Observations placeholder
Nahuatl legends - Aztlan
Identifier
004534
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Aztlán is the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in Mesoamerica. Aztec is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlan".
Nahuatl legends relate that seven tribes lived in Chicomoztoc, or "the place of the seven caves". Each cave represented a different Nahua group: the Xochimilca, Tlahuica, Acolhua, Tlaxcalan, Tepaneca, Chalca, and Mexica. Because of a common linguistic origin, those groups also are called "Nahuatlaca" (Nahua people). These tribes subsequently left the caves and settled "near" Aztlán, or Aztatlan.
After the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the story of Aztlán gained importance and was reported by Fray Diego Durán in 1581 and others to be a kind of Eden-like paradise, free of disease and death, which existed somewhere in the ‘far north’.
A description of the experience
