Where did Santa Muerte come from?
Centuries ago, when the Spanish empire was on the rise, the newly formed kingdom of Castilla y León was dominating the Iberian peninsula. These two great kingdoms had come together under one religion and had successfully expelled muslims and jews after seven hundred years of cooperation, coexisting and intermingling. Religious zealousness was at an all time high and at the same time the were sending over voyagers to the "new world" in the name of God, gold and glory. The spread of diseases helped to wipe out large portions of the native population making it easy to overpower and overthrow the native peoples to exploit them and their resources.
After securing these resources in the name of God, the Peninsulares were now trying to save these poor heathens. Missionaries were coming to the Americas in large numbers to help convert the native people. These holy men force their language and their beliefs onto these indios, reminding them that their pagan views would only grant them eternal damnation in the afterlife. Unsurprisingly, they found this challenging at first so some of these missionaries decided to take a different approach. The missionaries would focus on the similarities between their religious views and over time these beliefs started to blend and mix until they were assimilated.
This is why it is believed by many that Mictecacihuatl, or Lady of the Dead to the mexica people, is the syncretistic origin of la Santa Muerte. She was believed to be one of the Gods or deities that ruled over Mictlan, one of the places that the souls of the dead would be able to go to. Case closed right? Well that's what I believed too. To me this helped explained Santa Muerte's Mexican origin. However of time I started to realize that I was getting messages from people as far away as India asking if we ship Santa Muerte Statues internationally. At the time I was already selling to people all over the US but until then I had just assumed maybe these folk were kinfolk, people of Mexican decent who had a connection to Santa Muerte. On the other hand, these messages were coming from half a world away and from many people. It wasn't impossible to think that there were a small population of people in India who were of Mexican decent but this rationalization didn't seem all that rational.
Mictecacihuatl (kneeling, left) and her consort Mictlantecuhtli (seated, right) from the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer.
This made me start rethinking the way I see Santa Muerte. She is almost always depicted with a world in her hand, not just a map of México. I had learned that the world was a symbol to demonstrate that everyone dies, everyone eventually meets her, regardless of race, ethnicity, and nationality. I started to accept that there are no limits to her dominion, wherever there is life there is death and wherever there is death there she is. Santa Muerte. A chat with a colleague helped me solidify this understanding.
I was talking to a colleague who said that "Santa Muerte has existed even before the formation of México, she is much older than that." I thought that I had already expanded my few of the origins of la Santa Muerte but this was pushing the bounds even further. My friend theorized that maybe Santa Muerte, Mictecacihuatl, and other dieties of death are all like different avatars. Reincarnations of death. This seemed fitting. A being who is meant to help us understand death, being reborn again and again in different ages to help different cultures understand the same message and to help take care of them once their time in this world is up.
I started thinking about how far back are her origins. I started researching death even more. I read up on ancient burial rites and ritual dating to early native people of the Americans and even early humans and hominids, the ancestors of modern humans, and it was all making sense. There is a cave in South Africa dating back over 200,000 years ago or more to the time of homo naledi, an extinct species of humans that were recently discovered, that some anthropologists argue demonstrates that homo naledi could have been some of the earliest human ancestors that buried their dead. Of course it's difficult to know for certain because it's not like they left us any literature that demonstrates they possessed the awareness of their own mortality but I invite you to read about the details and come up with your own conclusion. Here is a link to one of the articles.
Truth be told it's possible that these archaic human ancestors buried their dead deep in this cave for hygienic purposes however it makes you wonder if they had a certain understanding or even respect for death. Is it possible that early humans understood and even revered death far before that 200,000 to 335,000 years ago? Do you think we as humans have had always understood what is death? Do you think that humans always personified death? Is Santa Muerte her most recent incarnation? Do you know of any other deities of death in other cultures or religions? What are they like? Do they also watch over the dead or greet them on the other side? Let me know down in the comments I'm curious to know what you know.
I would like to add on to this post if you guys don’t mind. I want to start by saying this is going to be a lot but I’m very grateful you guys have this platform so thank you. I’m always interested in how others were taught because From what I was taught Santa muerte has ties to (but should not be venerated as such) mexica teotl mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacíhuatl. We see the ties to mictlantecuhlti through some images where Santisima has red eyes as he’s know to be depicted with red eyes and then I don’t know if you ever have had a random snake pop up out of nowhere but that’s Mictecacíhuatl among other things as she was know to have a dress made of snakes. However I was taught it’s incredibly disrespectful to say the two teotl are santa muerte or vise versa as they’re pre-colonization and Santa muerte is post-colonization as well as they have their own imagery to venerate. I was also taught that mictlantecuhtli came before Mictecacihuatl and to honor her without the one who came before her isnt respectful. I would like to put it this way, are people had a choice to convert or die. They took their beliefs of the old world and fit them into the new world with Saint imagery. So to answer that question where did la santa muerte come from is to say simply the colonization of Mexica people. We also see her ties to azteca roots with the very numerology the practice comes with. 9 and 13 are very common numbers seen in el culto. 9 goes back to the 9 levels of mictlan and 13 goes back to the 13 levels of azteca heaven. I’ll end it here, all around the world different cultures have had their own depictions of death, Santa muerte being Mexico's personification of death. with the internet and present day technology making it easy Santa muerte’s impact has reached further than Mexico and the boarder lands and el culto grows everyday. Thank you.
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