Spiritual elements in indigenous Nahua Beliefs from Zongolica Mountains, Mexico

This paper discusses beliefs associated with human spiritual elements (oft en called “souls”) held by the indigenous Nahua from Sierra Zongolica, Mexico. Spiritual elements, such as tonalli, nawalli, and yolotl form part of a complex of correlated and often overlapping concepts. Such semantic intricacy related to the notion of a spiritual element is not just a local peculiarity of Sierra Zongolica. It appears in ethnographic data concerning other Nahuatl speaking areas, as well as in early colonial sources. Therefore, the case of Nahua beliefs constitutes a challenge to monosemantic, unambiguous definitions of Mesoamerican indigenous concepts of human spiritual elements, as presented by many anthropologists and ethnohistorians.