Aztec religion
Teotl

Nahua metaphysics centers around teotl, "a single, dynamic, vivifying, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, energy or force." This is conceptualized in a kind of monistic pantheism as manifest in the supreme god Ometeotl, as well as a large pantheon of lesser gods and idealizations of natural phenomena such as stars and fire. Priests and educated upper classes held more monistic views, while the popular religion of the uneducated tended to embrace the polytheistic and mythological aspects.

Teotl is sometimes translated as "god", but it held more abstract aspects of divinity or supernatural energy, akin to the Polynesian concept of Mana.

In first contact with the Spanish prior to the conquest, emperor Moctezuma II and the Aztecs generally referred to Cortés and the conquistadors as " teotl ". Some historians interpret this to mean that the Aztecs believed them to be gods, but a better understanding of teotl suggests that they were being referred to as "mysterious" or "inexplicable".
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