The Mexican legend of the Nahual

Record summary

Nahual traditions concern persons, ritual specialists, or powerful beings associated with animal transformation, protective alterity, or dangerous nocturnal activity. Colonial writers used the concept in competing ways, sometimes translating it through European categories of sorcery, while contemporary Indigenous traditions retain diverse meanings. The lead is useful for comparing crossings between human and animal states, social suspicion, and morally ambiguous boundary figures. It should not be reduced to a generic “werewolf” motif. Terminology, community context, and historical period are essential for evaluating each account.