The tonalli
What is received on the day you are born
What it covers
What the Mexica understood by tonalli — at once day-sign, heat, destiny and a part of the person — and what the sources say could be lost or recovered.
The full entry is in Spanish, and here is why
What you have read above is this project's own summary of the tonalli. The full entry — the part that rests on the sixteenth-century sources — has not been translated, and that is a decision rather than an omission.
We chose not to touch the primary text. Those sections quote Sahagún, Durán and the codices in their own words, often in sixteenth-century Castilian. A quotation carried across stops being a quotation: it loses the register, the ambiguity and the exact wording someone might want to check against a facsimile.
In Spanish the entry carries:
- De dónde viene la palabra
- Tres cosas, no una
- El rito de la vasija
- Por qué importa aquí
- La identidad que viene de más atrás
- In ixtli, in yóllotl — rostro y corazón
Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.
Why it matters here
Everything this app offers rests on that idea: that the day someone is born is not only when, but something that falls to them and stays with them.
And there is a consequence worth keeping in mind: in the sources this is not a horoscope. The tonalli does not predict what will happen; it names what is carried within.
How to cite this page
Alma Mexica, «The tonalli», The documents. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/document/el-tonalli/