The Legend of the nahual Of Mexico is that history belonging to a mythical being, framed in the magico-popular culture of a wide area of America.
Its development has been especially favored in Mexico and the Mesoamerica . These countries are related to a rich aboriginal culture, with deep roots in magical events and explanations of facts related to the nature in which they live and in which they feel fully integrated.
The nahual represented in the Codex Borgia.
This nature to which they assimilate their gods, myths and beliefs in general, is what they admire and fear at the same time. That is why nahual represents this fusion of fear, admiration and unattainable powers by the majority of mere mortals, who only bow to that unequaled power.
This mythological being is nothing more than the faithful reflection of the worldview of these peoples, which has been transmitted from generation to generation, modifying in part by the schooling and the irruption of the modern world in their ancestral territories and culture.
This character usually does not enjoy good reputation, given his attributes of supernatural power. Also by the maléficos characteristics with what usually is identified, in the great majority of the cases.
Its name presents variations. It can be called Nahual or nagual, even Nawal (In Nahuatl: nahualli, means 'hidden, hidden, disguise'), whose name belongs to words, in general, of origin Maya .
What is nahual?
The nahual is described as a very powerful sorcerer, or a being with supernatural abilities, whose gift is to adopt at will the form of any animal that truly exists (not mythological animals).
This term has double value, because it refers so much to the person who has that supernatural capacity as to the animal that acts as its guardian animal or that represents this particular person.
Within the legends of nahual, we find the belief that all human beings have a nahual or guardian animal that identifies us and / or represents according to our particular characteristics and gifts.
This concept is expressed and manifested in different aboriginal languages, adopting different meanings and adapting according to the particular contexts that are their own. Of course, always within the supernatural or magical.
The most widespread idea among indigenous groups is the broader concept of Nahualism, Like that practice or capacity that some people possess to transform themselves into animals, any element of nature or even perform acts of sorcery.
Main features of nahual
According to some traditions, there is a belief that each person, at birth, has incorporated or associated the spirit of a particular animal, who is responsible for providing protection and guidance.
To perform their protective function, these spirits often manifest as a diffuse animal image that appears in dreams, in order to properly advise their protégé or alert him to danger.
Some resemble their personal characteristics or dowries to the animal that is their nahual or particular guardian animal, as an explanation to the particular talent that makes him stand out widely among his peers.
For example, if a woman, whose nahual corresponds to a cenzontle, a bird with a beautiful song, will have a specially gifted voice to sing. That is, a characteristic in direct relation with his guardian animal.
However, not all of them have such a distant or symbolic relationship with their nahuals, since it is believed that many shamans and sorcerers of central Mesoamerica can develop a close bond with their representative animals.
This gift gives them an enormous variety of animal"powers"that they can take advantage of at will. For example, they may have the extremely acute vision of a bird of prey such as the sparrow hawk, the ultra-sensitive smell of the wolf or the finest ear of the ocelot.
All these extremely acute senses become part of the visionaries, as a part manipulable to their will to be used when they require them.
What is more, some have come to claim that there is a level of witch far more advanced and powerful that can even take the form of their nahuales and use this skill in many different ways.
The danger of these capacities would not be due to the power itself, but to the use that its bearer can make of them. It is necessary to consider that there are subjects with very bad intentions and that they can cause the evil in its community or to use it exclusively for its benefit.
Origin of the word nahual
In Mayan language, this conceptualization is expressed under the word Chulel , Whose literal translation is"spirit." The word derives from the root Chul , Which in turn means"divine."
The word 'nahual' comes from the term ' Nahualli , Whose origin is widely discussed and its meaning leads to many interpretations, so its true origin is lost throughout history.
Among the many theories that have been proposed about its presumed origin are:
As from the verb « Nahualtía »
In this case, its meaning is"hiding, hiding", which can also be translated as"disguise"or"cover", that is, cover or protect with a rebozo.
Originating in the verb « Nahuali Nahuala »
It relates to the idea of "cheating, dissimulating." This idea is always based on the sense of deception and surprise.
Originating in any of the verbs that contain the root « Nāhua- »
Relative directly to the verb"to speak": « Nahuati ", speak loudly; TO" Nahuatia Speak with power and energy, command; TO" Nahualtia "To speak or speak to someone.
As a Zapotec loan
Other researchers-historians and linguists suggest that the word nahual was a loan borrowed from the Zapotec, having its origin in the root « Na- "Which means"to know, to know", always in the context of a mystical or mystical knowledge.
Different meanings or attributions of nahual
Due to the obscure origins of the term, as well as to its wide diffusion in the Mesoamerican towns and cultures and to the diversity of sources that gave rise to the nagualismo, there is not a single meaning attributable to the term" Nahual '. There are certain matching points.
The nahual as a witch
The most widespread meaning of nahualism, assimilated early by the Conquerors Spanish, attributes to the nahual magical powers or characteristics with varying degrees of malignity.
