TEOTL

At the heart of Aztec metaphysics stands the ontological thesis that there exists just one thing: continually

Dynamic, vivifying, self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, force, or energy. The Aztecs referred to this energy as teotl. Teotl is identical with reality per se and hence identical with everything that exists. What’s more, teotl is the basic stuff of reality. That which is real, in other words, is both identical with teotl and consists of teotl. Aztec metaphysics thus holds that there exists numerically only one thing - energy - as well as only one kind of thing - energy. Reality consists ofjust one thing, teotl, and this one thing is metaphysically homogeneous. Reality consists of just one kind of stuff: power or force. Taking a page from the metaphysical views of contemporary Mixtec-speaking Nuyootecos of the Mixteca Alta, we might think of teotl as something akin to electricity. Nuyootecos speak of a single, all-encompassing energy, yii, which they liken to electricity.2 What’s more, the Aztecs regarded teotl as sacred. Although everywhere and in everything, teotl presents itself most dramatically - and is accordingly sensed most vibrantly by humans - in the vivifying potency of water, sexual activity, blood, heat, sunlight, jade, the singing of birds, and the iridescent blue-green plumage of the quetzal bird. As the single, all-encompassing life force of the cosmos, teotl vivifies the cosmos and all its contents. Everything that happens does so through teotl’s perpetual energy-in-motion. Teotl is the continuing “life-flow of creation”:3 “a vast ocean of impersonal creative energy.”4

Aztec metaphysics is therefore monistic in two distinct senses. First, it claims that there exists only one numerically countable thing: teotl. I call this claim ontological monism. Aztec metaphysics thus rejects ontological pluralism or the view that there exists more than one numerically countable thing. Second, it claims that this single existing thing - teotl - consists ofjust one kind ofstuff, to wit, force, energy or power. Teotl is metaphysically uniform and homogenous. I call this view constitutional monism. Since the cosmos and all its contents are identical with teotl as well as constituted by teotl, it follows that the cosmos and all its contents consist uniformly of energy, power, or force. Everything consists of electricity-like energy-in-motion. Aztec metaphysics thus denies constitutional pluralism or the thesis that reality consists of more than one kind of stuff (e. g., spiritual stuff and physical stuff). Together, ontological and constitutional monism entail that the apparent plurality of existing things (e. g., sun, mountains, trees, stones, and humans) as well as plurality of different kinds of stuff (e. g., spiritual vs. material) are both derivable from and hence explainable in terms of one existent and one kind of stuff: teotl. In the final analysis, the nature of things is to be understood in terms of teotl.

Teotl is nonpersonal, nonminded, nonagentive, and nonintentional. It is not a deity, person, or subject possessing emotions, cognitions, grand intentions, or

Goals. It is not an all-powerful benevolent or malevolent god.5 It is neither a legislative agent characterized by free will nor an omniscient intellect. Teotl is thoroughly amoral, that is, it is wholly lacking in moral qualities such as good and evil. Like the changing of the seasons, teotl’s constant changing lacks moral properties.6

Teotl is essentially power: continually active, actualized, and actualizing energy-in-motion. It is essentially dynamic: ever-moving, ever-circulating, and ever-becoming. As ever-actualizing power, teotl consists of creating, doing, making, changing, effecting, and destroying. Generating, degenerating, and regenerating are what teotl does and therefore what teotl is. Yet teotl no more chooses to do this than electricity chooses to flow or the seasons choose to change. This is simply teotl’s nature. The power by which teotl generates and regenerates itself and the cosmos is teotl’s essence. Similarly, the power by which teotl and all things exist is also its essence.7 In the final analysis, then, the existence and nature of all things are functions of and ultimately explainable in terms of the generative and regenerative power of teotl.

Teotl is a process like a thunderstorm or flowing river rather a static, perduring substantive entity like a table or pebble. Moreover, it is continuous and ever-continuing process. Since there exists only one thing - namely, teotl - it follows that teotl is self-generating. After all, there is nothing outside of teotl that could act upon teotl. Teotl’s tireless process of flowing, changing, and becoming is ultimately a process of self-unfolding and self-transforming. This self-becoming does not move toward a predetermined goal or ineluctable end (telos) at which point teotl realizes itself (like Hegel’s absolute spirit) or at which point history or time comes to an end. Teotl’s tireless becoming is not linear in this sense. Like the changing of the seasons, teotl’s becoming is neither teleological nor eschatological. Teotl simply becomes, just as the seasons simply change. Teotl’s becoming has both positive and negative consequences for human beings and is therefore ambiguous in this sense. Creative energy and destructive energy are not two different kinds of energy but two aspects of one and the same teotlizing energy.

