The Tzitzimime in Aztec cosmology

Record summary

Tzitzimime were feared supernatural beings in Nahua religious thought, associated in colonial descriptions with celestial danger, darkness, and catastrophic transition. Related traditions concerning cihuateteo connected dead women, especially those who died in childbirth, with potentially dangerous nocturnal or liminal presence. The material matters because it shows how sounds, darkness, eclipses, death, and place could be organized within a cosmological system rather than a modern haunting report. Surviving evidence is mediated by Spanish colonial informants, missionaries, and later translations.