to know sacred powers (see attestations)
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."