Teotl continually and continuously generates and regenerates as well as permeates, encompasses, and shapes reality as part of its endless process of self-generation-and-regeneration. It creates the cosmos and all its contents from within itself as well as out of itself. It engenders the cosmos without being a “creator” or “maker” in the sense of an intentional agent with a plan. Teotl does not stand apart from or exist outside of its creation in the manner of the Judeo-Christian god. It is completely coextensive with created reality and cosmos. Teotl is wholly concrete, omnipresent, and immediate. Everything that humans touch, taste, smell, hear, and see consists of and is identical with teotl’s electricity-like energy. Indeed, even humans are composed of and ultimately one with teotl and, as such, exist as aspects or facets of teotl. Teotl’s ceaseless changing and becoming, its ceaseless generating and regenerating of the cosmos, is a process of ceaseless self-metamorphosis or self-transformation-and-retransformation. In short, teotl’s becoming consists of a particular kind of becoming, namely transformative becoming; its power, a particular kind of power, namely transformative power.

Since teotl generates and regenerates the cosmos out of itself, it would be incorrect to think that it creates the cosmos ex nihilo. Contrasting the Quiche Maya concept of creation in the Popol Vuh with the Judeo-Christian concept creation in the Bible, Dennis Tedlock notes that for the Maya the cosmos does not begin with a “maelstrom” of “confusion and chaos.”8 The same holds for Aztec metaphysics. The cosmos does not begin from chaos or nothingness; it burgeons forth from an always already existing teotl. Consequently Aztec metaphysics may aptly be described as lacking a cosmogony, if by cosmogony one means the creation of an ordered cosmos from nothingness or primordial chaos. There are no absolute beginnings - or absolute endings, for that matter - in Aztec metaphysics. There are only continuings. Death, for example, is not an ending but a change of status, as that which dies flows into and feeds that which lives. All things are involved in a single, never-ending process of recycling and transformation. There is furthermore no time prior to or after teotl since time is defined wholly in terms of teotl’s becoming. Nor is there space outside of teotl since space, too, is defined wholly in terms of teotl’s becoming.

Teotl continually generates and regenerates as well as permeates, encompasses, and shapes the cosmos as part of its endless process of self-generation-and-regeneration. It penetrates deeply into every detail of the cosmos and exists within the myriad of existing things. All existing things are merely momentary arrangements of this sacred energy. Reality and hence the cosmos and all its inhabitants are not only wholly exhausted by teotl, they are at bottom identical with teotl. That which we customarily think of as the cosmos - sun, earth, rain, humans, trees, sand, and so on - is generated by teotl, from teotl as one aspect, facet, or moment of teotl’s endless process of self-generation-and-regeneration. The power of teotl is thus multifaceted, seeing as it presents itself in a multitude of different ways: for example, as heat, water, wind, fecundity, nourishment, humans, and tortillas. Yet teotl is more than the unified, kaleidoscopic totality of these aspects. It is identical with everything and everything is identical with it.

Process and transformation thus define the essence of teotl. Teotl is becoming, and as becoming it is neither being nor nonbeing yet at the same time both

Being and nonbeing. As becoming, teotl neither is nor is not, and yet at the same time it both is and is not. Aztec metaphysics, in other words, embraces a metaphysics of becoming instead of a metaphysics of being. Teotl processes, where to process is understood as an intransitive verb such as “to become,” “to proceed,” or “to walk in a procession.” Teotl’s processing does not represent the activity or doing of an agent. Nor does it have a direct object. Teotl’s processing is a nonagentive process such as the changing of the seasons, the coming and going of the tides, and fluctuations in a magnetic field. Because identical with teotl, reality is essentially process, movement, becoming, change, and transformation. Because identical with teotl, the cosmos is processive and as a consequence lacks entities, structures, and states of affairs that are static, immutable, and permanent. Everything that teotl creates out of itself - from cosmos and sun to all earth’s inhabitants - is processive, unstable, evanescent, and doomed to degeneration and destruction.

