What insights into the nature of olin motion-change do the lexicologies of ollin offer? Fray Alonso de Molina translates olli as “a gum from medicinal trees from which is made balls for playing.”11 Molina’s dictionary of classical Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs), the Vocabulario en lengua castellay mexicanay mexi-canay castellana, includes the following related words: ollama (“to play ball with one’s hips”), ollamaliztli (“rubber ball game”), ulli (“tree gum which is medicinal gum from trees and is used for making balls for playing”), and ollo (“something which has medicinal gum from trees”). Molina’s Vocabulario places olin within a family of words that derives from the verb olini (“to move”). Other family members include olinia (“to move, stir, swing, or shake, or to move oneself”), molinia (“for something to move from side to side, swing, sway, or wiggle, or to boil something”), moliniani (“something that moves or stirs, sways from side to side”), neoliniliztli (“movement, shaking, stirring or swaying”), oolin (“aborted, born before time”), tlalolini (“for the earth to tremble, shake, or quiver”), tlaoli-nilia ([intransitive] “for a baby to be born prematurely because of a mishap”), tlaolinilia ([transitive] “to induce the birth of a woman’s baby”), and tlaolinilvztli (“stirring, shaking, swaying something or act of stirring, swaying, shaking or moving something”).
What do these tell us about the nature of olin motion-change? For starters, it strongly indicates that in classical Nahuatl, the kind of movement designated by olin is both more complex and more varied than the simple kind of movement designated by olin in contemporary Huastecan Nahuatl (according to John Sullivan). In classical Nahuatl, olin motion-change includes moving up and down, stirring, swaying from side to side, boiling, trembling, quivering, and shaking back and forth. These tend to consist of two parts: up-and-down, back-and-forth, to-and-fro. By contrast, settling involves a single process of dropping or descending (but not subsequently ascending).12
Andres de Olmos’s Arte de la lengua mexicanay vocabulario contains the following entries: ol[l]ama, n[i]- (“to play ball”), olini (“to abort without violence”), olinia, nitla - (“the moving of the fetus or newborn”), olinilia, nin[o] (“to move, to abort when taking something for it, to move without cause”), and olinilia, nonotal - (“to abort without cause”).13 Remi Simeon states olli (ulli) refers to an elastic gum that comes from the olquauitl tree. He lists olin and ollin as stylistic alternatives of one another and glosses both as “motion.” He translates olinia as “to move, to stir, to boil, to tremble.” Lastly, Simeon claims olin and ollin as well as olinia derive from olini, which he glosses as “to go, to move to stir, to follow its path.”14
Eduard Seler defines olin as “movimiento rodante” (“rolling movement”),15 or as I prefer, “rolling motion-change.” Seler contends olin derives from the primitive radical ol, suggesting something round or circling like a bouncing rubber ball.16 Eva Hunt claims the Nahuatl word for rubber, oli or olli, as well as the verb olini (which Angel Garibay K. translates as “to agitate or move”)17 both derive from ol.18 Doris Heyden maintains ollin or olin (“rubber”) means “motion” because rubber “jumps around as if it were alive.”19 Consequently, reasons Caso, we frequently find ollin in words for things that move.20 Ollin also describes the path and motion-change of the Fifth Sun as it bounces up and down like a rubber ball above and below the earth’s surface. Ulrich Kohler summarizes the understandings of olin in the sixteenth - and seventeenth-century sources as including movement; earthquake; object that hurries, runs, or moves; sun; tremor; tremble, shiver; and path or way. Ol is sometimes translated as “4 Olin” (the Fifth Sun) and other times as “earthquake.”21 Thelma Sullivan derives yol-lotl (“heart”), yoli (“to be born, to revive, to quicken”), and tlaolli (“the dried kernels of corn that sustain life”) from ollin.22
Hunt glosses olin as “something that can be stretched or extended from one place to another or across a given space” as well as “undulant circling, rocking, oscillating or rolling movement.”23 This understanding fits comfortably with the Aztecs’ process metaphysics, with the idea that olin describes a modus operandi of teotl’s processing, and with the idea that olin characterizes one dynamic in the continuing processing of reality, cosmos, and all things. Processes, after all, stretch across and extend through time-place. The same holds for Hunt’s understanding of olin as “undulant circling, rocking, oscillating or rolling movement.” By Aztec lights, change, becoming, and transformation are literally shaped; they have a shape. There is a shape to how things change. This strikes us as odd, for although we are accustomed to thinking of physical motion as having a shape (e. g., elliptical), we are not accustomed to thinking of qualitative change as having a shape. We do not, for example, think of a human being’s transformation from birth, adolescence, adulthood, old age, and death as being shaped. The Aztecs, however, did. And what is that shape? It appears to be the shape of a bouncing ball. Olin-shaped motion-change, becoming, and transformation bounce back and forth; they oscillate and undulate.
