Tlacatecolotl (MH876r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Tlacatecolotl ("Human Horned Owl" or "Sorcerer") shows the head of an animal facing toward the viewer's right. It has an anthropomorphic face but two large horns on the top of its head and short spiky hair in between the horns. On the lower side of the visible cheek, there may be a couple of feathers. Tlacatl means person and tecolotl means owl, but as a result of the teachings of Christian clergy, the human-owl creature increasingly came to look like a devil in European iconography, and it took on those associations.
Stephanie Wood
In our Online Nahuatl Dictionary, one sees translations such as: witch, devil, and demon. A more just translation might have been a native person practicing pre-Columbian religion in colonial times. The rarity of the name is commensurate, perhaps, with the fact that such a person might have had to live a somewhat clandestine life.
Another example of a Tlacatecolotl has been published from the Codex Laud by Dumbarton Oaks, under the title "Sorcery." Examples of the tecolotl (simply owl) and cuauhtecolotl (eagle-owl) often have it with a frontal view of the face, whereas birds (and most people) are typically shown in profile. Frontal views of faces are more common in the representations of the nenetl (deity sculpture or doll). The cuauhtecolotl has similar, squared-off ears or horns like the nenetl. One example of the cuauhtecolotl has short lines emanating from its eyes in way that suggests something supernatural.
Stephanie Wood
anto. tlacatecollotl
Antonio Tlacatecolotl
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
sorcery, sorcerers, brujos, brujas, demonios, diablos, tecolotes-humanos, buhos-humanos

tlacatecolo(tl), human horned owl or sorcerer, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlacatecolotl
Bujo o Tecolote Cornudo-Humano
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 876r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=824&st=image.
This manuscript is hosted by the Library of Congress and the World Digital Library; used here with the Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SAq 3.0).
