There is local oral history about a cave located in the community of San Juan Diuxi, at the head of the Tilantongo Valley in Mexico. This cave is today described as the "Church of Santa Santisima." The account describes a miraculous materialization of Santa Santisima as witnessed by a citizen of Diuxi named "Juanu." Santa Santisima’s apparition is described as having been clothed in a long white dress with a skull face, standing at the mouth of the cave. (Notice how this sounds familiar to La Nina Blanca, the white Santisima Muerte.)

San Juan Diuxi is a Mixtec community. Santa Santisima at the cave in Diuxi can be thought of as a counterpart to Lady 9 Grass, a Mixtec goddess who protected the places of the dead.

Today the shrine of Santa Santisima is still venerated with a tree cross placed in its mouth, to which corn tassels, ears of corn, flowers, sacrificial birds, candles, coins, and food are offered on ritual occasions.

Clearly, the Mixtec were and still are involved in a religious system in which caves play a special transitional role, connected both to the supernatural world of the gods and to the natural world of political relations among living people. The Mixtec buried their noble dead in caves that were a route to a kind of royal paradise. The dead were nevertheless perceived to be active in the world of the living by virtue of the fact that their mummies had to be consulted during times of major decision making. The regulation of access to the mummies of the ancestors was one of the principal functions of the oracles of the burial caves.

Source: Byland, Bruce E. & Pohl, John M. D. The Archeology of the Mixtec Codices: In the Realm of 8 Deer. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press 1994

Santa Muerte is an enigma to many people. In Mexico she is very popular. While living in Mexico I bought a Santa Muerte tarot deck from an esoteric shop. The esoteric shop where I bought the tarot deck had lots of Santa Muerte merchandise and I asked the owner a stupid question, “Why do you have so much Santa Muerte items?” She responded, “Because Santa Muerte sells the best.” To the owners of these type shops, who many are Santa Muerte devotees themselves; Santa Muerte is a marketing tool.

There is no question that Santa Muerte has a very dark side, yet it is amazing the number of everyday Mexican people who seek her protection, guidance, help in love, and the darkest of favors-vengeance or death to an enemy or rival. But yet most of Santa Muerte’s followers in Mexico are housewives and women in general, seeking a better life for their families and themselves. They grew up in a culture where images of death are very common place. Praying to a skeletal figure that many say can help in life’s struggles is no big deal. Death is a very normal part of life in Mexico.

Like anywhere else, Mexico has a very dark side; you can feel it in certain alleys and various parts of town. You can feel it in certain people, like the man who pulled a large knife out one day and told me, “I can kill a thousand people with this knife,” and you can feel it in Santa Muerte. I’ve been drawn to her, and I’m not into the gothic lifestyle, sometimes I’ve been fearful of her.

I did a reading for one Mexican man, and after the reading he picked up the empty tarot box and said, “Santa Muerte is dangerous.” But he came back one week later and wanted another reading, strangely enough, the identical cards came up again. He became flustered and started flipping over all the cards in the deck one-by-one, his mood became more altered with every card.

I know there are some hoodooists who have worked with Santa Muerte. Several years ago I read a blog post by a hoodooist, Momma Starr Casas, in which she talked about invoking Santa Muerte to help in undoing a very nasty piece of work. The objectionable material involved felt so malevolent to her that she went straight to Santa Muerte for help. Sometimes the dark powers of Santa Muerte can be useful.

Santa Muerte is not an entity everybody should or can work with.

I was driving home from Walmart one day, and witnessed a dog being struck by a car. Nobody stopped so I pulled over and lifted the dog into my car. It was knocked out or dead. I brought it home and made a bed of fresh pine needles on the floor in front of Santa Muerte’s altar. I lit some copal incense, lit some candles, poured fresh water and tequila, lit some tobacco, and started praying. I left the dog there and went about my chores in the house. Soon the dog came walking into the kitchen and gave me a funny look.

One night I had a dream about Santa Muerte. I was at a large gathering of people who had come to worship Santa Muerte. The worship service was being held in a large stadium and it was filled. Santa Muerte was not in any of Her traditional colors, red, white, or black; She was dressed in a gray. The man officiating at Her worship service had enormous amounts of smoke from incense and tobacco rising to Her. Then a troublemaker approached my clan where we sat in the crowd. His intentions were to obtain money from us fraudulently. The dream ended when I shot him in the head.

Faith fosters not only miraculous cures, but also a positive state of mind that might be miraculous. Santisima Muerte shrines give devotees a deep sense of peace, tranquility, and well-being. Many describe the feeling as a recharging of their batteries, a replenishing of the reserves that get them through their difficult lives. Measures of hope, confidence, comfort, security, and stamina are restored by the belief that a supernatural power is protecting one, intervening on one’s behalf. Santisima Muerte is frequently described in the likeness of a guardian angel, as protector looking out always for devotees venturing through their precarious worlds.

