Mictecacihuatl, the Lady of the Dead, rules the Mexica underworld Mictlan together with her consort Mictlantecuhtli. Mictlan was the lowest and most common destination of the dead, of those who died ordinary deaths, as distinct from warriors or the drowned, who went elsewhere, reached only after an arduous four-year journey through nine levels, and the two skeletal deities presided over the bones that came to rest there. Depicted with a fleshless face and a skirt of serpents, she is, in the colonial sources, keeper of the bones of the dead and presider over the offerings made to them.
Modern Mexican observance of the Day of the Dead is a syncretic tradition blending indigenous and Catholic elements; popular and commercial culture has sometimes linked Mictecacihuatl to that festival and to the folk figure La Catrina, but such connections are recent interpretations rather than documented pre-conquest continuities.