Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte, often shortened to Santa Muerte, is a new religious movement, female deity, Folk-Catholic Saint, and folk saint in Mexican folk Catholicism and Neopaganism. A personification of death, she is associated with healing, protection, and safe delivery to the afterlife by her devotees. Despite condemnation by the Catholic Church and Evangelical pastors, her cult has become increasingly prominent since the turn of the 21st century.
Close-up of a Santa Muerte statue south of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas
Devotees praying to Santa Muerte, Mexico.
Mictēcacihuātl (or Mictlancihuatl) the skeletal Aztec goddess of death.
One of José Guadalupe Posada's Catrina engravings (1910–1913).
Death is frequently imagined as a personified force. In some mythologies, a character known as the Grim Reaper causes the victim's death by coming to collect that person's soul. Other beliefs hold that the spectre of death is only a psychopomp, a benevolent figure who serves to gently sever the last ties between the soul and the body, and to guide the deceased to the afterlife, without having any control over when or how the victim dies. Death is most often personified in male form, although in certain cultures death is perceived as female. Death is also portrayed as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Most claims of its appearance occur in states of near-death.
Statue of Death, personified as a human skeleton dressed in a shroud and clutching a scythe, at the Cathedral of Trier in Trier, Germany
Mictlantecutli in the Codex Borgia
La Calavera Catrina, one of José Guadalupe Posada's Catrina engravings (1910–1913)
Skeleton Fantasy Show by Li Song (1190-1264)