|
Itzamna
Itzamná () is, in Maya mythology, an upper god and creator deity thought to reside in the sky. Itzamná is one of the most important gods in the Classic and Postclassic Maya pantheon. Although little is known about him, scattered references are present in early-colonial Spanish reports (''relaciones'') and dictionaries. Twentieth-century Lacandon lore includes tales about a creator god ( Nohochakyum or Hachakyum) who may be a late successor to him. In the pre-Spanish period, Itzamná was often depicted in books and in ceramic scenes derived from them. Before the names of the Maya deities were deciphered, Itzamná was known, and is still sometimes referred to by archeologists, as "God D". Name J. Eric S. Thompson originally interpreted the name Itzamná as "lizard house", ''itzam'' being a Yucatecan word for iguana and ''na'' meaning "house". However, Thompson's translation has gradually been abandoned. While there is no consensus on the exact meaning of the name Itzamná, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nohochakyum
Maya mythology or Mayan mythology is part of Mesoamerican mythology and comprises all of the Maya tales in which personified forces of nature, deities, and the heroes interacting with these play the main roles. The legends of the era have to be reconstructed from iconography. Other parts of Mayan oral tradition (such as animal tales, folk tales, and many moralising stories) are not considered here. Important Early-Colonial and recent narrative themes In Maya narrative, the origin of many natural and cultural phenomena is set out, often with the moral aim of defining the ritual relationship between humankind and its environment. In such a way, one finds explanations about the origin of the heavenly bodies (Sun and Moon, but also Venus, the Pleiades, the Milky Way); the mountain landscape; clouds, rain, thunder and lightning; wild and tame animals; the colors of the maize; diseases and their curative herbs; agricultural instruments; the steam bath, etc. The following more encompa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Mythology
Maya mythology or Mayan mythology is part of Mesoamerican mythology and comprises all of the Maya tales in which personified forces of nature, deities, and the heroes interacting with these play the main roles. The legends of the era have to be reconstructed from iconography. Other parts of Mayan oral tradition (such as animal tales, folk tales, and many moralising stories) are not considered here. Important Early-Colonial and recent narrative themes In Maya narrative, the origin of many natural and cultural phenomena is set out, often with the moral aim of defining the ritual relationship between humankind and its environment. In such a way, one finds explanations about the origin of the heavenly bodies (Sun and Moon, but also Venus, the Pleiades, the Milky Way); the mountain landscape; clouds, rain, thunder and lightning; wild and tame animals; the colors of the maize; diseases and their curative herbs; agricultural instruments; the steam bath, etc. The following more encomp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hachakyum
Maya mythology or Mayan mythology is part of Mesoamerican mythology and comprises all of the Maya tales in which personified forces of nature, deities, and the heroes interacting with these play the main roles. The legends of the era have to be reconstructed from iconography. Other parts of Mayan oral tradition (such as animal tales, folk tales, and many moralising stories) are not considered here. Important Early-Colonial and recent narrative themes In Maya narrative, the origin of many natural and cultural phenomena is set out, often with the moral aim of defining the ritual relationship between humankind and its environment. In such a way, one finds explanations about the origin of the heavenly bodies (Sun and Moon, but also Venus, the Pleiades, the Milky Way); the mountain landscape; clouds, rain, thunder and lightning; wild and tame animals; the colors of the maize; diseases and their curative herbs; agricultural instruments; the steam bath, etc. The following more encompa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vucub Caquix
Vucub-Caquix (, , possibly meaning 'seven-Macaw') is the name of a bird demon defeated by the Hero Twins of an ancient Maya myth preserved in an 18th-century K'iche' document, entitled ʼPopol Vuhʼ. The episode of the demon's defeat was already known in the Late Preclassic Period, before the year 200 AD as represented in Stela 2 and Stela 25 of Izapa in Mexico which is its earliest representation and the precedent of the story that was narrated in the Popol Vuh many centuries later. In his appearances, Vucub-Caquix is described as a demon bird and a false sun god with shining eyes that daily sat on a big tree to eat its fruits, he was also the father of Zipacna, an underworld demon deity, and Cabrakan, the Earthquake God. The Kʼicheʼ Tale Vucub-Caquix is described as a powerful bird pretending to be the sun and moon of the twilight world in between the former creation and the present one. According to modern Kʼicheʼ, his name refers to the seven stars of the Big Dipper aste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Priesthood
Until the discovery that Maya stelae depicted kings instead of high priests, the Maya priesthood and their preoccupations had been a main scholarly concern. In the course of the 1960s and over the following decades, however, dynastic research came to dominate interest in the subject. A concept of royal ʼshamanismʼ, chiefly propounded by Linda Schele and Freidel, came to occupy the forefront instead. Yet, Classic Maya civilization, being highly ritualistic, would have been unthinkable without a developed priesthood. Like other Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican priesthoods, the early Maya priesthood consisted of a hierarchy of professional priests serving as intermediaries between the population and the deities. Their basic skill was the art of reading and writing. The priesthood as a whole was the keeper of knowledge concerning the deities and their cult, including calendrics, astrology, divination, and prophecy. In addition, they were experts in historiography and genealogy. Priests ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ixchel
