Ciofa 23

Nuria Ciofalo
Mexican Indigenous
Psychologies, Cosmovisons,
and Altered States
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
of Consciousness
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic
Abstract: Indigenous psychologies are informed by their cosmogonies

and cosmologies, philosophies, spirituality and religions, traditions
and customs, and knowledge and praxis systems. This paper reviews
some conceptions of consciousness, psyche, spirit, mental and
physical health, relations to all Earth Beings (human and non-
human), ancestors, nature, and altered states of consciousness among
the Nahua and Maya of Mexico. Colonization has threatened these
rich legacies by imposing the conquerors’ cosmologies. However,
these Indigenous communities continue to use plants, mushrooms, and
some animals to generate altered states of consciousness, enacting
sacred rituals and healing. The conclusion recommends learning from
these knowledge and praxes systems and their related consciousness
and spiritual states to expand the emergence of decolonial psychology
that may offer alternatives to address the challenges of our time.
Keywords: Cem Anahuac; Mesoamerican cultures; Indigenous
cosmovisions; Maya and Nahua; states of consciousness; conceptions
of psyche; spiritual world; altered states of consciousness; decolonial
psychology.
Correspondence:
Email: nciofalo@pacifica.edu
1 Pacifica Graduate Institute, Summerland, CA, USA.
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 30, No. 5–6, 2023, pp. 103–22

DOI: 10.53765/20512201.30.5.103
104 N. CIOFALO
1. Indigenous Psychologies and Decoloniality

Indigenous psychologies are informed by their cosmologies, philoso-
phies, spirituality and religions, traditions and customs, and knowl-
edge and praxis systems. Cosmovisions from Mesoamerica, renamed
in its original roots by the original inhabitants as Cem Anahuac, offer
rich legacies in the study of consciousness. Cem Anahuac conceptions
on religion and spirituality were studied by the Christian missionaries
to indoctrinate Indigenous people more effectively, in many cases,
rather than an interest in learning from them. As many scholars who
have been studying this topic emphasized, the information the
missionaries gathered was interpreted under the missionaries’ ideol-
ogy and worldview, a hegemonic conception of only-one-world,

labelling Indigenous knowledge and belief systems as inferior, primi-
tive, and superstitious, thereby establishing a racist hierarchical
system supported by colonial difference, erasure, and abyssal exclu-

sion (Mignolo, 2009; Santos, 2014).
Quijano (2000) analysed the ‘coloniality of power’ that maintains
exploitative colonial relationships to usurp Indigenous lands, oppress,
and dominate peoples’ bodies, minds, and spirits to impose colonial
knowledge and belief systems. As Santos (2014) pointed out, this
violent abyssal exclusion promotes and maintains the colonial
divisions of a racist hierarchical system, differentiating those who
deem themselves superior, the colonizers, from the colonized, the
inferior, and less-than-human. The coloniality of power affects the
holistic being, that is, how colonized cultures know and feel, their
rituals and practices, including relationships with bodies, minds, and
spirits, other humans, animals, other-than-human, and built and
natural environments. Coloniality of power, being, and feeling mani-
fests as modernity and epistemic universalism (Maldonado-Torres,
2007). It claims Eurocentric epistemologies as more advanced than
Indigenous epistemologies. It promotes the myth of progress and
civilization to justify ongoing historical, economic, political, cultural,
epistemic, and ecological imperialism. A decolonial approach to
learning from Indigenous cosmovisions on consciousness delinks
from Western-centric ideologies and demands the critical awareness
of colonial infiltration in the sources used for its study.
López Austin (1988) proposed the construct of worldview as ‘…the
ensemble of interrelated ideological systems, held together in a
relatively consistent form, by which an individual or social group at a
particular moment in history tries to understand the universe’ (p. 12).
MEXICAN INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGIES 105
It is a ‘collective cultural product and macrosystem of communication

that makes interactions intelligible’ (ibid., p. 13). The interconnection
of different worldviews creates an ideological complex that also
includes the analysis of the impacts of domination by another cultural
group. This was the case of Spanish colonization in Indigenous lands.
Resistance against ideological imposition recycled ideological and
cosmological components among societies with the same traditions.
López Austin asserted that this occurred in Mesoamerica. Common
beliefs are still alive today and concern the strong connection between
humans and all organic and inorganic life. For instance, the relation-
ships with animals and their unity with deities and humans.
2. A Brief Roadmap
I have selected a handful of the abundant sources devoted to under-
standing conceptions and manifestations of consciousness among the

Maya and Nahua in pre-Hispanic and contemporary times, acknowl-
edging that it is a limited review of the transdisciplinary literature that
continues to grow and be revised. I prioritized sources written by
Mesoamerican scholars and those written by European or North
American scholars based on the critical analyses of colonial archives
gathered by the Spanish friars, those produced by Indigenous inform-
ants who wrote the texts, and contemporary ethnographic accounts.
One of the central arguments in decolonial studies is the departure
of disciplinary silos. Indigenous epistemologies do not view reality as
fragmented into dissected elements and disciplinary compartments.
Notably, this paper does not address comparisons with Western con-
ceptions of consciousness within the confinement of psychological
delimitations as an intent to delink from Eurocentric paradigms and
avoid historical tendencies in cross-cultural psychology that have
imposed Western standards to understand non-Western psychologies
(Marsella, 2009; Ciofalo, Dudgeon and Nikora, 2021; Walsh, 2018). I
capitalize the words God and Goddess in respect to Indigenous
cosmologies, unless these were not capitalized in authors’ quotes.
I begin with an in-depth exploration of conceptualizations on con-
sciousness, religion, and spirituality to understand the Nahua and
Maya individual and cultural psyche. This section conforms to the
cyclical, holistic, and circular (not linear) Nahua and Maya spiritual
worldview, in which conceptions of consciousness and the psyche are
pluralistic and manifest in the mind, body, spirit, nature, and cosmos.
For this reason, I did not organize the concepts described in this
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section under subtitles presenting categories and subcategories but as

