La Calavera Catrina, one of José Guadalupe Posada's Catrina engravings (1910–1913) She was also known as The Hangwoman as she came to help along those who had killed themselves. She was a minor goddess in the scale of Maya mythology. There was also the goddess of suicide, Ixtab. In the Aztec world, skeletal imagery was a symbol of fertility, health and abundance, alluding to the close symbolic links between life and death. He was not the only Aztec god to be depicted in this fashion, as numerous other deities had skulls for heads or else wore clothing or decorations that incorporated bones and skulls. His headdress was shown decorated with owl feathers and paper banners and he wore a necklace of human eyeballs, while his earspools were made from human bones.
He is one of the principal gods of the Aztecs and is the most prominent of several gods and goddesses of death and the underworld. Mictlāntēcutli, is the Aztec god of the dead and the king of Mictlan, depicted as a skeleton or a person wearing a toothy skull. She presided over the ancient festivals of the dead, which evolved from Aztec traditions into the modern Day of the Dead after synthesis with Spanish cultural traditions. Mictecacihuatl was represented with a fleshless body and with jaw agape to swallow the stars during the day. Other epithets for her include "Lady of the Dead," as her role includes keeping watch over the bones of the dead. In Aztec mythology, Mictecacihuatl is the " Queen of Mictlan" (the Aztec underworld), ruling over the afterlife with her husband Mictlantecuhtli. A common term for the personification of death across Latin America is "la Parca" ("The Robe"), a figure similar to the Anglophone Grim Reaper, though usually depicted as female and without wielding a scythe. As such, it is common in Spanish-speaking cultures to personify death as a female figure. Death is also portrayed as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.īy region Americas Latin America Īs is the case in many Romance languages (including French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian), the Spanish word for death, muerte, is a feminine noun. Death is most often personified in male form, although in certain cultures death is perceived as female (for instance, Marzanna in Slavic mythology, or Santa Muerte in Mexico). Other beliefs hold that the spectre of death is only a psychopomp, a benevolent figure who serves to gently sever the last ties between the soul and the body, and to guide the deceased to the afterlife, without having any control over when or how the victim dies. In some mythologies, a character known as the Grim Reaper (usually depicted as a berobed skeleton wielding a scythe) causes the victim's death by coming to collect that person's soul. Statue of Death, personified as a human skeleton dressed in a shroud and clutching a scythe, at the Cathedral of Trier in Trier, Germanyĭeath is frequently imagined as a personified force. For other uses, see Grim Reaper (disambiguation).
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