Meaning of Some Indigenous Symbols on the Altar:
Arch: It represents the entrance to the cave the mouth of the Earth where everything that dies goes and from where life and water spring. It can be found crafted from flowers, seeds, or paper.
Tamales: In traditional stories, humans are made of corn. The tamale represents a deceased person wrapped in a petate (woven straw mat). From an indigenous worldview, a deceased person is an offering a seed buried so that, in time, it may germinate and bloom.
Spirits/Liquors: Spirits are associated with the sky because they smell and evaporate.
Incense Censors (Sahumerios): Smoldering elements represent the vapors that emerge from caves.
Paper: Placed to make sounds when the wind blows. This sound and the wear of the paper after a few days are the signal that the deceased have received the offering.
Fruits: Fruits represent skulls because they have a hard seed inside. They symbolize the deceased returning to the Earth's surface to help the living through food and nourishment.
Marigold (Cempasúchil): Flowers, in general, represent the deceased who overcame the underworld and returned to the surface of the Earth.
3 Levels: The world is divided into three levels (vessels): the sky, the surface of the Earth, and the underworld. Each level has a color: the sky is blue, the surface is green (due to the plants), and the underworld is black. In the human body, they correspond to three areas: head, chest, and belly. They also correspond to the three crops traditionally planted in the milpa (agricultural field): corn, beans, and squash.
13 Heavens: 13 is the number associated with the sky and movement because the natural cycles (counted in days) of many stars and planets share the number 13 as a common divisor. In the human body, we find 13 major joints: neck, 2 shoulders, 2 elbows, 2 wrists, 2 hips, 2 knees, and 2 ankles.
9 Levels of the Underworld: 9 is the number associated with what lies beneath the earth. In the human body, there are 9 caves (9 ways to enter the body without harming it): 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils, 1 mouth, 1 sexual organ, and 1 excretory organ. These are the places that generate excretions in the body, just as caves in nature generate vapors and moisture.
4 Directions: The cardinal points that create two flows in nature: East-West, associated with the day-night flow (the passage of the sun over a day), and North-South, associated with the cold-heat, winter-summer, rainy-dry flow (the tilt of the Earth throughout the year).
Cross: Although it can also be associated with Christianity, within the indigenous context, the cross is the axis connecting the 3 levels and the 4 directions.
By Jaime Castro.
