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Mythos Atlas

Mesoamerican PantheonRealm

Tlalocan

Illustration of Tlalocan, a realm of the Mesoamerican Pantheon
Illustrative imageIllustration of Tlalocan. Generated with an AI image model; not a historical artifact. About our images

The earthly paradise ruled by Tlaloc, a place of eternal spring and abundance. Those who died by drowning, lightning, or water-related diseases went to Tlalocan rather than Mictlan, considered a blessed fate.

About Tlalocan

Tlaloc's spring country

Tlalocan is Tlaloc's terrestrial paradise: green, watery, abundant. Those struck by lightning, drowned, or dead of certain watery diseases go there instead of Mictlan. Sahagun is explicit that this is a favored lot. Murals at Tepantitla (Teotihuacan) are often read as Tlalocan, which is a modern iconographic argument, not a caption. There is no surviving long poem of a hero touring Tlalocan. It is a rain-god's estate for a subset of the dead.

Sources and further reading

Source notes

These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.

  • Florentine Codex, Book 3 (Sahagun)

    Catalog date: c. 1577 CE

About this entry

By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. . Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.

Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.

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