In what follows I consider several objections against interpreting Aztec metaphysics as an instance of pantheism.
Objection i
Leon-Portilla opposes interpreting Aztec metaphysics as a form of pantheism on three grounds. Although he does so in the context of rejecting Hermann Beyer’s attribution of pantheism to the Aztecs, his reasons are fully general. First, he argues that the concept is too vague to be useful in explicating Aztec thought.201
Levine’s exhaustive survey of pantheism, however, reveals a remarkably high degree of consensus regarding the concept of pantheism.202 Levine offers a definition of pantheism that captures this consensus, and it is this definition that I adopt here. Leon-Portilla’s claim, therefore, simply does not ring true. I believe that by stating precisely one’s definition of pantheism at the outset one may avoid the confusion about which he worries. Furthermore, the concept of pantheism does not appear any less vague than other etic concepts that theorists including Leon-Portilla employ such as religion, theology, truth, mysticism, skepticism, metaphysics, and philosophy. Moreover, the concept of pantheism seems less burdened by the sorts of derogatory connotations borne by such Enlightenment concepts as magic, divination, and sorcery.
Leon-Portilla’s subsequent discussion interweaves two very different kinds of reasons: metaphysical and epistemological.203 The fact that he evaluates the merits of pantheism in terms of Ometeotl rather than teotl does not matter for present purposes. I accordingly treat teotl and Ometeotl as interchangeable.
Some of the time Leon-Portilla argues that pantheism cannot be the correct interpretation of Aztec metaphysics because the Aztecs believed the cosmos to be ultimately unknowable by human beings and hence fundamentally mysterious. Ometeotl, he tells us, was commonly referred to by the paired-metaphoric difrasismo Yohualli-ehecatl, literally “night and wind” but meaning more broadly “he who is invisible (like the night) and intangible (like the wind).”204 The “supreme principle,” he writes, “is an invisible and impalpable reality. His transcendent nature goes beyond that world of experience so graphically conceived by the Nahuas as the visible and tangible.”205 Consequently human beings are guaranteed epistemological access and knowledge of Ometeotl neither in fact nor even in principle. Hence Ometeotl is transcendent: ''''Yohualli-ehecatl is, then, the title that most clearly implies the transcendent character of Ometeotl.”206 Leon-Portilla concludes, “In the face of the acknowledged transcendency of Ometeotl, pantheism would make little sense.”207
Unfortunately, Leon-Portilla’s argument is unsound. First, it seeks to draw a metaphysical conclusion about the ways things are from epistemological premises about what humans can know. But one is not logically entitled to infer such a metaphysical conclusion from epistemological premises. Doing so confounds what medieval European philosophers called the “order of being” (ordo essendi) and “the order of knowing” (ordo cognoscendi). Nothing follows about the nature of reality from facts about human cognitive abilities. Second, in drawing his conclusion, Leon-Portilla assumes without argument that epistemological transcendence logically entails metaphysical transcendence (or equivalently, that epistemological transcendence precludes metaphysical immanence). But this inference is invalid as well. His premise states that Ometeotl is what Western philosophers call “epistemologically transcendent,” that is, that human beings are not guaranteed epistemological access and hence knowledge of Ometeotl. But this epistemological fact does not logically entail the metaphysical fact that Ometeotl must therefore be metaphysically transcendent. Leon-Portilla mistakenly believes that from the fact that Ometeotl is “invisible and intangible” it necessarily follows that Ometeotl cannot be metaphysically immanent (as required by pantheism). But there is no relationship of logical entailment between metaphysical immanence and epistemological immanence. Neither position logically entails the other. Hence from the fact that Ometeotl is metaphysically immanent it does not follow that humans must a fortiori have epistemological access to Ometeotl.
Levine argues pantheists are committed to the metaphysical immanence of the sacred but not necessarily to the epistemological immanence of the sacred (i. e., to the thesis that the sacred is easily or in principle knowable by humans).
