EUROPEAN AND NEW AGE DISTORTIONS OF OUR NAHUATL COSMOLOGY AND LANGUAGE
There are many mis-translations, mis-interpretations, mis-understandings, regarding our history, culture, and languages, but the worst is in regards to our Mexica cosmology.
Three of the most consistent error translations/interpretations/understandings are the Nahuatl words Calli, Quetzalcoatl, and Teotl.
Calli is translated as "House", when there is a word for house: "Chantli". The image on the calendar is of a temple, not a house. The proper translations should be "structure", since an "acalli" is a small boat/canoe, and not a "water house". Therefore "acalli" is literally a water structure".
A teocalli is a structure that is "sacred/holy, thing close to Our Creator". Europeans have dumbed down some extremely complex cosmological Mexica ideas in order to make the ideas simple for the European mind: a Euro-comforting way to misunderstand our cosmology. That way of translating is totally wrong. Tetotl is not a "god" or "God". Something that is Teotl is something that is "Sacred, holy, close to Our Creator"; that is as close as you can get to a translation, but that is not an exact translation.
Quetzalcoatl is mis-translated as "Feathered Serpent", the word for feather is "ihuitl". Quetzal in this word means precious or beautiful, quetzalli. Coatl can mean both serpent or twin.
The image that we normally see shows a serpent with quetzalli feathers, not any kind of feathers (quetzalli feathers), making it not a feathered serpent, but a precious serpent.
Imagery of Quetzalcoatl is literal and figurative simultaneously. You can see the "precious serpent" image in the illustrated stone image (second image above). That image represents a beautiful serpent, which is an allusion to the "beautiful twin/duality" in its cosmological reference (see first image above where instead of the precious quetzalli feathers, the serpent is covered in the precious turquoise stone---and it is both a serpent and a twin in this image).
Nahuatl is beautiful but it is a complex and sophisticated language and it is made up of many metaphors and allusions that are not clearly understood today.
This is just an introduction to the complex cosmology that our genius ancestors used to study astronomy, cosmology, and Our Creator. Please don't dumb it down, distort it, or accept the Euro and New Age simplistic distortions of our heritage.
Olin Tezcatlipoca Copyright © 2016
Introduction To The Materials of The Mexica Movement:
Lectures of Olin Tezcatlipoca