one whole section integrating the diverse and dynamic conceptions of
consciousness under psychological pluriversality. A brief overview of
altered states of consciousness pursued by these cultural groups
follows. This narrative weaves descriptions of pre-Hispanic con-
ceptions of consciousness defined by Indigenous scholars with
colonial definitions authored by Spanish missionaries and ethno-
graphic accounts reported by some post-colonial authors. I also
included brief connections to learnings from my affective conviviality
with Mexican Indigenous communities resulting in the co-authorship
of Maya psychology from the Lacandon Rainforest in Chiapas
(Ciofalo, 2019).
The conclusion highlights the main characteristics of Maya and

Nahua conceptualizations of consciousness. As Trnka and Lorencova
(2022; 2016) have warned, there is still much to learn from Indigenous
consciousness states. This paper will make evident that Cem
Anahuac’s cosmovisions and their related consciousness concepts
surpass the limitations of the Western rational mind. The conclusion
centres on the rich contributions that Mesoamerican cosmovisions on
consciousness and the psyche can offer to the growing field of
Indigenous psychologies, Latin American psychologies referred to as
psychologies from Abya Yala and the Global South, and to the
emergence of decolonial psychologies to address the challenges of our
time.
3. Conceptions About the

Psyche and Consciousness
Trnka and Lorencova (2022) asserted that some ‘indigenous concepts
are often more holistic, involving not only the individual or other
human beings, but also non-human beings or global, universal (or
spiritual) forces’ (p. 129). The ontological relationality with all beings,
including non-human, nature, ancestors, and the spiritual world, is
common among the original peoples of Cem Anahuac. The psyche,
also known as the soul or spirit, emerges from the cosmos ruled by the
peoples’ cosmogonies. It is human and animal connecting to the
divine and composed of multiple animistic entities that have diverse
meanings.
For the Nahua, the tonalli corresponds to life energy, the spiritual,
and the psyche. The tonalli is located in the head, and its loss pro-
duces illness as it is a life force that gives warmth and courage. It is
protected by the hair, which should not be cut at the back of the head.
According to López Austin (1988), the tonalli is ‘derived from the
verb tona, “to irradiate” (“to make warmth or sun,” according to
Molina)… “the soul and spirit” (Molina: totonal)… something meant
for, or the property of a certain person (Molina: tetonal)’ (pp. 204–5).
It is an animistic entity infused with heat-light energy that spreads
over the Earth and emerges from sacred trees daily with more force
than in the past days. According to McKeever Furst (2003):
The Aztecs said that a pair of old gods, who lived in the heavens, took a
fire drill and twirled the upright stick in the chest of an unborn child.
Thus was the vital heat ignited… At the beginning of all things, the
gods gave their life force to the sun so that eating a human being was
tantamount to consuming the tonalli of the gods, which sustained the

corn that gave heat to the gods. (p. 28)
The dead would be cold because of their tonalli’s loss. Therefore, the
Aztecs had to sacrifice living humans to offer their tonalli, their life
force, to their gods, or eat them to ingest it. It also exists in the body
parts that regenerate themselves, like the hair and the nails, and in
objects that the dead person possessed in life (ibid.).
López Austin (1988) said that all that belongs to humans is named
‘tonalli (tetonal)’ because of its relation to the cosmos (p. 205). It is a
vital force or energy called tona that is generated by the Sun. The
tonalli can also be understood as ‘the shadow… of abandonment
during the dream of a psychic entity that is the image of the body on a
trip and it could be dangerous’ (López Austin, 1980, p. 225 — cited in
De la Garza, 2012, p. 25 — translation by author). López Austin
(1988) reinforced that, according to several linguistic researchers, the
tonalli has been identified with a person’s shadow and the dangers of
its loss, its recovery, and relocation in the body that became sick due
to its loss. It is located in a person’s head, providing ‘vigor, warmth,
and valor [as] a force in which gods, animals, plants, and things
participate’ (pp. 206–7). It takes the shape of its owner and has a
‘luminous force’, is also called ‘shadow’ or ‘cehualli’ as a manifesta-
tion of the invisibility of the supreme God ‘Titlacahuan… who spoke
like a shadow’ (ibid., pp. 217–8). The tonalli departs through death,
unconsciousness, drunkenness, illness, sexual activity, and sleep. It
also departs as a shadow in dreams, and if the dreamer is awakened
abruptly, it causes fright and loss. The head, tonalli, is an organ of
consciousness dispersed in the body. It has been translated as soul by
Christian missionaries in their search for equivalent meanings to
indoctrinate the Indians (ibid., pp. 206–7). Trnka and Lorencova
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(2022) referred to the concept of teotl as consciousness signifying

various meanings such as sacred holistic energy and power.
The yol, yollo, or heart was the animistic centre where emotions
(feelings and affects) and memory are located. The yol could be
healthy or sick. If the former, the person will experience vitality and
satisfaction, and if the latter, confusion, wickedness, anger, and
unconsciousness in organs like the head, tonalli. The el or elli, liver, is
an organ that gives a person the necessary energy to be brave and
concentrate on matters of the tonalli. In its normal state, when the
components of the liver are unified, the person experiences tranquillity
and happiness. The yol can also arouse passions and make the person
angry and hateful, leading an evil life. López Austin (1988) asserted
that, according to the Florentine Codex, ‘the ihiyotl is the breath

