...Julia Madajczak Abstract In the sixteenth century, Fray Diego Durán gave rise to a scholarly myth that the primary purpose of Nahua ritual baths was “purification.” This article deconstructs his interpretation, focusing on baths performed on deities’ impersonators ( ixiptla ), and particularly...

....” The chants include those for cooling the steam bath used in indigenous perinatal treatments, for difficulty in childbirth, and for rites surrounding the disposal of the afterbirth. Through an analysis that combines philological approaches with ethnographic interviews of contemporary Maya speakers...

...Figure 1. Woman tending a steam bath on Codex Tudela , 62r, courtesy of the Museo de América, Madrid. ...

... to do with his own beliefs about sweat baths and their potentially contagious nature. Another report, sent that same day, suggests that the interim governor was overwhelmed with his newfound responsibilities, and under such circumstances, it is unlikely that he would have risked the ire of the community...

... arara or viarara, also called vy lava), whose handle was often sculpted in the 9 image of a crocodile, which served the king when sacrificing cattle dur- ing the royal relic bath (fitampoha or tampoke); two long...

... offer tamales and a gallina guisada 88 to two fires. One fire was set in the yard where Papalo would bathe the child the next day, and the other was set inside the home on its eastern side. The day of the ritual, Papalo bathed the child in front of lit fatwood. 89 Before she bathed the child...

...—in this case, the near-half of the Choctaw population besieged by smallpox (Pesantubbee 2005 : 46–47). This violence served as a means of purification not unlike the sweat and cold bath treatments an individual Choctaw took while battling illness. The only way to heal the Choctaw body politic required direct...

... the sweeping with herb bundles for cleansing, blood sacrifice, and the importance of abstaining from bathing, each practice with some similarities to rituals documented during the colonial period (bk. 2, fols. 123v; 121v–123; 124). There is much more evidence for analysis in this important auto-ethnohistory...

... by boasting of such power. Native testimony also recounts how traditional remedies failed to defeat these new diseases. Especially dangerous was the customary healing practice of taking a sweat followed by a cold bath, a basic cure for so many other ailments but a fatal response to smallpox. A third...

...   (4.9) Spanish clothing, shoes, beds/blankets   3   (3.3)   3   (6.1)   5   (8.2) Reduced bathing frequency   0 —   0 —   2   (3.3) Loss of indigenous religious praxis   1   (1.1)   0 —   1   (1.6) Miscellaneous...

...” of South American shamanism (Russell and Rahman 2015a ) and the “hallmark of shamanism through history” (Barbira Freedman 2015 : 70), is used in a variety of ways in shamanic practices (Wilbert 1987 ). In the cases discussed here, the healers used tobacco in multiple forms: as smoke, as a bath...

... also recounts how traditional remedies failed to defeat these new diseases. Especially dangerous was the customary healing practice of taking a sweat followed by a cold bath, a basic cure for so many other ailments but a fatal response to smallpox. A third aspect to the spread of disease...

..., defines the temascal—using the Nahuatl word temazacatl—as a bath of hot water where offenses to our Lord are committed, because if someone became sick, he would come to bathe in this hot place that held water inside. And it happened that many men and women would 54...

... From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision Ritual of the Merina of Madagascar . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1987 The Ritual of the Royal Bath in Madagascar: The Dissolution of Death, Birth, and Fertility into Authority. In Rituals of Royalty: Power...

... Crónica mexicáyotl, right before the vision of Huitzilopochtli’s eagle, a woman named Quetzalmoyahuatzin gave birth (mixihui) at this locale and, following the custom for postpartum women, was then bathed in a nearby sweat bath (temazcalli).12 Following this, Tezozómoc tells us that the places...

... bathing in temaz- cales (steam baths), eating tortillas and chiles, and drinking chocolate were introduced as particularly Mexican customs, familiar to anyone in a multi- ethnic, if technically segregated, society. But the extent of Nahuatl, or Purépecha, or Otomí acquisition remains ill...

... them from disease.72 During their medical rituals, Creeks consumed special potions to ward off infectious diseases. One of these medicines, kadohwa, or honey locust, was specifically taken to prevent exposure to ‘‘contagions such as smallpox and measles73 Family members bathed in the medicine...

... been soaking in a chemical bath made up mostly of mercury. The museum boasted many old photographs, hard hats, old lamps, maps, documents, pieces of machinery, information about the miner’s union, and even a walk-through­ model of the mineshaft itself. The museum is officially called Museo...