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Question for May 2013

What did ordinary Aztec people turn into in the afterlife?? Asked by St. Neot’s Prep School. Chosen and answered by Professor Susan D. Gillespie

The Aztecs believed in multiple alternative destinations for the souls of people who died. However, one’s “afterlife” depended not on how one lived one’s life - for good or ill - but only upon how one died.
The souls of warriors who died in battle or were captured and killed in ritual sacrifice would lift up the sun from the eastern horizon to the midpoint of the sky beginning each dawn. It is said that they did this for four years, after which time they were transformed into hummingbirds and butterflies. The souls of the merchants who died in skirmishes with enemies on their trading expeditions had the same fate.
Who took the sun down from the midpoint in the sky to the western horizon, so that it could begin its nightly journey through the underworld? That was the task of women who died in childbirth. They were likened to soldiers who had been killed in battle.

People unfortunate enough to be struck by lightning or to die by drowning - not uncommon occurrences among lake-dwelling peoples - were believed to have been chosen in that manner to serve Tlaloc, the rain and storm god. They spent their afterlife in Tlalocan, a paradise of flowering plants. Individuals who died from specific kinds of diseases also dwelt with Tlaloc.
As for the vast majority of people who died ordinary deaths, it was said that their souls undertook a four year journey to the deepest layer of the underworld, Mictlan, to serve the Lord of the Land of the Dead, Mictlanteuctli. Although it was not a punishment for anything they had done, the journey undertaken by the souls through the different levels of the underworld was fraught with dangers and difficulties.

Picture sources:-
• Main picture: photo by Graciela Sánchez/Mexicolore
• Glyphs from Codex Mendoza: scanned from our own copy of the 1938 James Cooper Clark facsimile edition, London.

Comments (5)

S

Silvana

24th Mar 2025

What happens if a soul gets stuck in one of the levels of the mictlan. It can happen or everybody can reach Mictlanteuctli?

M

Mexicolore

Good question! We don’t have the answer I’m afraid. I don’t think any of the sources mention this possibility...

E

Eli

23rd Mar 2023

What happens to souls that don’t make it to the underworld and are stranded on earth? Can that even happen? Or would it work like instant teleportation or the god of death comes to pick you up?

M

Mexicolore

Interesting questions! Difficult to answer as none of us have been there, yet...! There’s nothing in the sources, as far as we know, to indicate what happened if you ‘failed’ the challenges en route to Mictlan. it’s complicated because, in the words of Prof Kay Read (‘Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos’) ‘Death itself was a process in which various bodily components separated and dispersed to different locations.’ It was only one of your ‘souls’, the ‘teyolía’, which headed off to Mictlan; the second, the ‘tonalli’, fragmented and scattered upon death. The third, the ‘ihíyotl’, was something of a ghost or shadow, that could have harmful potential. So it’s only a ‘third’ of you that actually had to make the dangerous journey to Mictlan. It seems safe to assume, though, that none of your soul(s) could ever be ‘stranded’ on earth - we can only assume that at worst your soul ‘disappeared’ prematurely (rather than eventually it would do in Mictlan...) or that it just took longer to get there. Read summarises things like this -
’Death entailed a separation of the physical and psychic components. Just as a person’s material remains rotted and disappeared, their many forces scattered and disappeared. No longer would they be one coherent entity..’.

i

ibod

20th Aug 2019

for the warriors. if they reincarnates as hummingbird or butterflies, is it in this earthly life again? and what will happen after their life as hummingbirds and butterflies end, they will reincarnate again? thank you

M

Mexicolore

Yes, is in this earthly life.
Reincarnated spirits never completely disappear - they are swept up into the constantly moving swirl of souls in the cosmos, helping to bring new life everywhere...

S

Stevie Sanchez

6th Dec 2015

I was just wondering what they believed happened to the souls of their sacrifices when they died. What afterlife they were sorted into.

M

Mexicolore

Dying in sacrifice was considered pretty well ‘the best way to go’, so the souls of such victims would go up to one of the highest heavens above.

K

Katia H

11th Jul 2013

I’m still curious about the fate of people who died of old age. After this 4 year journey through Mictlan what happened to their soul? Also, did the Aztecs ever make any attempts to contact the deceased via shamanic or spiritualist-type rituals?

M

Mexicolore

in answer to your first question, yes, Mictlan really was pretty much the ‘end of the road’, a dark, still, motionless place ruled by the Lord of Mictlan (to whom you brought gifts with you on your journey). Once there, your three ‘spirits’, life-forces or soul-essences ‘enjoyed’ different fates: your heart (‘yollotl’) is the home of the TEYOLIA (the essence of human life) - this was the only spirit that travelled to the afterlife, and was associated with the world above the earth. Your brain (‘cuatextli’) is the home of the TONALLI (the force of love and heat) - this stayed on earth to be kept by your family as ashes in a box with a tuft of your hair, and was associated with the highest heavens of the cosmos. Your liver (‘elli’), being full of blood, is the home of the IHIYOTL (courage, the soul, the engine of passions but also the force of cold) - this was dispersed after death in winds, spirits and illnesses, and was associated with the underworld.
You can read more about this in the second of our articles on the Day of the Dead, here -
http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/day-of-the-dead-2

Professor Susan D. Gillespie

Professor Susan D. Gillespie

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