implanted by Citlalicue, Citlallatonac, and the ilhuicac chaneque’ (p.
233). It is cold during life and diffuses at death as night air that can
affect other beings. The ihiyotl is found in the liver ‘as a luminous gas
that had qualities influencing other beings, in particular attracting
them toward the person, animal or object from which it flowed’ (ibid.,
p. 234). It could be used to damage others and bring them sickness.
The ilhhuicac chaneque, the dwellers of the sky, passed their ihiyotl
(breath) to newborns. López Austin, referring to the colonial dramatist
Ruiz de Alarcón, stated that these beings are also called ‘ohuican
chaneque, lords of dangerous places’ that continue to appear in the
consciousness of contemporary Nahua with names such as
‘chaneques, enanos de la lluvia (rain dwarfs), sombrerudos (big hats)’
and are governed by divine beings, ‘sometimes of the Earth, some-
times the god of rain, sometimes the Lord of Animals — all seeking
the celestial force of the tonalli’ (ibid., p. 225).
The teyolia was another animistic entity located in the heart. It was
hot during life and cold at the time of death. There were different
kinds of heart: ‘…white, hard, sweet, bitter, sad, raw, or cold, etc. The
bitter one was correlated with effort, sorrow, repentance and resist-
ance to sorcery, magical attacks, or evil eye’ (ibid., p. 231). The
teyolia could become sick due to aquatic fevers caused by water
beings or by sorcerers who devoured hearts. Illnesses could be cured
by various remedies, such as confessing the sick person’s sins. Some
other remedies could heal the sufferer’s heart’s phlegm and help them
acquire intelligence. The teyolia could also be found in animals,
mountains, oceans, lakes, and other Earth beings. It has been associa-
ted with spirit as the tonalli with the shadow and the ihiyotl with night
air. Some contemporary Nahua believe that the dead body
disintegrates and the spirit departs to other worlds where reward and
punishment are received, according to the person’s life deeds. The
shadow departs from the body but wanders freely over the Earth.
Lastly, the night air may be absorbed by the shadow or released until
it evaporates and dissolves (ibid., p. 317).
McKeever Furst (1995) referred to Motolinia’s Nahuatl dictionary,
which translated the word soul with the Nahuatl words teyolia as yolia
and tonalli. McKeever Furst added that the fact that the Nahua had
diverse words to represent what the Spaniards understood as a soul
evidences the striking differential conceptions between those two
worldviews. She looked at various sources, such as iconographic and
textual evidence, including natural observations of contemporary
expressions on the soul, being cautious of colonial influence.

McKeever Furst asserted that it was difficult to separate the soul into
components as it was experienced rather than analysed in specific

theological categories. The yolia was centred in the heart and became
a bird or butterfly when a person died. The blood accumulates in the
veins in the back of the body when the heart stops beating. This
explains the winged form the corpse takes, attributed to the presence
of the flying soul in the shape of a bird. The yolia was also associated
with the breath, shadow, magical stones, and an encompassing vital
force in the bones that extended to the phenomenological world.
McKeever Furst found that contemporary Nahua people related the
soul not only to a life force located in the heart but also as a part of a
cosmic force.
De la Garza (2012) added that, for the Mayans, tonalli is like a
shadow surrounding the body. Teyolia refers to the heart executing
thinking and imaginative functions. For the Maya, the o’ol is a spirit
that leaves the body during sleep. It is gained through respiration and
conceived as the ‘blow or air of life’. This spirit can be also affected
by the influence of bad air. A person has a specific warmth called
kinam that remains in intimate garments used to exercise healing at a
distance. The spirit of blow is called the ik while the k’awil is an
inherited ancestral energy. Plants can also have tonalli. The sacred
corn plant has a soul that wanders at night. This is why it should not
be harvested at night, or else it would lose its tonalli (ibid., p. 127;
translation by author).
De la Garza (ibid.) mentioned Eric Velazquez’s investigations
during the Classic Mayan period on psychic entities that contained
‘the o’hlis located in the heart that control inner life and thoughts and
identify with life energy, spirit, and animus’ (p. 21; translation by
110 N. CIOFALO
author). The o’hlis could leave the physical body through ecstatic
trance or ritual. It is named by the Tzeltal, Tzoltzil, and Ch’ol as
ch’ulel, which is the heart soul. It had two components, one was
spiritually located in the body, and the other was associated with
animals as the instinctive impulsive side located in the forest. The
latter corresponds to the nagual among the Nahua as the animal
companion or alter-ego. The ch’ulel is accompanied by a partner
animal soul, the nagual, who guards the humans’ fate. Naguales are
introduced at birth but can also be accessed by being in nature in close
proximity with animals. They can be acquired in dreams and are
visible and invisible. Humans can change shape, taking the form of
the animal companion destined for them and travelling to many places
as they desire. The animal accompaniers are not those found in

