It has taken years for scholars to recognize the major gods, mainly by their jaguar spots or serpent legs, crooked noses or swirling eyes. Although a few goddesses have wrinkles or a tail, most look like beautiful young women. Their eternal charms disguise their secret powers as warriors, midwives, and weavers of fate.
There’s an even bigger problem for scholars, and that is deciphering the hieroglyphic names of the deities. At first, the gods were assigned letters, A to S. The Lord of the Underworld, for example, became widely known as God L. Recently the epigrapher Michael Grofe identified his name as B’olon Yokte’ (“Jaguar are his Feet”). For this book, I decided to call him “Old Jaguar Foot.”
As for Rabbit (Tzul), he is usually depicted as a writer, though he is often seen snuggling in the arms of a young moon goddess. Rabbit is certainly moonstruck and sly, and for his wicked behavior the gods tossed him on the moon. If you look up at the next full moon, you will see him facing left, with his long floppy ears drooping to the right.
The story about Rabbit stealing Death’s fantastic owl hat comes from a scene painted on a clay jar called the Royal Rabbit Vase. Nasty words are pouring out of Rabbit’s mouth, and those words are written in the hieroglyphs above Rabbit’s head. Poor Old Jaguar Foot is left speechless and shivering.
Imagine puzzling over a hieroglyph—a picture made up of sounds—or gazing at a great work of art and trying to figure out what it says. Discovering the words and the story in the picture requires dedicated detective work.
Short, long, magical, or funny, the stories come in snippets that have to be pieced together. Sometimes scholars find missing details in other languages, other places, and other times. The peoples of Mesoamerica have been sharing their gods, and the stories about them, for eons.
So it was that certain Maya myths found eager listeners among the cultures of Oaxaca, central Mexico, and the distant American Southwest. Over thousands of miles and thousands of years, storytellers not only changed the names of deities, but also invented brand new episodes that made the stories more exciting. The tales spread like seeds on the wind, blossoming in dozens of varieties across the Mesoamerican landscape. During the Spanish Conquest, sixteenth-century Aztec princes told their stories to foreign priests. Of course, the friars added a few ingredients of their own as they rendered the Aztec versions into Spanish. This is why the Plumed Serpent, Kukulcan, became famous under his Aztec name Quetzalcoatl. The same is true for Tezcatlipoca, who shared many traits with the older Maya god Kawil. Both wore magic mirrors and had powers over royal blood and fire. Yet Kawil was overshadowed, largely because the Maya didn’t leave behind lengthy songs and stories about their great deity.
No one dared to change a thing about the Earth Monster. Yet the Cloud Serpent drifted from place to place without a firm identity, one minute a pale Maya dragon, the next, a hunter, and then the Milky Way. The streaming cloud of stars that is our galaxy was also seen as a mirrored tree, the white road to Xibalba, the brilliant upper half of the reptilian Earth Monster. Poets and painters compared her lower half, the hide-bound earth, to a ferocious turtle or a fierce crocodile (see illustration on p.9).
For the most part, descriptions of the gods changed with every story. It was like being at a big party with a thousand people talking at once. Of course, some stories got lost along the way and some got so mixed up it is impossible to know where they started and how far back in time.
Now a few Maya stories were eventually written down in our alphabet. My brief retelling of the Maya creation story, the adventures of the Hero Twins, and the birth of corn are based on the Popol Vuh, translated by Dennis Tedlock. Scenes from this great epic first appeared in Maya art more than two thousand years ago. The K’iche Maya version was translated into Spanish in 1702. The stories are still told, with many variations, throughout the Maya area.
It’s true my neighbors talk all day, and some of the tales they tell may be as old as the pyramids. “Lady Yellow Ramon Leaf” and the “Serpent of Fire” were pieced together from scraps told to me by Chol and Lacandon Maya friends Chencho Guzman and Chan Kin Tercero of Palenque. Xun Calixto, a Tzotzil Maya shaman from the mountains of Chiapas, filled in many important details about K’Inich Ahau, god of the sun. Xun says the ancestors, the Fathers-Mothers, taught him the words. Juan Sebastian Canul, like other good storytellers from Yucatan, seems to know Pawahtun intimately. The little god was especially popular among Juan Canul’s ancestors, who passed down the stories by word of mouth. Pijul Guzman Mendez says he learned about feathered snakes and bony centipedes from his grandmother, who heard it from a talking serpent. Pijul says this same boa constrictor created the rainbow.
