Belize Mayan Religion
The most important sources on traditional Maya religion are the Maya themselves: the living incumbents of religious positions and tellers of tales, as well as those who shared their knowledge with outsiders (such as anthropologists) in the past, and continue to do this in our own day. What is known of pre-Spanish Maya religion stems from heterogeneous sources: (1) Primary sources from pre-Spanish times, first of all the three surviving hieroglyphic books and the earlier petrographical texts; (2) primary sources from the early colonial period, such as the Popol Vuh, the Ritual of the Bacabs, and (at least partly) the various Chilam Balam books; (3) secondary sources, chiefly Spanish treatises such as those of Landa and Las Casas; (4) archaeological, epigraphic, and iconographic studies; and (5) extrapolations made from anthropological reports of traditional Maya religion over the last century and a half.
Fundamentals of Ritual
Traditional Maya religion is often referred to as costumbre, the 'custom' or habitual religious practice, in contradistinction to orthodox Roman Catholic ritual. To a large extent, Maya religion is a complex of ritual practices; therefore, the indigenous Yucatec village priest is simply called jmen 'practitioner'. The main concepts relating to Maya ritual are the following ones.
Calendars and Shrines
Present-day traditional Maya religion, in its public aspect, is largely governed by the Catholic feast cycle. Formerly, however, ritual had a complex organization governed by various interlocking calendars and by the lay-out of shrines and temples spread through the landscape, perhaps assigning specific numbers, or combinations of day-names and numbers, to them (as in the system described by B. Tedlock for Quichean Momostenango). An important part of the rituals took place in the temples and in large caves, in Yucatan also around karstic sinkholes (cenotes).
The main calendars governing ritual were the divinatory cycle of 260 days, important for individual rituals, and the year of eighteen months (the Haab') and the monthly public feasts which, together with the elaborate New Year celebrations, have been described for the Yucatec kingdom of Maní by Diego de Landa (see 'Calendar' section). It is not known in how far this festival cycle was shared by the other Yucatec kingdoms, and if it was also valid for the earlier Mayan kingdoms.
Priesthood
The traditional Maya have their own religious functionaries, often hierarchically organized, and charged with the duties of praying and sacrificing on behalf of lineages, local groups, or the entire community. In many places, they operate within the Catholic brotherhoods (or 'cofradías') and the so-called civil-religious hierarchy (or 'cargo system'), organizations which have played a crucial role in the preservation of pre-Spanish religious traditions. In the private realm, the diviners ('seers', 'daykeepers') are active, together with the curers. The performance of many of the indigenous priests, but especially of the curers, shows features associated with shamanism.
Our picture of the earlier Maya priesthood is almost entirely based on what their Spanish missionary colleagues have to say about them (Landa for Yucatan, Las Casas and others for the Guatemalan Highlands). The upper echelon of the priesthood was a repository of learning, also in the field of history and genealogical knowledge. Around 1500 A.D., the priesthood was hierarchically organized, from the high priest living at the court down to the priests in the villages, and the priestly books were distributed along these lines. In the Quichean kingdom, the two most important deities (Gucumatz 'Feathered Serpent' and Tohil) had their own high priests. Priests had multiple tasks, running from performing life crisis rituals to divination, and held special offices, such as that of katun priest, oracle (chilan), astrologer, and sacrificer of human beings (nacom). At all levels, access to the priesthood was apparently restricted to the nobility.
Surprisingly little is known about the Classic Maya priesthood, although one surmises that the aged, ascetic figures depicted as writing and reading books, aspersing and inaugurating officials, and overseeing human sacrifice, are likely to be representatives of the priesthood at co
Purification
Purificatory measures such as fasting, sexual abstention - and, especially in the pre-Spanish past, confession - generally precede major ritual events. In 16th-century Yucatan, purification (exorcism of evil spirits) often represented a ritual's initial phase. The bloodletting-rituals (see below) may also have had a purificatory function. More generally, purification is needed before entering areas inhabited by deities. In present-day Yucatan, for example, it is customary to drink standing water from a rock depression at the first opportunity upon entering the forest (Hubert Smith, pers. comm.). The water is then spat on the ground, and thus renders the individual 'virginal' (suhuuy), free to carry out the business of humankind in the sacred forest.
