Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes - Molly Bassett
66. What is a nagual/nahual/nawal?
Indigenous Religious Traditions in Five Minutes - Molly Bassett
Mallory E. Matsumoto [+]
University of Texas at Austin
Mallory E. Matsumoto is assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research addresses the interface between language, material culture, and religion in pre- colonial and colonial Maya communities of Mesoamerica. She has conducted archaeological fieldwork and archival research in Guatemala, Mexico, Hungary, Peru, and the United States.
Description
The highly diverse tradition of nagualism in Mesoamerica—which posits the existence of nonhuman or other-than-human entities that inhabit the liminal space between the human world and the realm of gods and ancestors—provides an entry point for understanding Indigenous concepts of self and soul and challenges the applicability of Western understandings of “religion” to Indigenous Mesoamerica.