The Geography

9. The body as a vertical axis

The body corresponds to the structure of the world — and the correspondence is not decorative, it is functional.

The world

• Thirteen levels of sky, above
• The earth, the surface — which is a vast creature, Tlaltecuhtli, lying face up
• Nine levels of underworld, the Mictlan

And four directions with colour, tree, bird, god — plus the centre, which is the fifth. The olin shape of chapter 4.

The body

Two things that stand out

First, down is not bad. The underworld is dark, wet, cold — and it is the source of fertility and of seeds. Its gods are not demons. The ihiyotl is not your “lower part”; it is your vitality.

Second, the centre is the place of work. The heart is where sky and underworld meet — and the human work is to hold the meeting. The human does not try to climb. He tries to stand in the middle.

This is, again, the nepantla of chapter 4 — and the reason the last chapter closes with it.

10. Hot and cold — with a caveat

In modern Mexican folk medicine there is an extensive classification system of foods, illnesses and treatments into hot and cold. It is alive and widely spread.

The question: is it pre-Hispanic?

The disagreement, honestly

George Foster argued that it is a Spanish import — the Hippocratic-Galenic theory of qualities, which reached Spain via the Arabs and from there New Spain. Arguments: modern systems are not internally consistent, vary greatly from region to region, and the pre-Hispanic evidence is thin.

López Austin argued that there is a genuine pre-Hispanic core: tonalli is by definition hot, the underworld is cold, the hot-cold axis is structural in the cosmology and independent of the Greeks.

The most likely answer is “both”: there was an indigenous hot/cold polarity, it met an extraordinarily compatible European system, and the two merged so deeply that they are no longer separable.

What we can safely say

Pre-Hispanic for certain:

• Tonalli is heat — the etymology leaves no room
• The underworld is cold and wet; the sky hot and dry
• Excessive heat (fever, anger, drunkenness) is dangerous because it can displace the tonalli
• The temazcal (chapter 18) is heat therapy, and is attested as pre-Hispanic

The detailed table of “which food is hot and which is cold” I will not give, because we do not know how much of it is Nahua and how much is Galen in Spanish translation.

11. Tlazolli: pollution as relation

tlazolli — “trash, waste, discarded material, mess”. Literally the dry leaves and residues you sweep.

And it became the central concept for something much wider: moral and bodily pollution.

The goddess

Tlazolteotl — “the goddess of tlazolli”. She is simultaneously the one who causes sexual transgression and the one who forgives it: she is called tlaelcuani, “she who eats the filth”. She swallows pollution and cleanses.

That the same person does both is, exactly, the logic of the inamic of chapter 3.

Confession

There was a rite, neyolmelahualiztli — “the straightening of the heart”. The person went to a priest and declared his transgressions, especially sexual ones.

Two differences from Christian confession, and they are large:

1. It was done once in a lifetime. Usually in advanced age, because after it no new transgression could be cleansed.
2. It had legal force. What was declared there could not be prosecuted by the state. It was simultaneously a ritual and a legal cleansing.

And now the structural particularity

The tlazolli does not primarily harm the one who caused it. It harms his dependants.

A man’s sexual transgression manifested as illness in his wife or children. One person’s pollution harmed the house, the harvest, the community.

This is not guilt. Guilt is internal and individual. Tlazolli is external, transmissible and relational — closer to contagion than to sin.

And the mechanism of transmission is the ihiyotl of chapter 7.

Why it matters

Because it is the second major divergence of this system from familiar models.

There is no private moral life. There is no “I am harming no one”. Your state leaks — and the victims are not you.

12. Nahualli and transformation

nahualli — from a root related to “hidden, covered, disguised”.

The word means two connected things:

1. The person who can transform — usually into an animal (jaguar, eagle, coyote, dog), but also into a phenomenon (lightning, a ball of light).
2. The animal-companion itself — a creature that shares your fate, is born with you and dies with you. (In later ethnography this is often distinguished as tonal, from tonalli.)

The critical point: it is not a positive figure

The Western image of the “spirit animal” is warm and protective. In the sources, the nahualli is primarily a threat.

Sahagún classes him with the harmful sorcerers. The relevant descriptions concern people who harm, steal, frighten, or sicken others.

There was a positive version too — the ruler, the priest, the warrior with a powerful nahualli — but the dominant use is cautionary, and after the conquest it became a charge of witchcraft with real consequences.

How it connects

The nahualli is the logical consequence of the three preceding chapters:

If the tonalli can leave the body (chapter 5), and if the ihiyotl can be emitted and affect others (chapter 7), then a person with a powerful tonalli can send it elsewhere, with a form.

Transformation is not an exception in the system. It is the system, at its extremes.