The realms of the dead
Where the dead go, and why
What it covers
The four destinations of the dead in the sources — Mictlán, Tlalocan, the house of the sun, Chichihuacuauhco — and what decided which one.
The full entry is in Spanish, and here is why
What you have read above is this project's own summary of the realms of the dead. The full entry — the part that rests on the sixteenth-century sources — has not been translated, and that is a decision rather than an omission.
We chose not to touch the primary text. Those sections quote Sahagún, Durán and the codices in their own words, often in sixteenth-century Castilian. A quotation carried across stops being a quotation: it loses the register, the ambiguity and the exact wording someone might want to check against a facsimile.
In Spanish the entry carries:
- La regla
- La Casa del Sol
- El poniente es de ellas
- Sólo viaja una parte
- El camino, contado como relato
- Los nueve, uno a uno
- Y un lugar para los que no llegaron a hablar
- Preguntas que llegan a esta página
Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.
How to cite this page
Alma Mexica, «The realms of the dead», The documents. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/document/reinos-de-la-muerte/
Questions that reach this page
What is Mictlan?
The place most of the dead went to in the Mexica sources, ruled by Mictlantecuhtli — also called Tzontemoc — and Mictecacihuatl. It is not a hell: there is no reward and no punishment. What decides where the dead go is not how they lived but how they died.
What did the Aztecs believe happened after death?
That the dead went to one of three places, and that the manner of death decided which — not conduct in life. Sahagún states it plainly: the souls went to one of three parts. There is no counterpart to the Christian idea of reward and punishment.