Spinoza, for example, embraces pantheism yet explicitly rejects the epistemological immanence of the sacred. Similarly, for Lao Tzu the dao is metaphysically immanent yet mysterious and unknowable.208
I dispute neither Leon-Portilla’s assertion that Ometeotl is correctly called in Tloque in Nahuaque nor his assertion that this difrasismo correctly means “He who has everything inside himself,” “The one who is near to everything and to whom everything is near,” and “Lord of the Close Vicinity.”209 Nor do I not dispute the appropriateness of Fray Alonso de Molina’s remark that the name “applies to him who is the very being of all things, preserving them and sustaining them.”210 Lastly, I do not dispute Leon-Portilla’s claim that these names suggest that Ometeotl is “multipresent” and “omnipresent.”211 What I do dispute, however, is Leon-Portilla’s presumed logical connection between Ometeotl’s “multipresence” and “omnipresence,” on the one hand, and Ometeotl’s necessary knowability, on the other. Humans may simply be unable to come to know or understand - via the senses, reason, or mystical awareness - that which is metaphysically speaking all about them and intimately within them.
Third, Leon-Portilla appears to oppose pantheistic interpretations of Aztec metaphysics on the grounds that Aztec metaphysics is ontologically dualistic whereas pantheism is ontologically monistic. He reasons that since Ometeotl is “invisible like the night and intangible like the wind,” it follows necessarily that Ometeotl must be metaphysically distinct from (i. e., metaphysically transcendent of) that which is visible and tangible. He concludes, “In the face of the acknowledged transcendency of Ometeotl, pantheism would make little sense.”212 His argument runs as follows:
1. That which is perceptible is ontologically distinct from that which is imperceptible.
2. Ometeotl is imperceptible.
3. Therefore Ometeotl is ontologically distinct from the perceptible world.
4. Therefore Aztec metaphysics is committed to ontological dualism.
5. Pantheism is committed to ontological monism.
6. Therefore Aztec metaphysics cannot be pantheistic.
Unfortunately Leon-Portilla’s argument is unsound. I simply see no reason to accept the first premise. The epistemological transcendence of Ometeotl does not entail Ometeotl’s nonidentity with the epistemologically immanent. One and the same reality (process or entity) may possess both perceptible and imperceptible, and occult and nonoccult aspects.
Objection 2
The current interpretation is guilty of imposing a nonautochthonous, Judeo-Christian-style, Mediterranean monotheism upon Aztec thinking. Richard Haly, for one, contends the notion of Aztec monotheism is the post-Conquest invention of scholars such as Alfonso Caso and Leon-Portilla. Caso, according to Haly, misinterprets the Nahuatl appellation Tloque Nahuaque (“one who is near to everything and to whom everything is near”) as a product of the Aztec elite’s “philosophical zeal for unity.”213 Leon-Portilla, in turn, misconstrues Ometeotl as a transcendent, imperceptible supreme being and unifying cosmic principle.214 Because both scholars are sympathetic to the Aztecs, Haly argues Caso and Leon-PortiUa set out to make the Aztecs more palatable to their modern audience, which means making the Aztecs more like us. And what are we like? We are monotheists according to Haly. Caso and Leon-Portilla consequently characterize Aztec thought favorably so as “to imply an evolution [in Aztec thought] from polytheism to monotheism.”215 But Haly denies there exists such a deity as Ometeotl and that Leon-Portilla confuses the deity Omitecuhtli (“Bone Lord”) as Ometecuhtli (“Two Lord”).216
Is the present interpretation of Aztec metaphysics guilty of this error? If we accept Levine’s conceptual mapping of these issues, then the present interpretation is monotheistic in the sense that it posits the existence of a single sacred force in the cosmos: teotl. However, as Levine argues, pantheism is a very strange kind of monotheism - “a non-theistic or non-personal type of monotheism” that embraces “a non-theistic conception of deity.”217 Pantheism rejects the idea that the sacred must be a personal or conscious being and as such represents a “de-anthropomorphised theism.”218
