article on Aztecs II

[Richard Haly]

Part of the problem here re: multiple gods vs One Supreme god is the issue
of what a "god" is and without going into it very much here I can
confidently state that what gods are has to do in Mesoamerica  with what
_places_ are and the human interactions with those places which always
include relations of power. Likewise, I'm sure that Spaniards did get Aztec
ideas of divinity wrong, just as other researchers have since. While certain
names, eg. yohualli ehecatl or necoc yaotl or telpochtli may all refer to
Tezcatlipoca (of which there were by some accounts four) this doesn't mean
that one can ignore the context in which such titles might be used. That is
to say it is not appropriate to call a deity by any name at any time. The
context in which Tez may be called one or the other is a question of time
and place. Where we go wrong is in our misguided attempt to
phenomenologically describe some system of Aztec theology apart from
practice.

Richard Haly

P.S. I've explored some of these issues in an analysis of what I argue is a
fictive "ometeotl" in an article "Bare Bones: Re-thinking Mesoamerican
Divinity" in the journal History of Religions February 1992.

----------
>From: CCBtlevine at aol.com
>To: Multiple recipients of list <nahuat-l at server.umt.edu>
>Subject: Re: article on Aztecs
>Date: Sat, Aug 07, 1999, 23:44
>

> There is Centeotl, Ometeotl, yehecatl, naollin, macuilteotl.  I wonder if
> there is some sort of a pattern here?  I wonder if there is support for the
> belief that centeotl comes from centli except for the similarity of names.