Religion

Maya religion

God K, the god of lightning

A jade mask. Its design

metaphorically represents the Rain

God Chaac, and the Creator God

Kukulkan.

The Mayans concept of the cosmos is more complex than the western religion. Benson reminds us that the only evidence of the Maya religion is the ruins left to tell the stories. The Maya religion seems to have been made up of thirteen heavens and nine underworlds ruled by the nine lords of the nights, whose names are not known. Apparently, there was warfare between the sky gods and those of the underworld. As their society grew more complex, their religious pantheon also grew more complicated with new gods being added and old gods taking on new functions. Their ceremonies grew more complicated too. Not only could the Maya gods change their appearance, but they could also change their goodness or evil. Benson explains that the sky god was the most important at all periods because he is frequently noticed in the art. The Maya worshipped hundreds of different gods. It is apparent that religion was an important part of all Mayan life, and confirmation proves that religion and the Mayan calendar were so inter-woven because of the ceremonies that were held regularly in connection with the Mayans advanced calendar. (The Mayan World)

Like the Aztec and Inca who came to power later, the Maya believed in a cyclical nature of time. The rituals and ceremonies were very closely associated with celestial and terrestrial cycles which they observed and inscribed as separate calendars. The Maya priest had the job of interpreting these cycles and giving a prophetic outlook on the future or past based on the number relations of all their calendars. They also had to determine if the “heavens” or celestial matters were appropriate for performing certain religious ceremonies.

Sacrifice to the gods

The Maya practiced human sacrifice. In some Maya rituals people were killed by having their arms and legs held while a priest cut the person’s chest open and tore out his heart as an offering. This is depicted on ancient objects such as pictorial texts, known as codices. It is believed that children were often offered as sacrificial victims because they were believed to be pure.

Much of the Maya religious tradition is still not understood by scholars, but it is known that the Maya, like most pre-modern societies, believed that the cosmos has three major planes, the underworld, the sky, and the Earth.

The Maya underworld is reached through caves and ball courts. It was thought to be dominated by the aged Maya gods of death and putrefaction. The Sun (Kinich Ahau) and Itzamna, an aged god, dominated the Maya idea of the sky. Another aged man, god L, was one of the major deities of the underworld.

The night sky was considered a window showing all supernatural doings. The Maya configured constellations of gods and places, saw the unfolding of narratives in their seasonal movements, and believed that the intersection of all possible worlds was in the night sky.

Maya gods were not separate entities like Greek gods. The gods had affinities and aspects that caused them to merge with one another in ways that seem unbounded. There is a massive array of supernatural characters in the Maya religious tradition, only some of which recur with regularity. Good and evil traits are not permanent characteristics of Maya gods, nor is only “good” admirable. What is inappropriate during one season might come to pass in another since much of the Maya religious tradition is based on cycles and not permanence.

The life-cycle of maize lies at the heart of Maya belief. This philosophy is demonstrated on the belief in the Maya maize god as a central religious figure. The Maya bodily ideal is also based on the form of this young deity, which is demonstrated in their artwork. The Maize God was also a model of courtly life for the Classical Maya.

It is sometimes believed that the multiple “gods” represented nothing more than a mathematical explanation of what they observed. Each god was literally just a number or an explanation of the effects observed by a combination of numbers from multiple calendars. Among the many types of Maya calendars which were maintained, the most important included a 260-day cycle, a 365-day cycle which approximated the solar year, a cycle which recorded lunation periods of the Moon, and a cycle which tracked the synodic period of Venus.

Philosophically, the Maya believed that knowing the past meant knowing the cyclical influences that create the present, and by knowing the influences of the present one can see the cyclical influences of the future.

Even in the 19th century, there was Maya influence in the local branch of Christianity followed in Chan Santa Cruz. Among the K’iche’ in the western highlands of Guatemala these same nine months are replicated, until this very day, in the training of the ajk’ij, the keeper of the 260-day-calendar called ch’olk’ij.