David Cooper proposes that we understand the term, God, in the mystical teachings of the Jewish Kabbalah as a verb rather than as a noun. He suggests God be understood along the lines of “raining” and “digesting” rather than “table” or “planet.” Doing so better captures the dynamic, processive nature of the deity discussed in these teachings.9 Similarly, David Hall argues in his study of classical Daoism that we better understand the term dao as “primarily gerundive and processive” rather than as nominative and substantive. Dao signifies a “moving ahead in the world, forging a way forward, road building.”10 Since doing so better reflects the dynamic nature of teotl, I propose we think of the word teotl as primarily gerundive, processive, and denoting a process (rather than as nominative and denoting a static substantive entity). Teotl refers to the eternal, all-encompassing process of teotlizing. Since the cosmos and all its contents are merely moments in teotl’s teotlizing, they, too, are properly understood as processes.11

Aztec metaphysics’ understanding of teotl is shaped by several further fundamental guiding intuitions. First, it subscribes to the notion that that which is real is that which becomes, changes, and moves. Reality is defined by becoming - not by being or “is-ness.” To be real is to become, to move, and to change. In short, Aztec metaphysics embraces a metaphysics of Becoming. It embraces flux, evanescence, and change by making them defining characteristics of existence and reality - rather than marginalizing them by denying them existence and reality. It maintains the ontological priority of process and change over rest and permanence. It squarely identifies the real with the constant flux of things.12 Since teotl is sacred, it follows that the sacred is defined by becoming, change, and motion as well.

The Aztecs’ metaphysics of Becoming stands in dramatic contrast with the metaphysics of Being that characterizes the lion’s share ofWestern metaphysics since Plato and Aristotle. The latter defines reality in terms of being or is-ness. On this view to be real is to be permanent, immutable, static, eternal, and at rest. (E. g., real love, as popular sentiment would have it, is eternal, immutable, and undying love.) That which becomes, changes, perishes, or moves is not real - or at least not wholly or fully so. Mutability, evanescence, and expiry are criteria of non - or partial reality, whereas immutability, permanence, and eternality are criteria of reality. Plato’s metaphysics serves as a paradigmatic expression of this intuition. It denies complete reality, is-ness, and being to all things that change and assigns them to an ontologically inferior realm of semireality. Perishable and mutable things occupy his famous Cave where they suffer from semireality and semiexistence. This is the realm of Appearances. Eternally unchanging things occupy his famous the realm of the Forms, where they enjoy complete reality and is-ness. This is the realm of the Real.13

One’s view on this issue has important implications for one’s understanding of the sacred. For example, if one upholds a metaphysics of Being and if one also defends the reality of the sacred (e. g., the gods), then one must a fortiori see the sacred as eternal, immutable, and defined by pure Being. The sacred cannot therefore be identified with that which becomes, changes, and perishes. The latter must be characterized as nonsacred or profane. Furthermore, if the world about us changes then the sacred must be metaphysically divorced from the world and instead identified with a transcendent, metaphysically distinct realm of Being. On the other hand, if one upholds a metaphysics of Becoming, then one may identify the sacred with the mutable, evanescent, and perishable, and hence with the changing world about us.

Second, Aztec metaphysics equates reality with the exercise of power, that is, being real with making things happen, influencing things, acting upon things, and effecting change in things. As always active, actualized, and actualizing power, teotl is continually doing, effecting, and making happen. Carl Jung articulates the intuition nicely: “Everything that exists acts, otherwise it would not be. It can be only by virtue of its inherent energy.”14

A third intuition claims essence follows from function. That is, what something is follows from what it does as well as how it does it. This intuition replaces the traditional Western metaphysical principle operari sequitar esse (“functioning follows being”) with its own principle esse sequitar operari (“being follows from operation”).15 Teotl therefore is what teotl does. And what does teotl do? Teotl makes everything happen as well as happen the way it does. Teotl is the happening of all things, the patterns in the happening of all things, and the co-relatedness between the happenings of all things. It vivifies aU things and is essentially vivifying energy. It energizes the life cycles of plants, animals, and humans; the cycles of the seasons and time; and the creation and destruction of the five Suns and their respective Ages or what I call (for reasons that will become clear in chapter 4) “Sun-Earth Orderings.” Teotl is the power behind and the power of the becoming, changing, and transforming of all things above the earth, on the surface of the earth, and below the earth.16

The foregoing suggests Aztec philosophy embraces what Western philosophers call a process metaphysics.1'7 Process metaphysics views processes rather than perduring objects, things, or substances as ontologically basic. What seem to be perduring things are really nothing more than stability patterns in processes. As the products of processes, entities are derivative. Process metaphysics treats dynamic notions such as becoming, power, activity, change, flux, fluidity, unfolding, creation, destruction, transformation, novelty, interactive interrelatedness, evanescence, and emergence as central to understanding reality and how everything hangs together. What’s more, processes are what processes do. Essence follows function. This intuition, like others we’ve seen, contradicts the dominant view in the history of Western philosophy since Plato and Aristotle, namely, substance metaphysics. Substance metaphysics views perduring things or substances as ontologically basic and processes as ontologically derivative.

