The Nahuas used the word malacatl for the round piece, normally made of clay, that provided the weight for the wooden spindle used for spinning. After the conquest the term was Hispanized and became malacate (spindle). Most known spindles appear to have been modeled by hand, although some of the decorations that they displayed were usually made with stamps.
Although there are spindles of different sizes, generally the standard measurement ranges between three and five centimeters in diameter at their widest part. Some were considerably larger and heavier, and were used to spin harder fibers, such as that from the lechuguilla cactus.
This piece corresponds to the Late Post-Classic period and has a four-part decoration typical of the period that matches a disk with rays; it is very common for the spindles to have a perfectly radial decoration, like a flower with four petals or a disc with rays. Apart from the technical function of these instruments, their decoration suggests that they had a strong symbolic value.
Firstly, there is a perforated disk at its center into which a rod is inserted; all this produces a cosmogram, and the four-part drawing that many of them have has strengthened this interpretation. In addition, the operation of the spindle requires regular spinning, just as the cosmic forces of the supernatural worlds circling the earth rise and fall. We say that the motion of the spindle is an allegory of the dynamism of the cosmos.
In addition, the spindle was closely associated with women. Spinning was perhaps the first task that a girl had to learn and it was a daily occupation for any woman. It is interesting to know that the Nahua associated in a play on words the formation of the skein that was swelling out of the spindle after each spin with pregnancy.
After a vertical axis penetrated the representation of the Earth, they turn and behind them, the pregnancy occurred. Goddesses associated with female sexual vitality, such as Tlazolteotl, were represented with whorls and spindles covered by strands on various parts of the body. In other words, the spindle and whorl system represented the cosmos and one of its fundamental manifestations: fertile sexuality.
The Nahuas used the word malacatl for the round piece, normally made of clay, that provided the weight for the wooden spindle used for spinning. After the conquest the term was Hispanized and became malacate (spindle). Most known spindles appear to have been modeled by hand, although some of the decorations that they displayed were usually made with stamps.
