Aztec Tonalpohualli — Body Days
Aztec Tonalpohualli — Body Days is a Indigenous Mesoamerican / Aztec-Nahua — Tonalpohualli body days body system as transmitted through the lineage The tonalpohualli is the 260-day Nahua divinatory count, formed from twenty day signs cycling with thirteen numbers and interpreted through the tonalpouhqui's calendar practice. This entry combines that calendrical frame with the three animating-force vocabulary of tonalli, teyolia, and ihiyotl, but uses day-sign zones as a separate visual layer; it is deliberately not the shipped aztec_three_animating_forces map, which focuses on the tripartite anthropology alone.. This page lists every point in the system with sourced placements and links to cross-tradition correspondences curated for The Body Spiritual.
Open in interactive explorerPrimary sources
- Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex) (compiled 1545–1577 in Mexico-Tenochtitlan; English edition Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, 12 vols., School of American Research / Univ. of Utah 1950–82) — Book IV, The Divinatory Art, records the 260-day tonalpohualli, its twenty day signs, thirteen numbers, and the tonalpouhqui's interpretations. Books VI and X add Nahua moral, bodily, and personhood vocabulary; no surviving passage supplies the six anatomical zones rendered here.
- Alfredo López Austin, The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas (trans. Thelma Ortiz de Montellano and Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, Univ. of Utah Press 1988 (Spanish original Cuerpo humano e ideología, UNAM 1980)) — Volume 1, chapters 6–7, analyses Nahua animating entities, body symbolism, and the relation of body locations to personhood. López Austin is the principal modern scholarly source for distinguishing the three forces from the calendar's day-sign system.
- Elizabeth Hill Boone, Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate (University of Texas Press, 2007) — Chapters 2–4 explain the 260-day count, the twenty signs, and the structure of Mexican divinatory manuscripts. The book supports the calendar layer but does not prescribe the body-region grouping used by this visual record.
Known lineage variants
- The twenty signs and their 1–13 coefficients are the calendrical core of the tonalpohualli, but sign names and manuscript glyph styles vary across Nahua communities and colonial records. This file uses the common Central Mexican names as a readable comparative set.
- The Florentine Codex does not provide a canonical diagram that assigns all twenty day signs to six body regions. The six zones are an editorial grouping in canonical sign order, with broad uncertainty, intended to make the calendar legible on a body silhouette rather than to claim a Nahua anatomical doctrine.
- Tonalli, teyolia, and ihiyotl are the animating-force triad reconstructed by López Austin and represented separately in ent:system:aztec_three_animating_forces. Here they are retained only as three points that anchor the calendar's day-sign field; the day-sign zones and the 260-day cycle are the defining content of this entry.
- The head, heart, and liver locations have stronger textual support than the six day-sign zones. The liver placement of ihiyotl is a scholarly reconstruction, and the zone placements are schematic front-view coordinates rather than medical anatomy.
Cross-tradition overlaps
- Ihiyotl ↔ Ihiyotl (distance 0.005)
- Teyolia ↔ Teyolia (distance 0.015)
Related systems
No other systems share this tradition label.
Points
Frequently asked
What is Tonalli?
Tonalli is the day-linked life-heat and animating force that receives a person's calendrical sign in Nahua thought. It is placed at the crown here to preserve the distinction from the six day-sign zones below; this point repeats the force vocabulary only so the calendar and anthropology can be read together.
What is Teyolia?
Teyolia is the heart-soul in López Austin's reconstruction of Nahua personhood, distinct from the day-sign's tonalli. It is shown as a companion point to the calendar field, not as one of the twenty signs and not as a third force replacing the day-sign zones.
What is Ihiyotl?
Ihiyotl is the breath-essence or passion-bearing force reconstructed at the liver, and it is not a day-sign. Its presence here prevents the tonalpohualli map from collapsing calendar fate into a single undifferentiated energy field, while the wide radius records the contested locus.