The Shadow Self

Question: This one might have been written in the comments instead, but I think it deserves an entire post (whenever it gets through The Questionado): What are nahualli?

You know, we talk about nahualli a whole bunch on this blog, because they're a concept that is very important for Aztec religion and spirituality and therefore very important to a lot of Teotl Scions and gods. But we've never outright laid out exactly what a nahualli is, which it now occurs to me has probably been confusing for folks who hadn't heard the term before. So let's fix that!

The word nahualli comes from the root nahua; it has a meaning something close to "wisdom" or "secret knowledge", with a secondary connotation of hiding or disguise, all of which concepts tie in with the idea of the nahualli. Often translated as "shadow self" or "second soul", a nahualli is a specific Aztec religious concept: basically, the idea is that all people are born with only half their soul in their human selves. The nahualli is the second half of a person's soul, which takes the form of an animal (either a real, physical animal somewhere in the world, or a spirit animal that only exists in the realms beyond normal human sight). What kind of animal depends upon the person; everyone might have a different one, often related to who they are as a person, what day of the sacred calendars they were born on, what patron god they might serve or what their name, specially given in order to attempt to describe their future life, means. For most people, that's the extent of the idea - the average person never meets or interacts with their nahualli, and lives an average life.

Those who are especially spiritually gifted, however - usually priests or magicians - might occasionally be able to find and encounter their nahualli. Usually it is assumed that they can do so because of their great magical powers; there's not a lot written about them from the time of the Aztecs' heyday, unfortunately, since European invaders were way not cool with the idea and didn't really understand it very well anyway, but some Spanish writers recorded that nahualli might reveal themselves to their other selves in dreams, and become joined to them in the course of sacred hunts where the human pursued his animal self. Others (usually casting the nahualli as a "devil") simply claimed that Aztec "sorcerers" could call them up in rituals. Naturally, having both parts of the soul together made those who could connect with their nahualli enormously powerful, magically and spiritually.

Various Aztec figures have famous nahualli, or employ nahualli in their stories. Tezcatlipoca's nahualli is the famous Tepeyollotl (meaning "heart of the mountain"), a massive jaguar that causes earthquakes and flees from the sun, and also possibly Chalchiuhtotolin ("jade turkey"), the turkey that symbolizes masculinity and diseases; both of them show different aspects of Tezcatlipoca himself, appropriate since they are, after all, him. Huitzilopochtli's nahualli are the hummingbird, symbol of virility, ferocity and resurrection, and the golden eagle, which led the Mexica people to their new home in Tenochtitlan to build their glorious empire. In fact, for most of the Aztec gods, their most closely associated totem animal - or animals, since as you can see in the previous examples gods sometimes have more than one - is likely to be their nahualli, as they are all deities and therefore by definition spiritually powerful enough to have contact with their shadow selves. Human priests and magicians also contact their nahualli in Aztec myth; in one story, a large contingent of Mexica magicians decide to undertake a journey to Aztlan to pay tribute to the earth goddess Coatlicue, and because they are passing from the world of humanity into the magical land where the goddess lives, they must transform into their nahualli in order to do so.

This idea of the nahualli is the root of the term nagual, a later version of the word now employed in modern Mexican spiritualism, witchcraft and folklore. The word nahualli is associated with not just the spirit animal but the person who was able to call it up - in modern times, that becomes its primary meaning with the animal a distant second, probably partly through a process of cultural evolution and partly because incoming Europeans were confused about the whole idea - and in the modern day, the word nagual usually refers to a sorcerer, one who is able to transform into an animal and perform spells and curses for others, both beneficial and malicious.

So, for the Teotl and their children in Scion, nahualli are obviously hella important! We represent them in games as a custom Birthright, one that Scions gain once they have become sufficiently powerful to find and harness their alternate self, and all of our Teotl Scions have gotten theirs at some point in their careers, although some sooner than others and some more successfully than others. Eztli, our Scion of Huitzilopochtli, is twin to Cuacitlali, an enormous vampire bat that mirrors her associations with blood and death, while Yoloxochitl is twin to an unnamed axolotl that mirrors her associations with immaturity, childhood and otherworldly beauty. No one has ever actually seen Maquicelotl's nahualli, but we all presume it's probably a jaguar, like his father's.

Details on exactly how we run a nahualli Birthright are in this old post here. And not only are we happy to talk about them, but I know a few Aztec enthusiasts who hang out in the comments who probably are, too! This was a pretty simplified overview of nahualli, so if you're interested in them, we encourage you to dig around for more.