CHAPTER 14 THE RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS OF MESOAMERICA 515When the child is conceived,
when he is placed in the womb,
his destiny (tonalli) comes to him there;
it is sent by the Lord of Duality.(Florentine Codex 1969, Book VI, Chapter XXII)In a recent commentary on this text, the historian Miguel León-Portilla writes the
following:In several of the books where divine presences are depicted one finds also the hiero-
glyphs which denote the tonalli,the individual human destinies which, at given moments
and places, are brought by the gods. These tonalli,destinies, will determine everything in
each human life, from birth to death. The tonalli is essentially an individual’s i-macehual,
“that which is granted to one, that which one deserves.” Thus, the tonallibears, for all
people on earth, the consubstantial origin and imprint of the divine source of life; it is
this essence that determines what is going to happen in accordance with prearranged
schemes. The unveiling of this predestined plan and propitiation of its divine source are
vital to the human condition. (León-Portilla 1993:46)When this belief system came into contact with Christianity, its fundamental “oth-
erness” became apparent to the missionaries and other Spanish observers. Jorge Klor
de Alva has recently summarized these differences:... there was no autonomous will at the core of the self since every human being was a
microcosm reflecting the forces that made up the cosmos at large. Furthermore, there was
no clear boundary between personal will and the supernatural and natural forces that
governed the universe. Consequently, acts that were believed truly to harmonize the con-
trary influences of the gods (saints, spirits, “devils”), rather than right intentions per se,
mapped out the terrain of the ethical individual. Therefore, behavior, performance and
punctiliousness, rather than will, contemplation or motivation were the key concerns of
the Nahua who strove to be moral. (Klor de Alva 1993:183–184)
Although Aztec state religion was of course enormously more complex than this
native theory of self alone reveals, it has been argued that Aztec spirituality as a whole
was fundamentally preoccupied with the problem of ascertaining and fulfilling the
destiny that humans were given, individually and collectively, by the Lord of Duality.
From this logically follows the need for humanity to propitiate and reciprocate for
the gift of life. This requirement underlies the theme of human sacrifice, for which
the Aztecs were noted but little understood.THE MESOAMERICAN SPIRITUAL
WORLD MEETS THE WEST
By the end of the sixteenth century, well before the Puritans arrived on the rocky
shore of what is now Massachusetts, Mesoamerica had been profoundly transformed.
New Spain—as Mexico and Central America were called by the Spaniards—was fully
established as one of the two linchpins (with Peru) of Spain’s New World empire.