Some devotees prefer Santisima Muerte because she grants certain types of miracles that canonized saints would never even consider. Success in crime and sending curses to enemies are outstanding examples. Santisima Muerte understands these special needs and is not restricted by traditional moral standards. Santisima Muerte also lends a hand in dubious enterprises, including muggings, hetero and gay prostitution, drug dealing, and even murder. Some of the crimes are seen as consistent with a certain concept of justice, a vengeful justice.

Santisima Muerte lends herself to uses reminiscent of witchcraft. She grants miracles, which are requested by lighting black candles that send harm, suffering, or death to one’s enemies. The phrases hacer el mal (doing evil) or el dano (hurt, harm, or damage, here with the implication of a curse) are widely used by devotees to describe these practices.

Despite the admission of such phrases, those who use Santisima Muerte for assaults on their enemies view their actions as just and legitimate. Their adversaries have overpowered and injured them unjustly, so they take exceptional countermeasures to redress the offense. Rather than doing evil, they are exacting justice. Rather than being aggressive, they are retaliating defensively. They would not be doing so were it not necessary.

Most Santisima Muerte devotees get uncomfortable when asked about black-candle rituals. All acknowledge that Santisima Muerte is used frequently for such purposes, and most are familiar with how it is done, but few claim to condone or practice these rituals. Those who speak openly explain that they made black-candle petitions to clear their path of hostilities or to restore a disrupted status quo, rather than to seek malicious harm or personal gain. When one devotee was asked about the purpose of black candles, he responded with a single word: “justice.” He went on to explain: “If your house is robbed, or if you are mugged, you get justice with a black candle.”

Santisima Muerte is not a Catholic saint, she is a folk saint, but many Santisima Muerte devotees are Catholic in Latin America. Formal Catholicism can also be used—with some manipulation—for the purpose of cursing enemies. Burning upside-down candles before Catholic saints is one way of doing so. Priests can be recruited by asking them to celebrate a mass for the dead but providing the name of someone alive. The mass sends out the spell that dooms the unknowing victim.

Check out my Tezcatlipoca tattoo on my left thigh. What tattoo do you suppose is on my right thigh? Quetzalcoatl of course.

Tezcatlipoca was envisioned as the Devil by the conquistadors. Long before 2001 when Santa Muerte became highly publicized on the internet and highly marketed for monetary purposes, there was an old story the original devotees of Santa Muerte told their children. They said the Black Tezcatlipoca and Santa Muerte were brother and sister. Santa Muerte was very tall and would watch through the church window on Sunday to see which children were misbehaving then report back to Tezcatlipoca her findings.

Many of you are familiar with the late E. Bryant Holman and his book about Santa Muerte. Here is a short excerpt for your reading enjoyment:

“The notion of a "black saint", as they are known - saints who help in assassinations, skullduggery, or evildoing of some sort - is a common element throughout the Catholic world. . .. The original shrine to the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca (the original one in Mexico, that is) still exists, and it consists of a natural grotto now located beneath a Sixteenth Century church in Mexico City dedicated to a Cristo Negro (a "Black Christ" - or a crucifix wherein the body of the figure of Christ is black). This church is also visited by assassins who pray to the Cristo Negro for protection from the law and from avengers. . .. The cult of the Black Santisima Muerte, then, is a cult of death and it is steeped in the traditions of these assassin saints and of "black saints", and in the traditions of black magic and sorcery . . .”

Source: Holman, E. Bryant La Santisima Muerte: A Mexican Folk Saint. Raleigh, NC: Lulu Press 2011

Santisima Muerte has spread by many forms in Mexico, some professed devotees have decided not to hide their fervor and have placed altars in the street so anyone who requires Santisima Muerte’s help can invoke it.

For her devotes, the Lady, as she is sometimes affectionately called, is capable of appearing and manifesting bodily or impressing her image in diverse locations. In books and magazines throughout Mexico that promote her, people narrate the miraculous interventions that they have experienced in their lives, how Santisima Muerte has saved them from multiple dangers and resolved complicated problems in their lives.

Altars can take many forms depending on their location and purpose. Many people in Mexico build an altar designed specifically for the location and purpose. In the Spanish book “La Biblia de la Santa Muerte,” altars are described for locations including home, office, business, beauty salon, mechanic shop, grocery store, restaurant, and law office.

I hope the altar of Santisima Muerte that you invoke will serve you well, so that through her image you are free of all dangers, whether physical or from witchcraft, and through her sacred flame, your body will be cleansed of illness and curses, and in turn come love, peace and abundance.

I’ve seen an apparition of La Nina Blanca, the white Santisima Muerte.

