Maya Mythology's Original Texts 4: The Gods, the Calendar & the Codices

Thank you for visiting. This article is the fourth installment (the final one) in a series explaining the original texts of Maya mythology.

This time, I look, following the original texts, at the Maya gods, the world-famous precise “calendar,” and the manuscripts that recorded it, behind the stories so far. Not only the “Popol Vuh,” which conveys the stories, but the Maya’s own original texts — the codices and inscriptions — become important here.

For an overview map of the original texts of Maya mythology as a whole, please see this summary article.

Maya Mythology's Original Texts: The Popol Vuh and All Articlesen.senkohome.com/myths-religions-origins-maya/

The Major Maya Gods

In Maya mythology, many gods appear, governing the forces of nature and daily life. The Maya were divided into many city-states, and the names of gods changed by era and region, but let us grasp the representative gods.

Listing the major gods gives the following.

Especially important is the aged supreme god “Itzamna.” He is held to be the god who granted writing, the calendar, and knowledge to humans, deeply tied to the Maya civilization’s valuing of writing and astronomy. And the four gods who support the sky at the four corners of the world, the “Bacab,” are tied to the four directions of east, west, south, and north, and the colors red, white, black, and yellow, symbolizing the Maya worldview of “the four directions + the center.”

World Mythology for Beginners (illustrated)View on Amazon → An Anatomical Illustrated Guide to the Myths That Make StoriesView on Amazon →

The Maya Cosmos — the World Tree and Three Layers

The Maya people thought the world consisted of vertically stacked layers. Above is the “upper world,” where gods and heavenly bodies circle; at the center is the “earthly world,” where humans dwell; and below spreads the underworld “Xibalba (the lower world),” which the hero twins challenged.

What stands piercing these three layers is the giant world tree (tree of life) towering at the center of the world. The Maya people regarded the sacred tree ceiba (the kapok tree) as the cosmic axis connecting heaven, earth, and the underworld. Its roots extend to the underground Xibalba, its trunk to the human world, and its branches to the upper world, and gods and the souls of the dead are held to come and go between the world’s layers through this tree.

And the earthly world is divided into the four directions of east, west, south, and north, supported by the aforementioned Bacab gods, each tied to a color (red, white, black, yellow), a sacred tree, and a particular god. Spreading to the four directions with the central world tree as the axis — this cosmic image of “center + four directions” is reflected even in the arrangement of temples and pyramids and the structure of the calendar, forming the foundation of the Maya worldview.

The Sacred Ballgame — the Gate to the Underworld

In the story of the hero twins seen in Article 2, what played an important role was the “ballgame.” This is not fancy. In the cities of the Maya and Mesoamerica, a stone ballcourt was built almost without fail, and the sport of hitting a rubber ball with the hips and elbows was performed as a sacred ritual.

For the Maya people, the ballgame was not a mere sport. It was a ritual that re-enacted on earth that cosmic battle in which the hero twins fought the lords of the underworld Xibalba. The ball that was hit was also likened to the movement of the sun, and the ballcourt itself was thought to be the entrance (gate) to the underworld. And this ritual ballgame was often concluded with the sacrifice of the loser (or captives). From this, one can see well that myth, real ritual, and kingship were inseparably tied.

The Maya Calendar — a World-Famous Precise System of Time

What the Maya civilization is most famous for is its astonishingly precise calendar and astronomy. The Maya people thought of time itself as sacred, and used a combination of several calendars.

The 260-day calendar (Tzolkin) for divination, and the 365-day calendar (Haab) matched to the sun’s movement. These two gears mesh and turn, and in exactly 52 years all the combinations go around once. This is called the “Calendar Round” (the Aztec shared the same mechanism).

The “Long Count” Counting Thousands of Years

What was especially original about the Maya was that, apart from the calendar that goes around once in 52 years, they developed the “Long Count (the Maya Long Count),” counting solely by accumulating the number of days from a starting point. This was a groundbreaking calendar method, able to record thousands of years without being off by a single day.

Its units build up roughly by a factor of 20 each.