Alfredo Lopez Austin agues that olin derives from the primitive radical, ol, which he glosses as “line, curved surface, or volume.”24 From ol he derives ol., meaning “ball, plump body,” from which, in turn, he constructs a four-branched philological tree. The first branch consists of ol (“rubber ball”), ol (“rubber”), and olin (“movement”). Lopez Austin, like Eva Hunt, thus claims that olli (rubber, rubber ball) and olin both derive from ol and that the two are in fact linguistically related pace John Sullivan. The second branch consists of olo (“corncob”). The Aztecs apparently conceived the corn kernels as curving around a corncob’s center or central axis point. The kernels carve out a volume. This pattern is apparent upon examining the widthwise cross-section of a corncob. The third branch consists of olol (“roundness, reunion, covering, heap”) from which derives ololoa (“roundabout”). The fourth and largest branch consists of yol or yul (“something round, ball”) from which derives yol or yul (“the ball,” “heart”) and yol (“life”). Five sub-branches split off from yol (“life”): (i) yol (“one of the animistic entities”) and teyolia (“one of the animistic entities”), (2) yolca (“life”), (3)yoyo (“disgusting animal or insect”), (4)yolqui (“animal”), and (5)yollo (“vitality,” “heart”). From this fifth sub-branch, Lopez Austin further derives yollo (one of the three energies animating not only human beings but also animals, plants, mountains, wind, rivers, and lakes), yollo (“center for a volume, like that of the heart”), and yollo (“axis”).
The foregoing analyses suggest that olin motion-change has a specific shape: it moves up and down and to and fro; it follows an arced, rounded, or curved path; it carves out a volume; it revolves around a central axis; and it has centered. It includes the more simple rising and falling motion of an earthquake
And the more complex pulsating motion of a beating heart or curving motion of stirring a liquid. Olin-defined processes of becoming and transformation are curvaceous and rounded like a ball, a cross-sectioned corncob, and a plump body. Olin-defined transformational processes unify inamic partners such as life~death, day~night, and male~female by curving, rounding, oscillating, and centering them into a single process. Indeed, this shape would seem to be an essential element of what it means to describe these processes as cyclical. Olin motion-change is also vitalizing. It is the shape of the life-sustaining energy of corn and the shape of the vitalizing energy of a fetus’s stirring and coming into life. In short, olin defines the shape of coming-into-life, of cyclical completion, of life-energy generally. Indeed, it defines the shape of life or living per se. Olin life-energy rises and falls. It swings back-and-forth. It pulsates.
The largest branch of ol-rooted words according to Lopez Austin’s etymology consists of yol-derived words. Let’s examine some of Molina’s entries. Molina translates yol as “life,”25 and its derivationyoli as “to live, to be born, to revive, to enliven, to quicken, to come to life, to give life, and to hatch.”26 (To the latter Remi Simeon adds “for flowers to open.”)27 Other yol derivations include28 noyolca (“my nourishment,” “my substance”), toyolca (“our life,” “our sustenance,” “our nourishment”), yoliliztli (“life” [Simeon adds “breath” and “respiration”]29),yolihuani (“something that sustains life”),yolihuitia (“to revive, resuscitate someone”),yoltinemi (“to have life”),yoltoc (“someone alive, among the living”),30 altepeyolloco (“center [or heart] of the city”), aoquichyullo (“coward or of little spirit”), iuhquin iza noyollo (“to recover consciousness”), yoatl (“drink made from raw corn for those who faint”), and yuliuani atl andyuliliz atl (“spring water”; literally, “life-giving water” and “water that will give life,” respectively).
One of the most important yol derivations is teyolia. Molina translates it as “'elalma, o anima (“soul or spirit”),31 Miguel Leon-Portilla as “lo que confiere vida a alguien (“that which confers life upon someone”),32 and Lopez Austin as “he who animates.”33 Teyolia combines te (indefinite human object) with the causative form of yoli to mean “that which causes someone to live.” Lopez Austin sometimes construes teyolia as an “animating entity,” other times as a “vital force.”34 I prefer “vital force” in light of Aztec philosophy’s process metaphysics. Teyolia is one of three kinds of vitalizing and animating energies in the cosmos (along with tonalli and ihiyotl). It is present in humans, animals, and plants as well as mountains, wind, rivers, and towns. Although it suffuses the entire body, teyolia in humans is concentrated primarily in the heart.35 It is sensed in the pulse and in breath. Upon death, teyolia loses its association with a specific body. When the human heart is extracted from the body its ollin-patterned life force
Travels to the sky. Every town (alfepeft) has an altepeyollotl (“heart of the town”) or living force.36 Tepe yiollo (“mountain heart”) and tlalli yiollo (“earth heart”) function as metaphors for the life-generative potency of the earth.37 Also related to teyolia is teyolitia (“to give life to another”).38 Lastly, there isyollotl (“heart, life, spirit, pith of dried fruit”).39 Jill McKeever Furst parses yollotl as y-oll-otl, which she glosses as “its movement, or the reason for its movement.”40 Leon-Portilla maintains yollotl derives from yoli, which means in its abstract form “vitali-dad,” that is, vitality, liveliness, animation, having to do with life, or sustaining, empowering, and maintaining life.41 In sum, the life-empowering, - conferring, and - sustaining energies of teyolia and yollotl instantiate olin motion-change. They are olin-shaped; that is, rounded, arced, and centered. They move back and forth; they undulate and oscillate.
