The Practice

16. The ticitl

ticitl — the healer or, very often, the female healer. The abundance of women in this role, especially in midwifery, is explicitly recorded.

What they did

Sahagún gives a catalogue of abilities that is strikingly practical:

• Herbal medicine — extensive; hundreds of plants with names, uses and modes of preparation
• Midwifery (temixiuitiani) — prenatal care, delivery, massage, foetal rotation
• Bone-setting — reduction of fractures, splints
• Surgery — sutures, drainage of abscesses, bloodletting with an obsidian blade
• Massage and hydrotherapy
• Diagnosis — observation, questioning, palpation, and divinatory techniques

The divinatory techniques

Used for diagnosis — that is, to find the cause:

• Tossing kernels of maize on a cloth and reading the arrangement
• Measuring the forearm with the hand — if the length “did not come out”, tonalli was missing
• Reading in water
• Observing the pulse

The critical point for understanding the whole system

In this tradition there is no separation between “real medicine” and “magic”. The same person set the fracture and called back the tonalli, and both were techniques, and both had specific procedures.

The separation is ours, and we project it onto a system that does not have it.

And the honest assessment

A significant part was effective. The Nahua herbal was among the richest in the world; several plants have confirmed action; their bone-setting and midwifery were, according to the testimony of the Spanish themselves, in some respects superior to the European practice of the time.

Another part was not. And the aetiology — loss of tonalli, attack of ihiyotl, punishment by a deity — did not identify infectious disease. In 1520 and 1545 the epidemics killed, by current estimates, a vast proportion of the population, and the system had no answer.

European medicine of the same period had none either.

17. Susto: loss and recovery

The most characteristic illness of this system, and the only one that is alive today across the whole of Latin America.

Nahuatl: nemouhtiliztli, from mauhtia, “to frighten”. Spanish: susto or espanto.

What it is

Loss of tonalli from terror. A fall, a sudden plunge into water, an encounter with something frightening, a violent emotion — and the tonalli leaves and stays at the spot.

The symptoms

And they are strikingly consistent across the sources and modern ethnographic records:

• Anorexia, weight loss
• Pallor
• Lethargy, weakness
• Insomnia or disturbed sleep
• Sadness, withdrawal
• In children: crying, wasting, “not the same child”

The treatment

It is not medication. It is recovery, and it has a clear procedure:

1. Return to the spot where the terror occurred
2. Calling the tonalli by the person’s name, repeatedly
3. Water — sprinkling, or an offering at the spot
4. The person’s clothing, which is laid out or shaken so the tonalli recognises it and follows
5. A cleansing (limpia) with plants, egg or incense, as the tonalli returns
6. Often an offering — because something was holding the tonalli, and it is paid off

The invocation, in the records of Ruiz de Alarcón, is addressed directly to the tonalli in the second person: it tells it to come, scolds it for leaving, reminds it where it belongs.

How to read it

Two readings, and both are reasonable.

The cultural: susto is a recognised culturally-bound syndrome in the medical literature. The symptoms overlap with depression, post-traumatic reaction, and somatoform manifestations — and there are studies that correlate a susto diagnosis with measurably worse health.

The structural, which is the interesting one: the model says that after trauma, a piece of you is missing, and is still at the place of the event. And that treatment requires return to the spot, naming, and ritual closure.

You do not need to believe anything to recognise that this description of trauma is functionally accurate — and that modern approaches converge on a similar shape from another road.

18. Temazcal: the bath as technology

temazcalli — from tema (“to bathe in steam”) + calli (“house”). The house of steam.

What it is

A low domed structure of stone or clay, with a small entrance. Fire-heated stones, water with herbs poured on them, steam. Striking with bundles of plants.

It is attested as pre-Hispanic, with archaeological remains at many sites.

Where it was used

• The puerperium — the main use. The mother enters with the midwife, repeatedly, in the weeks after birth
• Joints, skin, respiratory conditions
• Cleansing from tlazolli
• Preparation before important events

The deity

The temazcal is associated with Toci, “our grandmother”, who is also called Temazcalteci — “the grandmother of the bath”. The entrance is often depicted as her body.

The image is clear and explicit: you enter the womb and are reborn. The low dome, the darkness, the heat, the humidity, the stooping to come out.