Three men began harassing my family and me by driving by the house at night yelling obscenities and threats. One night they drove to the house with intentions to do harm to my family and me. La Nina Blanca appeared and went through the front window of our house and through a tree in the yard into the car with the three men. She was screaming bloody murder and must have frightened those villains terribly because they sped away and never came back.

I have read and heard comparisons of Santisima Muerte to the Angel of Death. The first mention of Death as an entity in the Bible is in Job 28:22. In the original Greek and Hebrew versions of the Bible the Angel of Death in Job is called “Abaddon.” Abaddon is referred to as a place in several Bible references, but it is also referred to as an Angel at times, and there are various Angels in the Bible that are called the Angel of Death, but in Job 28:22 Death is personified as an entity prior to the mention of any other Angels of Death. And the last mention of Abaddon in the Bible as a proper name for a personified entity is in Rev 9:11.

One day while visiting a botanica dedicated to Santisima Muerte the young lady working there acted very strangely. At first everything was going fine; we were having a nice conversation and her little girl was busy playing. She asked me a few questions: Do you know Santisima Muerte? Has Santisima Muerte done anything for you? I answered her questions and started looking around the botanica. She went behind the counter to get her little girl and I looked on the floor behind the counter to see what her little girl had gotten into. She picked up her little girl and came out from behind the counter. I complimented the little girl on being pretty then touched her hand. I told the young lady that I was supposed to touch the little girl after admiring her so that I would not give her the “evil eye.” The young lady replied that she knew. Then she told me that I would have to leave because she needed to close the store and it was not even her day to work. I asked her how much a statue was on the shelf, and she told me $85. She proceeded to the door and opened it for me to leave. I told her that I understood and would come back later. The last time I was in that botanica an older woman was working and she was very friendly with me. This young lady was friendly and polite also, but she did not want to sell me anything and she wanted to lock the doors. Admiring her little girl, and touching her hand to prevent the evil eye, created too much tension. People with esoteric beliefs can be skittish and so can people and animals that sense danger.

Some followers of African diaspora religions follow the belief that all spiritual/magical work should be abstained from on Good Friday. There are certain things that occur in the spiritual realm that make it dangerous for persons who have not been sufficiently prepared or purified. Ancestral bundles are moved and danced from one location to another and if a person inadvertently disturbs the spirits moving the bundles they will harm and even kill the unsuspecting culprit. One Good Friday in a dream I traveled to the land of the dead and witnessed the moving of the sacred bundles. A spiritual entity close to me turned and looked at me; he was wearing a gray robe and had black eyes with no whites. He raised a knife to kill me but then noticed Santisima Muerte was standing over my shoulder and put his knife back in its sheath.

An attendant at a religious store in south Texas explained that the Mexican Santisima Muerte was an angel assigned by God to guide the dead into the next world. One image represents a pieta with the Virgin replaced by Santisima Muerte, holding a skeleton: “She is showing him to God to see what the fate of his soul will be.”

The gathering of souls is also reminiscent of St. Michael the Archangel, whose identity as an otherworldly courier was derived from the pagan Mercury. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, St. Michael served for dying people a triple role as protector, conductor, and advocate. He was appointed judge in matters concerning death, and he carries a pair of scales (like that of the allegorical Justice) that weigh the soul against its sins.

St. Michael appears on some Santisima Muerte altars, including that of the Curandera Maria in Mexico City who states that is the only saint who works well with Santisima Muerte, but the two are more strongly linked through their common association with justice. The idea of justice that is suggested by Michael’s scales is also evident in Santisima Muerte’s identity.

Justice is also served by death’s function as an equalizer, a neutralizer of this-worldly hierarchies and inequities. Death is for everyone, regardless of individual attributes or privileges, and afterward all skeletons look more or less the same. In one Santisima Muerte myth a poor man sets out in search of a Godmother for his son. His primary criterion is that the person be just. After he discards the possibilities of St. Peter, St. John, and the Devil, Death offers to be the child’s Godmother. The man will find no one more just, Death explains, because when the time comes Death takes people whether they are young or old, rich or poor, men or women, good or evil, happy or sad.

Justice is similarly emphasized through Santisima Muerte as an equalizer in many versions of myths from the 1960s and 1970s. These ideas are identical to a prominent strain in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish discourse on death. As explained by Fray Luis de Rebolledo, “although men may be different during life, some tall and others short, some rich and others poor, some nobles and others villains, in death they are all the same.” Equality in death neutralizes the inequality of life.

One night not too long ago I had strange dreams, but that is not unusual, my dreams are always strange. In one dream these balls of energy were emanating from my Santisima Muerte shrine and me. They were powerful and dreadful in the sense that their energy could do great harm or great good.

