Ch'ulel
Tzotzil inner soul (heart-and-blood)
Ch'ulel — the Tzotzil Maya soul, etymologically related to ch'ul ('holy', 'sacred'). Ch'ulel is housed in the heart and blood and is what enters the body at conception (placed there by the ancestor-deities) and what departs at death. Vogt's Zinacantan ethnography emphasises that ch'ulel operates as a paired entity: every person has an interior ch'ulel and an exterior co-essence (chanul, 'animal companion') sharing the same ch'ulel; sickness or injury to one is felt by the other. We render the rendered point slightly above the heart-centre to differentiate it from k'ux, recognising that the two terms cover overlapping but linguistically distinct soul-concepts in different Maya communities. The 'breath-and-blood' tagging follows Vogt's account of ch'ulel as the carrier of the breath and circulation: when ch'ulel weakens, the body cools and the blood thickens.
Point 2 of 3 in Maya Soul Centers — K'ux / Ch'ulel / Pixan
Cross-tradition overlaps
No overlapping points are registered for this point.
Sources
Evon Z. Vogt, Zinacantan (secondary)
“The ch'ulel is placed in the body at the moment of conception by the ancestor-deities; an identical ch'ulel is simultaneously placed in an animal-companion that lives in the wild forest, and the two are bound together for life.”
Robert M. Laughlin, The Great Tzotzil Dictionary of San Lorenzo Zinacantán (secondary)
Lexical entry on ch'ulel.