Faith of the Maya
Courtesy: Wikipedia
Nowadays, the Maya religion of Chiapas and Yucatan (Mexico), Guatemala, Belize, and western Honduras is full of tensions between the traditional, ancestral religion, the 're-invention of tradition' by the Maya Movement, and the various factions of christianity. In this article, however, the focus is on traditional Maya religion, a southeastern variant of Mesoamerican religion, and on its pre-Spanish antecedents in particular. As a recognizably distinct phenomenon, traditional Maya religion exists for at least two millennia, only the last five hundred years of which witnessed a symbiosis with another, non-Mesoamerican religion. Before the advent of Christianity, it was spread over many indigenous kingdoms, each with its own local traditions.
Sources of Traditional Mayan Religion
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 hieroglyphical 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; (2) secondary sources, chiefly Spanish treatises such as those of Landa and Las Casas; (3) archaeological, epigraphic, and iconographic studies; and (4) extrapolations made from anthropological reports of traditional Maya religion over the last century and a half. Particularly the reconstruction of Classic Maya religion (200-900 A.D.) and its leading concepts is often debatable. There is also a tendency to view Classic Maya religion too exclusively through the prism of the Popol Vuh, abstracting from this source's temporal and geographical specificity.
Ritual
Times and Places
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 large caves, where the rain deities were believed to dwell, and in Yucatan also around karstic sinkholes (cenotes).The main calendar governing ritual was that of the eighteen months (the Haab') and their feasts - together with the elaborate New Year celebrations - described for the Yucatan by Diego de Landa. It is not known in how far this festival cycle was shared by the various Yucatec kingdoms, and if it was also valid for the earlier Petén kingdoms.Priesthood
Little is known about the Classic Maya priesthood, although one surmises that the aged, ascetic figures depicted as blessing and inaugurating officials are likely the representatives of the priesthood at court. Our picture of the Mayan priesthood is almost entirely based on what Spanish missionaries have to say about them (Landa for Yucatan, Las Casas and others for the Guatemalan Highlands).Around 1500 A.D., the priesthood was hierarchically organized, from the high priest living at the court down to the priest-shamans in the villages, and the priestly books were distributed along these lines. In the Quichean kingdom, the two most important deities, Gucumatz and Tohil, had their own high priests. The Maya priesthood had multiple tasks, running from performing life crisis rituals to divination. The amount of professional specialization is unclear. Special offices existed, such as that of of predicting the future for the major divisions of time (katunob) and of giving oracles (chilan), and also, of course, that of reading the sky.
Offerings and Sacrifices
Offerings serve to establish and renew relations (or 'pacts') with the other world, and the choice, number, preparation, and arrangement of the offered items (such as food, incense nodules, flowers) obey to stringent rules. An example is the 'meal' offered to the rain deities in the Yucatec Cha-chaac ritual.The forms sacrifice might take varies considerably. In the pre-Spanish past, it usually consisted of small animals such as quails and turkeys, or of deer meat, but on certain occasions (such as accession to the throne, severe illness of the ruler, royal burial, or drought) also came to include human beings. A characteristic feature of Mayan ritual 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
Mayan prayer almost invariably accompanies acts of offering and sacrifice, and often takes the form of long litanies in which the names of personified days, features of the landscape connected with historical or mythical events, and mountains are particularly prominent. [1] These prayers, with their hypnotizing scansion, often show a dyadic couplet structure which has also been recognized in Classic period texts. The earliest recorded prayers are in Quiché, and are embedded in the creation myths of the Popol Vuh.Impersonation of Deities
The theatrical impersonation of deities is a Mesoamerican practice shared by the Mayas, and very visible in the person of the Classic Mayan 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 an identity in kind.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 an estafette 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 depicted as Howler Monkey Gods, the patrons of the priestly scribes themselves. 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 Mayas observed 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 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 resistent 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 Mayan 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.
Astrology
What is often called Mayan 'astronomy' was really astrology, since it was a priestly science resting on the assumption of a correspondence between earthly events and the movements of specific heavenly bodies and constellations. Contemporary Mayan astrology is extremely empoverished and fragmented. Usually, the names of certain stars and constellations is all that has been preserved. Some of the Books of Chilam Balam testify to the great interest the colonial Mayas had for the astrology of their conquerors. 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 (personified by different aspectual deities) in the course of its cycles; the Paris Codex contains what some consider to be a zodiac.
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 usually assumed to have consisted of nine layers, even though the underworld of the Popol Vuh (xibalba) does not know such a division; a central axis served as a means of communication between those various spheres. In Classic Maya texts and iconography, it is rather common to find deities linked to some of the thirteen skies, but similar references to the layers of the underworld have not been identified.
Eschatology and Cosmogony
Within the framweork of the post-Classic cycle of thirteen katuns (the so-called 'Short Count'), some of the Yucatec Books of Chilam Balam describe the collapse of the sky, the subsequent deluge, and the re-establishment of the world and its five world trees. In this cosmic drama, the Earth Crocodile (Itzam Cab Ain) and the divine carriers of sky and earth, the Bacabs, had 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 a succession of previous mankinds, the last of which was destroyed by a flood.For the Classic Mayas, 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. References to these primordial events (as on Quirigua 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).
Notes:
- Köhler 1995