Then in a later dream, there were tornadoes chasing my son and me as we were chasing a skull. The skull looked like the one I saw this week on a traffic signal control box. It had highlights around its eyes, unusual teeth, and a cross on its forehead. The traffic signal control box is across the street from a botanica dedicated to Santisima Muerte. We chased the skull into an amusement park and then my wife wanted to show me the face of death on an iPhone. So, my son and I started watching the video my wife wanted to share with us. Before the video was completed, which somehow, I knew was going to be a scary ending, the dream completed.

The Aztecs believed that every human had three souls, the tonalli, teyolia, and ihiyotl. When a person dies these three souls depart the body and travel to different locations on the astral plane.

The tonalli resides in the skull and is empowered by the sun and fire. Exposing your head to sunlight empowers your tonalli. The tonalli mirrors the white Santisima Muerte. The tonalli is the source of intellect and reason.

The teyolia resides in the heart and is empowered through art, government, war, and social expression. The teyolia mirrors the red Santisima Muerte. The teyolia is the source of love and passion.

The ihiyotl resides in the liver and is a luminous gas that can attract and inflict harmful spells. It is emitted in breath and through the winds of moving hands. It can kill by causing disease and misfortune. The ihiyotl mirrors the black Santisima Muerte. The ihiyotl is the source of anger and aggression.

There is an old folktale in Mexico about a Bruja who would shed her flesh at night and flew around as a skeleton. One day her husband found out she was a Bruja and what she was doing at night. He waited for her to shed her flesh and when she took off flying, he covered her flesh with salt and chopped it into little pieces. She returned to put her flesh back on but was unable. She now spends eternity flying around as a skeleton.

One night while I was living in Mexico, something flew over me in the sky at about 3:00 am. The sky was very dark, I could not clearly see what it was, but it was the size of a human. As it passed over it let out a terrible scream. It was not a bird of any sort. It may have been a flying skeleton like in the old folktale. I swear that this story is true.

Santa Muerte devotion is often structured by a spiritual contract that establishes mutual obligations for the folk saint and the devotee. The contract begins with a problem or need that the devotee presents to Santa Muerte with the hope of a miraculous solution. This request, also called a petition, is presented along with a promise. A devotee might request success in finding a job, for example, and promise in return to make a pilgrimage to the shrine and offer candles. If a miracle is granted, then the promise must be fulfilled. Failure to uphold one’s end of the bargain after receiving a requested miracle has consequences. Santa Muerte may undo the miracle and may also impose an additional punishment.

Santa Muerte should be given regular offerings to maintain a good relationship for her continued protection and favor. Though these offerings can be accompanied by requests for specific benefits (health, work, and love, for example), they tend more toward installment or goodwill payments to maintain general wellbeing. Regular offerings are made to the quasi-diabolical Santa Muerte to placate her wrath. If regular offerings are not made, Santa Muerte may punish.

In Santa Muerte devotions, the obligations of the devotee and Santa Muerte are clearly established—this repayment in exchange for that miracle—at the time that the miracle is requested. Some devotees choose to build a relationship with Santa Muerte before asking for a miracle. They will give her offerings and visit her shrines to build a good relationship. Once they have established a good relationship then they will ask for their miracle.

The exchange-based relations between devotees and Santa Muerte are also less contractual once devotion becomes a way of life. Ramon, a dedicated devotee of Santa Muerte, described a bond of ongoing, mutual care: “I take care of her, and she takes care of me; it’s reciprocal.” As Santa Muerte improves Ramon’s financial situation, Ramon can afford luxuries for Santa Muerte. Well-being advances in tandem, and Ramon’s specific requests for miracles are integrated into this regimen of reciprocity.

The forms of offerings in exchange for miracles are as varied as the devotees themselves. Need-based faith is conditioned by poverty, and offerings are likewise in accord with one’s means. The devotee establishes the terms, but repayment can nevertheless strain limited resources. This is particularly true when devotees overreach with the hope of inspiring a greatly needed miracle and then suffer the burden of debt service. The most common offerings are candles, flowers, plaques, banners, food, alcoholic drinks, cigarettes, and visits to shrines, pilgrimages to distant shrines, votive artwork, and attendance at fiestas, small cash donations, and prayer. It is best not to promise beyond your means of repayment.

Grateful devotees also publish newspaper announcements, circulate chain letters, provide saintly attire for Santa Muerte images, perform dances, write and perform songs (often referred to as serenading Santa Muerte), volunteer at a shrine, and get a Santa Muerte image tattooed on their bodies. Recipients of substantial miracles, such as rescue from some life-threatening situation or illness, generally make greater offerings, particularly when they have the means. These include building a domestic or roadside shrine; contributing to the construction, expansion, or maintenance of an existing shrine; sponsoring a fiesta; and donating to a shrine a large sum of cash or such valuables as jewels and cars.

