Teonanácatl, "carne de Dios"

[Section heading: Teonanácatl, the Flesh of God]

They had another kind of drunkenness that made them more cruel: this was with certain small mushrooms, which grow in this land as they do in Castile; but those of this land are of such a kind that, eaten raw, and being bitter, they drink after them, or eat with them, a little honey; and after a short while they would see a thousand visions, especially serpents, and as they went entirely out of their senses, it seemed to them that their legs and bodies were full of worms eating them alive, and so, half raving, they would go out of the house, wishing that someone would kill them; and from this bestial drunkenness and the affliction they felt, it sometimes happened that they hanged themselves, and they were also crueler toward others. These mushrooms they call in their language Teonanácatl, which means flesh of God — of the demon they worshipped; and in this manner, with that bitter food, their cruel god administered communion to them.

[Section heading: Other Forms of Communion: The Rolls of Tezcatlipoca and Human Flesh]

At many of their feasts they had the custom of making dough rolls, of many kinds, which they used almost as a communion of the god whose feast they were keeping; but they had one that more properly resembled communion, which was that in November, when they had gathered their maize and other seeds, from the seed of a kind of plant they called [uncertain: "Xenixos"], with maize dough they made certain tamales — round rolls — which they cooked in water in a pot; and while these were cooking, some boys played a kind of drum, carved entirely from a single piece of wood, without hide or parchment; and they also sang and said that those rolls turned into the flesh of Tezcatlipoca, who was the god or demon they held greatest, to whom they attributed the most dignity; and only those boys ate those rolls in place of communion, or the flesh of that demon. The other Indians sought to eat the human flesh of those who died in sacrifice, and this was commonly eaten by the principal lords, and merchants, and the ministers of the temples; the common people rarely got so much as a mouthful of it. After the Spaniards had gone to war, and Mexico was already won, until the land was pacified, the Indians friendly to the Spaniards often ate of those they killed, because the Spaniards could not always forbid it; rather, at times, out of their need for the Indians, they let it pass, although they abhorred it.