material nature but have specific characteristics in the pantheon of the
Gods and Goddesses. ‘There were days dedicated to honor and show
gratitude to the nagual and encounter the animal alter-ego’ (Bunzel,
1981, pp. 331–5 — cited in De la Garza, 2012, p. 25; translation by
author).
The medicine men, curanderos, or as De la Garza called them,
chimanes (shamans), have thirteen animal accompaniers called ch’ulel
and its projection, wayjel. The latter is also called wayiiel, the com-
panion animal used by sorcerers, while chanul is the companion
animal of ordinary people. Pitarch (1996) stated that way also signifies
dream but extends to the connotation of animal companion found in
the Maya classical period. The lab is an animal representation of the
self that can take diverse external forms such as chambalametik,
animals, chanbul ja, fluvial beings, and meteorites that correspond to
the Indigenous cosmovision and ecology (p. 119). The person is com-
posed of various beings, such as the lab, the ch’ulel, and the heart
bird. The consciousness in the head means knowing, nop, while the
knowing with the heart means na’a. Forgetting literally means to fall
from the heart, ch’ay ta o’tan (ibid., pp. 123–4).
De la Garza (2012) stated that the Yucatec Maya called the soul
pixan, which translates as ‘spirit and consciousness that reincarnates
after death’ (p. 21; translation by author). The Maya Lacandón call it
pixan or pixam, meaning spirit, rather than alma, soul (Ciofalo et al.,
2019). The tonalli, the pixan, the o’hl, the ch’ulel, and the wayjel refer
to the capacity of the self to dismember from the body and travel
through time and space to immaterial realities naturally and
involuntarily during sleep. According to Pitarch (1996) the ch’ulel has
a plurality of meanings, but its main intent is to attain harmony and
balance with the cosmos. In his Etnografia de las Almas Tzeltales

(1996), he wrote that, from all psyches (almas), this type is
…a variegated set of animistic principles: animals of all species, atmo-
spheric phenomena, strange human beings, mineral substances, and
others. According to the indigenous belief, the ch’ulel resides in the
interior of the human body, simultaneously, outside of it, and is
disseminated worldwide. (p. 9; translation by author)
Pitarch faced challenges understanding the plurality of souls (almas)
in the Tzeltal cosmovision, yet some of his participants gifted him
with deep insights. For instance, they shared that almas were
associated with the concept ‘bird of heart, ave-corazón, lab’ that is
named in plural: ‘mutil ko’rautik’ (ibid., p. 32; translation by author).
The lab represents certain kinds of animals that relate with the
person’s ch’ulel positively or negatively. If the latter, it causes sick-
ness or even death, and if the former, they can give power and magic
abilities to the person’s ch’ulel. At times the lab, animal, dies too.
Labs can also be water and meteorites (ibid., p. 57; translation by
author). People who have thirteen labs are considered to have com-
plete animistic entities ‘t’zaka sch’ulel’ that can be located in the
person’s interior or exterior, in which case it could disseminate across
the Earth’s surface (ibid., pp. 72–82; translation by author).
The second kind of soul, the ch‘ulel, also lies in the heart and is
important for life, but it also influences the personal character. During
death, the ch’ulel leaves the body and wanders some days (20 or 40)
around the dead person’s house. It can inflict into other people’s souls,
and for this reason the family must pray and set the dead person’s
ch’ulel free so it can continue its journey to the deepest bottom of the
Earth, ‘a place called k’atinbak, calcined bone’ (ibid., p. 53; transla-
tion by author). People can learn about these souls (almas) in prayers.
Lorenzo Lot, one of Pitarch’s participants, stated that prayers tell the
story of the Earth’s surface with its four pillars. Lorenzo said he
evidenced once an elder praying the ‘bik ‘tal clzab’ (a kind of praise),
and he was in awe listening to ‘the many stories and towns he
mentioned that can only be learned by listening’ (ibid., p. 19).
Pavón-Cuellar (2013) reviewed Aztec, Mayan, and Purépecha
psychologies from pre-colonial and contemporary times. Pavón-
Cuellar asserted that this type of Indigenous psychology is of tran-
scendental significance for contemporary Latin American psychol-
ogists, as it is the first native Latin American psychology that is as
valid as other traditions. Conceptualizations of the psyche have
existed since pre-colonial times in many Indigenous cultures that have
112 N. CIOFALO
elaborated precise definitions, identifications, and treatments of

mental health illnesses. Pavón-Cuellar stated:
The Maya represented mental health illness in complex ways thereby
distinguishing dementia (cooil), melancholy (tzeniolal), agitation
(okomolal), delirium (coothan), and hallucinogenic states
(oxkokoltzeck), as well as epilepsy (citam tamcaz canchapahal), and
other types of fits and fainting (zaccimil zatalol) (Guerra, 1964). (ibid.,
p. 94; translation by author)
These ailments were treated by ‘medicine men or sorcerers (pul-yah),
wise fortune-tellers (ah-men), and healers (dzac yah)’ using narrative
therapies and ceremonies (ibid., pp. 94–5). The therapies used to treat
them are still preserved among the Maya in Guatemala, Chiapas, and
Yucatán. For instance, the healers among the Tzotziles of Chiapas,

