The age-old Maya believed that everything in the universe, from the natural world to everyday experiences, was part of one powerful one spiritual strength. They were not polytheists who worshiped separate gods, but pantheists who believed that the various gods were only appearances this strength.
Some of the best evidence for this comes from the behavior of two of the most powerful beings in the Mayan world: the first is the creator god whose name is still spoken by millions of people every fall – Huracán, or “Hurricane”. The second is the god of lightning, K'awiil, dating from the early first millennium AD
as researcher of indigenous religions of the AmericasI realize that these beings, although separated by over 1,000 years, are interconnected and can teach us something about our relationship with the natural world.
Huracán, “Heart of Heaven”
Huracán was once the god of the K'iche, one of the Mayan peoples living today in the southern highlands of Guatemala. He was one of the main characters of the so-called Popol Vuhreligious text from the 16th century. Probably his name comes from the Caribbeanwhere other cultures used it to describe the destructive power of storms.
K'iche' associates Huracán, which means “one leg” in the K'iche language, with the weather. He was also their chief god of creation and was responsible for all life on earth, including humans.
For this reason, it was sometimes called U K'ux K'aj, or “Heart of Heaven”. In the K'iche language, k'ux was not only the heart, but also the spark of life, the source of all thoughts and imagination.
However, the Huracán was not perfect. He made mistakes and sometimes destroyed his works. He was also a jealous god who harmed people so that they would not be equal to him. In one such episode, it is believed that he did their vision was blurredthus preventing them from seeing the universe as he saw it.
Huracán was a being that existed as three different people: Huracán Thunderbolt, Youngest Thunderbolt and Sudden Thunderbolt. Each of them embodied different types of lightningranging from huge bolts of lightning to diminutive or sudden flashes of lithe.
Despite being the god of lightning, there were no strict boundaries between his powers and those of other gods. Each of them can wield lightning, create humanity or destroy the Earth.
Another storm god
The Popol Vuh suggests that the gods could mix and match their powers at will, but other religious texts are more explicit. A thousand years before the Popol Vuh was written, there was another version of the Huracán called K'awiil. In the first millennium, people from southern Mexico to western Honduras worshiped him as the god of agriculture, lightning, and royalty.
K5164 from the Justin Kerr May Archives, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees of Harvard University, Washington, DC, CC BY-SA
Illustrations of K'awiil can be found everywhere on Mayan pottery and sculpture. In many depictions, he is almost human: he has two arms, two legs and a head. But his forehead is the spark of life – so he usually has something that produces sparks from it, such as a flint ax or a flaming torch. And one of his legs doesn't end in a foot. In its place, a snake appears with an open mouth, from which another creature often emerges.
Indeed, rulers and even gods once performed ceremonies in honor of K'awiil to try to invoke other supernatural beings. How lightning personifiedit was believed to create portals to other worlds through which ancestors and gods could travel.
Representation of power
For the age-old Maya, lightning was raw force. This was the basis of all creation and destruction. For this reason, the age-old Maya carved and painted many images of K'awiil. Scribes wrote about him as a kind of energy – as a god with “many faces”, and even as a member of a triad like Huracán.
It was present everywhere in age-old Mayan art. But he was never the center of attention either. As raw strength, he was used by others to achieve their goals.
Rain gods, e.g. he wielded it like an axe, creating sparks in seeds for agriculture. Charmers called on him, but mainly because they believed he could facilitate them communicate with other creatures from other worlds. Even rulers he carried scepters shaped in his likeness during dances and processions.
Moreover, Mayan artists always forced K'awiil to do something or exploit it to cause something to happen. They believed that power was something you did, not something you had. Like lightning, the power was always changing, always in motion.
An interdependent world
For this reason, the age-old Maya believed that reality was not immobile but was constantly changing. There were no strict boundaries between space and timeforces of nature or animate and inanimate worlds.
AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
Everything was malleable and interdependent. Theoretically, anything could become anything else – and everything was potentially a living thing. Rulers could ritually turn into gods. Sculptures can be attacked to death. Even natural features such as It was believed that mountains were alive.
These ideas – common in pantheistic societies – persist to this day some communities in the Americas.
They used to be mainstreamhowever, 1,000 years later, during Huracán's time, they were part of the K'iche religion. One of the lessons of the Popol Vuh, as told in the episode where the Huracán obscures human vision, is that human perception of reality is an illusion.
The illusion is not that there are different things. It's more that they exist independent of each other. In this sense, Huracán did himself a disservice by destroying his works.
Hurricane season should remind us every year that humans are not independent of nature, but are part of it. And like Hurácan, by destroying nature, we harm ourselves.
Image Source: Pixabay.com
