Hermeticism reads intoxication not as moral failure but as altered circulation of vital force, moments when pneuma is redistributed unevenly across the psyche. Fermentation is not decay but controlled dissolution, a lawful transformation in which vegetal vitality is released, intensified, and made unstable. The Centzon Tōtōchtin are not gods of excess alone; they are differentiated intelligences of intoxication, each governing a distinct configuration of imbalance produced when sap becomes spirit.
What kind of divinity multiplies not through form, but through effect?
Lens Effect
Under this lens, the Centzon Tōtōchtin appear as:
a distributed pantheon of altered states, fragmenting a single substance into innumerable psychic outcomes.
Primary effect on humans:
They destabilize unified identity, revealing how consciousness fractures differently under the same intoxicating force.
1. Four Hundred Rabbits — Non-Finite Multiplicity
The number four hundred signifies uncountable plurality, not arithmetic quantity. Hermetically, this marks indefinite differentiation, where a single principle refracts into countless expressions without exhausting itself.
The Centzon Tōtōchtin are not individuals in a crowd but modal variations of one intoxicating force. Each rabbit is a distinct configuration of imbalance, not a separate source.
2. Birth from Mayahuel — Vegetal Pneuma
Mayahuel’s nourishment of her children with maguey sap situates the rabbits within vegetal pneumatics. The sap contains latent vitality, which through fermentation undergoes dissolution followed by reanimation.
Hermetically, pulque is liberated plant-spirit, no longer fixed in growth but free to circulate through human vessels. The rabbits embody this liberated force after it has lost singular direction.
3. Pulque and Fermentation — Lawful Dissolution
Fermentation is not corruption but regulated breakdown, a process where structure loosens without annihilation. In Hermetic terms, this is soft dissolution, producing mobility rather than death.
The Centzon Tōtōchtin preside over this threshold state, where order persists but coherence wavers. Drunkenness is not chaos—it is re-patterned circulation, uneven, unstable, but still lawful.
4. Differentiated Drunkenness — Fragmented Psyche
Each rabbit governs a specific manifestation of intoxication: laughter, aggression, confusion, ritual ecstasy, or disorder. Hermetically, this reflects psyche fragmentation, where internal correspondences lose synchronization.
The same substance produces divergent outcomes because each individual’s internal alignment determines which rabbit gains dominance. Pulque does not impose behavior; it amplifies pre-existing configurations.
5. Tepoztecatl and Order Within Excess — Regulatory Node
Tepoztecatl’s association with ritual calendars and festivals identifies him as a regulatory intelligence, ensuring intoxication remains cyclic rather than catastrophic. Even excess is bound to timing, offering, and return.
Hermetically, this represents controlled imbalance, where dissolution is permitted only within structured intervals. Without such regulation, fragmentation would become permanent.
6. Rabbit Symbolism — Fertile Instability
The rabbit signifies rapid multiplication, fertility without restraint. Applied to intoxication, it marks how altered states replicate quickly, spreading through groups and ceremonies.
Hermetically, this is accelerated circulation, where force moves faster than integration can follow, producing both vitality and risk.
Final Reading
Under a Hermetic lens, the Centzon Tōtōchtin are intoxication differentiated into law, a pantheon that governs how fermented vitality fractures consciousness into many possible states. They reveal that excess is not singular, but plural—each instance shaped by internal correspondence and ritual containment.
Lesson for the Reader
Do not believe that the same influence will move all minds alike. What enters you releases what is already configured within. Intoxication does not create disorder—it selects for it. Know which rabbit you are feeding, because once circulation accelerates, control passes to the pattern already strongest.
“What ferments evenly becomes drink; what ferments unevenly becomes possession.”