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object

Smoking mirror

Objects · Rituals · Traditions

A named obsidian scrying-mirror of Nahua story, especially the tezcatl of Tezcatlipoca. Not the generic mirror, and not obsidian as a raw material.

Also known as Tezcatl

Nahua tradition

  • Smoking mirror appears in Nahua tradition.

    The Florentine Codex names tezcatl, the obsidian smoking-mirror of Nahua rite and of Tezcatlipoca’s epithet. A named Mesoamerican scrying-surface in that colonial ethnography, not the generic mirror node and not the obsidian-to-mirror craft sentence.

    from Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua collaborators · Florentine Codex, c. 1577

    appears in · sourced · culturally specific

  • Smoking mirror is sacred to Tezcatlipoca.

    Sahagún’s Florentine Codex ties tezcatl, the smoking obsidian mirror, to Tezcatlipoca’s name and cult — the mirror as that god’s sacred instrument and epithet-object. A colonial-era Nahua ethnographic attestation, not a pan-Mesoamerican essence and not an unfiltered pre-invasion voice.

    from Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua collaborators · Florentine Codex, c. 1577

    sacred to · sourced · culturally specific

sources

  • Florentine Codex · Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua collaborators

    Bernardino de Sahagún, General History of the Things of New Spain (Florentine Codex).