Mexico, treat mental health disorders using a type of confessional
therapy by acquiring information on the patient’s relations with the

family and community, the natural and supernatural cosmos, and
details of everyday life. The Tzotziles interpret mental illness as the
separation of body and spirit, an essential constitution of the Western
self. Mayan groups, such as the Tzeltales, have a quaternary con-
ception of being intimately connected to nature as opposed to the
Western binary that separates humans and culture from nature. Their
psyche is inseparable from the cosmos and nature (ibid.; Ciofalo,
2019).
The psychology of the Purépecha Indigenous people from northern
Michoacán centres on the human body’s interaction with society. The
body is conceived as an ‘open entity through which all that enters and
exits becomes part of the socio-economic weave in which it is
inserted’ (Martínez González, 2010, pp. 192–3 — cited in Pavón-
Cuellar, 2013, p. 97; translation by author). The connection with the
cosmos is also present in the Aztec psychology under which pathol-
ogies occur due to imbalances between the earth, sky, light, and dark-
ness. Several professionals healed mental disorders. One of them was
tonalpouqui, a wise old-man and a practical therapist who could re-
establish the lost emotional balance and predict the sufferer’s destiny.
For the Aztecs, the yollotl or teyolia (heart) is at the centre of psychol-
ogical life and is accompanied by the tonalli (head) that determines
the temperament and the ihiyotl (liver) that provides the energy and
emotional source. The psychic entity is composed of these three
elements and a concentrated vital fluid flows through them. Mental
illness occurs when the yollotl is lost as it is
…what provides ‘life’ and corresponds to the intellectual functions of

‘sensibility’ and thought; the tonalli is in the head and it ‘irradiates’ and
determines ‘the temperament’ and the ‘psychic value’ of the subject; the
ihiyotl is in the liver and is ‘the fountain of energy, the breath is the
emotional strength, and emotions, passions, joy, and pleasure depend on
it’. (López Austin, 1980, vol. 1, pp 223–62 — cited in Pavón-Cuellar,
2013, p. 100; translation by author)
The yollotl corresponds to the intellectual functions of sensibility and
thought that are aligned with Arturo Escobar’s (2016) construct of
‘thinking-feeling/sentipensar’ as a means to decolonize knowledge-
generation. The Nahuatl term is matia, which is the activity of the
yollotl.
The tonalpouqui would empower patients to view their image or

ixtli (face) — the deep seat of the self or personality — reflected in a
mirror. This would allow them to understand themselves with the
heart. It is noteworthy that Tezcatlipoca was also called the God of the
Smokey Mirror. It could be speculated that this God reflected the deep
cosmic self-consciousness through his capacities to opaquely mirror-
back the cosmic self to the human mortals. In the Tzotzil communities
of San Juan Chamula and Zinacantán, saints in churches have a mirror
covering their faces. The person prays in front of the mirror and
communicates with the saint about their inner ailments to be healed
and regain harmony with the self, community, and the divine (ethno-
graphic account of the author). Pedro Pitarch (2000) described how, in
Maya Tzeltal communities, saints’ representations are externalizations
or projections of their inner selves or hearts. The symbol of the mirror
facing the person who is communicating with the divine may be a
continuation of the relationship with Tezcaltipoca practised in ancient
and contemporary times among the Maya, Nahua, and other ethnic
groups. According to Zamora (2020):
One of the supreme gods of the Aztec pantheon, Teskatlipōka, was
called ‘he who invents himself’ (moyōkoyatsin) or ‘he for whom we
live’ (īpalnemowani), translated by the 16th-century friar Bernardino de
Sahagún as dador de vida, ‘giver of life’ (1986[1524]: 169), a Spanish
phrase that is still used by the Mixe in reference to their own maker god
(Pitrou, 2015: 86). (ibid., p. 338)
Another reference to the influence of the Aztec pantheon on Cem
Anahuac contemporary psychologies, including those emerging from
the migratory diasporas in the United States of America, is the
analysis of the dismemberment of Huitzilopochtli’s sorceress sister,
the Goddess Coyolxauhqui. Huitzilopochtli was Coatlicue’s son, and
114 N. CIOFALO
when his sister learned of her mother’s pregnancy, she summoned her
400 siblings to kill her mother. Huitzilopochtli was born before they
arrived and cut his sister’s head, causing her body to fall into pieces.
The killing of Coyolxauhqui allowed for the continuation of the
cosmic cycle with recurring periods of life and death, regenerating
each other. Gloria Anzaldùa (2007), a Chicana feminist, wrote about
this myth referring to psychological states of dismemberment and
renewal, causing soul transformations amidst the challenges of bi-
cultural identification. Contemporary analytical psychologists have
applied this myth to understanding psychological processes among
generations in Mexico (Michán, 2000; Besquin Rubinstein, 2000).
This myth expresses the coexistence of life and death in a person’s
psychological journey. It does not mean a contradiction of opposites,

as Carl Jung (1976) would explain it, but the simultaneous and com-
plementary relationship, co-forming a desired symbiotic state of con-

sciousness as an unconscious archetype of the collective unconscious.
Trnka and Lorencova (2016) asserted that ‘the unconscious is a
primary source of mythology and religious symbolism’ and it influ-
ences human agency even if outside of the awakened cognitive
domain (p. 88). For Jung these symbols form archetypes that influence
cultural behaviour patterns conforming the collective consciousness of
groups in society. Trnka and Lorencova compared archetypes with
quantum patterning processes and found parallels between Indigenous
concepts of consciousness, such as the transformation of the spirit
after death existing diffusely everywhere, and conceptualizations in
quantum physics such as ‘the quantum sea, an all-pervasive energetic
field including quantum vacuum energy that is a random, ambient
fluctuating energy existing even in so-called empty space’ (ibid., p.
12).
Taube (1993) asserted that Mesoamerican myths are sacred stories
that transmit lessons on proper behaviour. The ‘brave and humble
Nanahuatzin’ defeats the ‘vain and wealthy Tecuzistecatl’ in Aztec
mythology, and the former becomes the Sun. In the Popol Vuh it is
stated that the sacred twins ‘slay the monster bird Vucub Caquix
because of his excessive pride and bragging’ (ibid., p. 17). People
were responsible for maintaining balance with the cosmos through
their animistic entities. Pedro Pitarch (1996) found that conceptions of
the ch’ulel had to do with moral conduct, a way to follow traditions
and customs, in his ethnographic research in Tzeltal communities in
Chiapas. Mexican Indigenous communities are regulated by traditions
and customs that, in turn, modify individual behaviour as collective
accountability to these regulations guided by their cosmovisions.