Offerings and Sacrifices
Offerings serve to establish and renew relations ('contracts', 'pacts', or 'covenants') with the other world, and the choice, number, preparation, and arrangement of the offered items (such as food and drink, incense nodules, flowers, cigars) obey to stringent rules. An example is the 'meal' offered to the rain deities in the Yucatec Ch'a-chaac ritual. Particularly Lacandon ritual was entirely focused on the 'feeding' of the deities, as represented by their incense burners.
The forms sacrifice might take varies considerably. In the pre-Spanish past, it usually consisted of small animals such as quails and turkeys, of deer meat, and of fish, but on exceptional occasions (such as accession to the throne, severe illness of the ruler, royal burial, or drought) also came to include human beings. Partaking of the sacrifice was common, but ritual anthropophagy ('cannibalism) appears to have been exceedingly rare. A characteristic feature of Mayan ritual (though not exclusive to the Mayas) were the "bloodletting" sessions held by high officials and members of the royal families, during which the earlobes, tongues, and penises were cut with razor-sharp small knives.
Prayer
Maya prayer almost invariably accompanies acts of offering and sacrifice. It often takes the form of long litanies, in which the names of personified days, saints, features of the landscape connected with historical or mythical events, and mountains are particularly prominent. These prayers, with their hypnotizing scansion, often show a dyadic couplet structure which has also been recognized in Classic period texts.The earliest prayers recorded in European script are in Quiché, and are embedded in the creation myths of the Popol Vuh. Some Maya communities in the northwestern highlands have a specialized group of 'prayermakers'.
Pilgrimages
Through pilgrimages, which create networks connecting places regionally as well as over larger distances, Maya religion transcends the limits of the own community. Nowadays, pilgrimages often involve reciprocal visits of the village saints (as represented by their statues), but also visits to farther-removed sanctuaries, as exemplified by the Q'eqchi' pilgrimages to their thirteen sacred mountains. Around 1500, Chichen Itza used to attract pilgrims from all the surrounding kingdoms to its large cenote; other pilgrims visited local shrines, such as those of Ix Chel and other goddesses on the islands off Yucatan's east coast.
Impersonation of Deities
The theatrical impersonation of deities is a Mesoamerican practice shared by the Maya, and often took place in the context of procession, dance, or ball game. With a view to such pageantry, the term 'theater state' (Geertz) has been used. Impersonation is also noticeable in the case of the Classic Maya king or queen. Quite commonly, the king, as depicted on his steles, shows the attributes and mask of the rain deity and of a rain serpent, but he (or the queen) could also represent other important deities, such as the Tonsured Maize God. Little is known about the way this impersonation was conceived, as a vicarious representation, a temporary possession, or, perhaps, as reflecting a basic identity.
Ritual Domains
The only extensive treatment of pre-Spanish Maya ritual by a near-contemporary concerns Yucatan, particularly the kingdom of Mani, and was written by Diego de Landa (ca. 1566). However, major ritual domains, such as those of agriculture and kingship, are hardly touched upon by Landa.
Calendar
The Maya calendar, connected to networks of sacrificial shrines, is fundamental for ritual life. The rites of the 260-day cycle are treated below (see 'Sciences of Destiny'). Among the highland Maya, the calendrical rites of the community as a whole relate to the succession of the 365-day years, and to the so-called 'Year Bearers' in particular, that is, the four named days which can serve as new year days. Conceived as divine lords, these Year Bearers were welcomed on the mountain (one of four) which was to be their seat of power, and worshipped at each recurrence of their day in the course of the year.
The calendrical rites include the five-day marginal period at the end of the year (Uayeb) and the New Year rites. For the 16th century, these have been described in great detail by Landa, more or less as they had been depicted in the Dresden Codex several centuries earlier. The four different New Year celebrations were governed by a single temporal and spatial model resting on a division of public space into four quarters correlated with the four year cycle, with procession routes visualizing this division. During these New Year rites, the incoming patron deity of the year was installed, and the outgoing one removed.
