Teotl

Teotl is usually translated to “god” or “spirit”, and we use the term to refer to deities in the singular. It is a complex concept that does not translate well into English: as a quality of animate matter, it refers to things/beings/people that are god-like, terrible, awe-inspiring, powerful, etc.

According to James Maffie in Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion, "teotl" is an agenitive, monistic force that manifests itself in Creation in pairs of opposites in a kind of dualism. Below, we discuss both understandings.

Teotl as Power

While teotl is used as the term for a single deity or spirit being ("that Teotl" versus "those Teteoh"), we do know that teotl was used as a way to describe things that seemed to echo or manifest the power and influence of divinity. We find ample evidence of this in personal names such as Tlacateotl, "he is a man-like god". Another good example of this is the way that Cortez was received by Moteuczoma - a highly complex social encounter colored by religious conventions, deeply formalized etiquette, and a worldview that saw "teotl" manifest in many different kinds of powerful things and people. (For more on this encounter, see Molly H. Basset's The Fate of Earthly Things.)

It is in this way that we believe it's possible to make a useful comparison between "teotl" and the animistic Japanese concept of "kami", which also refers to a complex of ideas and experiences of the way spiritual agencies manifest in the world.

Teotl as Force

"Although essentially processive and devoid of any permanent order, the ceaseless becoming of the cosmos is nevertheless characterized by an overarching balance, rhythm, and regularity: one provided by and constituted by teotl... Dialectical polar monism holds that: (1) the cosmos and its contents are substantively and formally identical with teotl; and (2) teotl presents itself primarily as the ceaseless, cyclical oscillation of polar yet complementary opposites.

Teotl's process presents itself in multiple aspects, preeminent among which is duality. This duality takes the form of the endless opposition of contrary yet mutually interdependent and mutually complementary polarities that divide, alternately dominate, and explain the diversity, movement, and momentary arrangement of the universe. These include: being and not-being, order and disorder, life and death, light and darkness, masculine and feminine, dry and wet, hot and cold, and active and passive. Life and death, for example, are mutually arising, interdependent, and complementary aspects of one and the same process."

— Aztec Philosophy: Exploring a World in Motion