Psychological theories of individual and collective behaviour, con-
sciousness, and spirituality can be generated by understanding
ancestral customs and traditions (Bautista Cruz, 2017).
Some contemporary scholars critique the Mesoamerican con-
ceptualizations of the soul widely influenced by Western concepts of
the anima from Greek and Roman antiquity used in the works of the
Franciscan and Dominican missionaries. Particularly, referring to the
analysis of the main Nahua and Maya concepts of alma, pichan, and
ch’ulel (soul) by Franciscan friars, Dana Bultman (2018) highlighted
what De la Cadena and Blaser (2018) conceived as the incommensura-
bility of two divergent worlds, the European and the Indigenous world
of the Americas. This divergence constitutes a heterogeneity or

hybridity that ‘…juxtaposes a European concept of the soul with pre-
Columbian beliefs in a way that marks a difference and an

asymmetrical potential for universality between them’ (Bultman,
2018, p. 301). Bultman found a remarkable similarity between, on the
one hand, the representations of the three main animistic entities (or
forces, as she calls them) of the Nahua — the tonalli, ihiyotl, and yolia
— with descriptions published by Osuna, a Spanish Franciscan friar in
his ‘Tercer Abecedario Espiritual published in the 1570s’ (ibid., p.
296). Strikingly, Osuna was never in Mesoamerica, but his work was
widely disseminated in the New Spain and effected a remarkable
influence in the Franciscan missionaries who worked with Nahua
nobles and sages to describe their spiritual entities. As stated earlier,
what the Spaniards conceived as soul in the Nahuatl vocabulary had
more to do with consciousness that permeated the whole body and
cosmos rather than a specific entity (alma or anima) that could be
analysed.
De la Garza (2012) described that, among the Nahua and the Maya,
the self was conceived in two forms, the material parts that were
‘heavy, embodied, visible and tangible’, and the ‘light parts’ that were
‘subtle, ethereal, associated with heat, air, smells, taste, light, and
shadow, as forms of energy, breath, rational knowledge, but also
irrationality and emotions’ (ibid., p. 20; translation by author). For the
Nahua, among the subtle parts is the ‘teyolia located in the yollotl that
refers to the heart associated with vitality and knowledge, memory,
affects, motivation, and intention’, corresponding to the vital energy
that can separate from the body at the time of death and continues to
exist as an immortal entity (ibid., p. 21; translation by author).
116 N. CIOFALO
The separation of the body can occur voluntarily, such as in rituals,

or accidentally, as in the case of dreams or death. The material and
subtle forms under which the self was conceived do not constitute a
duality, as in Western concepts of the self, but unity and multiplicity
‘composed of subtle materials located in diverse parts of the body
(heavy matter) that can be externalized or projected outside of the
body in altered states of consciousness, such as dreams and ecstasy’
(ibid., p. 20; translation by author). This may explain the consumption
of hallucinogenic plants and the practice of rituals and ceremonies that
produced trance and ecstatic states of consciousness.
4. Altered States of Consciousness

Through the Use of Psychoactive Plants

Trnka and Lorencova (2022) asserted that in many Indigenous
cultures altered states of consciousness give access to ‘the universal

sphere of all-inclusive consciousness, which is represented by the
immense womb’ (p. 121). The use of psychoactive plants to produce
these states appears in numerous pre-Hispanic archives such as the
codices, hieroglyphs, and images inscribed in stelae next to or on the
pyramids and in historical records collected by Indigenous reporters
and by Spanish missionaries. These plants were and continue to be
considered divine. ‘Mystic experiences could be provoked by stimula-
ting the hippocampus and the amygdala that are considered ancient
phylogenetic structures’ (Rubia, 2009 — cited in De la Garza, 2012,
p. 34; translation by author).
Plants (and animals) that contain alkaloids are psychotropic and
narcotic and may act as depressants or stimulants. These include
mushrooms, certain cacti like the peyote, and animals like certain
frogs, toads, and woodpeckers. Among the religious experiences pro-
voked by the consumption of these substances are feelings of dying
and reincarnation; out-of-body experiences; extreme clarity of under-
standing of all phenomena and relations in life; visions of deities and
demons; ecstatic perceptions of unification with the universe; commu-
nicating with nature; and being able to diagnose, treat, and cure ill-
nesses (De la Garza, 2012, pp. 35–7; translation by author).
De la Garza noted that the Gods and Goddesses would also be asked
for specific ecological conditions such as rain and productivity of the
harvest, but also for the capacity to heal illnesses. Hallucinogenic
plants and mushrooms were consumed by the holy priests or healers to
perform the rituals and communicate with the divine (ibid., p. 28). De
la Garza added that the religious experiences stimulated by the use of

these substances were: (1) experience of death; (2) universal unity;
(3) encounters with spirits or the divine; (4) monsters, demons,
reincarnation; (5) disembodied perceptions with a capacity to perceive
one’s body; and (6) simultaneous perceptions of past, present, and
future events. De la Garza asserted that these experiences are common
in many religions worldwide and are found ‘…in mystic texts of
ancient civilizations’ (Rubia, 2000, pp. 301–5 — cited in De la Garza,
2012, p. 37; translation by author).
A reference to the Sacred Books is described in the memoirs of the
Mazatec healer Maria Sabina who consumed the sacred mushroom
teonanacatl. She used El Libro Sagrado del Lenguaje (The Sacred
Book of Language) that appears in visions to teach how the dying

