Mictlāntēcutli

In Aztec mythic cosmology Mictlāntēcutli is the sovereign of Mictlan (also called Chicunauhmictlan), the lowest and northernmost section of the underworld. He and his consort Mictecacihuatl receive souls who survive the arduous postmortem journey. In narrative episodes—most famously the descent of Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl to retrieve the primordial bones—Mictlāntēcutli functions as a shrewd, sometimes obstructive underworld lord who sets tests or conditions concerning the bones and their removal, thereby participating in cosmogonic arrangements that shape human bodies and fates.

Iconography frequently depicts Mictlāntēcutli as skeletal or wearing a toothy skull, often with eyeballs visible in the sockets. He is shown with a headdress decorated with owl feathers and paper banners, depicted wearing sandals (a marker of rank), and represented with ornaments such as a necklace of human eyeballs and earspools fashioned from bone in codical and archaeological imagery. Life-size clay statues and a distinct Disk of Mictlāntēcutli testify to an established visual program in pre-Hispanic material culture; some descriptions also emphasize blood-spattered skeletal imagery and aggressive postures.

Sources present Mictlāntēcutli in institutional and mythic roles rather than as a list of arbitrary powers: he receives the dead who complete the long journey to Mictlan, presides over their reception (the interred goods are offered to him and his wife), and in myths he can set obstacles, change his mind, or otherwise test divinities who enter his realm (for example opposing Quetzalcoatl's removal of the bones). He is associated with animalesque and nocturnal domains (spiders, owls, bats), with the northern direction (Mictlampa), specific calendrical signs (e.g., the day-sign Itzcuintli, the 11th hour, and classification among Night Gods), and with ritual cult spaces such as temples marked by statues.