Other listeners besides me have been fortunate to hear the ancient words retold by living storytellers. The tale of Chak and his serpent daughters first appeared in Perils of the Soul by Calixta Guiterrez Holmes. Grandmother Moon is my version of a traditional weaving story told by Loxa Jiménes Lópes and printed in Ambar Past’s beautiful book of Maya women’s songs and spells, Incantations. “The Lazy Buzzard” and “Saved from the Horned Serpent” are based on tales collected and translated by Robert M. Laughlin and published in Mayan Tales from Zinacantán: Songs and Stories from the People of the Bat. My experience editing that book sent me on a lifelong search for more Maya myths and stories. Robert Laughlin told me the story of José de la Fuente Coronado, the boy who discovered Palenque, in hopes that I would write about it one day.
The stories in this book interweave ancient motifs and modern folk tales. Similarly, some of the illustrations are derived from ancient sculptures and painted pots (the Lord of Death, Rabbit, and the Water Lily Jaguar); others are interpretations with a modern Mexican slant. The Maya use the same word, tzib, for writing and painting, and it is rare to see one without the other. Together, these stories and illustrations bring the ancient deities to life.
The Popol Vuh is often called the Maya Bible, mainly because the Hero Twins’ selflessness and sacrifice offer moral lessons to live by. The defeat of death is the theme of all religions. Readers don’t have to believe in many creations to understand the cycle of life, death, and rebirth that is at the heart of Maya philosophy. Readers don’t have to believe in many gods in order to know we are beholden to the natural forces of sun and rain and to the plants and animals that sustain us.
The stories in this book are my interpretations of Maya art and my versions of other people’s versions that are probably centuries old. There is no perfect version. The stories change with each storyteller and grow like all living things in nature.
GLOSSARY
and GUIDE to
PRONUNCIATION
SUPERNATURAL BEINGS
Chak (chaak) Maya rain god
Ehecatl (ay-HAY-catl) wind god of central Mexico, an aspect of Quetzalcoatl
Hunahpu (hoon-ah-POO) “One Lord,” the firstborn of the Hero Twins
Ik (eek) Maya god of wind and breath
Itzamna (EATS-um-nah) Maya creator god, grandfather of the Hero Twins
Kawil (ka-WEEL) Maya god of lightning, wind, fertility, and royal blood
Kinich Ahau (kin-ITCH a-haw) Maya god of the sun
Kolowisi (ko-low-WIS-ee) name for the feathered or horned serpent among the Zuni people of New Mexico
Kukulcan (coo-cool-KAHN) Maya name for the Plumed Serpent
Lamat (la-MAHT) Venus, a form of the Plumed Serpent
Mixcoatl (MEESH-ko-atl) Cloud Serpent, father of Tezcatlipoca
Nagual (nah-GWAL) animal spirit
Palalukong (pa-la-loo-KON) name for the Plumed Serpent among the Hopi people of Arizona
Pawahtun (pow-a-tune) Maya god who holds up the sky
Quetzalcoatl (ketz-al-KO-atl) Aztec name for the Plumed Serpent, by which he is best known
Tezcatlipoca (tez-cat-lee-PO-kah) Aztec name for the “Lord of the Smoking Mirror,” god of night and magic and brother of Quetzalcoatl. He shares attributes with the Maya god Kawil.
