30 May 2025 / 10 House
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Find out moreThe 13 Mexica heavens and 9 underworlds
The 13 Aztec (Mexica) heavens and 9 underworlds
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Tezozomoc: What were the 13 levels of the heavens and the 9 levels of the underworld called? Are there any descriptions about them? (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
There is a good outline of these ‘overworlds’ and ‘underworlds’ in Handbook of Life in the Aztec World by Professor Manuel Aguilar-Moreno (on our Panel of Experts), which we’re happy to reproduce here. Somewhere we’ve come across the names for the levels in Náhuatl: when we find them we’ll include them...!
‘The lowest heaven was the place where the Moon traveled and from which the clouds were suspended. The second heaven was the place of stars, which were divided into two large groups: the 400 stars of the north (Centzon Mimixcoa) and the 400 (countless) stars of the south (Centzon Huitznahua). The heaven of the Sun was the third region. Tonatiuh traveled over this heaven in his journey from the region of light to his home in the west. The fourth heaven was the place where Venus could be seen. In the fifth heaven the comets or smoking stars, traveled. In the sixth and seventh of the celestial levels only the colors green and blue could be seen, or according to another version, black and blue - the heavens of day and night. The eighth heaven was apparently the place of storms, and the three heavens above this - the white, yellow and red - were reserved as dwelling places for the gods. Most important of the 13 levels were the last two, which constituted Omeyocan, the dwelling place of the dual supreme deity, generator, and founder of the universe.
‘Under the celestial column of the gods, forces, colors, and dualities floated the four-quartered Earth in the sacred waters. Below the terrestrial level were the nine levels of the underworld, realms that the souls of the dead had to cross: the place for crossing the water, the place where the hills are found, the obsidian mountain, the place of the obsidian wind, the place where banners are raised, the place where people are pierced with arrows, the place where people’s hearts are devoured, the obsidian place of the dead, the finally, the place where smoke has no outlet (Mictlan).’
Picture sources:-
• Illustration of the overworlds and underworlds (‘Diagram showing the Nahua cosmology’) by Abel Mendoza, scanned from our own copy of Firefly in the Night by Irene Nicholson (Faber & Faber, London, 1959)
• Image scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition of the Codex Vaticanus-Latinus 3738, Graz, Austria, 1979.
Comments (8)
Nobody_important
9th Apr 2024
I think the 9 levels of the underworld are more to do with the 9 months of a pregnancy. The moon has always been linked to the feminine sign. Also a woman’s menstruation would have been used as a form of a calculation and keeping track of the seasons. Also the 13 heavens are the same amount of a woman’s menstruation and moon cycles. Maybe men were more appreciative that women were a part of the natural world and have just as much of a role in survival, creation and in life and death.
Damian
5th Jun 2022
Two questions:
Firstly, did human souls reside in these 13 heavens at all? I know that sacrifices accompanied the sun, but were these heavens where they lived in their downtime?
Secondly, if human souls were claimed by the gods, what would happen to someone sacrificed to Mictlantechutli? Would that just be the regular four year journey, a heaven, or somewhere else to serve the lord of the dead?
Mexicolore
1) Yes, but only temporarily - they then returned to the earthly realm but in different guises (eg warriors returned as butterflies and hummingbirds...)
2) Yes, Mictlantecuhtli awaited you in Mictlan, at the end of your four-year journey to the underworld, nowhere else. There weren’t major sacrifices to him.
Omar Reyes
24th Sep 2021
Are there any sources that give an explanation on each of the 9 levels of mictlan?
Mexicolore
We think one of the best and most authoritative explanations on this in English is in the classic book ‘The Aztecs: People of the Sun’ (1958, Uni of Oklahoma Press) by the great Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso. You’ll find it on pp. 58-65. And in Spanish it has to be in ‘Cuerpo Humano e Ideología’ by Alfredo López Austin, vol. 1, 1980, UNAM, pp. 60-64.
Richard Jehl
25th May 2021
Hello, do you have more info about who was Abel Mendoza, whose diagram is reproduced ? I would like to insert a drawing inspired from it in the book I am writing and need to know a bit more about the origin of this diagram and the author. Thank you !
Mexicolore
It hasn’t been easy, but yes, we’ve managed to put together a short entry on his life and work in our ‘Aztec Inspiration’ section -
https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/inspiration/abel-mendoza
Curious
29th Oct 2020
I’m very much a beginner in terms of learning Aztec religion and history so forgive my ignorance, but, when the dead are to cross over the nine levels of the underworld, what is waiting for them at the bottom? Do they get a reward? Do they go back to the beginning? Cease to exist?
Mexicolore
Thanks for writing in. Afraid your last guess is the most accurate! In fact the sources disagree, but most suggest that, after your four-year journey to Mictlan, you handed over to the Lord and Lady of the Underworld the tools and other goods that had served you on your journey and then simply awaited your final destruction - ‘job done’. But remember that Mictlan was only one of the four ‘worlds of the dead’, and definitely the most boring one, reserved for those who died ‘without glory’, those not chosen by a god for a special destination, those who died a natural death. It was also the place of most uncertainty and mystery, compared to the other three more splendid heavens or paradises... It is complicated!
ben
18th Sep 2019
is there any more info about the green and blue plains of existance?
Mexicolore
We’ll have to work on this one! Sorry, in middle of heavy teaching term, so very little time for additional research. Will do our best...
Rome
13th Sep 2018
What was the name for the 13 Heavens as a whole? Other sources I’ve found have suggested “Topan” - is that correct?
Mexicolore
Half correct! Topan simply means ‘above us’ in Nahuatl. According to Alfredo López Austin, probably the leading world expert on this, Mexica cosmovision consisted of a ‘triple division of the cosmos’: Chicnauhtopan (‘The nine [uppermost heavens] that are above us’), Tlalticpac (‘Above the earth’), ie the intermediate four levels, and Chicnauhmictlan (‘The nine places of death’) - ie, the nine underworlds below us. So the first two of these formed the thirteen heavens combined.
Leroy Pena
5th Dec 2014
Supposedly the first level of heaven was reserved for infants who died at childbirth.Each day Xochiquetzal would come down from an upper level of heaven to tend to them.She would sing and nurture them and place them on trees which had breasts to feed them when they were hungry.
Mexicolore
Thanks, Leroy - at least an early death for an infant meant going to one of the gentlest of heavens...
The 13 Aztec (Mexica) heavens and 9 underworlds
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