Like the Year Bearers, the twenty-year periods (katuns) were viewed as divine lords. Since they had their own priests (Avendaño), they were apparently also worshipped.
Life cycle
The life cycle rituals (or rites of passage) demarcate the various stages of life. Landa details one of these rituals, destined for making young boys and girls marriable (caput sihil 'second birth'). The Yucatec Maya continue the ritual (hetz me) which marks a child's movement from cradling or carrying to the mother's hip. It is performed at about three months and has godparents of the ceremony. The child is offered implements appropriate to its gender, tools for boys and cloth or thread for girls. If the children grasp them, this is considered a foretelling. Of course, all children are offered pencils and paper.
Health
The main collection of ancient Yucatec curing rituals is the so-called 'Ritual of the Bacabs'. In these texts, the world with its four trees and four carriers of earth and sky (Bacabs located at the corners is the theatre of shamanic curing sessions, during which "the four Bacabs" are often addressed to assist the curer in his struggle with disease-causing agents. Not represented amongst these ritual texts is black sorcery. Many of the features of shamanic curing found in the 'Ritual of the Bacabs' still characterize contemporary curing ritual.
Weather and Agriculture
Influencing the weather, in a negative or a positive sense, includes such rituals as 'Sealing the frost' just before the sowing season (Kanjobales), and the (usually secretive) rituals of the rainmakers, found all over the Maya area. The other rituals for the rain deities had a more public character.
Agricultural rites focus on the sowing of the maize and the maize harvest. Particularly the seasonal rites of the Ch'orti have been described in great detail (Donald ramirez).
Territory
The claims on territory by social groups of varying dimensions were expressed in rituals such as those for the waterholes, ancestral lands, and the boundaries of the entire community. The focus of these rituals were often crosses, or rather, 'cross shrines', and prayers were directed at rain and earth deities.
Occupational Groups
The 18 months had festivals, dedicated to specific deities, which were largely celebrated by the occupational groups concerned (in particular hunters and fishermen, bee-keepers, cacao planters, curers, and warriors). They also included a commemorative festival for the hero Kukulcan, viewed as the founder of Yucatec kingship.
The King
Jade Fillings
Little is known about the king's (or, as the case might be, queen's) ritual duties; the early Spanish writers have little to say about this theme. Nonetheless, one finds the Yucatec king (halach uinic) referred to as 'bishop', so that, in virtue of his office, the king appears to have participated in major public rituals, perhaps including such things as initiating the season of sowing. However, the king not only took a part in ritual, but ritual is likely to have focused on his person as well. The erection of royal steles at intervals of five 360-day years was a ritual by itself, and involved the notion of a protective 'tree of life' (Schele). Moreover, in the Classic period, the king is commonly depicted holding a cosmic serpent from whose jaws the deities of rain and lightning emerge, and the king's raising and balancing of this serpent may have been expressed in, and supported by, ritual.
Ancestor Worship
Around 1500 A.D., the incinerated remains of the (male) members of notable Yucatec families were enclosed in wooden images which, together with the 'idols', were placed on the house altar, and ritually fed on all festive occasions; alternatively, they were placed in an urn, and a temple was built upon it (Landa). In the Verapaz, a statue of the dead king was placed on his burial mound, which then became a place of worship. In Classic courts, tombs are found integrated in the residences of the nobility, and, in the case of royal families, in funeral pyramids. Apart from the ancestral remains themselves, sacred bundles left by the ancestors were also the object of veneration. Reliefs from the Classic kingdom of Yaxchilan show that royal ancestors were sometimes approached during bloodletting rituals, and then appeared to their descendants, emerging from the mouth of a terrestrial serpent (see also Vision Serpent).
