Tonalli
Life-heat / day-sign / fate-soul
Tonalli — from tona, 'to be warm, to be sunny': the soul-component of life-heat, fate, and day-sign. Each person is born under a specific sign of the 260-day tonalpohualli calendar, and that day-sign infuses the new-born's tonalli. Tonalli is housed at the crown of the head and is the most volatile of the three forces — it can be temporarily lost to fright (tonalcahualtia, 'fright-sickness'), to sun-stroke, to sexual transgression, and Sahagún records that hair was cut from the crown only with great care for fear of severing the tonalli's seat. López Austin (1988, vol. 1 ch. 6) collects the textual evidence: the tonalli ascends to the crown shortly after conception; it can be temporarily separated from the body in dreams, drunkenness, sexual climax, and serious illness, and recovered by ritual specialists called teopixqui. At death, the tonalli does not necessarily depart with the body — it persists for a time in the lock of hair cut from the crown of the deceased.
Point 1 of 3 in Aztec Three Animating Forces — Tonalli / Teyolia / Ihiyotl
Cross-tradition overlaps
No overlapping points are registered for this point.
Sources
Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book VI ch. 23, ch. 42 (primary_canonical)
“Tonalcahualtia: it is said that the tonalli has been cast down, the tonalli has been frightened from the body.”
López Austin, The Human Body and Ideology, vol. 1 ch. 6 (secondary)