How it ties to the preceding

It is heat therapy — that is, therapy that works directly on the tonalli (chapter 5), which is heat.

And it is simultaneously a cleansing — removal of tlazolli (chapter 11). In the same step, you warm the vital force and wash off the pollution.

The warning

Hot ceremonies in a confined space have killed people when performed without the tradition’s knowledge. The best-known incident is in Sedona, Arizona in 2009: three deaths and dozens of medical evacuations at a decontextualised “ceremony” with paid participants.

The mechanism is not mysterious: hyperthermia, dehydration, electrolyte imbalance — and social pressure not to leave.

In the tradition, the person who controls duration and brings people out is part of the technique.

19. Where one goes after death — and why it is not judged

This is perhaps the most foreign chapter for a reader with a Christian or karmic background, and it deserves attention.

The destination after death is determined by the MANNER of death. Not by the life you lived.

There is no judgment. There is no reward for virtue, nor punishment for vice.

The four destinations

1. Mictlan — the ordinary death. For those who died of illness, old age, anything ordinary. The teyolia makes a four-year journey through nine levels, with trials: a river crossed with the help of a dog, mountains that clash, a wind of obsidian knives.

At the end it arrives at the lord of Mictlan — and ceases to exist. It is not hell; it is dissolution.

2. Tlalocan — death by water. For those who drowned, were struck by lightning, or died of “wet” illnesses (dropsy, gout, certain skin conditions).

It is a place of abundance: green, with water, plants, song. The closest thing to a paradise.

3. Tonatiuh ilhuicac — the sun’s heaven. And here the most remarkable detail. There go:

• Warriors who fell in battle
• Captives who were sacrificed
• And women who died in childbirth

Death in childbirth was considered death in battle. The woman had “captured” a creature and fell doing so. They were called cihuateteo, “woman-goddesses”.

The distribution is symmetric: the warriors accompany the sun from dawn to noon; the women from noon to dusk.

4. Chichihualcuauhco — the tree of nourishment. For infants who died before weaning. A tree from whose branches hang breasts that drip milk. The children feed there until they are born again.

Why it matters

Because it shows something about the whole system:

Ethics is not accounting with a reckoning at the end.

The good life is not an investment with a payout after death. It is an obligation here: you pay your debt to the community and the gods while you live (chapter 1). What happens afterward is a question of how you left, not how you behaved.

And this has a direct consequence for the logic of chapter 24.

20. The medicines of the gods

Here, as warned in chapter 0, more care is needed than elsewhere — because there is a great deal of confusion.

This chapter gives no instruction for use, no dosage and no method. It is not a manual. These substances are dangerous, largely illegal, and outside their context they do not do what is described here.

First, what is NOT Nahua

Ayahuasca. Amazonian — Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil. Other peoples (Shipibo, Shuar, Tukano), thousands of kilometres away. The Nahua did not know it.

And the ritual forms a Westerner meets today are largely modern: Santo Daime was founded in 1930, the União do Vegetal in 1961, and the paid retreat model is more recent still. Amazonian vegetalismo has a genuine system — with plantas maestras each in a different role, and dietas of isolation and restriction. It is real. It is simply from another tradition.

Peyote. Northern Mexico — Huichol, Rarámuri. The Nahua knew it by hearsay as something of the northern peoples, not as their own. The Native American Church was founded in 1918.

What they did have

Picietl, which nobody expects

Strong tobacco was the ubiquitous sacred substance. Priests continually carried a gourd of tobacco (yetecomatl) as a symbol of office. It was used chewed, rubbed on the body, as a protective, as a tonic, as an offering.

In the invocations recorded by Ruiz de Alarcón, tobacco is addressed directly, in the second person, as an auxiliary.

If any substance was central in this tradition, it was this one — not the mushrooms.

Pulque, and what it tells us

The octli is associated with the Centzon Totochtin, “the Four Hundred Rabbits” — deities of drunkenness, one for each degree of it.

But the critical thing is how strictly it was regulated:

• For the ordinary citizen, public drunkenness carried severe penalties, up to death for repetition
• It was permitted to the elderly (generally after 52, the closing of the great cycle)
• And at specific festivals, where it was not only permitted but mandatory

The system’s stance toward drunkenness is neither prohibition nor celebration. It is regulation: when, who, how much.

