The altar is a human-scale replica of the cosmos: a sacred space where humans and sacred entities communicate and exchange gifts. In the Mesoamerican cosmovision, the cosmos has a tripartite division, heaven, earth, and the underworld, levels that communicate with one another through trees or hollow posts. This conception of the world is projected onto different types of domestic and communal altars through elements arranged in an orderly manner. A rectangular surface oriented toward the sun, the cardinal directions, or some sacred point of reference is conceived as a table or as the terrestrial surface, a synthesis of the four corners and the center of the world, upon which foods and offerings intended for different powers are placed. In general, this space is dedicated to entities considered beneficent, such as Catholic saints, rain and agricultural entities, as well as ancestors or “the ancients” (pre-Hispanic figures or objects). The lower part remains in contact with the earth and with the entities that inhabit this level, for example, the Lords of the Earth, the underworld, or the Devil.
Within the Indigenous system of representations, the “table” possesses a deeper significance, for it replicates the space where authorities and sacred entities sit to eat and make decisions regarding human and communal affairs. Moreover, the terrestrial surface separates the underworld from the sky, a space delimited by an arch adorned with flowers, palm fronds, or paper. These elements make present within the sacred space the celestial bodies, the deceased, and other heavenly bodies. For the Teenek of the Huasteca of San Luis Potosí, the arches represent the celestial plane, the place inhabited by sacred entities such as Mámláb (the Thunder God), but they also function as portals or thresholds that enable communication and interaction among the living, the dead, and the deities.
At the conclusion of the All Saints celebrations, the Teenek give special treatment to the arches that received the deceased. The “casting down of the arches” is a communal act carried out on Saint Andrew’s Day, November 30, whose purpose is the expulsion of the visiting souls by depositing the arches and other offerings in the cemetery or in a plot of land designated for this activity. In this context, some authors have identified the discarding of the withered arch as a metaphor for the decomposing human body.