Article suitable for older students

Tlemaitl (incense ladle)

19th May 2024

Mixtec incense burner, British Museum

Pre-Hispanic incense ladles can still be seen today in museum collections - such as this beautiful pottery Mixtec example (right), some 56 cm. long, on display in the Mexico gallery of the British Museum. It bears several images of an obsidian mirror, the key symbol identifying the Smoking Mirror god Tezcatlipoca. The long hollow handle also operates as a rattle. In Aztec times, incensing wasn’t restricted to temples... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

Book 2 of the Florentine Codex gives a good description of the incensing ritual, well summarised by Frances Berdan and Patricia Rieff Anawalt in their superb The Essential Codex Mendoza (p.177):-
’Incensing rites were called tlenamaquiliztli, the “Offering of Fire.” They were performed by scooping up burning coals with a clay incense ladle, the long, hollow handle of which was filled with stones, creating a rattling sound when used. Onto the hot coals was sprinkled copal incense, made from the odiferous resin of conifer trees. While the fragrant smoke billowed forth, the incense ladle was raised in each of the four cardinal directions. The coals were then thrown into a brazier, where the incense continued to smoke.
’Ritual incensing was not confined solely to the night hours. This homage to the gods was carried out four times during the day: at dawn, noon, dusk, and midnight.’

The Florentine Codex goes on to record that not just priests were involved:-
’The mothers, the fathers likewise woke the children at dawn... that they might offer incense quickly, they woke them. That they might not become slothful [lazy] this was done in the houses.
’And the casting of incense was thus done when some statement already was to be uttered: first one cast incense into the fire. For whoever already was to speak, just there lay the incense in a gourd vessel. Or else a singer, when already he was to sing, thus would begin: first he cast incense into the brazier; then the singer began [to sing]’ (pp. 194-5).
What’s more, Fray Diego Durán describes an incensing ceremony during the month of Toxcatl. ‘In the early morning, minor priests went throughout the community with incense burners in hand. Their mission was to bless each house from “the threshold to the last corner”, including all the implements therein: grinding stones, tortilla griddles, pots, vessels, jugs, plates, bowls, and weaving instruments including the little baskets used to hold the spinning and weaving apparatuses. Agricultural instruments, storage bins, and the artisans’ tools were all included in these incensings. For this service, the house owners had to pay the priests as many ears of corn as objects they had blessed’ (The Essential Codex Mendoza, p. 179).

Clearly, incensing was a common ritual practice; in another chapter of the Florentine’s Book 2, a fire priest is busy incensing both inside and outside of temples: ‘He walked everywhere; he issued everywhere into the temple courtyards; everywhere he offered incense; everywhere he spread warmth...’ (p. 151).
At its heart, though, the Mexica ritual bears close resemblance to the use of incense in (mainly Catholic) churches today, as a symbol of prayer and a sign of offering. In both, the rising smoke represents prayers rising up to the deity concerned. For the Aztecs, copal incense itself was considered the ‘food of the gods’, to be offered alongside prayers and supplications.

Guilhem Olivier, in his masterful study of Tezcatlipoca (Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God), points out that ‘Music was supposed to attract the gods’ attention, in particular that of Tezcatlipoca during that feast [Toxcatl]. Without pretending to exhaust the meaning of incense burning, I wish to point out that a similar function can be attributed to the burning of copal. In that respect, there is a significant similitude between the glyph speech and music and that of smoke’ (p. 225). By way of illustration he refers to the Codex Becker I (see picture 4): in the image ‘two personages play the flute, from which two volutes escape, perfectly reproducing the design generally interpreted as the symbol for smoke’ (p. 347, n. 105). He also suggests that ‘a number of names for the feast [Toxcatl] meant “fumigation”, “incense”, or “smoke”’ (p. 224).

Sources/references:-
• Berdan, Frances & Rieff Anawalt, Patricia (1997) The Essential Codex Mendoza, University of California Press
• Olivier, Guilhem (2008) Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God: Tezcatlipoca, ‘Lord of the Smoking Mirror’, University Press of Colorado
• (de) Sahagún, Bernardino (1981) Florentine Codex - General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 2 - The Ceremonies, trans. Arthur J.O. Anderson & Charles E. Dibble, School of American Research/University of Utah.

Picture sources:-
• Main: photo © Trustees of the British Museum
• Pic 1: image scanned from our own copy of the James Cooper Clark facsimile edition of the Codex Mendoza, London, 1938
• Pic 2: image from the Codex Magliabechiano scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1970
• Pic 3: image scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition of the Florentine Codex, Madrid, 1994
• Pic 4: Image from the Codex Becker scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1961.

Comments (1)

Alejandra Tapia

20th May 2024

Great article! Question: Given that incensing was not restricted to temples only, was any particular preparation or permission given to common people to incense?

Aztecs

Maya

Tlemaitl (incense ladle)

Comments (1)

More Aztec Artefacts