They also perform a "healing" incantation by offering certain prayers in which they mention the diseases and the different winds to the influence of which they attribute them. They will repeat the Lord's prayer over their patient, the Ave Maria, and the Creed, and sometimes also the prayer to Saint Anthony which is included in the Mexican prayer-book. On other occasions they will resort to the _kex_, which means exchange, and consists in hanging around the house of their patient certain food and drink for the _Yuncimil_, or Lord of Death, and they believe that by so doing they are able to save, for the time being, the life of the patient by barter.
To prevent bees from abandoning the hives and to make them bring home ample honey, and also that their owners may be free from sickness, they will hang in the beehives chocolate cups with _sacá_ or _horchata_ of corn.
They also perform the _misa milpera_ (mass on the cornfield), which they call _tich_, which means offering or sacrifice, and which is celebrated in the following manner: On a barbecue or roast made with little sticks of equal length they place a turkey, and the one who officiates as priest opens the bird's beak and pours pitarrilla down its throat. Then they kill it, and the assistants carry it off to season it. In the meantime they have been cooking in the earth some large loaves of corn-bread which they call _canlahuntaz_, which is made of fourteen tortillas or broken bread filled with beans. When all is well flavored and cooked, they place it on the barbecue with several cups filled with pitarrilla. Now again the one acting the part of priest begins to incense it with copal, invoking the Holy Trinity; he repeats the Creed, and, taking some pitarrilla with a holy-water sprinkler, he flings it to the four winds, invoking the four _Pahahtunes_, lords or custodians of rain. He then returns to the table, and, raising one of the jicaras aloft while those surrounding him kneel, he places the jicara to each one's mouth for a sip. The feast then proceeds and terminates by general eating and drinking, most of all by the one who "officiated," who furthermore takes home with him a goodly supply. They say that the red _Pahahtun_, who is seated in the east, is Saint Dominick (_Santo Domingo_); the white one in the north is Saint Gabriel; the black one in the west is Saint James; the yellow _Pahahtun_, said to be female and called by them _Xanleox_, is seated in the south, and is Mary Magdalen.