tlamati. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

tlamati.

Principal English Translation:

to know sacred powers (see attestations)

Orthographic Variants:

tlahmati

IPAspelling:

tɬɑhmɑti

Alonso de Molina:

tlamati. ni. (pret. onitlamat.) embaucar a otro el hechizero. &c.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 126r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

TLAHMAT(I) pret: TLAHMAT to jest, to practice trickery and deception, to be quick-witted / embaucar a otro el hechicero (M), travesar (M) [(2)Cf.128v]. Although IHMAT(I) retains the initial I after reflexive prefixes, it loses it with fused TLA-. This contrasts with TLAMAT(I) ‘to know something’ Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 261.

Attestations from sources in English:

See an image that represents tlamati in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

Trickery, deception, magic and other translations associated with this term appear to derive from early friars' perspectives on Nahua religion, which saw sacred or divine forces as negative and dangerous.

See the Nahuatl hieroglyphs derived from tlamati, such as the name Tlamauh (often glossed as Tlamao), as they appear in the Visual Lexicon. The use of the stellar or starry eye in many of these glyphs suggests a special type of knowledge that is gained through seeing--perhaps along the lines suggested by Marc Thouvenot: "Mientras que imati se relaciona con un conocimiento empírico dado por la experiencia a través del ojo, mati hace referencia a un saber interno, abstracto, dado por la capacidad de pensar."
Marc Thouvenot, "Imágenes y escritura entre los Nahuas del inicio del XVI," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 41 (2010), 182.

themes:

Humor