Many of these offerings conform to the ageless tradition of presenting an ex voto (a votive offering, from the Latin meaning ‘according to a vow’) as acknowledgment of a miracle received. Because ex votos are public offerings, their accumulation on and around altars and images testifies to Santa Muerte’s miraculousness and thus contributes to growth of her devotion. Unlike candles or flowers, which are anonymous offerings, ex votos commemorate a miracle with a representation of the recipient (such as a photograph, an identification card, clothes, or a lock of hair) or of the miracle itself (such as narrative paintings or crutches that attest to a cure).

In addition to personal items of every sort, Santa Muerte shrines are full of such ex votos as license plates, school texts and notebooks, trophies, sports team paraphernalia, miniature models of homes and businesses, and legal documents, each of these relating to the miracle performed. Soldiers donate their uniforms, boxers their boxing gloves, musicians their instruments, and brides their wedding dresses. The tiny metal images known as milagros (literally “miracles”) are also common in some regions. Traditional milagros represent body parts, and one pins a milagro of the ailing or healed part on or near Santa Muerte. Today milagros come in all forms—animals, cars, buses, airplanes, houses, crops, books, married couples—with each relating to the miracle received or requested.

Santa Muerte values offerings in terms of their “sacrifice,” which is to say what it cost one—more in pains than in money—to repay a saint for a miracle. When Santa Muerte accepts offerings that entail suffering, she does so not out of sadism but rather because suffering is viewed positively, to purge and purify.

Devotees also regard sacrifices as demonstrations of sincerity, dedication, and seriousness of purpose. They are indices of true faith and gratitude, expressions of reciprocation for extraordinary gains. Miracles are more likely if the advance or the payoff signals the devotee’s earnestness and worthiness. A devotee from Texas once said, “If you don’t do a sacrifice, you don’t get anything.” No pain, no gain.

The most severe forms of sacrifice are physical. Typical hardships and sufferings include walking for miles in bare feet, climbing up stairs on one’s back or knees, rolling uphill. These acts of penance pay off debt, express commitment, and offer voluntary, meaningful suffering in exchange for the alleviation of meaningless suffering—illness and injury—beyond one’s control. Because they are public and often theatrical, such sacrifices attract the admiration and awe of some devotees (who see them as maximal expressions of faith) and the disapproval of others (who see them as excessive or as ostentatious spectacles).

Most devotees seek a proportional relation between the miracle and the sacrifice offered in exchange. The greater the miracle requested, the greater the sacrifice. A devotee at a Santa Muerte shrine explained that he asks for minor miracles daily and repays them by lighting a candle or saying a prayer. Now, however, he has traveled eight hours to the shrine to make a more substantial request. “If Santa Muerte gives me the miracle I am asking for,” he said facetiously, “I’m going to have to come back [from home] on my knees.” In other cases, there is clearly a trade imbalance between the value of the miracle received and the offering made in gratitude. A Santa Muerte devotee in Nuevo Laredo, for example, explained that his life was miraculously spared during a mugging, and in gratitude he offered ‘two fingers’ of a candle (the width of the fingers measures the amount of the candle to be burned).

Sacrifices are not limited to physical sufferings. They include any pains—in the broadest sense of the term—that express gratitude. The pilgrimages to distant shrines, sponsorship of fiestas, (unaffordable) expenses incurred by offerings, and other vow-related redirections of scarce resources are all considered sacrifices.

The Aztec complex of Underworld Goddesses have an association with spiders. You may have noticed spiders on your Santa Muerte altar from time-to-time. You may have dreamed about spiders, especially the night you swallowed one. The average human swallows nine spiders in their lifetime while sleeping. You are never farther away than three meters from a spider.

One night in a dream, Santa Muerte gave me a huge spider. She showed me how to hold the spider so it would not poison me. She took her pinky finger and poked two holes in the body of the spider from which two venom sacks emerged. This made the spider very powerful. After that, she gave me the spider.

A person at work who was sabotaging my work record and threatening the lively hood of my family and I. He got terribly sick one day and ended up in the emergency room. Doctors found two punctured wounds on his leg and determined he was bitten by a spider while sitting at his desk. He felt the spider bite but never saw the spider.

Upon his return to work he never talked badly about me or anyone else again. Soon thereafter, he left the company and the tension in the air resided.

The Aztecs had a very large network of spies, messengers, and soldiers. The spies reported back to the leaders of the Empire. Their reports sometimes resulted in rewards which the messengers would deliver. Negative reports resulted in punishment which the soldiers would deliver.

Santisima Muerte has eyes and ears everywhere. Those who call her name are not gone unheard. Petitions and prayers are not always answered, for whatever reason, but they do receive an audience in the spirit realm.

Santisima Muerte has a large network of spies, messengers and soldiers, a very large network. They function as her eyes and ears in places around the World. The network is comprised of various spiritual entities, much like the Biblical God has legends of angels.