Sciences of Destiny
Numerology and Calendrics
Apart from writing, the fundamental priestly sciences were arithmetics and calendrics. Within the social group of the priests at court, it had by Classical times become customary to deify the numbers as well as the basic day-unit, and - particularly in the south-eastern kingdoms of Copan and Quirigua - to conceive the mechanism of time as a sort of mounted courier in which the 'burden' of the time-units was passed on from one divine numerical 'bearer' to the next one. The numbers were not personified by distinctive numerical deities, but by some of the principal general deities, who were thus seen to be responsible for the ongoing 'march of time'. The day-units were often depicted as the patrons of the priestly scribes themselves, that is, as Howler Monkey Gods, who seem to have been conceived as creator deities in their own right. In the Postclassic period, the time-unit of the katun was imagined as a divine king, as the 20 named days still are among the traditional 'day-keepers' of the Guatemalan Highlands.
Divination
Like all other cultures of Mesoamerica, the Maya used a 260-day calendar, usually referred to as tzolkin. The length of this calendar coincides with the average duration of human gestation. Its purpose was (and still is) to provide guidance in life through a consideration of the combined aspects of the 20 named days and 13 numbers, and to indicate the days on which sacrifice at specific 'number shrines' (recalling the number deities of Classic times) might lead to the desired results. The days were commonly deified and invoked as 'Lordships'. The general Yucatec word for 'priest' (ah k'in) referred to the counting of the days.
The mantic calendar has proven to be particularly resistant to the onslaughts of time (that is, of colonial repression, liberalism, ethnocide, and free market). Nowadays, a 'daykeeper' (divinatory priest) may stand in front of a fire, and pray in Maya to entities such as the 260 days; the cardinal directions; the ancestors of those present; important Mayan towns and archaeological sites; lakes, caves, or volcanoes; and deities from the Popol Vuh. People also come to these daykeepers to know about baby names, wedding dates and other special occasions.
Divinatory techniques include the throwing and counting of seeds, crystals, and beans, and in the past also - apart from the count - gazing in a magical mirror, and reading the various sorts of signs (auguries) given by birds; during the Classic period, pictures of such birds were used as logograms for the larger time periods.
Astrology
What is often called Maya 'astronomy' was really astrology, since it was a priestly science resting on the assumption of a correspondence between earthly events and the movements of heavenly bodies and constellations. Contemporary traditional Maya astrology is extremely impoverished and fragmented. Usually, the names of certain stars and constellations is all that has been preserved, and the influence of star lore on social and professional activities can no longer be traced. The highly sophisticated pre-Spanish astrology is mainly found in the relatively late Dresden Codex, and concerns lunar and solar eclipses and the varying aspects of Venus in the course of its cycles; animals and deities symbolize the social groups negatively affected by Venus during its heliacal rising as the Morning Star. The ParisCodex contains what some consider to be a zodic. Some of the Books of Chilam Balam testify to the great interest the colonial Maya had for the astrology of their conquerors.
Cosmology
Earth, Sky, Underworld
Horizontally, the earth could be conceived as a square with its four directional - or, perhaps, solstitial - points, each with its own colour, tree / mountain, deity, and aspect, or as a circle without such fixed points; in the centre is the tree of life / dominant mountain. The square earth could be conceived as a maize field, the circular earth as a turtle floating in the waters; the centre as a ceiba or a maize tree. Vertically, the sky was divided into thirteen layers, while the underworld is often assumed to have consisted of nine layers (in parallel to the 'Nine-God', mentioned together with the 'Thirteen-God' by the Chilam Balam of Chumayel). The underworld of the Popol Vuh, however, does not know such a ninefold division; and whereas, in Classic Maya texts and iconography, it is rather common to find deities linked to some of the thirteen skies, similar references to layers of the underworld have not been identified. A central axis served as a means of communication between the various spheres; the king, identified with the tree of the centre, embodied this axis.
In the Classic period, earth and sky are embodied by cosmic serpents and dragons (often bicephalic, more rarely feathered) which serve as vehicles for deities and ancestors and make these appear from their maws. Dragons combine the features of serpent, crocodile, and deer, and may show 'star' signs; they have been variously identified with the nocturnal sky and the Milky Way.
