Key Info

- Singular Lord of the Underworld

- Most feared of the Underworld Lords

- When a person dies Ah Puch burns the soul and douses them in cold water. He repeats this process until the soul disentegrates into nothing

Brief Bio

Ah puch is an extremely fearsome deity usually depicted as a skeleton, often with rotting flesh. He is also known as Ah Cimih, Ah Cizin, Hun Ahau, Kimi, or Yum Kimil. In the Quechua language Cimi means “Death” and Cizin “The Flatulent One” alludes to the odour of death. The Maya death god was often portrayed as two separate beings but in reality is one. He is the opposite of the Upper God in the creation of the world and of the human body and soul. This god inhabits an Underworld that is also the world of the dead and also corresponds to the Aztec deity Mictlantecuhtli.

As Cizin, he was a dancing human skeleton smoking a cigarette, wearing a gruesome collar of human eyes dangling from their nerve cords. He was called "The Stinking One" as the root of his name means flatulence or stench. he had a foul smell.

Mayan depictions of Ah Puch were either of a skeletal figure that had protruding ribs and a deaths-head skull or of a bloated figure that suggested an advancing state of decomposition. Because of his association with owls, he might be portrayed as a skeletal figure with an owl's head. Like his Aztec equivalent, Mictlantecuhtli, Ah Puch frequently wears bells.

Ah Puch is the god of death, darkness, and disaster and yet also apparently represents regeneration, child birth, and beginnings.

Of all the depictions of death, Ah Puch was said to be the most feared of the Mayan gods. The Mayans while mourning silently during the day, would create a dreadful din at night in order to scare him away. The conquistadors describe him as wearing bells and that he comes ringing them. 

This god is also associated with the moon. The moon as we know exerts great influence over water and water brings life. The other side of the ritual of course being the welcoming in of fertility and new life. In this sense the story would appear to have some shamanistic overtones with a character who can bring life as well as death, a psychopomp, who carries souls to the other side and brings new ones in to the world.