Ometeotl

[Michael McCafferty]

Michel and los otros listeros,

The founder of analytical psychology James Hillman in the conclusion to 
his book titled _Anima_ proposes that the use of the concept "tandem" 
can be of more benefit than the use of "duality" or "opposite". Perhaps 
this is something that can be worked into the study of ancient 
Mesoamerica.

Bien a vous,

Michael


Quoting Michel Oudijk <oudyk at hotmail.com>:

>
> Dear Listeros,
>
>
>
> Joe's words are wise one:
>
>
>
> Given this kind of variation, I would hesitate to identify any
> "e", "ex", or "ei" as a token of "eyi". And even more, I would walk
> with great trepidation with regard to making a statement about the
> worldview of a culture on the basis of such an identification.
>
>
> His very specific example has consequences on broad levels of our
> respective disciplines. Scholars apply certain analyses and then use
> their results to make statements about indigenous societies. After
> all, that's what we do. But there are dangerous pitfalls there and
> the discussion on Ometeotl is a good one as far as that's concerned.
> In the literature Ometeuctli is too often regarded as the god of
> duality intimately related with the "Mesoamerican concept of
> duality", while the first question is if Ometeuctli can be regarded
> as a god of duality at all. And I'm not speaking in favor or against
> here. Several authors have suggested that 'ome' actually may refer to
> 'bones' with, therefore, no reason whatsoever to see any duality in
> it. But even if we would agree that 'ome' refers to 'two', how do we
> get to duality? Two automatically means duality? And what does
> duality mean? In many publications 'duality' is regarded as typical
> Mesoamerican but if 'duality' is regarded as it used to be (or still
> is) regarded in (sixteenth-seventeenth century) Europe, than I would
> have serious arguments against such an existense in Mesoamerica. Many
> authors have tried to get out of the 'duality' problem and refer to
> many Mesoamerican concepts as 'oppositional', 'complementary', 'part
> of dichotomy', etc, etc. But this doesn't get us any further if we
> are not specific about what we mean when we use such terminology.
> Even though 'duality' is considered an essential part of Mesoamerican
> cultures by many if not the majority of scholars, this doesn't
> necessarilly mean that this is actually the case. But more
> importantly, and to come back to Joe's words, we have to be aware
> what is hard data and what is our interpretation in the literature.
>
>
>
> On top of all this we also have to be very careful in our use of
> sources. The 'trinity' issue related with Ometeuctli come straight
> out of the Italian commentary to the pictography of the Codex
> Vaticano A. We have to be extremely careful with such commentaries as
> these are European colonialist views on Mesoamerican religion and
> society. Several authors have faced the problems of glosses in
> Mesoamerican codices and there shouldn't be any reason for using
> these sources without any critical analysis.
>
>
>
> Un abrazo,
>
>
>
> Michel
>
>
>
>> Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:21:36 -0400
>> From: campbel at indiana.edu
>> To: ipedrozar at gmail.com
>> CC: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
>> Subject: Re: [Nahuat-l] Ometeotl
>>
>> Pedro,
>>
>> Things are frequently not as simple as we think they are... or wish
>> they were. If they were, I might be a chemist. But I'm glad I'm not.
>> I wouldn't have missed Nahuatl (and Nahuat-l) for anything.
>>
>> When we find that morphemes have variant forms, it is natural to
>> wonder if a particular form isn't connected with a particular "meaning
>> unit" (i.e., morpheme) that we are familiar with. If we are going to
>> entertain the possibility of that connection, we are frequently faced
>> the necessity of building "semantic bridges" between the basic
>> meanings of forms and the meanings of other forms (usually in
>> combination with others.
>>
>> An example:
>>
>> 1) When I started the English translation and morphological
>> analysis of Molina's 1571 Nahuatl-Spanish dictionary in about 1970, I
>> hadn't read Carochi -- and Andrews' and Karttunen's works were still
>> in the future.
>> I looked at Molina's entry:
>> Atlacatl. marinero , o mal hombre.
>>
>> The first part looked obvious... ("if Nahuatl morphology is *this*
>> simple..." I thought).
>> "a(tl)" = 'water' + "tlaca(tl)" = 'person, man' == "a-tlaca(tl)" --
>> 'water-man, sailor'.
>> But the second Spanish gloss made me pause -- what was bad about
>> sailors? And then I remembered reading that the people who took their
>> dugout canoes around the canals of central Mexico, peddling fruit,
>> vegetables, and game, sometimes left the people at their stopping
>> place less than pleased with their behavior. That seemed like a
>> satisfactory semantic bridge to me. So the behavior of water-persons
>> was a likely explanation for the extended meaning, even though there
>> is nothing inherent in 'water' or "atl" that hints at evil or bad
>> behavior.
>>
>> Years later, I benefitted from Carochi, Andrews, and Karttunen,
>> and learned that "a:tl" has a long vowel, and that the initial
>> element of "the other meaning" not only has a short vowel, but a
>> glottal stop as well --"ah-". Or, "ah-" 'not' + "tlacatl" 'person,
>> human' = 'not human, bad'. (It can be noted that I still don't
>> always write vowel length, but at least now, I admit it.)
>>
>>
>> The moral of the story is that all that seems simple may not be.
>> ...and that there is always more to know.
>>
>> ................
>>
>> On the issue of "ometeotl", I would first suggest that it may not
>> be a single word, maybe a two word phrase. There are other apparent
>> words might deceive us:
>>
>> coatlicue name of a divinity
>> really: coatl i-cue (her skirt is snakes)
>>
>> Coatlichan name of a town
>> really coatl i-chan (snake's house)
>>
>> Atlihuetzia name of a town (in Tlaxcala)
>> really atl i-huetziya(n) (water's falling place -- waterfall)
>>
>> .............................
>>
>> On the issue of the vowel dropping behavior of "o:me" and "e:yi",
>> the facts just don't support a simple "they drop their final vowels
>> before X" statement.
>>
>> "e:yi" obeys the general rule that "y" usually drops in direct
>> contact with "i", as in "ayi, celiya, chichiya, chiya,
>> ciyacatl, ihcuiya, piya, etc." It happens too after the other
>> front vowel "e", but not with such regularity: "ceya, meya".
>> So "eyi" shows up frequently as "ei".
>>
>> As Ivan and Mario recently pointed out, when "y" occurs in final
>> position, it changes to "x" ('sh'):
>>
>> castolcan omexcan in eighteen places
>> cempoalpa omexpa. twenty-three times
>> chicuexpa. eight times
>> excampa nacaceh triangular
>>
>> Sometimes "yi" deletes and leaves only the "e" segment:
>>
>> epantli. three rows
>> oc epoalcan in another sixty places
>> epoalilhuitl sixty days
>>
>>
>> Given this kind of variation, I would hesitate to identify any
>> "e", "ex", or "ei" as a token of "eyi". And even more, I would walk
>> with great trepidation with regard to making a statement about the
>> worldview of a culture on the basis of such an identification.
>>
>> Iztayomeh,
>>
>> Joe
>>
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