World Endings and Beginnings
Within the framework of the post-Classic cycle of thirteen katuns (the so-called 'Short Count'), some of the Yucatec Books of Chilam Balam present a deluge myth describing the collapse of the sky, the subsequent flood, and the re-establishment of the world and its five world trees. In this cosmic drama, the Lightning deity (Bolon Dzacab), the Earth Crocodile (Itzam Cab Ain), and the divine carriers of sky and earth (the Bacabs) have an important role to play. The Quichean Popol Vuh does not mention the collapse of the sky and the establishment of the five trees, but focuses instead on a succession of previous mankinds, the last of which was destroyed by a flood.
For the Classic Maya, the base date of the Long Count (4 Ahau 8 Cumku) is generally assumed to have been the focus of acts of creation especially, though not exclusively, connected to the mythology of the Maya maize god (through the figures of the two so-called Paddler Gods). References to these primordial events (as on Quiriga stela C) are few in number, seemingly incoherent, and hard to interpret (among these is an obscure conclave of seven deities in the underworld, and a concept of "three stones", usually taken to refer to a hearth).
Although no longer used by the 16th-century Yucatec kingdoms, theoretically the Long Count (which normally has the baktun as its largest arithmetical unit) could be extended indefinitely, with the thirteenth baktun then being completed in 2012. Since the thirteenth baktun is not completing the Long Count, however, it is unlikely that the end of the world (and beginning of the next) was expected to occur upon its conclusion (see also 2012 doomsday prediction). Nonetheless, it is entirely imaginable that the completion of the larger calendric units was once accompanied by a recitation of cosmogonic narrative.Man
Soul and 'Co-essence'
The traditional Mayas believe in the existence, within each individual, of various souls, usually described in quasi-material terms (such as 'shadow', 'breath', 'blood', and 'bone'). The loss of one or more souls results in specific diseases (generically called 'soul-loss', 'fright', or susto). In Classic Maya texts, certain glyphs are read as references to the soul. Much more is known about the so-called 'co-essences', that is, animals or other natural phenomena (comets, lightnings) linked with the individual and protecting him. In some cases (often connected to black sorcery), one can change into co-essences acting like a sort of 'werewolves' (see also nagl). The Classic Maya grandees had a whole array of such soul companions, usually of a menacing nature, and called wayob; these were distinguished by specific hieroglyphic names. Among them were also stars.
Afterlife: Underworld and Paradise
In the pre-Spanish past, there may never have existed a unified concept of the afterlife. Among the Pokoman Maya of the Verapaz, Xbalanque was to accompany the dead king, which suggests a descent into the underworld (called xibalba 'place of fright') like that described in the Popol Vuh Twin myth. The Yucatec Maya had a double concept of the afterlife: Evildoers descended into an underworld (metnal) to be tormented there (a view still held by the 20th-century Lacandons), while others went to a sort of paradise; into such a paradise, those who had committed suicide were conducted by the goddess Ixtab. The ancestors of Maya kings (Palenque tomb of Pakal, Berlin pot) are shown sprouting from the earth like fruit trees which, together, constitute a blissful orchard. The so-called 'Flower Mountain' has more specifically been interpreted as a reference to an aquatic and solar paradise. To judge by the aquatic imagery associated with Classic burials and depictions of ancestors, this paradise may have been the Maya variant of the rain gods' paradise (Tlalocan) in Central Mexico.
Powers of the Other World
Ancestors
The traditional Maya live in the continual presence of the '(grand)fathers and (grand)mothers', the usually anonymous, bilateral ancestors, who, in the highlands, are often conceived of as inhabiting specific mountains, where they expect the offerings of their descendants. In the past, too, the ancestors had an important role to play, with the difference that, among the nobility, genealogical memory and patrilineal descent were much more emphasized. Thus, the Popol Vuh lists three genealogies of upper lords descending from three ancestors and their wives. These original ancestors - ritually defined as 'bloodletters and sacrificers' - had received their private deities in a legendary land of origins called 'The Seven Caves and Seven Canyons' (Nahua Chicomoztoc), and on their disappearance, left a sacred bundle.