Teotl, and hence reality, cosmos, and all existing things are processes. Teotl is not a perduring entity that underlies the various changes in the cosmos the way that say a table, according to Aristotelian metaphysics, underlies changes in its attributes (e. g., color). Nor is it a perduring substance that undergoes the various changes in the cosmos the way that say wood, according to Aristotelian metaphysics, undergoes changes from tree to lumber to table. We therefore need to resist the temptation to reify teotl. Sun, earth, humans, maize, insects, tortillas and stones are processes. What’s more, teotl is a transformational process that changes the form, shape or “face” (ixtli) of things.18 As such, it is simultaneously creative and destructive. Transformational processes involve the destruction of something prior in the course of creating something posterior.

Fourth, Aztec metaphysics sees reality as ex hypothesi ineliminably and irre-ducibly ambiguous. The ambiguity of things cannot be explained away as a product of human misunderstanding, ignorance, or illusion. Teotl, reality, cosmos, and all existing things are characterized simultaneously by inamic pairs such as being and nonbeing, life and death, male and female, and wet and dry. This contradicts the reigning intuition in Western metaphysics since Plato that holds that that which is real is ex hypothesi unambiguous, pure, and unmixed. It is only appearances and illusions that are contradictory, ambiguous, impure, and mixed.

Fifth, Aztec metaphysics views reality in holistic terms. Holism claims reality consists of a special kind of unity or whole: namely, one in which all individual components are essentially interrelated, interdependent, correlational, interactive, and thus defined in terms of one another.19 Holists commonly cite biological organisms and ecological systems as examples of the kind of unity they have in mind, and accordingly liken reality to a grand biological organism or ecosystem. They claim wholes are ontologically primary and individuals are ontologically secondary, and that individuals are defined in terms of the wholes in which they participate. Houses, trees, and humans, for example, do not enjoy independent existence apart from the wholes of which they are essentially parts and in which they essentially participate. By contrast, atomism views reality as the summative product of its individual parts. Individuals, not wholes, are basic. Atomists commonly cite sets or collections of things such as the coins in one’s pocket as paradigmatic examples of atomistic unities.

For holists, individuals cannot be properly understood apart from how they function in the constellation of interrelated and intercorrelated processes that define the whole and in which they essentially participate. Individuals’ relationships with one another are intrinsic to them and exhaustively define them. What’s more, an individual’s relations extend throughout the entire cosmos. In the preceding I claimed the fundamental concepts for understanding reality are dynamic ones such as becoming, power, transformation, and emergence. I want now to add to this list holistic concepts such as interdependence, mutual arising, covariance, interconnectedness, interdependence, complementarity, and correlationalism.

How does this bear upon Aztec metaphysics? For starters, since reality is processive, it follows that Aztec metaphysics’ holism is a processive holism. And since teotl is nonteleological and identical with reality per se, it follows that reality is a nonteleological processive whole: a “unified macroprocess consisting of a myriad of duly coordinated subordinate microprocesses.”20 The same also holds for the cosmos. These microprocesses are mutually arising, interconnected, interdependent, interpenetrating, and mutually correlated. They are interwoven one with one another like threads in a total fabric, where teotl is not only the total woven fabric but also the weaver of the fabric and the weaving of the fabric. Weaving is especially apropos since (as I argue in chapters 3 and 8) weaving functions as a root organizing metaphor of Aztec metaphysics. Alternatively, seeing as biological organisms function as another organizing metaphor in Aztec metaphysics, we may view these processes as mutually interdependent and interpenetrating like the processes composing an individual biological organism. It is in this vein that Kay Read claims Aztec metaphysics conceives

The cosmos as a “biologically historical” process.21 In sum, Aztec metaphysics advances a nonteleological ecological holism.

If the foregoing is correct, it follows that teotl is metaphysically immanent in several significant senses.22 First, teotl does not exist apart from or independently of the cosmos. Teotl is fUlly copresent and coextensional with the cosmos. Second, teotl is not correctly understood as supernatural or otherworldly. Teotl is identical with and hence fUlly coextensional with creation: hence no part of teotl exists apart from creation. Teotl does not exist outside of space and time. It is as concrete and immediate as the water we drink, air we breathe, and food we eat. Teotl is neither abstract nor transcendent.

