Nahuatl Note: “Teotl” vs. “god”
You may have read people making the claim that pre-Spanish Invasion Nahua peoples (Mexica and other “Aztecs” as well as their rivals in Tlaxcallan, etc.) did NOT have “gods.” Their assertion is that the word “god” is an imposition of European worldview on Indigenous beliefs and that what has been translated “gods” really means something like “natural forces” or “spiritual energies.”
But … argh. No. That’s not quite right. Let me explain.
The word in question is teotl (singular). What was it used to name, exactly?
The main things classified as teteoh (plural) are the objects of worship for which temples (teocalli — “houses of teotl” — or teopan — “places of teotl”) were constructed. Statues of these teteoh show nearly always a humanoid figure (sometimes with animal characteristics). Those idols were dressed, adorned, painted. They were carried for ritual purposes by a teomamahqui, a “carrier of the teotl,” whose title shows that the statues themselves were thought of as being—if not the gods themselves—representatives of various deities.
Other anthropomorphic effigies, of wood and amaranth dough, were made during some of the several dozen religious ceremonies throughout the solar year, as when the Mexica would eat bits of a baked representation of Huitzilopochtli as they celebrated his birthday around the winter…
