Maya mythology

Maya 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 each other play the main roles. The mythology of the Pre-Spanish era has to be reconstructed from iconography and incidental hieroglyphic captions. Other parts of Mayan oral tradition (such as animal tales, folk tales, and many moralising stories) are not considered here.

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 encompassing themes can be discerned.

The Popol Vuh describes the creation of the earth by a group of creator deities, as well as its sequel. The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel relates the collapse of the sky and the deluge, followed by the slaying of the earth crocodile, the raising of the sky and the erection of the five World Trees. The Lacandons also knew the tale of the creation of the Underworld.

The Popol Vuh gives a sequence of four efforts at creation: First were animals, then wet clay, wood, and then last, the creation of the first ancestors from maize dough. To this, the Lacandons add the creation of the main kin groupings and their 'totemic' animals. A Verapaz myth preserved by Las Casas in his 'Apologética Historia Sumaria' assigns the creation of humankind to artisan gods similar to the Popol Vuh monkey brothers. The creation of humanity is concluded by the Mesoamerican tale of the opening of the Maize (or Sustenance) Mountain by the Lightning deities.

The best-known hero myth, included in the Popol Vuh, is about the defeat of a bird demon and of the deities of disease and death by the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Of considerable interest is also the parallel narrative of a maize hero defeating the deities of Thunder and Lightning and establishing a pact with them. Although its present spread is confined to the Gulf Coast areas, various data suggest that this myth was once a part of Mayan oral tradition as well. Important mythological fragments about the heroic reduction of the jaguars and the acquisition of jaguar power have been preserved by the Tzotzil and Chol Maya.

This mythological type defines the relationship between humankind and the game and crops. An ancestral hero – Xbalanque in a Kekchi tradition – changes into a hummingbird to woo the daughter of an Earth God while she is weaving, or to abduct her; the hero's wife is finally transformed into the game, bees, snakes and insects, or the maize. If the hero gets the upper hand, he becomes the Sun, his wife the Moon. A moralistic Tzotzil version has a man rewarded with a daughter of the Rain Deity, only to get divorced and lose her again.

The origin of Sun and Moon is not always the outcome of a marriage with the Earth. From Chiapas and the western Guatemalan Highlands comes the tale of Younger Brother and his jealous Elder Brethren: Youngest One becomes the Sun, his mother becomes the Moon, and the Elder Brethren are transformed into wild pigs and other forest animals. In a comparable way, the Elder Brethren of the Popol Vuh Twin myth are transformed into monkeys, with their younger brothers becoming Sun and Moon. To the west of the Maya area, the transformation of two brothers into sun and moon is the main subject of many tales.

It is doubtful that mythological narratives were ever completely rendered hieroglyphically, even though a sort of 'strip books' may once have existed. The surviving Mayan books are mainly of a ritual and also (in the case of the Paris Codex) historical nature, and contain few mythical scenes. As a consequence, depictions on temple walls, stelae, and movable objects (especially the so-called 'ceramic codex') are used to aid reconstruction of pre-Spanish Mayan mythology. A main problem with depictions is defining what constitutes a mythological scene, since any given scene might also represent a moment in a ritual sequence, a visual metaphor stemming from oral literature, a scene from mundane life, or a historical event. The easiest way to solve this problem is to focus on scenes that include known mythological actors. This only became possible in the early 1970s, when an enormous increase in the number of Maya vases available for study occurred.