mixtli (Mdz10v)

The color of the cloud suggests water, or in other words, rain clouds. Clouds were prized for the rain they might bring, which would benefit temporal agriculture and sustain life. As we see in the entry for mixtli in our online Nahuatl Dictionary, "out of the clouds, out of the mists" was an expression that described people who were "highly esteemed and very rich." Clouds could be white and bright or dark, as the dictionary also shows us. The "cloud people," or people of the Mixteca Alta of what is now the state of Oaxaca, believed that clouds came out of the mountain tops (personal communication from Ronald Spores), which adds to the reverence people held for the mountains. The curling nature of this glyphic representation of clouds suggests movement, possibly wind. The swirling motion of ehecatl (wind) can be seen in the terms ehecacoatl and ecamalacotl, among other terms also found in our dictionary. Breath/speech, smoke, wind, and sound have a similar visual curling nature that suggests movement through the air.