Santisima Muerte’s spies could generate a visit from a messenger. Messengers can speak through dreams, visions, symbols, and animals/plants/insects. Those who have the ears to hear, the heart to feel, the eyes to see, the hands to feel, and the brain to recognize her messages know when it comes from Santisima Muerte. The message may indicate a coming reward, the delivery of a reward, or the negative omen of future dismay.

Santisima Muerte’s soldiers will follow her orders.

Once in a dream I witnessed the soldiers of Santisima Muerte. They stood in formation, waiting for orders. They wore camouflaged uniforms. Their skin was black and leathery, like the underworld creature Camazotz, a Maya Underworld Bat Lord.

There was a paper written by Arnold Lebeuf, that was published in "Image and Ritual in the Aztec World: Selected Papers of the `Ritual Americas' Conferences." In the paper Lebeuf wrote, he analyzes the Aztec Calendar Stone and proposes an interesting though controversial hypothesis.

Lebeuf believes the Aztecs used information attained from other Mesoamerican tribes and incorporated it into their own calendar and Calendar Stone. One of the proposals he makes is that the Aztec Calendar Stone begins in the year 3119 B.C., the same year the Venus Tables of the Dresden Codex begin.

He goes on to further hypothesize that each of the suns, of the four before which we live in now, constitute a period of 1040 years. The Fifth Sun in which we live now, is also a period of 1040 years. He realizes that this completely contradicts the presently accepted time periods for the previous suns established by others in the scholastic field of Mesoamerican calendars. The five suns would then create a period of 5200 years, or 100 New Fire Ceremonies, before the destruction of our present age on 4 Ollin of the year 2080 A.D.

The math and astronomy he uses to justify his proposal is based on eclipses, the Sun-Node conjunctions, and the Sun-Venus conjunctions. It incorporates various data from colonial and pre-colonial writings presently accepted by scholars. It makes for interesting reading, though I'm sure, as he readily admits, it will stir debate and criticism from the peers of his field.

In the most recent musing of the Aztec Calendar Stone, David Stuart hypothesizes that the central image is that of Montezuma II assuming the supernatural identity of Huitzilopochtli. It has been thought for many years the central image was Tonatiuh. That’s all fine and good, but Stuart fails to explain the other imagery.

Whatever people believe, the end of the World for each of us is the day we are accompanied by Santa Muerte into the afterlife.

Many people believe Mictecacihuatl, the Aztec Lady of Death, is represented today as Santa Muerte. Do followers of Santa Muerte join Mictecacihuatl in Mictlán after their death? Based on Aztec beliefs, most will but not all.

Mictecacihuatl lives in Mictlán, in a windowless home surrounded by spiders, owls, and bats. She lives there with her husband Mictlantecuhtli. Together they are the Lady and Lord of Death who protect the bones of the dead. They live peacefully.

In Aztec beliefs it is not how you lived that determined where your spirit went in the afterlife, it was how you died. The spirit is what animates the body and gives it life. The three souls of Aztec belief give the body its personality. Depending on how you died, a person’s spirit went to one of four places:

1. Chichihuacuauhco, the Orchard of the Gods, means “in the wet-nurse tree.” This paradise was also called Tonacacuauhtitlan. It received children whose innocence had been protected because of their early death. These infants had died while still nursing and therefore had not yet eaten directly from the earth, rendering them pure and untainted—that is, not indebted to the gods for the earthly riches they had not yet consumed.

2. Tonatiuh-Ilhuicac, the spirits of soldiers fallen at war and the spirits of mothers who died during childbirth rested in Tonatiuh-Ilhuicac, the Heaven of the Sun. This was the home of the Sun and the most desirable ending to earthly existence because it was considered a place of honor.

3. Tlalocan, the paradise of the rain god Tlaloc, received individuals specifically chosen by him. It is believed any death related to water had his direct intervention. Deaths by drowning or lightning, dropsy, gout, people with leprosy, mange, or tumors were indications that the person would rest in Tlalocan (the Aztecs believed the diseases to be water related). This was also the place where children sacrificed to Tlaloc arrived.

4. Mictlan, deemed the Underworld, Mictlan was physically understood as the underbelly of the Earth. It was a dark region reserved for the spirits of everyone else, regardless of social class. It was a place of uncertainty and mystery. The spirits of individuals who died of old age, any natural cause, or diseases, accidents, or circumstances not specified by the gods of the other three destinations inhabited this region.

The Aztecs believed that every human had three souls, the tonalli, teyolia, and ihiyotl. These are not to be confused with the spirit we just finished talking about. When a person dies these three souls depart the body and travel to separate locations.

The tonalli resides in the skull and is empowered by the sun and fire. Exposing your head to sunlight empowers your tonalli. The tonalli is the source of intellect and reason.