• 1 kin = 1 day
• 1 winal = 20 kin (20 days)
• 1 tun = 18 winal (360 days)
• 1 katun = 20 tun (about 20 years)
• 1 baktun = 20 katun (about 394 years)

And it is known that this calendar’s great segment, 13 baktun (about 5,125 years), fell exactly in December 2012 (AD). This became the basis of the “2012 Maya calendar doomsday theory” that once made a stir in the world. But this does not mean “the end of the world.” For the Maya, time was cyclical, and this was merely a turning point where a great cycle went around once and a new cycle began. Even while misunderstood, that it could accurately point to a date 5,000 years ahead itself tells of the height of Maya astronomy.

Maya Glyphs and the Codices — the New World’s Only Writing System

That such a precise calendar and myths could be recorded is because the Maya developed the only full-fledged writing system (Maya glyphs) in the New World. Maya glyphs were, contrary to their picture-like appearance, an advanced system combining characters that represent sound (syllabic characters) and characters that represent meaning (logograms).

The decipherment of this writing had a long and hard road. It was once thought that “Maya glyphs are merely pictures and symbols, not writing that represents words.” What changed the tide was, in the 1950s, the Soviet linguist Yuri Knorozov. He showed that Maya glyphs include syllabic characters representing actual pronunciation. Further, the woman researcher Tatiana Proskouriakoff determined that stela inscriptions record not myth or divination but the “history” of real kings’ births, accessions, and victories. By these discoveries, decipherment advanced at once, and now most Maya glyphs can be read. The silent stelae began again to tell the history of the kings.

The pictorial books (codices) written in these Maya glyphs once existed in great number, but were burned in great quantity as “pagan things” at the time of the Spanish conquest. At present, only three (or four) remain in gathered form.

Among them, the “Dresden Codex” includes tables that calculated the movement of Venus astonishingly accurately, a precious original text conveying to the present how excellent Maya astronomical observation was. The stories of the gods in the “Popol Vuh,” the calendar and astronomy in these codices — thus Maya mythology is read out by combining multiple original texts.

The Books of Chilam Balam, and Maya Mythology Afterward

Another original text not to be forgotten is the “Books of Chilam Balam.” These are a group of books, including prophecy, calendar, history, and myth, in which the Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula (the Yucatec Maya), after the Spanish conquest, wrote down their own language in Latin letters. Like the “Popol Vuh,” they are an original text in which people who survived the conquest desperately wrote down their own tradition, and are a precious record supplementing the Maya worldview.

By the way, the Maya civilization may have an image of “a mysterious civilization that suddenly vanished.” Certainly, the great Classic-period cities like Tikal and Copán were abandoned one after another around the 9th century. But the Maya people did not vanish. The center of civilization moved north to the Yucatán Peninsula and continued, and even now, from southern Mexico through the Guatemala region, several million Maya people live, speak Maya languages, and inherit their own calendar and faith. The world the “Popol Vuh” tells is by no means a past that has perished, but a myth that still lives on.

To Learn More

Here are some related books. Reading them alongside this series lets you savor this world even more deeply.

An Illustrated Introduction to the World’s 5 Great MythologiesView on Amazon → An Illustrated Encyclopedia of World Myths and LegendsView on Amazon →

Conclusion

In this article, I explained in detail the Maya gods, calendar, and codices, following the original texts. How was it?

The old creator god Itzamna and the rain god Chaac and other diverse gods, the 52-year cycle woven by the 260-day and 365-day calendars, and the Long Count, which counts thousands of years without error. From these to the “Dresden Codex” and the Books of Chilam Balam that recorded them, I think you have grasped that Maya mythology is a rich world that highly tied together the three of story, calendar, and astronomy.

With this, all four articles of the Maya mythology original-texts series are complete. From the creation of the humans of maize, to the underworld story of the hero twins, the dawn and the origin of the K’iche’ royal line, and the gods and the precise calendar, I hope you have savored the still-living world of the Maya.

I also explain the original texts of other mythologies and religions. For the full list, please see the Summary of the World’s Mythology and Religion Original Texts.

I hope you’ll read the next article too.