This chapter focuses on Spain's encounter with Mexico, the jewel added in 1521 to the crown of the newly elected Emperor Charles V, Ferdinand and Isabella's young Habsburg grandson. It introduces Mexican 'magic' by discussing the divinatory calendar. The chapter examines the extent to which a domain of malefice or black magic existed in indigenous conceptions of magical practitioners and considers how European observers imposed their notions of witchcraft and the demonic pact on these darker figures. The idolatry, witchcraft, and magic that Spaniards associated with indigenous Mesoamericans served the same ideological function that tropes of savagery or racial inferiority did for later colonial projects: keeping the colonized perpetually in a condition of otherness and subjection. The chapter discusses unsanctioned native religion with a brief look at indigenized Christianity, especially the cult of the saints. Mesoamerican healers supplemented their magic with an immense herbal pharmacopeia.