The teyolia resides in the heart and is empowered through art, government, war, and social expression. The teyolia is the source of love and passion.

The ihiyotl resides in the liver and is a luminous gas that can attract and inflict harmful spells. It is emitted in breath and through the winds of moving hands. It can kill by causing disease and misfortune. The ihiyotl is the source of anger and aggression.

If I were to choose a fourth color for Santa Muerte, considering the original three colors were black, red, and white, I would choose yellow. But we all know there are many colors today, and that is a good thing. The Aztecs were known to incorporate spiritual deities and practices from those they conquered. New ideas should be welcomed and not heavily criticized.

In the Aztec Empire, the four cardinal points are imbedded within their art, architecture, calendrics, and cosmology.

There is a day name and color associated with each direction. The Aztec color associations are East=Red, North=White, West=Black, South=Yellow. Death is associated with the North. When addressing the four directions, the Aztecs started in the East and moved counterclockwise, not clockwise like many practitioners today.

In choosing to perform a ritual or worship service to Santa Muerte, it would seem fitting to choose a direction and color appropriately based on the above information.

The center of the Aztec Empire was their great city Tenochtitlan. It exemplified the fundamental observance of Aztec cosmology and was sectioned into quarters. North is not on the top quarter of this ancient depiction of Tenochtitlan. Observe the white Santa Muerte and skull rack shown on the right-hand quadrant, that is North.

On a personal level, an individual could design their altars at home as a microcosm of this cosmology, using color and direction even within the small area of a personal altar. This Mesoamerican practice can still be seen today in the shamans in Mexico. Such an altar would open a portal to the spiritual realm.

Another practice of the Aztecs is the selection of local geographical features in each of the four directions and addressing the Dueno, Dominant Elemental Spirit, of each of these geographical locations, prior to each ritual use of your altars. One could use the actual name of said river, mountain, volcano, lake, hill, tree, boulder...in an honorable fashion, as you faced and bowed in their direction (i.e., Great Grandfather Mississippi).

None of these practices relate to the casting of a circle. The Aztecs looked at the world as being a square that was quartered.

This is a picture of my real human skull with owl wings. I’ve used it in some of the graphics I’ve created for posts.

I was driving through the countryside and my attention was caught by an owl’s wing rising off the ground and waving. I stopped my car and walked back to find a dead owl on the side of the road. I cut off his wings and put them in my car then took them home. I would have never seen the owl if it wouldn’t have waved at me as I drove, the wind must have caught the wing and raised it off the ground. Santa Muerte in Mexico is often pictured with an owl and many Mexicans believe that if an owl hoots outside your window for three days straight someone in your house is going to die soon.

Santa Muerte loves a good cigar or cigarette, and so does San Simon. In fact, many San Simon statues come with a small metal protrusion on their mouth so a cigarette can be placed in his mouth. The larger Maximon/San Simon statues in Guatemala have larger openings for a good cigar. In Peru tobacco is directly ingested to the point that it causes nausea and euphoria during certain healing and cleansing rituals. Native Americans smoked tobacco in their peace pipes to bind treaties with other tribes. Tobacco binds an agreement between two people, groups, or between a person and a spiritual entity.

The spirit of the tobacco plant appears as a bluish-gray woman. She has ropes tied very tightly around all Her joints: wrists, elbows, knees, ankles, and waist. The ropes are digging into the joints. Around Her neck is a rope tied so tight that it has Her neck squeezed down to a ridiculously small size. She laughs extremely hard and is smoking tobacco. Ropes and cords are used in binding spells and rituals.

Tobacco is probably one of the most spiritually active plants known to mankind. The Maya loved smoking cigars and pipes. Imagine you are a Maya sitting before a priest in the temple and holding up your pipe. It is made of clay or stone, and the bowl is shaped like the head of a god. You fill it with the leaves from a plant known as tobacco, which you believe to be the gods’ gift to you, one of the surest signs they have given both of their existence and their regard for human beings and you light it from the fire that the priests have built near the altar. You draw on it and gulp in the smoke, bringing it deep into your body and holding it for several seconds, allowing it to suffuse your innards, seep through every byway, into every corner and over every organ. You blow out, watching intently as the smoke drifts up toward the sun and the clouds. Again you take it in, again you blow it out, and then again and again, one more time and another, as the regularity of inhaling and exhaling, holding and releasing, becomes a kind of silent incantation.

But you are not just smoking. You are praying, and the smoke that you expel is the emissary of your prayers. It is incense with a mission. Yes, it rises only a few feet before disappearing, but you are not discouraged; to the contrary, the very fact that the smoke is here one moment and gone the next strikes you as magical, evidence that the gods are reaching down to accept your pleas, gathering them into celestial realms with invisible hands. Or perhaps they are breathing in as you breathe out, a kind of give-and-take that enables you to communicate with them via second-hand smoke. This does not necessarily mean that your harvest will be bountiful or your days of great number or even that the progress of the dawns is certain. There are tribes to the north of you that blow smoke over their weapons before battle; this does not ensure accuracy. There are other tribes that blow smoke down the throats of the animals they have killed; this does not ensure protection from the creatures’ ghosts.