Contemporary Nahuatl-speakers in Amatlan, according to Alan Sandstrom, believe humans possess two basic souls: yolotl and tonali. Although literally “heart,” yolotl is better translated as “life force,” argues Sandstrom.42 Yolotl is the “heart or essence” of an “object, being, or spirit.”43 Everything in the cosmos (whether living or not, by Western lights) has “a yolotl by virtue of being part of the pantheistic universe. The yolotl is a piece of the universal deity that inheres in everything in existence. Thus, even objects partake of an animate universe, and they can be said to be alive in this sense.”44 The beating human heart is merely an aspect or fragment of this universal vitalizing force. For the Aztecs, too, everything in the cosmos - sun, earth, mountains, rivers, towns, trees, animals, humans, and insects - is vivified since everything partakes of teyolia and thus I submit teotl’s olin-shaped motion-change.
Timothy Knab argues contemporary Nahuatl-speakers in San Martin Zinacapan view the yollo as one of three aspects of the soul. They equate the yollo with the heart, “seed,” and “core of life.” Yollo is that from which “life sprouts”45 and “the internal life force that gives the body movement and life.”46 In The Dialogue of Earth and Sky, Knab adds that the iyollo (the possessed form of yollo) is an internal “animic” force that gives life to the body. Although centered in the heart, iyollo is distributed throughout the entire body. Although associated with the heart, it is not identical with the heart. And although distributed throughout the body in a way analogous to blood, iyollo it is not identical with blood. Blood is the iyollo’s “outward manifestation.” Iyollo is so closely associated with the heart and blood that “life of the body and the iyollo are . . . synonymous.” Breath, too, is associated with iyollo. Lastly, the heart is also called yoltagolli (“the seed of life or grain of corn”).47 The rhythmic undulating motion of heart, blood (pulse), and breath defines iyollo. The shape of iyollo is that of olin motion-change, for iyollo is an instance of olin motion-change.
Heart, corn, blood, breath, life, and nourishment are conceptually as well as materially unified by olin motion-change.
Let’s examine fUrther the nature of the heart. Sahagun’s informants tell us the human heart is “round” (ololtic) and “hot” {totonqui).48 It “beats” (tecuini), “it jumps” (chocholoa), and “it beats repeatedly” (motlatlamotla). They characterize the heart as “life” (yoliliztli), “that by which there is existence” (nemoani), “it makes one live” (teyolitia), “it sustains one” (tenemitia), and “it lives” (yoli). Let’s examine several of these. Frances Karttunen translates tecuini as “for a fire to flare up or for one’s heart to pound.”49 Related entries in Molina likewise suggest a conceptual association between the heart’s beating, pounding, and jumping, on the one hand, and a fire’s flaring up, throwing off flame, and making noise, and also the wind’s making noise, on the other.50 The Aztecs associated the motion and sound of a beating heart with the motion and sound of fire and wind. Indeed, McKeever Furst contends the Aztecs (and other Mesoamericans) associated the heart (yolia) with breath and life generally.51 Duran claims the goddess tlalli iyolli (“heart of the earth”) was so called because “when she so desired, she made the earth tremble.”52 The Aztecs also associated the motion and sound of a beating heart with that of earthquakes.
Second, chocholoa derives from choloa (“to flee”). Other derivatives include chocholotia (“to bounce a ball”) and tlachochololtiliztli (“bounce of a ball”).53 Thus we have additional linguistic evidence of a conceptual link between the beating of a heart and the bouncing of a ball, or more precisely, the pattern of motion exhibited by beating hearts and bouncing balls.
