LEGEND OF THE NAHUAL OF MEXICO: ORIGIN, WHERE IT COMES FROM AND HISTORY - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The legend of the nahual of Mexico is a story belonging to a mythical being, framed in the magical-popular culture of a wide area of ​​America. Its development has been especially favored in Mexico and the Mesoamerican area.

These countries are related to a rich Aboriginal culture, with deep roots in magical and explanatory events 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 their gods, myths and beliefs in general assimilate, is the one they admire and fear at the same time. For this reason, the nahual represents this fusion of fear, admiration and powers unattainable by the majority of mere mortals, who only bow to that unparalleled 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, modified in part by schooling and the irruption of the modern world in their ancestral territories and culture.

This character usually does not enjoy a good reputation, given his attributes of supernatural power. Also because of the malefic traits with which it is usually identified, in the vast majority of cases.

Its name presents variations. It can be called Nahual or nagual, even nawal (in Nahuatl: nahualli, it means 'hidden, hidden, disguise'), whose name belongs to words, in general, of Mayan origin.

What is the nahual?

Ceramic figure of the nahual in the Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City. Source: Alejandro Linares Garcia. via Wikimedia Commons)

The nahual is described as a kind of very powerful witch 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, as it refers both to the person who has this supernatural capacity and to the animal that acts as his guardian animal or that represents this person in particular.

Within the legends of the nahual, there is the belief that all human beings have a nahual or tutelary animal that identifies and / or represents us according to our characteristics and particular gifts.

This concept is expressed and manifested in different aboriginal languages, adopting different meanings and adapting itself according to its own particular contexts. Of course, always within the supernatural or magical.

The most widespread idea among indigenous groups is the broader denomination of the concept of nahualism, as that practice or capacity that some people have to transform themselves into animals, any element of nature or even perform acts of sorcery.

Main characteristics of the nahual

Stoneware vase with nahuals from Jalisco, exhibited at the Museo de Artes Populares in Mexico City. Source: Alejandro Linares Garcia. via Wikimedia Commons)

According to some traditions, there is a belief that each person, at birth, has incorporated or associated the spirit of a specific animal, which is responsible for providing protection and being its guide.

To carry out their protective function, these spirits usually manifest themselves as a diffuse animal image that appears in dreams, in order to correctly advise their protégé or alert them to some danger.

Some resemble their characteristics or personal gifts to the animal that is their nahual or tutelary animal in particular, as an explanation for the talent so particular that it makes it stand out widely among its peers.

For example, if a woman, whose nahual corresponds to a cenzontle, a bird with a beautiful song, she will have a voice especially gifted to sing. That is, a characteristic in direct relation to their guardian animal.

However, not all have such a distant or symbolic relationship with their nahuals, as it is believed that many shamans and sorcerers in the central region of Mesoamerica can develop a close bond with their representative animals.

This gift grants them an enormous variety of animal "powers" that they can harness at will. For example, they may have the extremely keen vision of a bird of prey such as the hawk, the ultra-sensitive sense of smell of the wolf, or the fine hearing of the ocelot.

All these extremely heightened senses become part of the seers, as a part that can be manipulated at will to be used at the moment they are required.

Furthermore, some have even affirmed that there is a much more advanced and powerful level of sorcerers who can even adopt the form of their nahuals and use this ability in many different ways.

The danger of these abilities would not be due to the power itself, but to the use that its bearer can make of them. It must be considered that there are individuals with very bad intentions and that they can cause evil in their community or use it exclusively for their benefit.

Origin of the word nahual

Monumental alebrije of a nahual. Source: Salcedo95 via Wikimedia Commons)

In the 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 «

In this case, its meaning is "hide, hide", which can also be translated as "disguise" or "wrap", that is, cover or protect yourself with a shawl.

Originating from the verb «

It is related to the idea of ​​"deceiving, concealing." This idea is always structured based on the sense of deception and surprise.

With origin in one of the verbs that contain the stem «

Directly related to the verb "to speak": "nahuati", to speak loudly; "Nahuatia", to speak with power and energy, to command; «Nahualtia», to address or speak to someone.

As a loan from the Zapotec

Other researchers-historians and linguists suggest that the word nahual was a loan taken from Zapotec, having its origin in the root «na-», which means «to know, to know», always in the context of a mystical knowledge or with magical roots.

