On The Sorcery of the Aztecs

The following are quotes from Alfredo Lopez Austin's The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas.

The words souls, spirits, animas all lack precision ...

Observation of vital processes, organic liveliness, and the functions of knowledge, inclination, and feeling form the basis for a concept of centers and entities to which is attributed the existence and the regulating of the animistic. An animistic center can be defined as that part of the human organism in which there is a concentration of animistic forces or vital substances and where the basic impulses originate for directing the processes that give life and movement to the organism and permit the fulfillment of psychic functions. In diverse cultural traditions, the centers are conceived of in various ways. They can correspond or not to a particular organ. They can be singular or plural within each organism. In the latter case, they can be differentiated according to function, and they can even be ranked hierarchically.

Animistic energy, which supposedly resides in an animistic center, is often considered to be a structured unit capable of independence, in certain circumstances, from the place in the organism where it is located. This necessitates distinguishing between the normal locus of a force and that of the structural unity of the force as a separate entity.

The attributes of elli, or the liver are concentrated in the areas of vitality and feelings. The energy needed to make a person a spirited, strong, and brave individual comes from this organ. A normal state, presupposing the unification of the liver's components, produced happiness and tranquility; and the integration of the components could result, reciprocally, from recreation. Unification, expressed chiefly in the term cemelli ("happiness, pleasure"), seems to refer to a coordination of feelings and passions, to an elimination of the inner struggles among the different affective forces that produce contradiction and emotional conflicts in an individual and, with them, mental anguish.

Mention is made of an anomaly, expressed in terms of a decrease in the normal function of the organ or its physical growth (and here it is perhaps more correct to interpret this as a multiplication or dispersal of its parts) - an anomaly that brought on affliction and pain. Directing the forces of the elli towards persons or objects provoked desire, which was sometimes manifested in the form of love, sometimes as desire or cupidity. In a parallel fashion, anger and hate were produced in the elli, feelings associated with a swollen state. To possess an abundance of this, to have the liver harden, gave vigor and sprightliness to a person. A decrease in its functioning, to the contrary, made its possessor a lazy person.

Without being, in the strict sense, an organ with attributes of knowledge, its proper functioning gave a person the vigor necessary to work carefully, intelligently, and diligently; as a generator of passions, its malfunction made a person evil and crazy; its cleanliness permitted a person to have normal feelings and to be charitable and sincere. It is quite probable that in this sense it was conceived to have a reciprocal action: sins defiled it; and pollution, caused chiefly by hate, led a human being to a life of evil and insanity. Sins, principally sexual transgressions, radiated impurity, and this harmed innocent people.

The identification of the animistic entity believed to be located in the liver poses as major a difficulty in the case of the ancient Nahuas as it does in that of contemporary Indians. Madsen, who writes about the three souls in whom the present day inhabitants of San Francisco Tecospa believe, gives us the name of the entity, but not within the body, only when it has gone outside: "night air", a malign substance that can attack humans.

At the present time, in Zaragoza and in Oteapan, Veracruz, the Spanish word anima is used in the Nahua language for "liver"; in that region they believe that the life and strength of a man is in his bile. The ancient Nahuas were also said to believe that the appetite, desire, and cupidity emerged from the liver; among the Chortis the strong order of hijillo is associated with those people who can cast an evil eye, an injury, as is well known, that has its origin in a feeling of envy or simply from a strong desire for things, animals, plants, or persons. Anger and hatred are located in the liver and in bile, which Sahagun's informants deescribed as "thick, green, blue, our annoyer, it irritates people, it fills people with rage." Hijillo can emanate from anyone; but it happens when a person is angry emotionally upset, or physically exhausted.

The ihiyotl was thought to be a luminous gas that had qualities of influencing other beings, in particular attracting them toward the person, animal or object from which it flowed. Today Nahuas believe it to be a cold gas during life, and after death it is diffused and formless. The Chortis say that hijillo is like air, but different from ordinary air, since it is so dense it is almost visible. According to the Tojolabales, the gas smells bad, which recalls the fact that the ancient Nahuas also used the word ihiyotl for the odor leaving the body as a fart.

One of the most interesting characteristics of the ihiyotl, from the ancient times, was its nature as a source of energy which, if the supply was adequate, could be used for one's own good or the good of another, although its release without control or with malicious intent could cause damage.