Still, you believe that the vanished emissions mean the gods have taken your prayers under advisement, are treating them seriously. It is all a person can hope for in a capricious world.

It's not just Santa Muerte statues, all statues used for devotional purposes should be blessed, baptized, or dedicated. The method chosen is determined by the spiritual/religious practices of the devotee. A term used for this practice is “seating a spirit.” When an image or statue becomes a spiritual/religious icon used as the focus for communication with the spiritual world it should be given proper direction, or it may take a direction of its own.

This practice goes far back in time. Pagan idols were also dedicated, given direction, spirit seated, in a ritual manner. The Ancient Maya and Aztecs had strict ritual protocol not only for the dedication of a statue but also for the carving. Abstinence from sex and fasting were an important part in the carving and dedication of their idols.

I had a dream this week about my face looking like an owl. So, I took an old picture of me in my younger years at my father-in-law's ranch in Mexico and added an owl face. I'm drinking a coke, and smoking a smoke, between two 55-gallon drums of gasoline. About twenty feet away from where I'm sitting a man was shot and killed. The police never came out to investigate.

On my first visit to the ranch, I was instructed to stay away from certain areas. The Mexican military was working for marijuana growers in those areas, protecting their crops, and I might get shot.

An old bruja lived on the property. She was always watching. In the evening when the weather cooled, she would come outside. She had an altar to Santa Muerte in her house.

Enriqueta Romero has said that Santa Muerte comes for us all when it is our time to die. This seems like a reasonable assumption. I have said this same thing in the past. But once when very close to death in the hospital, there were 13 black-robed figures around my bed. Was it 13 figures of the black Santa Muerte? I do not know. The hoods on their robes were pulled forward to the point where I could not see their faces.

In hospitals, Messengers of Death are always present. Their job is to escort the spirits of the sick and old. People under the effects of sedatives or a serious illness may even see the Messengers of Death.

In Mexico, doctors have known for centuries that when a patient extends their hand toward a window or door, they are seeing a Messenger of Death. The doctor or someone else will whisper in the patient’s ear that they are still needed alive. This is to both convince the patient to resist death, and to convince the Messengers of Death it is unjust to take a life prematurely.

Death always has the last word, just like individuals who love to argue.

Before the era of mass marketing and plastic resins, many people simply used the image of a skull, or some form of skull, as an icon for Santa Muerte. Like the old bruja on my father-in-law's ranch. All she had was a skull for an icon of Santa Muerte. I myself have a collection of skulls, both real and otherwise. I’ve noticed on many of your altars you have skulls.

In Ruben E. Reina’s book “Shadows: A Mayan Way of Knowing”, he talks about a skull being brought to people’s houses late at night on the Day of the Dead. He talks about the three skulls on the church altar, the skulls of important and wise men. These skulls are revered ancestors.

Rey San Pascual is also quite often represented by just a skull. One farmer describes finding a skull in his milpa. He brought the skull to a friend and gave it to him. His friend used the skull for healing. It was an icon of Rey San Pascual. There are documented cases of him healing over great distances when given the picture of the ill person.

Bolivia has a lovely ceremony where they adorn and honor skulls which they call natitas. The natitas spend most of the year indoors, but a week after Mexico’s Day of the Dead, the skulls are adorned and paraded to the cemetery. These are real human skulls as seen in this picture.

I like the statues of Santa Muerte with seven colors. They remind me of when I used to frequent Botanica 7 Potencias in Houston. I don’t live there anymore so I have no idea if it is still open. Botanica 7 Potencias was based on the Seven African Powers. Back when I visited it was owned and operated by an older couple.

On my last visit to the botanica, it was clear they did not welcome my presence. When I opened the door, the old lady looked at me and sighed. She dropped her head and walked behind the counter. I purchased a yellow Santa Muerte statue from her and then she started giving me gifts strangely.

African diaspora spirituality and Santa Muerte found common ground in today’s World. Seven colors are found in old Mexico folklore. There is a cave near Mexico City, that a person can descend into to make a deal with the Devil. One must get by the Dog of Seven colors that guards the entrance. Inside you will find agents of the devil to strike your deal, along with Popes and various other religious and political leaders.

I struck a deal with the Devil a long time ago, 50 years to be exact. Pretty much everything in my life has turned out for the better since then, even negative situations ended up working out for the best. I didn’t strike my deal in a cave near Mexico City. My deal was made at a ferry crossing on the river. Anybody can go to the crossroads like the Hoodoo crew, it all works out the same.