the Cihuacoatl or high priest shows that he also conformed to the exigencies of his position when he acted as the representative of the hidden forces of Nature, of the female principle. He and the entire priesthood smeared their bodies with black, cultivated long hair, and wore, during the performance of certain religious ceremonies, a wide and long garment reaching to the ground. It is noticeable that the designs on the garments of the priests, in the B. N. MS., are invariably executed in red and yellow, the symbolical colors of the north and west, combined with black the symbol of the union of both, the Below. In this connection it is noteworthy that in Mexican pictography the faces of women are usually painted yellow—the color of the West=the female region. The association of darkness, concealment and secrecy, with the female principle, is exemplified by the fact that a building in the enclosure of the Great Temple of Mexico, named the “house of darkness,” was dedicated to the earth-mother=Cihuacoatl (Sahagun, appendix to book II). Other temples of hers are described as being cave-like, underground, dark, with a single low entrance, the door of which was sometimes sculptured in the form of the great open jaws of a serpent. Only priests were allowed to penetrate into these mysterious chambers where sacred and secret rites were performed and a sacred fire was also kept burning in an adjoining chamber. Evidence, which I shall produce further on, establishes that the high-priest Cihuacoatl dwelt, at times, in a house named “place of darkness” and annually sacrificed a human victim in honor of the lord of the underworld, in an edifice called “the navel of the earth.”