Third, teotl is metaphysically homogeneous, consisting of just one kind of stuff: always actual, actualized, and actualizing energy-in-motion. The fact that teotl has various aspects does not gainsay its homogeneity. Teotl does not bifurcate into two essentially different kinds of stuff - “natural” and “supernatural” - and thus neither do reality and cosmos. Indeed, the very nature of teotl precludes the drawing of any qualitative metaphysical distinction between “natural” and “supernatural.”23 The natural versus supernatural dichotomy, so cherished by Western metaphysics and theology, simply does not apply. While Aztec tlamatinime did claim that certain aspects of teotl are imperceptible to and so hidden from humans under ordinary perceptual conditions, and accordingly made an epistemological distinction between different aspects of teotl, this does not mean that Aztec tlamatinime drew a principled metaphysical distinction between perceptible and imperceptible aspects of teotl or that they believed that the imperceptible aspects were “supernatural” because they consisted of a different kind of stuff.

Fourth, teotl is immanent in the sense that it generates and regenerates the cosmos out of itself. The history of the cosmos consists of the self-unfolding and self-becoming of teotl; of the continual unfolding and burgeoning of teotl out of teotl. Teotl is identical with creation since teotl is identical with itself. There do not therefore exist two metaphysically distinct things: teotl and its creation. There is only one thing: teotl.

Fifth, although teotl is sacred, it is not transcendent in the sense of being metaphysically divorced from a profane, immanent world. Aztec metaphysics does not embrace a dichotomy of sacred versus profane. Given that teotl is sacred, that everything is identical with teotl, and that teotl is homogeneous, it follows that everything is sacred. The Aztecs saw sacredness everywhere and in everything. Whereas Christianity’s dualistic (and as we will see hierarchical) metaphysics effectively removes the sacred from the earthly and characterizes the earthly in terms of the absence of the sacred, the Aztecs’ monistic (and as we

Will see nonhierarchical) metaphysics makes the sacred present everywhere.24 Aztec metaphysics lacks the conceptual resources for constructing a grand, metaphysical distinction between two essentially different kinds of stuff: sacred and profane. The sacred versus profane dichotomy, venerated by the metaphysical systems underlying many religions, simply does not obtain. This dichotomy is commonly underwritten by a Platonic-style, metaphysical dualism between two ontologically different kinds of stuff, one sacred, the other profane. But Aztec metaphysics rejects all manner of ontological dualisms. There is, however, one quite limited and insignificant sense in which teotl may be said to be transcendent. Teotl is neither exhausted by nor limited to any one existing thing at any given time or place: for example, any one given tree, human, or even cosmic era.

Consonant with the foregoing, Aztec philosophy embraces a nonhierarchical metaphysics.25 That is, it denies the existence of a principled, ontological distinction between “higher” and “lower” realms, realities, degrees of being, or kinds of stuff. A hierarchical metaphysics, by contrast, upholds the existence of a principled hierarchy of “higher” and “lower” realities, degrees of being, and so on. Plato’s Middle Period metaphysics serves as a paradigmatic instance of a hierarchical metaphysics, one that has exerted tremendous influence upon the metaphysics of Christianity and Western philosophy.26 Hierarchical metaphysics are characterized by what Arthur Lovejoy calls a “great chain of being” and “great scale of being.”27 They standardly defend metaphysical dualism and the transcendence of the real and the sacred. Teotl’s ontological monism and homogeneity, as well as its radical immanence preclude any such hierarchicalness. This helps us understand why, for example, “Christian transcendentalism was meaningless to the Nahuas,” as Louise Burkhart claims.28

The assertion that Aztec metaphysics is nonhierarchical appears inconsistent with sources such as the Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas and Histoyre du Mechique that speak of the cosmos as being divided vertically into distinct layers: thirteen above and nine below the earthly layer (tlalticpac).29 These layers are alternatively characterized as nine upper skies, four lower skies and the surface of the earth, and nine lower layers of the underworld. Claims regarding the hierarchical layering of the Aztec cosmos are also routinely based upon the depiction of cosmos with vertical layers (and accompanying commentary) on pages i and 2 of the Codex Vaticanus3738A.3°

How do I respond to this? Chapter 8 argues the vertical layers of the cosmos are merely folds in the single, metaphysically homogeneous energy of teotl. This folding is analogous to the folding of a blanket or skirt that consists of one and the same kind of material (e. g., cotton). The fact that the Aztecs cosmologists assigned different names to the folds does not mean they defended the metaphysical heterogeneity of the folds.