Aztec metaphysics is therefore not theistic if one understands theism as entailing belief in the existence of a personal, conscious god. Indeed, the likes of Thomas Hobbes and Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued pantheism is a form of atheism for this very reason. The elders of the Sephardic synagogue in Spinoza’s own Amsterdam excommunicated Spinoza for his “abominable heresies” and “monstrous deeds” that prominently included his pantheism.219 Although my pantheistic interpretation may be construed as monotheistic in the sense that it speaks of the existence of a single sacred power or force, pantheism is a far cry from the brand of monotheism that dominates Judeo-Christian theology and thus the kind of monotheism that Haly believes Aztec sympathizers and contemporary Christians find palatable. In fact, pantheism has long been condemned by the Catholic Church as atheistic, false, and heretical. As Edward Pace writes in The Catholic Encyclopedia, “pantheism eliminates every
Characteristic that religion presupposes.”220 In short, it would appear there’s nothing comforting about a pantheistic interpretation to traditionally minded Christians. The differences between the two views are not only legion but profound. If teotl can be likened to any nonautochthonous notion, it would be the Melanesian notion of mana, Taoist notion of dao, Chinese notion of qi, Jicarilla Apache notion of usen, Sioux notion of wakan orenda, and Mixtec notion ofyii.
Objection 3
Jongsoo Lee takes a hard look at the arguments of chroniclers and historians such as Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Juan Bautista Pomar, Fray Juan de Torquemada, Alfonso Caso, and Miguel Leon-Portilla who portray Nezahual-coyotl as a peace-loving, sacrifice-rejecting poet-philosopher-king who discovered the idea of a single, unknown god of gods, whom he worshipped in a special temple in Texcoco.221 Lee argues Nezahualcoyotl’s unknown god is the product of these chroniclers’ and historians’ attempt to “Westernize” Nahua religion. Although I find Lee’s argument compelling, I do not think it applies to my interpretation of Aztec metaphysics. I claim neither that Nezahualcoyotl worshipped an unknown god of gods nor that teotl was that unknown god of gods.
Objection 4
Teotl does not appear in any descriptions or pictorial depictions of Aztec rituals and ceremonies offered by early chroniclers such as Sahagun, Duran, and Toribio de Benavente Motolinfa. The Aztecs fashioned no images of teotl and addressed no specific rituals or ceremonies to it. Doesn’t this gainsay pantheism as well as ontological and constitutional monism?
In many respects, teotl’s absence resembles that of other “deities” comprising Nicholson’s “Ometeotl complex”: Ometeotl, Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, and Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacihuatl. Eloise Quinones Keber explains the absence of images of and rituals devoted to Tonacatecuhtli-Tonacacihuatl, for example, by the fact that Tonacatecuhtli-Tonacacihuatl was not a calendar god. References are confined to cosmological or cosmogonic texts.222 Yet no one argues this gainsays Tonacatecuhtli-Tonacacihuatl’s existence.
My response takes a page from Quinones Keber. Like Tonacatecuhtli-Tonacacihuatl - along with Ometeotl and Ometecuhtli-Omecihuatl - teotl was not a calendar “god.” Aztec rituals and ceremonies singled out and focused upon specific workable segments of teotl with specific practical purposes in mind such as releasing the forces of agricultural fertility, revitalizing the forces of human fertility and sustenance, cleansing and recirculating tlazolli, and renewing and revitalizing the Fifth Sun. I maintain that teotl unifies these into a coherent ritual cycle - rather than leaving them as an arbitrary sequence of disconnected activities. The sequence of rituals along with the specific rationale behind each ritual makes sense in terms of the cyclical unfolding of teotl. Scholars customarily understand the ritual cycle in terms of the two sacred calendars, the xiuhpohualli and tonalpohualli. Chapter 7 argues that the tonal-pohualli and xiuhpohualli are properly understood as modi operandi of teotl.
World History