come back to life to assist healers in treating illnesses. Gordon
Wasson met the Mazatec healer Maria Sabina, and experienced the
use of the sacred flesh of the Gods or the ‘nti-si tho’ that in Nahuatl is
called the ‘nanacatl’ or ‘teonanacatl’ mushroom (Psilocybe
Mexicana) (Estrada, 1977/2010; Ciofalo, 2017, p. 8). Wasson (1977/
2010) asserted that Sabina’s healing chants were the same as those
reported by Ruiz de Alarcón more than three centuries ago. These
chants were written in a Nahua Sacred Book called Amoxtli and were
sung by a Nahua healer. Colonization has threatened these rich
legacies by imposing the conquerors’ cosmologies. However, learn-
ings from the rich Maya, Nahua, and Mazatec cosmology, astrology,
science, and mythology are still conducted in archaeological sites
where these texts are written in stone. There is abundant evidence that
these Indigenous communities continue to use plants, mushrooms, and
some animals to generate altered states of consciousness, enacting
sacred rituals and healing.
Shamans, curanderos, or healers had special capacities that were not
only stimulated using substances but through other practices. Some
possessed a shapeshifting ability to transform into animals. This
capacity is reported in the Florentine Codex, but also in contemporary
narratives in Indigenous communities across Mexico (De la Garza,
2012, p. 48). As stated above, this transformation could take the form
of the nagual of the healer that assisted in the healing process. De la
Garza (2012) reported that, according to peoples’ stories collected by
Sahagún, there were benign and malign naguales. They knew the
place of the dead and the sky and would spend time at temples
immersed in their inner selves and perhaps consuming hallucinogenic
plants. They were also called sorcerers. Some other powerful men
118 N. CIOFALO
called caciques could summon rain and thunder. The missionaries

considered shamanistic abilities evil possession, but asserted that
Indians were successful in practising them. De la Garza (2012) added
that among the Nahua and Maya murals and images painted on
ceramic objects are ‘shamans with eyes wide opened and enlarged
heads, and others placing their hand in the glutes representing the use
of psychoactive enemas’ (p. 64; translation by author). The codices
and missionary sources state that healers testified they had died and
reincarnated back to life, acquiring capacities to foretell the future,
heal illnesses, and practise magic arts for the governing classes,
causing the divine realms to manifest themselves (ibid., pp. 50–2).
5. Conclusion
For the Maya and the Nahua, the world is a unitary whole under a
relational ontology in which all entities — humans, animals, nature,

ancestors, and the spiritual world — are interdependent. Zamora
(2020) suggested that:
Aztec gods were said to have animal co-essences (nāwalli) which often
appear in iconography merely as animal disguises, objects. For
example, the co-essence of the oldest pair of gods, Tōnakātēkwtli, and
his wife, Tōnakāsiwātl, was a caiman, the first day sign of the Aztec
calendar; this was ‘symbolized’ by a caiman costume (Boone, 2007:
41). (p. 330)
Similarly, the Maya God Itzamna, equivalent to ‘Tōnakātēkwtli had a
caiman form, and in some images is seen as coming out from a caiman
costume, as in the Dresden Codex’ (ibid., p. 329). Zamora went on to
state that the Gods also had agency in the objects that represented
them. For instance, a Coyote God, ‘Wēwekoyōtl (‘old coyote’)… a
patron of poets and musicians plays the drum teponāstli’, suggesting
that ‘…artistic objects among pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures
pertained to a wider ontological context, where an interplay of the
artificial and the natural was implied’ (ibid., p. 329). In this example,
Zamora sees evidence of the ontological instead of only symbolical
level of consciousness among Mesoamerican cultures. The coyote-
drum artefact can be possessed by the Gods. Artefacts on altars can
become beings that are alive and used to renew life to sustain the
cosmic balance. The person continues the legacy of ancestors and
passes it to the new generations, thus extending the concept of the self
and consciousness to other beings, including objects beyond time and
space (Gillespie, 2021; López Austin, 1988; León Portilla, 1973;

1963; 1992; 2010; Zamora, 2020).
The growing interest in knowledge systems erased by Eurocentric
imposition has uncovered the greater importance of animistic ontol-
ogies extending to non-humans that acquire agency and become
sentient beings (De la Cadena, 2015). The sharp opposition of con-
cepts such as culture and nature, living and ancestors, and objects and
subjects under Western worldviews contrasts with the polyagentic
consciousness of Mesoamerica (Gillespie, 2021; Zamora, 2020).
Furthermore, the departure of an individualistic consciousness of the
self allows for its expansion into a process of pluriversal becoming.
The conceptions of the soul are thus varied, dynamic, and entangled
with those related to the body, nature, spirituality, and the cosmos. As
Gillespie (2021) asserted: ‘This ontology is holistic and relational. It
accounts for the emergence of differences from the continuous inter-

