Teochan.org

Teochan means “Home of the Gods” in Nahuatl. This site aims to provide the foundation of a vibrant and living 21st century religion based on the beliefs of the pre-Conquest Mexica, intended for those without an in-person practice community. We call this path Teotecayotl, the way of the people of the Teteoh.

What do we believe?

Divinity

We are a group of polytheists, pantheists, animists, and monists. However we conceive of the sacred and divine, we pay honor to many different godheads called the Teteoh, who have many manifestations and take many forms. These divinities are not organized into the Western conception of a pantheon, and move in ways more like a family, or “unfoldings” of each other.

Duality

Everything in our understanding of Creation manifests through the movement, dialogue, and dance between opposites. There is good and bad in everything: life and death, wet and dry, hot and cold, active and receptive. We don't aim to get rid of one and reify the other; instead, we try to walk the path of moderation, knowing that good and bad are only tempoarary states, and that all things in existence are in constant flux.

Meaning Through Process

We believe that truth and meaning are things that need to be manifested through movement. Nothing exists in a static, abstracted form separate from Creation - ideas, objects, beings, and even time itself must be enacted and embodied through right relationship, right action, and right speech, in order to be brought to fullness.

Sacrifice

We see all of what we know as Creation as being the product of the work, love, and sacrifice of the ancestors and the Teteoh, and we participate in this cycle of reciprocity to show our gratitude through the humbling act of sacrifice: we offer up food, incense, beautiful objects, fasting, poetry, dance, labors of love, and for those called to do so, safe autosacrifice.

Living Well

At the end of the day, our religion places much importance on living a dignified, beautiful, well-ordered life. Honoring the Teteo, creating harmony through right action and good speech, remembering the ancestors and celebrating life in spite of its fleeting and precarious nature forms the bedrock of our worldview.

What we stand for:

We are a group of religionists from a wide variety of backgrounds coming together to honor the Teteo and the cultures that knew them first.
We are many colors, ethnicities, orientations, genders, abilities.
We stand firmly against the idea that only certain kinds of people can know or learn about the Teteo, and maintain that honest worship of them is open to anyone provided that contemporary Indigenous practices are respected.
We acknowledge the sovereignty of the 68 ethnic Indigenous groups living in Mexico today, and we support their struggles to keep their traditional lifeways under capitalism and colonialism.

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