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Agricultural Divination Mixtec Codex, 16th-Century Oaxaca, Mexico This agricultural incantation was still in use more than a century after the conquest. INCANTATION FOR SOWING SQUASH
I speak to you, my mother, the Princess Earth, who are face up. And I speak to you, my father, One Rabbit. In the palms of your hands I put a piece of flint (the squash seed). Cover it well and clutch it firmly in your hands. Let not its uncles, those who live in the houses of those who sting or bite (the ants), who are the red Chichimecs, covet it. --Hernando Ruiz de Alarcon. Treatise on the Heathen Superstions that today live among the Indians Native to this New Spain, 1629. |