Third, motlatlamotla derives from motla, which carries meanings of throwing, bumping, hunting, throwing a stone or rock at someone, something knocking against another thing, and bowling.54 The beating heart knocks and bumps against the wall of the chest. The presence of balls and their motion is not accidental. The Aztecs likened the heart to a rounded bumping ball or stone; they associated hearts with stones55 and viewed the heart as a stone. The rounded shape of a heart resembles the rounded shape of a stone or pebble. Indeed, the Nahuatl word, teyollotl (“pebble”) combines tetl (“stone”) and yollotl (“heart”).56 Sahagun relates the funerary custom of placing in the deceased’s mouth a green or greenish stone that would eventually serve as a substitute for her heart (ini-ollo or yolia).57
What insight into the nature of olin does the preceding offer? Olin identifies a specific kind, shape, or pattern of motion-change. Olin motion-change bounces, stirs, swings, oscillates, sways, pulsates, circles, rounds, curves, and arcs. What’s more, it does so in a manner that is orderly, rhythmic, cyclical, centering, and generally speaking reliable and predictable (within the limits of the Tezcatlipoca factor). Olin’s pattern of motion-change is instantiated by the up-and-down and back-and-forth bouncing of a rubber ball (as during the ballgame); the pulsating of a human heart and a breathing human chest; the oscillating of the Fifth Sun as it follows its path over and above Tlalticpac and down and under Tlalticpac; the stirring of a fetus in the womb; and the contractions of birth and trembling motion of earthquakes. Therefore, on the one hand, even if olli and olin are linguistically unrelated as John Sullivan maintains, I nevertheless see the movement of rubber balls as contingently instantiating the kind of movement referred to by olin. And if, on the other hand, Lopez Austin and Hunt are correct in deriving olin and olli from the single root ol, then so much the better. The movement of rubber balls is then conceptually related to the kind of movement referred to by olin. Olin’s pattern simultaneously constitutes a specific rhythm and shape of qualitative change, becoming, and transformation. The stirring of a fetus, the human life cycle, the Fifth Sun’s diurnal-nocturnal back-and-forth journey between east and west and up-and-down journey above and below Tlalticpac, and the Fifth Sun’s seasonal back-and-forth coursing between winter and summer solstices are both physical and transformational.
Olin motion-change is both orderly and actively ordering. It orders and arranges the processing and becoming of things in a cyclical, oscillating pattern. Olin motion-change is both centered and actively centering. It centers the processing and becoming of things. I contend olin orders and centers the processing and becoming of the Fifth Sun - hence the name Fifth Sun-Earth Ordering - and therefore creates the shape of the Fifth Sun’s existence. Since the Fifth Sun orders and centers the Fifth Age and all its inhabitants, it follows that olin motion-change defines the shape of the existence ofthe Fifth Age and the shape of existence in the Fifth Age. It is the defining pattern of the Fifth Age. In the history of the five Suns and five Eras, olin motion-change uniquely defines the Fifth Sun, Fifth Era, and all the latter’s inhabitants. It defines how things process and hence how they live~die in the Fifth Era. Because olin motion-change defines how the Fifth Sun, the Fifth Era, and all the latter’s inhabitants become and transform, olin constitutes their “heart” or “essence.”
In keeping with Aztec metaphysics’ animism, olin motion-change defines the processing of what we regard as animate (“living”) and inanimate (“nonliving”) things. When we speak of life and of living things, we must always remember that we are speaking of all existing things, from the Fifth Sun and Fifth Era to mountains, lakes, humans, spindle rods, flutes, and jewelry. To exist is to move-change, to be animated, and so to be alive. All things consist of energy-in-motion, and olin motion-change defines how things in the Fifth Era move-change and process. All things have life~death cycles and olin motion-change defines the shape of their life~death cycles: they oscillate, pulsate, and move around a center.
Teyolia is a vitalizing energy present in humans, animals, and plants as well as mountains, wind, rivers, and towns. Teyolia is defined by olin motion-change. Olin motion-change is therefore tied substantively as well as conceptually to the becoming, transforming, and moving-changing that constitutes living and existing. It is the pattern of energy involved in sprouting, blooming, hatching, and coming alive. It is the shape of the life-giving energy of corn. The Aztecs used liquid rubber, itself condensed olin motion-change, as a life-preserving medicine for humans and as life-giving ritual food for teotl (the cosmos). They likewise ritually also offered human blood, another form of condensed olin motion-change, as nourishing energy to the cosmos.
The foregoing linguistic evidence also supports the idea that olin motion-change is irreducibly ambiguous. Olin motion-change moves back and forth between life and death, male and female, and being and nonbeing, for example, and in so doing unifies them into the inamic pairs life~death, male~female, and being~nonbeing (respectively). It creates and destroys. From the standpoint of humans, it is both positive and negative. It defines the creative motion-change involved in renewal, birth, vitality, sustenance, and well-being, yet it also defines the destructive motion-change involved in fatal miscarriages, aging, and lethal earthquakes. It is also olin motion-change that will eventually disorder and destroy the Fifth Age and all humankind.
In sum, olin motion-change constitutes the biorhythm of the Fifth Sun, Fifth Age, and all inhabitants of the Fifth Age. It defines cyclical generation and degeneration in the Fifth Age. As Leon-Portilla remarks, “The profound significance of movement” to the Aztecs “can be deduced from the common Nahuatl root of the words movement, heart and soul.”58
World History