relationships of assembling and disassembling entities as processes’
(p. 108).
For the Maya and the Nahua, reality is always changing and
becoming, and time is cyclical (Tedlock, 1992). There are Meso-
american similarities within differences, particularly within con-
ceptions of a relational being within cosmological perspectives that
extend epistemological and ontological conceptions in a fluid con-
tinuity of past–present–future, constantly changing and becoming. The
physical person is embodied with many body parts with distinct
functions that assemble in a whole and integrate animistic entities or
energies, different souls (almas, animas) of animals, and spiritual
beings. There is also an eternal soul that leaves the body at death and
rejoins the pool of ancestral souls guarded by the Gods, who assign
them back to the newborn. Gillespie (2021) added, ‘Suggestive
evidence for souls in pre-Hispanic inscriptions includes the way glyph
as a kind of “co-essence” (Houston and Stuart 1989) and a “death
event” read as “the diminution of the sak-nik-nal, the white-flower-
thing” (Freidel et al.,1993: 183)’ (p. 113).
It was stated earlier that the concept of soul (alma, anima) is a
colonial translation of this free-floating energy that embraces the body
and is related to all beings, including ancestors, nature, the divine, and
the cosmos. It can be assumed that altered states of consciousness
were pursued to expand this life force and better comprehend the
mysteries of the micro-cosmos existing within the person and the
macro-cosmos where the Gods reside. Pavón-Cuellar (2013) con-
cluded that these psychologies are in opposition to Western psychol-
120 N. CIOFALO
ogy that does not embrace relational ontologies composed of inter-

actions within the deep psychic structure — ixtli, yollotl, and ihiyotl
— the community and society, and the universe or cosmos. These
Indigenous psychologies cannot be individualistic nor based on
psychological reductionism as they constitute meta-psychologies or
counter-psychologies that ‘could become an inexhaustible mine of
arguments for the modern critique of Mexican psychology’ (ibid., p.
100; translation by author). This critique extends to Euro- and United
States-centric psychology under ecologies of knowledges that are
pluriversal, decolonial, and transdisciplinary.
There is still much to learn from Cem Anahuac’s cosmovisions and
their related consciousness states that surpass the limitations of the
Western rational mind. As Santos (2018) alerted us, the cognitive

empire that maintains coloniality is ending. We are experiencing a
crisis of civilization that generates multiple epistemological and

ontological ruptures (Sánchez Díaz de Rivera, 2021). As Trnka and
Lorencova (2016) asserted, when discussing understanding conscious-
ness from a perspective of the ontological turn in anthropology:
When turning our attention to cultural differences in ontologies, one
may encounter the main analytical problem when applying an ontol-
ogically-oriented approach, i.e. the problem of alterity. If in our culture
a person is not a jaguar, our brain cannot simultaneously believe that a
person is a jaguar. However, the ontological approach cannot be satis-
fied by saying that a people believes in something different. Being
ontological means that we need to go beyond establishing a difference
— we need to understand how realities are produced and how identities
are constituted. (p. 3)
Openness to learning from Indigenous cosmovisions, conceptions of
consciousness, spirituality, epistemologies, and praxes beyond differ-
ence and disciplinary silos established by hegemonic scientific
archives offers pathways toward decoloniality based on pluriversality
within relational ontologies that promote yollotl, sentipensar, feeling-
thinking with the Earth, the unity of body, mind, spirit, and cosmos.
The era of psychological decolonization has begun!
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Nuria Ciofalo

Abstract: Indigenous psychologies are informed by their cosmogonies

1 Pacifica Graduate Institute, Summerland, CA, USA.

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 30, No. 5–6, 2023, pp. 103–22

1. Indigenous Psychologies and Decoloniality

ogy and worldview, a hegemonic conception of only-one-world,

system supported by colonial difference, erasure, and abyssal exclu-

It is a ‘collective cultural product and macrosystem of communication

standing conceptions and manifestations of consciousness among the

section under subtitles presenting categories and subcategories but as

The conclusion highlights the main characteristics of Maya and

3. Conceptions About the

tantamount to consuming the tonalli of the gods, which sustained the

(2022) referred to the concept of teotl as consciousness signifying

that, according to the Florentine Codex, ‘the ihiyotl is the breath

expressions on the soul, being cautious of colonial influence.

components as it was experienced rather than analysed in specific

as they desire. The animal accompaniers are not those found in

balance with the cosmos. In his Etnografia de las Almas Tzeltales

elaborated precise definitions, identifications, and treatments of

Yucatán. For instance, the healers among the Tzotziles of Chiapas,

therapy by acquiring information on the patient’s relations with the

…what provides ‘life’ and corresponds to the intellectual functions of

The tonalpouqui would empower patients to view their image or

psychological journey. It does not mean a contradiction of opposites,

plementary relationship, co-forming a desired symbiotic state of con-

accountability to these regulations guided by their cosmovisions.

of the Americas. This divergence constitutes a heterogeneity or

Columbian beliefs in a way that marks a difference and an

The separation of the body can occur voluntarily, such as in rituals,

4. Altered States of Consciousness

Through the Use of Psychoactive Plants

cultures altered states of consciousness give access to ‘the universal

la Garza added that the religious experiences stimulated by the use of

Book of Language) that appears in visions to teach how the dying

called caciques could summon rain and thunder. The missionaries

relational ontology in which all entities — humans, animals, nature,

space (Gillespie, 2021; López Austin, 1988; León Portilla, 1973;

accounts for the emergence of differences from the continuous inter-

ogy that does not embrace relational ontologies composed of inter-

Western rational mind. As Santos (2018) alerted us, the cognitive

crisis of civilization that generates multiple epistemological and

Bautista Cruz, M. (2017) Memoria histórica de Taapa-Baa. La defensa de la

NC: Duke University Press.

Mignolo, W. (2009) Epistemic disobedience, independent thought and decolonial

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