Mictlan - Aztec Otherworlds Inspiration

 

The question, “Where do we go when we die?” must be as old as human consciousness itself. Perhaps it was the difficulty of letting go of loved ones, the fear of the unknown, or just that insatiable human hunger to understand the universe that drove cultures to imagine vivid “Otherworlds” that followed life here on Earth. In the Christian worldview of the Spanish conquerors and colonizers of the New World, the answer was black and white: a heavenly paradise would reward faithful Christian souls, while a terrifying eternity of suffering in hell was the punishment of the wicked and the unconverted.

But what about the Aztec people the Spaniards encountered in the early sixteenth century? What sort of Otherworlds did they imagine? The short answer to this question is lots! There were at least four or five different destinations of the dead in pre-Contact Aztec thought.

When considering what the Aztecs may have understood about the land of the dead, there are a few things critical students of history need to keep in mind. One is that any time we try to understand the religious beliefs of cultures outside of our own tradition we have a tendency to think about them in terms familiar to us. In the case of the Aztec Otherworlds, we who were raised in the monotheistic traditions might be tempted to think of them in the simple terms of “the place where good people go” and “the place where bad people go.” This association of one’s destination afterlife with one’s behavior during life is very strong in the Christian tradition (as well as in Islam).

However, such was not the case for the Aztecs. Rather, where one ended up after death was determined either by the day on which one was born or by the manner in which one died (or perhaps a combination of both). For example, warriors who died in battle were transformed into shimmering hummingbirds and resided forever in the land of Tonatiuh, the Sun. People who died by drowning or from diseases associated with water would pass on to Tlalocan, the verdant abode of Tlaloc, the rain god (see pic 3). However, for the vast majority of people, those who died from sickness or old age, their eternal home was the cold and shadowy world of Mictlan, the land of the dead. Remember, Mictlan was not the destination of “sinners,” nor was it a place of punishment and torture at the hand of demons. In other words, Mictlan differed in some very important ways from the Christian hell. We’ll return to this shortly.

To help depict how fascinating Aztec Mictlan and Mictlantecuhtli truly is, here is the most fascinating design you should take a look : 

Aztec Mayan Mictlan 3d All Over Printed Vintage Hoodie

Some sources suggest that the Aztec underworld itself consisted of a number of different layers (nine, to be precise). The top-most layer of the underworld began at the surface of the earth (Tlalticpac), and descended down to the lower-most level of Mictlan.

Aztec Mayan Mictlan 3d All Over Printed Vintage Hoodie