Nahual
- Origin
- A living belief of Indigenous peoples of Mexico and Guatemala. Alessandro Lupo (Arqueología Mexicana) says nahualismo and tonalismo are still widespread among them and go back to the great pre-Hispanic civilisations. The word is Nahuatl: Britannica derives it from nahualli, disguise, while Daniel G. Brinton (1894) tied it to a root meaning to know. The earliest writing these sources point to is that of the first missionaries in New Spain, who, Brinton says, often described the naualli as sorcerers; that is an outsiders' record.
- How we treat it
- The label covers the living belief in the senses these sources give: a personal guardian spirit that dwells in an animal, the animal form some powerful people are said to take, and the nawal of each day in the Maya calendar as Guatemala's Ministry of Culture describes it. It records that communities hold the belief. It makes no claim that anyone changes into an animal.
- Routes out
- No source written by Nahua or Maya practitioners was found. Guatemala's Ministry of Culture comes first as the nearest to community voice, since it gives each nawal's meaning as the grandmothers and grandfathers teach it. Lupo's scholarship follows, then Britannica and Wikipedia. Brinton (1894) comes last because he wrote from colonial missionaries' accounts.
The nahual, or nagual, is a Mesoamerican religious idea still held among Indigenous peoples of Mexico and Guatemala: a guardian spirit tied to an animal, or the animal form some powerful people are said to take.
Alessandro Lupo, writing in Arqueología Mexicana, says the ideas that scholars call nahualismo and tonalismo stand out among Mesoamerican beliefs because they remain widespread today among the Indigenous peoples of Mexico and Guatemala, while their origins go back to the great civilisations before the Spanish conquest. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the nagual as a personal guardian spirit that some Indigenous people of Mesoamerica believe dwells in an animal, for instance a deer, a jaguar or a bird. In some places, it says, the word names the animal certain powerful men can turn into to do harm. Britannica derives the word from the Nahuatl nahualli, meaning disguise, the term for animal forms sorcerers took on by magic.
In Guatemala the word also belongs to the Maya calendar. The Ministry of Culture and Sports, on a 2013 page, describes each day sign as a nawal. No'j, for example, stands for wisdom and knowledge: it is the nawal of intelligence and of sound advice, as the grandmothers and grandfathers teach, a wisdom that comes from the Former and Creator, and it is one of the Bearers of Time.
Outside writers have long struggled with the term. Daniel G. Brinton, in Nagualism (1894), linked it to a Nahuatl root meaning to know. He wrote that the early missionaries in New Spain often described the naualli, plural nanahualtin, as masters of hidden knowledge, practitioners of the black arts and sorcerers, widely feared though not always meaning ill. Wikipedia says modern scholars have had trouble pinning down the shifting and disputed meanings of Nahua words such as nahualli and tonalli and the terms built from them. It suggests plainer wording, such as the belief that some people, often in positions of influence, hold particular spiritual powers.
"We do find, however, in the Nahuatl language, which is the proper name of the Aztecan, a number of derivatives from the same root, na, among them this very word, Nahuatl, all of them containing the idea “to know,” or “knowledge.” The early missionaries to New Spain often speak of the naualli (plural, nanahualtin), masters of mystic knowledge, dealers in the black art, wizards or sorcerers. They were not always evil-minded persons, though they seem to have been generally feared."
- Nahualismo y tonalismo, Alessandro Lupo, Arqueología Mexicana
- nagual, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Nagual, Wikipedia
- Calendario maya (tag archive: day-sign nawales), Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes de Guatemala (2013)