They relate to nahual with a human being who, through the practice of magical arts or sorcery, has the power to transform into an animal, inanimate object, or even a meteorological phenomenon, such as lightning or a cloud.
While there are ancient records that make explicit that these nahuales could apply their magical powers to do good or evil, the relation of this character to an evil being is the predominant vision, both in antiquity and in the current belief.
It is believed that it is Especially avid at the time of attacking unprotected creatures, like infants, for example.
The nahual as the manifestation of a guardian animal or guardian spirit
This is another interpretation that has been attributed to nahualism, in which the tutelary animal has an intimate connection with its protected or human being to which it protects.
In such a way that the afflictions that afflict one, are unfailingly suffered by the other, both in the corporal plane as in the spiritual plane.
Hence arises the fervent belief, manifested in the multiple narrations of the deaths inexplicably suffered by people at the moment that their animal-nahual has passed away.
The nahual understood as a psychic entity
The hypothesis is also Nahualli , Apart from giving meaning to the witch or to the being that mutates or transforms, also serves to give an explanation to that transformation.
This ability lies in one of the three soul entities that the Nahuas recognized as part of the human body: Tonight , Teja and Ihiyotl . The latter, according to generalized Aboriginal thought, concentrated the power that allowed the being of such transformation, with which it could perpetuate eventual damages to people who were wanted to harm.
Such capacity or power could be acquired by: inheritance, by determining the calendrical sign in which the subject was born or by obtaining certain initiatory rituals of dark origin.
Other non-magic interpretations
The nahualismo thought like secret society
Within the currents of thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the attractive and daring hypothesis arises that nahuales as a whole constituted a" Powerful secret organization '.
This organization would be made up of people from different cultures and languages whose meeting points were the practice of hidden magic rituals and against the Spanish conquistadors.
Hence, according to some researchers, it can be explained that, as a constant, nahuales were found as leaders of most of the indigenous uprisings of Mexico during the period of conquest and colonial times in the towns of Mexico And Guatemala.
History of nahualism
While this point is somewhat difficult to prove, it is believed that one of the earliest occurrences of this concept occurs in Mexico, Aztec context , Which lists the trades developed by the Aztecs in their usual work.
There is mentioned this mythical figure, equating it with a sorcerer or sorcerer. This"office"is credited with a dual ability to operate with its magical powers: both to the prejudice and to the benefit of people.
In Mexico, they have been given the name of nahuales to the witches that can change of form. For them, nahual is a form of introspection that allows the practitioner to have close contact with the spiritual world.
Thanks to this superior introspective power, solutions to many of the problems afflicting those who seek his advice could be more easily found.
Already since pre-Hispanic times, they are attributed to the gods of Mesoamerican cultures such as Mayan, Toltec And Mexican, among many others, the divine gift of taking the form of an animal (called nahual) in order to get in touch with the human race that gives worship.
According to the traditions that extended in Michoacán, nahuales, in some cases, could also be transformed into elements of nature.
Each deity took the form of one or two animals, typically, with which it was inevitably related. For example, the nahual of Tezcatlipoca Was the jaguar, although it could also take the form of a coyote, while the animal of Huitzilopochtli was a hummingbird.
The gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca
As seen in these cultures, the influence and interaction of the gods with humans in the pre-Hispanic world was often exercised in the form of an animal.
This half-god-half animal entity, used to test travelers who dared venture into these territories.
In large part, these stories are related to the god Tezcatlipoca, lord of the sky and the land of Mexico, in its coyote form.
Quetzalcoatl has been mistakenly linked with the nahuals, although he is well known in his facet of being a human being or ruling king, rather than with an animal form.
Although Quetzalcoatl is identified with the name of"feathered serpent", this form was not with which it made contact with the human beings. The coyote was the form taken by Quetzalcoatl in his journey through the subterranean world, exempt from human contact.
Geographical domain
A brief explanation must be made to differentiate shamanism from nahualism:
Shamanism is a spiritual movement of very wide scope, assimilated by those cultures with technological backwardness and more rudimentary.
On the other hand, the nahualismo is focused mainly in Mexico, Guatemala And Honduras and also has a broader ideology and broader support in what is its approach to unifying animal-human cosmovision.
Today's nahualism
Nahual is still prevalent in Mesoamerican culture. It continues to maintain this mixture between a mythical being and a healer. It is a mixture of respect and fear at the same time.
It possesses that ancestral remembrance that takes us back to the worship of the divinities based on the elements of nature, especially in the water.
The question is, then, what has been the role of keeping this legend alive in the villages, now with a technological development on the rise, with a greater reach of literacy and the scientific explanation of our world.
Apparently, it could be explained as a form of defense or of keeping pure and unscathed the vestiges of an ancestral culture.
At the same time it shows that there are still many aspects of natural life without explanation, or that have not been satisfactorily elucidated by"common sense".
So, in the end, it would remain as a hidden and primitive safeguard to all this technological and automated world, that has been incapable of accommodating the natural and our origins as elements conforming the same land that we tread and in which we can still Transform us
References
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