Different meanings or attributions of the nahual

Due to the dark origins of the term, as well as its wide diffusion in Mesoamerican peoples and cultures and the diversity of sources that gave rise to Nagualism, there is no single meaning attributable to the term "nahual." Yes there are certain overlapping points.

The nahual as a witch

The most generalized meaning of nahualism, assimilated early by the Spanish conquerors, attributes to the nahual magical powers or characteristics with varying degrees of malignancy.

They relate the nahual to a human being who, through the practice of magical arts or sorcery, has the power to transform himself into an animal, an inanimate object, or even a meteorological phenomenon, such as lightning or a cloud.

Although there are ancient records that make explicit that these nahuals could apply their magical powers to do good or evil, the relationship of this character with an evil entity is the predominant view, both in antiquity and in current belief.

It is believed to be especially avid when it comes to attacking unprotected creatures, such as infants, for example.

The nahual as the manifestation of a tutelary animal or guardian spirit

This is another interpretation that has been attributed to nahualism, in which the guardian animal keeps an intimate connection with its protégé or human being whom it protects.

In such a way that the ailments that afflict one are unfailingly suffered by the other, both on the bodily and spiritual levels.

Hence arises the strong belief, manifested in the multiple accounts of the deaths suffered inexplicably by people at the time that their animal-nahual has died.

The nahual understood as a soul entity

The hypothesis is also handled that the nahualli, apart from giving meaning to the sorcerer 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: tonalli, teyolía and ihiyotl. The latter, according to the generalized aboriginal thought, concentrated the power that allowed the entity this transformation, with which it could perpetrate eventual damage towards people whom it wanted to harm.

This 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 obscure origin.

Nahualism thought as a secret society

Within the currents of thought of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the attractive and daring hypothesis arises that the nahuals 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 magical rituals and being against the Spanish conquerors.

Hence, according to some researchers, the fact that, as a constant, nahuales were found as leaders of most of the indigenous uprisings of Mexico during the period of conquest and the colonial era in the peoples of Mexico can be explained. and Guatemala.

History of Nahualism

Although this point is somewhat difficult to prove, it is believed that one of the oldest appearances of this concept occurs in Mexico, referring to the Aztec context, where the trades that the Aztecs developed in their usual work are listed.

There this mythical figure is mentioned, equating it with a sorcerer or sorcerer. This "trade" is attributed a double ability to act with its magical powers: both to the detriment and benefit of people.

In Mexico, sorcerers who can change shape have been called nahuales. For these, the nahual is a form of introspection that allows those who practice it 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 more easily be found.

Since pre-Hispanic times, the gods of Mesoamerican cultures such as the Mayan, Toltec and Mexican, among many others, have been attributed the divine gift of taking the form of an animal (called nahual) in order to thus come into contact with the human race that worships him.

According to the traditions that spread in Michoacán, the 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 unfailingly 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 Quetzalcóatl and Tezcatlipoca

As is clearly 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 to venture into these territories.

In large part, these stories are related to the god Tezcatlipoca, lord of Mexico's heaven and earth, in his coyote form.

In a wrong way, Quetzalcoatl has been linked with the nahuals, despite the fact that he is well known in his facet as a human being or a ruling king, rather than in an animal form.

Although Quetzalcóatl is identified with the name of "feathered serpent", this form was not with which he made contact with human beings. The coyote was the form that Quetzalcóatl takes on his journey through the underground world, free from human contact.

Geographic domain

A brief previous explanation must be made to differentiate shamanism from nahualism:

Shamanism is a very wide-ranging spiritual movement, assimilated by those cultures with technological backwardness and the most rudimentary.

For its part, Nahualism is focused mainly on Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras and also has a broader ideological development and with a broader support in what is its approach to a unifying animal-human worldview.

Nahualism today

The nahual is still in force in Mesoamerican culture. He 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 has that ancestral remembrance that takes us back to the cult of divinities based on the elements of nature, especially in water.

It is worth wondering then what has been the function of keeping this legend alive in the towns, now with a technological development on the rise, with a greater scope of literacy and scientific explanation of our world.

Apparently, it could be explained as a form of defense or to keep the vestiges of an ancestral culture in a pure and unscathed way.

At the same time, it shows that there are still many aspects of natural life without explanation, or that they have not been able to be satisfactorily elucidated by "common sense".

So, ultimately, it would remain as a recondite and primitive safeguard to this entire technological and automated world, which has been unable to accommodate the natural and our origins as elements that make up the same land that we step on and in which we can still transform us.

References

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