About Tlazolli

The concept of tlazolli have been usually describes as garbage, manure, or that that is swept, however its meaning expand beyond the physical being used as a metaphor for taint, sin, defilement, adultery and infidelity, and is this way as a complex concept that in the next lines we will explore it as the notion of impurity as well as a “dualistic and creative force”

1) TLAZOLLI AS IMPURITY

Tlazolli derives from the prefix tlah- (thing) and the suffix -zolli (old, dirty, worn out, exhausted, deteriorated). In its most literal, it refers to something used up, out of place, something that has lost its original order or structure and has been rendered “loose and undifferentiated matter”; in this manner, it refers to material substances such as muck, dirt, broken sherds, dust, excrement, sweat or things swept up with a broom that made one physically “dirty”. As such, it exists at the opposite end of a continuum from that which is clean, well-ordered, well-arranged, well-integrated – that is stuff in place.

Why Huehue Tlamanitiliztli

The decision to coin a word to refer to the old Mexica religion was due to have a proper name to call our Tradition, the same way Greek Reconstructionists have Hellenismos or Anglo-Saxon Reconstructionists have Fyrnsidu, in this way and as there wasn’t a word used by the own Mexicas to name their believes, I decided to follow the pattern of Modern Paganism, so on, Huehue Tlamanitiliztli is Classic Nahuatl for “Old Customs” or the “Old Way of Life“, the same way Fyrnsidu, Vattisen Yaly or Senistrognata means more or less the same thing for the Anglo-Saxon, Chuvash and Celtic Recons.