Topiltzin (toe-peel-tzeen) culture h
ero of the Toltecs, divine king of ancient Tula, in central Mexico
Tzul (tzool) Rabbit
Xbalanque (sh-bah-lan-KAY) “Little Jaguar Sun,” the younger brother of the Hero Twins
Xmucane (SHMOO-kahn-eh) grandmother of the Hero Twins
Xul Vo’ Ton (shool voh tohn) the Tzotzil Maya name for the Horned Serpent. His habitat ranges from the Maya area to the Pueblo region of the American Southwest
PLACES AND PEOPLE
Calakmul (kah-lahk-mool) Called “Three Stones” in Classic Maya times, this powerful Maya city-state in Campeche, Yucatan Peninsula, was ruled by the Lords of the Snake.
Chichimec (chi-chi-meck) ancient people of the northern Mexican desert
Chilam Balam (chi-LAMB bah-LUM) “Jaguar Priests,” or seers, who kept books of history and prophesy
Copan (Ko-PAN) major Maya city-state and art center in northern Honduras
K’an Bahlam (kahn bah-LUM) “Serpent Jaguar,” ruler of Palenque (A.D. 684–702)
K’iché (key-CHAY) a large Maya group living in central Guatemala
Mixtecs (MEESH-teks) “Cloud People,” founders of the great Mixtec civilization of Oaxaca, Mexico
Oaxaca (wah-HA-kah) modern state in southwestern Mexico
Palenque (pah-LEN-kay) known as Lakanja, Great Waters, during the Classic period, this Maya city-state in Chiapas, Mexico, was famed for art and astronomy.
Tamoanchan (tam-oh-an-chan) mythical land of rain and mist, perhaps located near the Gulf of Mexico
Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-wah-KAHN) The “birthplace of the gods,” this immense imperial state in the Valley of Mexico had a strong influence on cultures from the American Southwest to Honduras before its collapse in A.D. 650
Tikal (tee-call) prominent Maya kingdom in the northern rainforest of Guatemala from 400 B.C. to A.D. 900
Toltecs (TOLL-teks) “artists” and warriors of central Mexico
Tula (TOO-la) “Place of Reeds,” the great city of the Toltecs, in central Mexico
Yaxchilan (yash-chi-LAN) Known as “Cleft Sky,” this prosperous Maya center controlled trade along the Usumacinta (usu-ma-SIN-ta) River.
Xibalba (shee-BAHL-bah) “Place of Fear,” the Maya Underworld
Xok (shoke) Lady “Shark,” a powerful Maya queen who ruled Yaxchilan with her husband Shield Jaguar (A.D. 681–742)
PLANTS AND CREATURES
Ceiba (say-bah) cottonwood or silk-cotton tree; the Maya Tree of Life whose roots are in the Underworld and whose branches support the heavens
Chachalacas (cha-cha-LA-kas) noisy brown birds, resembling chickens, commonly found in southern Texas, Mexico, Central and South America
Coati (kwa-tee) a furry, long-snouted animal related to raccoons that inhabits deserts and rainforests from the Southwestern United States to Argentina
Ocotillo (oh-ko-TEE-yo) This tall wavy plant, native to the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico, has numerous spiny branches that sprout small green leaves and bright red flowers during the rainy season.
Quetzal (keh-TZAL) rare bird with long blue and green tail feathers, sacred to the Maya
Ramon (ra-MOAN) giant tropical tree found in the Maya rainforests, the Caribbean, and the Amazon, produces orange fruits and nutritious nuts (breadnut) that have long served as a food source in times of drought and famine.
ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS
(PAGE viii)
Turquoise Mosaic, Chichen Itza,
drawing by Linda Schele
©David Schele. Courtesy of the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
(PAGES v, 3, 100, 101, 104, 105, 106, 107)
Paddler Gods, Tikal
drawing by Linda Schele
©David Schele. Courtesy of the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
(PAGE 31)
Number 4
by Alonso Mendez
(PAGES v, 103)
Royal Rabbit Vase
by Alonso Mendez
All Maya borders and decorative motifs
by Pedro Meza
From Batz’I Luch: Traditional Weaving Designs
of Chiapas. Walter F. Morris, Jr. and
Pedro Meza Girón. San Cristóbal:
Chiapas Grupos Artesanales de Chiapas, 1975.
Maya Gods and Monsters Page 7