And now the connection with the rest of the structure — which is the essential point

In the sources, the substances are not used for experience, therapy or personal growth. They are used for divination and diagnosis:

• Where is the lost object?
• Who stole?
• Why did this person fall ill?

And the last question connects directly with Part B:

Where did his tonalli go? Whose ihiyotl struck him? What tlazolli exists in this house?

That is: it is a diagnostic instrument. The question is not “what will I feel” but “what happened, and who owes what” — which is, exactly, the central idea of chapter 1.

The modern reading — inner journey, personal therapy, the plant as teacher for you — is Western individualism placed onto a system that was communal and reciprocal.

María Sabina

She was not Nahua — she was Mazatec, from Huautla in Oaxaca. But her story belongs here, because it is the clearest argument for everything above.

In 1955 she received the American banker R. Gordon Wasson in a mushroom ceremony. In 1957 Life published his report. There followed a wave of foreigners in her village.

What happened to her afterward:

• The community held her responsible for the invasion
• Her house was burned
• Her son was murdered
• She was interrogated by the authorities
• She died in poverty in 1985

And she stated that from then on the mushrooms had lost their power — because, as she put it, from the moment the foreigners came they ceased to function as they had before.

Whatever one believes about the pharmacology, the historical fact stands: the extraction of a practice from its context is not a neutral act, and the cost is paid by specific people.

21. Huehuetlatolli: the words of the elders

huehuetlatolli — huehue (“old, ancient”) + tlatolli (“word, speech”). “The old word.”

This is a body of formalised rhetorical speeches delivered at set moments: birth, naming, entry into school, marriage, assumption of office, death. Book VI of the Florentine Codex is full of them.

What they really are

They are the moral education of the tradition, in oral form. And they are extraordinarily specific.

The speech of the father to the son, or the mother to the daughter, does not say “be a good person”. It says, indicatively: how to walk in the street — neither too fast nor too slow. How to speak — neither too loud nor whispering. How to eat. What not to look at. How to dress — neither showily nor sloppily. How to listen without interrupting.

The central moral concept

And it is not purity, not courage, not piety. It is measure and decency: not to shame your own, not to stand out improperly, to keep your place with dignity.

The central fear expressed again and again is the shame you bring on the family and the community — not personal guilt.

This is exactly consistent with chapter 11: ethics is relational. The question is not the state of your soul; it is your effect on others.

The recurring tone

The most striking element of the huehuetlatolli is the insistence on the brevity of life and on uncertainty. The earth is described as a place where nobody stays, as a slippery passage.

This is not pessimism in the modern sense. It is the direct consequence of chapter 1 and chapter 3: the body is on loan and the world is precarious. So the stance that fits is attention, gratitude and seriousness — not certainty.

22. In ixtli, in yollotl: face and heart

The phrase in ixtli, in yollotl — “the face, the heart” — is the way to say “the complete human being”.

It is a difrasismo: two words that together mean a third thing (chapter 25).

What each means

• ixtli (face) — the personality, the identity, what you are in the eyes of others. Not the look; the form you have taken.
• yollotl (heart) — the will, the motive, the dynamic interiority (chapter 6).

So education, ixtlamachiliztli, is literally “to give wisdom to someone’s face”.

The tlamatini

Book X describes the sage with a series of images: he is light and torch, mirror, road and guide; he causes others to acquire a face, he gives them a mirror to see themselves in.

And there is the inverse description, of the bad sage: one who hides things, misleads, makes people lose their face.

The mirror metaphor is central — and not accidental: the greatest god is called Tezcatlipoca, “Smoking Mirror”. Knowledge is represented as reflection, not as possession.

And the aim of education

Contrary to what one would expect, the goal is not information, not skill, not even virtue in the abstract sense.

It is: that the person acquire a stable face and a stable heart — that is, become someone specific, recognisable, with a steady will, who is not swept away.

And the fundamental verb here is “to take root” — which takes us directly to chapter 26.

23. Ten practical principles

There is no such list in the tradition. The following is a synthesis. Each principle is marked [source] if it comes directly from the texts, [ethnography] if from living practice, [modern] if it is my own formulation.

