But the obsidian itself became deified as Tezcatlipocâ. I have retained the full proof of this assertion for the section which treats of that god, and must here content myself with a summary of it. The whole cult of obsidian centred in the personality of Tezcatlipocâ. His idol was made of that stone, and in Codex Borbonicus his sandals are painted with the zigzag line of the obsidian snake. In his variant of Itztli (obsidian) he was the god of the sacrificial knife of obsidian, and in certain codices he is represented as having such a knife in place of a foot. From this stone, too, divinatory mirrors were made, one of which was held by the idols of Tezcatlipocâ and served as the mirror or scrying-stone in which he witnessed the doings of mankind. Obsidian, the great life-giver, food-getter, blood-provider, became identified in the form of this god with the cause or breath of life, which, in turn, was identified with the wind, and therefore it came to be classed among those magical stones which in some mysterious manner are considered capable of raising a tempest. In this manner Tezcatlipocâ came to be regarded as a god of wind, and has been identified with the Hurakan of the Quiches of Guatemala, from whose name the expression “hurricane” has been borrowed and who was probably introduced into Central America by the Nahua. When the nomadic Chichimec adopted an agricultural condition, obsidian had doubtless been regarded as sacred for many generations. It was by virtue of this magical stone that the nourishment of the gods was maintained by the sacrifice of deer; but when the Chichimec came to embrace a more settled existence within an agricultural community where deer must certainly have been more scarce, the nourishment of the gods had necessarily to be maintained by other means. The manner in which this was effected is quite clear. Slaves and war-captives were sacrificed instead of beasts of the chase, and at the festival of Mixcoatl, the greatest of the Chichimec gods, women were sacrificed in the place of deer, and after being slain were carried down the steps of the teocalli, their wrists and ankles tied together precisely in the manner in which a deer is trussed by the hunter. [33] The transition from deer-sacrifice to a human holocaust and from the hunting to the agricultural condition is well illustrated by an ancient hymn relating to the goddess Itzpapalotl (“Obsidian Butterfly”), who was associated with Mixcoatl. “O, she has become a goddess of the melon cactus, Our Mother Itzpapalotl, the obsidian butterfly. Her food is on the Nine Plains, She was nurtured on the hearts of deer, Our Mother, the earth-goddess.”