Rudolf Otto, a great scholar of religious phenomena—along with other experts such as Eliade, Durkheim, and Voegelin—believes that the sacred is the very origin of civilizations, because it shapes space (from «chaos» to «cosmos»), regulates time, legitimizes political power (think of the figure of the sacred sovereign in ancient and modern civilizations), and underpins ethics and symbols.
Civilization, in practice, is born when man recognizes a sacred space, time, and order.
Otto defines the sacred as «numinous»: a primary emotional experience that fascinates man, that literally captivates him. Mircea Eliade, developing this intuition, had shown that the sacred not only manifests itself («hierophany»), but also establishes an orderly space, a world, separating it precisely from chaos. And the center of this ordered space is an «axis mundi,» where the divine bursts forth, opening a communication between heaven, earth, and the world of the dead.
We often think that this only applies to «religious» societies, but in our Western countries, which are so secular, there are axis mundi that are completely separate from the «religious» concept and yet cloaked in an aura of sacredness, such as the Altar of the Fatherland in Rome, conceived as the «secular» axis mundi of the new Italian state, a civil alternative to the sacred axis represented by St. Peter's.
The Mexicas and Their World
We Europeans have often been victims of a mindset that many define as «Eurocentric»: willing to label other civilizations as barbaric without wanting to delve deeper and learn about their histories and cultures. And indeed, before the «discovery» of America, pre-Columbian Mexico was a complex reality, a mosaic of interconnected peoples, city-states, empires, and religious systems, united by alliances, rivalries, and trade networks.
The Tlaxcaltecs, for example, were a confederation hostile to the Aztecs (despite having a similar political and religious system). Then there were the Mixtecs and Zapotecs; the Purépechas of Michoacán and the Mayans, heirs to an ancient civilization. Although they lacked political unity, these peoples shared the same symbolic matrix: a sacred, cyclical, and deeply relational view of the cosmos.
The most powerful and advanced of these peoples at the time of the Guadalupe phenomenon (1531) were commonly known as «Aztecs» (from Aztlán, their mythical city of origin), but they defined themselves as Mexica (pronounced «meshica»), from which the place name Mexico derives.
The Mexicas spoke the Nahuatl language and had created an empire with its capital (axis mundi) in the famous Tenochtitlán, mythically founded on the spot indicated by an eagle and a snake (ierophany). Tenochtitlán stood on an island in Lake Texcoco and was structured socially, hierarchically, and religiously. At its center, in the Templo Mayor, stood two twin shrines dedicated to the two divine polarities: Tlaloc, lord of water and fertility, and Huitzilopochtli, sun god and warrior (there were also other «deities,» such as Quetzalcoatl, a feathered serpent associated with wisdom and creation).
The relationship with the sacred was rigidly marked by sacred calendars, astrology, poetry, ritual dance, and astronomically oriented architecture.
The Mexicas practiced human sacrifice to maintain cosmic balance and feed the gods, especially Huitzilopochtli, the Sun. In their culture, Huitzilopochtli needed blood and vital energy to rise each day. The sacrifice to the sun god Huitzilopochtli consisted of extracting the still-beating heart at the top of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán. The victims were usually prisoners of war, obtained through specific campaigns (children were sacrificed to Tlaloc, the god of rain, during times of drought).
Polytheism?
The Mesoamerican peoples were not polytheistic in the strict sense, but rather monistic. Their complex religious culture viewed the gods not as autonomous figures, but as emanations of a single divine energy («teotl») that was the basis of everything. In practice, they believed in a single God who had many manifestations and just as many «forms» of referring to him.
However, when speaking of divinity in general, the Mexicas only used terms such as Tloque en Nahuaque, «Lord of the near and the far,» Ipalnemohuani, «He for whom we live,» or Teyocoyani, «He who forms and molds.» This concept is very important and key to understanding why the phenomenon of Guadalupe had such a profound impact on the Mexica collective imagination.
And when the Virgin of Guadalupe defined herself as «Nicān nicā, nicān nēcah, ichpoch in God, in Ipālnemohuani, in Teyōcoyani, in Tloque Nahuaque, in Ilhuicahua, in Tlalticpaque» —«Mother of the true God, of the God for whom we live (Ipalnemohuani), of the Creator of men (Teyocoyani), of the Lord of what is near and what is far (Tloque Nahuaque)»—the indigenous people felt that someone was speaking not only the language of their hearts and their land, but also that of their conceptual maps.
It was a decisive cultural shift, a «hierophany» that reestablished a cosmic order and confirmed what was already germinating in the intuitions of the philosopher-king Nezahualcóyotl of Texcoco, but also in the depths of a complex culture such as the Mesoamerican one (the famous «Semina Verbi de Ad Gentes» 11): between 9 and 10 million spontaneous, unforced conversions following the apparitions of 1531. Centuries later, John Paul II would summarize this phenomenon by defining Guadalupe as «the first example of perfectly inculturated evangelization.».
That is why there is a very common saying in Mexico: a Mexican may not be Christian, but he is a Guadalupano.
This hierophany creates, in fact, a new center (but using the same geographical and cultural center, Tenochtitlán) that is fully transcultural: neither solely Spanish nor solely Mexica, but Mexican, making «the two into one people.».
Ipalnemohuani and Yahwe: different languages, one concept
When I first heard about Guadalupe, and especially about the name Ipalnemohuani, «He through whom we live,» knowing Hebrew, I immediately thought of a parallel: Ipalnemohuani is the exact translation of the Hebrew Yahweh, which derives from the verb h–y(w)–h and means to be/live in a causative form: not only «I am,» but also «I cause to be/exist.».
Similarly, Ipalnemohuani contains the Nahuatl verb nemohua, «to live,» with the prefix ipal, which indicates a vital, causative relationship: «that through which one lives, which sustains life and being.».
The apparitions of Guadalupe are, therefore, a revelation (and a discovery) of a meaning already contained, albeit in embryonic form, in the Mesoamerican mentality, whose language, Nahuatl (defined as «copious, elegant, highly artificial» by Fray Alonso de Molina), holds, like Hebrew, a treasure trove of complexity and symbolic meanings.
Mexican Spanish also retains traces of Nahuatl in affectionate forms (casita, mamita) and polite forms (ustedes), a discreet sign of a language that has its roots in Nahuatl and of a cross-cultural phenomenon, such as that of Guadalupe, which has created a new people who, sometimes without knowing it, continue to be neltiliztli tlacatl.
I would like to conclude this article with the words of Nezahualcóyotl (1402–1472):
No one can, down here,
No one can be a friend
From the giver of life:
He can only be invoked.
But alongside him,
Along with him,
you can live on earth.
Whoever finds it,
You can only know this: He is invoked,
next to him, with him.
You can live on earth.
No one is really your friend,
O Giver of Life!
Alone as if among the flowers
we were looking for someone,
that's how we look for you,
we who live on earth.
while we are with you,
It is as if Nezahualcóyotl, long before Guadalupe, had sensed that the true God does not dominate, but accompanies: «together with him, with him, one can live on earth.».
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