Ixchel or Ix Chel is the 16th-century name of the aged jaguar goddess of midwifery and medicine in ancient Maya culture. She corresponds to Toci, an Aztec earth goddess inhabiting the sweatbath. She is related to another Aztec goddess invoked at birth, '' viz.'' Cihuacoatl (or Ilamatecuhtli). In Taube's revised Schellhas-Zimmermann classification of codical deities, Ixchel corresponds to the Goddess O. Identification In the 1500s, Diego de Landa called Ixchel “the Goddess of making children”. He also mentioned her as the goddess of medicine, as shown by the following. In the month of Zip, the feast Ihcil Ixchel was celebrated by the physicians and shamans (''hechiceros''), and divination stones as well as medicine bundles containing little idols of "the Goddess of medicine whom they called Ixchel" were brought forward. In the Ritual of the Bacabs, Ixchel is once called "grandmother". In their combination, the goddess's two principal domains (birthing and healing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kinich Ahau
Kinich Ahau ( Mayan: ) is the 16th-century Yucatec name of the Maya sun god, designated as God G when referring to the codices. In the Classic period, God G is depicted as a middle-aged man with an aquiline nose, large square eyes, cross-eyed, and a filed incisor in the upper row of teeth. Usually, there is a ''k'in'' ('sun')-infix, sometimes in the very eyes. Among the southern Lacandons, Kinich Ahau continued to play a role in narrative well into the second half of the twentieth century. Names Kinich Ahau is the Yucatec and Lacandon name of the sun god. The element ''kʼinich'', usually assumed to mean 'sun-eyed', appears to have been in general use as a royal title during the Classic Period. Kinich Ahau should not be confused with Ah Kʼin or Ah Kʼin Chob. ''Ah Kʼin'' is Yucatec for 'someone who deals with the day(s)', the word for 'day' and 'sun' being the same. The term refers to Yucatec calendar priests and to priests in general. As to ''Ah Kʼin'' Chob, J.E.S. Thompson ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bacab
Bacab () is the generic Yucatec Maya name for the four prehispanic aged deities of the interior of the Earth and its water deposits. The Bacabs have more recent counterparts in the lecherous, drunken old thunder deities of the Gulf Coast regions. The Bacabs are also referred to as ''Pawahtuns''. Yucatec traditions Myth The Bacabs "were four brothers whom God placed, when he created the world, at the four points of it, holding up the sky so that it should not fall. ..They escaped when the world was destroyed by the deluge." Their names were Hobnil, Cantzicnal, Saccimi, and Hosanek. The Bacabs played an important role in the cosmological upheaval associated with Katun 11 Ahau, when Oxlahuntiku 'Thirteen-god' was humbled by Bolontiku 'Nine-god'. According to the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, "then the sky would fall, it would fall down, it would fall down upon the earth, when the four gods, the four Bacabs, were set up, who brought about the destruction of the world." Accordi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toniná 2
Tonina (or Toniná in Spanish orthography) is a pre-Columbian archaeological site and ruined city of the Maya civilization located in what is now the Mexican state of Chiapas, some 13 km (8.1 mi) east of the town of Ocosingo. The site is medium to large, with groups of temple-pyramids set on terraces rising some above a plaza, a large court for playing the Mesoamerican ballgame, and over 100 carved monuments, most dating from the 6th century through the 9th centuries AD, during the Classic period. Toniná is distinguished by its well preserved stucco sculptures and particularly by its in-the-round carved monuments, produced to an extent not seen in Mesoamerica since the end of the much earlier Olmec civilization. Toniná possesses one of the largest pyramids in Mexico; at in height, it is taller than the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. Toniná was an aggressive state in the Late Classic, using warfare to develop a powerful kingdom. For much of its history, Toni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hunab Ku
Hunab Ku (, standard Yucatec Mayan orthography: Junab K'uj) is a colonial period Yucatec Maya ''reducido'' term meaning "The One God". It is used in colonial, and more particularly in doctrinal texts, to refer to the Christian God. Since the word is found frequently in the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, a syncretistic document heavily influenced by Christianity, it refers specifically to the Christian God as a translation into Maya of the Christian concept of one God, used to enculturate the previously polytheist Maya to the new religion. References to Hunab Ku have figured prominently in New Age Mayanism such as that of José Argüelles. Hunab Ku as the Christian God The earliest known publicly available written reference to the term "Hunab Ku" (which translates as "Sole God" or "Only God") appears in the 16th century ''Diccionario de Motul'', where "Hunab-ku" is identified as "the only living and true god, also the greatest of the gods of the people of Yucatan. He had no form b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chaac
Chaac (also spelled Chac or, in Classic Maya language, Classic Mayan, Chaahk ) is the name of the Maya civilization, Maya god of rain, thunder, and lightning. With his lightning axe, Chaac strikes the clouds, causing them to produce thunder and rain. Chaac corresponds to Tlaloc among the Aztecs. Rain deities and rain makers Like other Maya gods, Chaac is both one and manifold. Four Chaacs are based in the cardinal directions and wear the directional colors. East, where the sunrise is, is red, North, mid-day zenith, is represented by white, West is represented by black for the sunset, and South is represented by yellow. There is a fifth color which is associated with the center point, and that is green. In 16th-century Yucatán, the directional Chaac of the east was called ''Chac Xib Chaac'' 'Red Man Chaac', only the colors being varied for the three other ones. Contemporary Yucatec Maya farmers distinguish many more aspects of the rainfall and the clouds and personify them ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lacandon People
The Lacandon are one of the Maya peoples who live in the jungles of the Mexican state of Chiapas, near the southern border with Guatemala. Their homeland, the Lacandon Jungle, lies along the Mexican side of the Usumacinta River and its tributaries. The Lacandon are one of the most isolated and culturally conservative of Mexico's native peoples. Almost extinct in 1943, today their population has grown significantly, yet remains small, at approximately 650 speakers of the Lacandon language. Culture The Lacandon escaped Spanish control throughout the colonial era by living in small, remote farming communities in the jungles of what is now Chiapas and the Guatemalan department of El Petén, avoiding contact with whites and Ladinos. Lacandon customs remain close to those of their pre-Columbian Mesoamerican ancestors. As recently as the late 19th century some bound the heads of infants, resulting in the distinctively shaped foreheads seen in Classic Maya art. And well into the 20 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
