Acolmiztli- Aztec GodDeity"Arm of the Puma"

Lord of Mictlan's Depths

Acolmiztli, "Arm of the Puma," was one of the lords who ruled the intermediate levels of Mictlan, the nine-tiered Aztec underworld. While Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl waited at the ninth and deepest level, lesser lords presided over the trials the soul encountered at each stage: the plain scoured by obsidian wind, the passages haunted by beasts that devoured hearts. Acolmiztli's puma name marked him among these powers, a predator of darkness guarding the ways where the dead passed in silence.

He was not alone. Paired with a companion lord called Acolnahuacatl, he followed the Aztec pattern of presiding pairs. Mictlantecuhtli had his queen Mictecacihuatl, and the intermediate levels had their own dyads who together embodied the trials the dead had to overcome.

Sustaining the Dead

The living bore responsibility for guiding their dead past each lord's domain. The body was wrapped with paper vestments and cremated, its smoke carrying the soul into Mictlan's darkness. Grave goods and continuing ceremonies then sustained the wanderer across its four-year descent through the nine levels. Food and copal incense were laid at eighty-day intervals and at each year's anniversary, provisions meant to carry the dead through the regions where lords like Acolmiztli kept watch. A dog was killed at the funeral to serve as guide, leading the soul across the wide river Apanohuaia and past the lords who waited on the far side.

Without these provisions from the living, a soul might falter in Mictlan's depths and never reach the hall of bones at the bottom of the world.