Teotl

Teotl (modern Nahuatl pronunciation ) is a Nahuatl term that is often translated as "god". It may have held more abstract aspects of the numinous or divine, akin to the Polynesian concept of Mana.[1] It is a central idea of Aztec religion. In Pipil mythology Teut (Nawat cognate of Teotl)[2][3] is known as the creator and father of life.[4] The nature of Teotl has been an ongoing discussion among scholars.

As described by James Maffie, Teotl is essentially power: continually active, actualized, and actualizing energy-in-motion... It is an ever-continuing process, like a flowing river... It continually and continuously generates and regenerates as well as permeates, encompasses and shapes reality as part of an endless process. It creates the cosmos and all its contents from within itself as well as out of itself.[5]

Maffie (ibid., p.24) adds that there are no absolute beginnings - or absolute endings, for that matter - in Aztec metaphysics. There are only continuings. Death, for example, is not an ending but a change of status, because that which dies flows into and feeds that which lives ... in a single, never-ending process of recycling and transformation.

Aztec teteo or Teotl were seen to be active in the world. They spoke to their devotees. They both inhabited and oversaw elements of the landscape. They appeared in localized physical forms called forth by priests and practitioners. Aztecs called mountain-shaped dough figurines, humans, and bodies of water teotl.[6] Teotl and their localized manifestations frequently appear together in Nahuatl accounts of ritualistic activity, especially in those that involve devotees constructing and venerating an embodiment of a deity. Localized embodiment could be human, dough, wood, or rock.[6]

Teotl is a key to understanding the fall of the Aztec empire, because it seems that the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II and the Aztec people referred to Cortés and the conquistadors as Teotl. The Aztecs may have considered the conquistadors to be gods, but another interpretation is "mysterious" or "inexplicable".[7]

Whereas in most Nahuatl translations of the Bible and Christian texts, "God" (אֱלֹהִ֔ים‎, Θεός) is translated with the Spanish word Dios,[8] in modern translations by the Catholic Church in the 21st century, the word Teotzin, which is a combination of teotl and the reverential suffix -tzin, is used officially for "God".[9]

References
  1. Taube and Miller 1993, pp 89. For a lengthy treatment of the subject see Hvidtfeldt, 1958
  2. Rafael Lara-Martínez, Rick McCallister. Glosario cultural Náwat Pipil y Nicarao. p. 199: tewt, teut, “Dios”; teot, náhuatl teotl “god, dios” (Nicaragua) [Squier]. téut, “Dios” [Calvo Pacheco].
  3. Also used for the Christian God in a modern translation of the New Testament by Alan King, Ne Bibliaj Tik Nawat, Ne Iyeknawatilis Yojan 1:1 (John 1:1): Achtu nemik ne palabraj wan ne palabraj nemik itech ne Teut wan Teut ne palabraj Archived 2016-05-07 at the Wayback Machine.
  4. Mitología de Cuscatlán, San Salvador, 1919
  5. Maffie, James (2014). "Teotl; p.23". Aztec Philosophy, Understandng a world in Motion. University Press of Colorado. ISBN 978-1-60732-222-1.
  6. Bassett, Molly H. (2015). "Aztec Gods and God-Bodies". The Fate of Earthly Things. University of Texas Press. ISBN 9780292760882. JSTOR 10.7560/760882.
  7. Restall 2001 pp 116-118
  8. Bible.is: Genesis in Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl, John in Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl, Central Huasteca Nahuatl, Western Huasteca Nahuatl, Northern Puebla Nahuatl, Southeastern Puebla Nahuatl, Highland Puebla Nahuatl, Guerrero Nahuatl, Northern Oaxaca Nahuatl, Tenango Nahuatl.
  9. Catoliscopio: Credo en versión Nahuatl, 5 March 2013.

Sources
  • Hvidtfeldt, Arild (1958). Teotl and Ixiptlatli: some central conceptions in ancient Mexican religion: with a general introduction on cult and myth. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
  • Miller, Mary; Karl Taube (1993). The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05068-6.
  • Townsend, Richard F. (2000). The Aztecs (revised ed.). New York: Thames and Hudson.
  • van Zantwijk,Rudolph (1985). The Aztec Arrangement: The Social History of Pre-Spanish Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
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