1. Ask what you owe, not what you lack [source]

The foundational question of the system is not “how do I become better?” but “what do I owe, to whom, and am I aware of it?”. It is a different question and it produces different acts.

2. The world does not stand on its own [source]

Nothing is guaranteed — not even the sun. Whatever exists, exists because it is actively maintained, and the maintenance is collective. The assumption that things will continue on their own is, in this system, the foundational error.

3. The centre, not the peak [source]

The human work is not ascent. It is to stand in the middle — between sky and underworld, between opposites that are not reconciled. Nepantla.

4. Your state leaks [source]

The ihiyotl does not stay inside you. Your anger, your disturbance, your pollution are in the room, and they strike the weakest first. There is no “my own business”.

5. After terror, return to the spot [ethnography]

The logic of susto: after trauma, something stayed there. The procedure includes return to the place, naming of what happened, and explicit closure. Avoiding the spot preserves the loss.

6. Your day gives you force, not an outcome [source]

You get a specific constitution and specific tendencies. You do not get a result. And the force can be squandered by negligence — the calendar book itself says this explicitly.

7. Heat for what has been exhausted [source/ethnography]

The tonalli is heat. Lethargy, sadness, wasting are treated with warmth, steam, rhythm and contact — not with analysis. The temazcal is a therapy that works on the body, not on thought.

8. Regulation, not prohibition nor freedom [source]

The stance toward drunkenness is exemplary: neither forbidden nor free — when, who, how much. The same for fasting, for sexuality, for joy. The system does not subtract; it places.

9. Do not stand out improperly [source]

The central moral measure of the huehuetlatolli is moderation in public conduct: how you walk, how you speak, how you dress. Neither display nor neglect. Dignity is visible and it is a responsibility to your own.

10. Acquire face and heart [source]

The ultimate aim is not knowledge, not ecstasy. It is to become someone specific, with a stable will, who is not swept away — and to be a mirror for others.

The essential about the essentials

They are not ten. They are one, seen from ten angles:

You are not the owner of your body or of your state. You are the holder of a loan, inside a network, and what happens to you concerns others as well.

24. The sacrifice

It cannot be omitted, it cannot be hidden in a footnote, and it should not be sensationalised.

The logic

It is not bloodthirst. It is the consistent consequence of the cosmology of chapter 1:

The gods bled themselves so that humans could exist. The sun moves because a god was sacrificed. The world is the fifth and will collapse.

So there is a debt, and it is paid in the same currency: blood and life.

The term is nextlahualli — “the settlement”. The blood is called chalchiuhatl, “precious water”.

And the principle was applied first to oneself: autosacrifice with agave thorns or stingray spines was daily, mandatory for priests and nobles, and painful. There was no “I sacrifice others instead of myself”.

The scale — what we know and what we do not

The Spanish sources inflate. The figure of 80,400 victims at the inauguration of the Great Temple (1487) given by some sources is arithmetically impossible: it would require a rate of dozens of deaths per minute for days without interruption. It is propaganda.

Archaeology, however, confirms substantial reality. The excavations of the huei tzompantli — the great skull rack beside the Great Temple — begun in 2015, have revealed a tower and racks with hundreds of skulls in the excavated section, of men, women and children, with clear traces of ritual death. And Offering 48 at the Great Temple contained the remains of dozens of small children, sacrificed to Tlaloc.

So: real, systematic, institutionalised, on a scale of thousands over decades. Not tens of thousands in four days.

Two things that must not be confused

First, the Spanish use of the argument. Human sacrifice was used as a justification for the conquest by people who were simultaneously conducting massacres, imposing forced labour that killed uncounted numbers, and burning people in Europe over doctrinal differences.

Second — and this is important — this does not cancel the first. The fact that the accuser was a hypocrite does not make the act acceptable. Children were killed. It was real, and it was terrible.

And the philosophically interesting point

Sacrifice is not a deviation from the Nahua cosmology. It is its strictly consistent consequence.

If the world stands only through active maintenance, and if the currency of maintenance is life, then mass sacrifice is not an excess — it is correct calculation within given premises.

And here is the lesson, which concerns not only the Nahua:

An internally consistent system with a wrong starting point does not self-correct. Consistency drives it deeper.

The very thing that made this cosmology impressively organised is the same thing that led it there.