Catequil was the god of thunder. He is represented as possessing a club and sling, the latter evidently being intended to symbolise the thunderbolt. He was a servant of the Sun, and had three distinct forms--Chuquilla (thunder), Catuilla (lightning), and Intiallapa (thunderbolt). Temples were erected to him in which children and llamas were sacrificed at his altars. The Peruvians had, and still have, a great dread of thunder, and sought to pacify Catequil in every possible manner. Their children were sacred to him as the supposed offspring of the lightning. We now descend gradually and almost insensibly in the scale of deism, until little by little we reach a condition of gross idolatry, not far removed from that still practised by many African tribes. Here we find even vegetables adored as symbols of sustenance. The potato was glorified under the appellation of acsumama, and the maize as saramama. Trees partook of divine attributes, and we seem to see in this condition of things a state analogous to the reverence paid by the early Greeks and Romans to Sylvanus and his train, and the vivification of trees by the presence within them of dryads. Certain animals were treated with much reverence by the Peruvians. Thus we find the serpent, especially Urcaguay, the keeper of subterranean gold, an object of great veneration. The condor or vulture of the Andes Mountains was the messenger or Mercury of the Sun, and he held the same place on the sceptre of the Incas as the eagle on the sceptre of the Emperor of Germany or Russia. Whales and sharks were also worshipped by the people who lived near the sea. But in all this nature and animal worship it is difficult to detect a totemic origin.[6] The basis of totemism is the idea of blood-kinship with an animal or plant, which idea in the course of generations evolves into an exaggerated respect, and finally (under conditions favourable for development) into a full-blown mythology. At first it would appear as if the perfect organisation of the Peruvian state and its peculiar marriage laws had originated in a condition of totemism; but had totemism ever entered into the constitution of the Peruvian religion at any period of its development, it would have left as deep an impression upon it as it did in the case of the Egyptian religion--that is, some of the more important deities would have betrayed a totemic origin. That they betray an origin wholly naturalistic there is no room for doubt. And here the root difference between the Mexican and Peruvian mythologies may be pointed out--that although both systems had grown up from various constituents grouping themselves around the central worship of the Sun, the constituents of the Aztec religion were almost wholly totemic, whereas those of the Peruvian religion were naturalistic.[7]