(M297) The religious ritual of the Cora Indians of Mexico comprises elaborate dramatic ceremonies or dances, in which the actors or dancers identify themselves with the gods, such as the god of the Morning Star, the goddess of the Moon, and the divinities of the Rain. These dances form the principal part of the Cora festivals and are accompanied by liturgical songs, the words of which the Indians believe to have been revealed to their forefathers by the gods and to exercise a direct magical influence upon the deities themselves and through them upon nature.(859) The Kobeua and Kaua Indians of North-Western Brazil perform masked dances at their festivals in honour of the dead. The maskers imitate the actions and the habits of birds, beasts, and insects. For example, there is a large azure-blue butterfly which delights the eye with the splendour of its colour, like a fallen fragment of the sky; and in the butterfly dance two men represent the play of these brilliant insects in the sunshine, fluttering on the wing and settling on sandbanks and rocks. Again, the sloth is acted by a masker who holds on to a cross-beam of the house by means of a hooked stick, in imitation of the sluggish creature which will hang by its claws from the bough of a tree for hours together without stirring. Again, the darting of swallows, as they flit to and fro across a river, is mimicked by masked men dancing side by side: the swarming of sandflies in the air is acted by a swarm of maskers; and so with the movements of the black vulture, the owl, the jaguar, the _aracu_ fish, the house-spider, and the dung-beetle. Yet these representations are not simple dramas designed to amuse and divert the mourners in their hour of sorrow; the Indian attributes to them a much deeper significance, for under the outer husk of beasts and birds and insects he believes that there lurk foul fiends and powerful spirits. “All these mimicries are based on an idea of magical efficiency. They are intended to bring blessing and fertility to the village and its inhabitants, to the plantations, and to the whole of surrounding nature, thereby compensating, as it were, for the loss of the dead man in whose honour the festival is held. By copying as faithfully as possible the movements and actions of the being whom he personates, the actor identifies himself with him. The mysterious force which resides in the mask passes into the dancer, turns the man himself into a mighty demon, and endows him with the power of banning demons or earning their favour. Especially is it the intention by means of mimicry to obtain for man control over the demons of growth and the spirits of game and fish.” When the festival is over, the masks are burned, and the demons, which are thought to have animated them, take flight to their own place, it may be to the other world or to a mountain top, or to the side of a thundering cascade.(860)