The Mayan religion was based in the regions of Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and some southern parts of Mexico. It is a southeastern variant of Mesoamerican religion. Death and afterlife beliefs have always played an important role in all religions. Some religions have similar beliefs while others are very different. The Maya religion is very similar to Roman Catholicism. Many Mayas were able to adopt Catholic beliefs while still maintaining their own faith: many of their customs remain evident today.
Early creation myths are found in the Popol Vuh, which is K’iche for “the Book of the Community”; it entails the creation and genealogy of the rulers of the Mayan kingdom. It has been referred to as the single most important piece of Mesoamerican literature. It consists of a preamble and four sections that describe the creation, history and cosmology of the Mayan religion. It is said that the original Popol Vuh was lost and recently rediscovered. The alphabetic Popol Vuh gave a "long performance and account" (Tedlock, 1996, p. 29) written in two columns on each page; one in alphabetic Quiche Mayan text, the other a Spanish translation made by a priest named Francisco Ximenez in the early 1700s. The words of the Popol Vuh describe two creator Gods, Gucumatz and Tepeu, who were created from the sea. Once the Earth was created, animals came next; humans followed but were created from mud and ultimately destroyed. Hence the creation of humans from the sacred Maya crop of maize. These people of the corn were able to be worshiped and also were able to nourish the people of the land.
The Mayans worshipped a number of Gods and Goddess: their foremost god, Itzam Na "incorporated in himself the aspects of many other gods: not only creation b...
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...y that I have found a new respect for the Maya people. They were able to withstand the forcible transition into Catholicism without giving up their own identities. The Catholic religion seems to make up the majority of this country but it is amazing to see how other religions all over the world are comparable to it.
Works Cited
Coe, Michael D. "The Hero Twins: Myth and Image." In Justin Kerr ed., The Maya Vase Book.
New York: Kerr Associates, 1989.
Keen, B., & Haynes, K., (2004). A history of latin america. (7th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin
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Sharer, R., (1996). Daily life in maya civilization. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
Tedlock, D., (1996). (Trans.). Popol vuh: the definitive edition of the mayan book of the dawn of
life and the glories of gods and kings. (2nd ed.). New York: Simon and Schuster.
The Mayans lived in Southern Mexico and Central America in their capital, Tikal, which is in present day Guatemala. The Mayans were known for their engineering, one structure they were famous for is their pyramid temple in Tikal (Document 1). This pyramid was the tallest structure in the Americas up until the 20th century and is still standing today. The government must have been strong and well organized in order to carry out such a large task. The Mayan religion had multiple gods and this pyramid was most likely devoted to one or used as a place for sacrifices. Another accomplishment of the Mayans was the creation of their calendar. An extra document that would be useful is one that explains how the calendar was created. The Mayans must have studied astronomy and math to a great length. Similar to the Ancient Egyptians, they wrote with symbols and pictures known as glyphs that were used in the calendar. These glyphs were gods, such as Zotz (Document 2). The use of glyphs is an acknowledgement of a writing system, which is another accomplishment.
One of the biggest parts of any civilization would be religion. In the Maya civilization and the Roman civilization religion played a big part in their culture. Both of these civilizations had polytheistic religions, but later the Romans became monotheistic which is something the Maya didn’t do. The Romans had the same gods as the Greeks but the Maya had a unique religion and unique practices. In the Maya civilization they practiced human sacrifice for religion purposes, however in the Roman civilization they watched gladiators fight to the death for
The Maya religion required a highly complicated method of worship that demanded bloodletting and sacrificial rituals that were often fulfilled by the kings and queens. These efforts were necessary because it was believed to "feed" the gods. It was the sacred duty and responsibility of the ruler to often feed the gods with their own blood. The believed their rulers had the power to pass in and out body to the spirit world and acted as messengers to the celestial world.[109]
The Mayans were independent city-states with many traits and beliefs that categorized en as Maya. In addition with their writing system, calendar system, their unique view of the universe and rich culture.
The Mayan interpretation of the cosmos included a plethora of gods: some benevolent, others malignant; some unattainable, others close at hand. Defining past, present and future, it concerned itself with death, the afterlife and reincarnation. Itzamna was a Mayan god that represented the earth and sky. This god was there to produce vegitables. The Aztec beliefs were very similar to that of the Mayan civilization. Both societies were very similar in their belief of gods, sacrificing, and wars. The ritual of human sacrifice was infulenced by the Toltec tradition. Praying, sacrifice, speaking in metaphors were all forms of speaking with dieties. The calendar was very accurate, more accurate then the calendars that we follow now. Europeans thought that Mesoamerican people were wild people because they were cannibals, believed in many gods, and "enjoyed sex".
When Spaniards first set foot on Mesoamerican shores in the early sixteenth century, they encountered not the godless mass of natives they believed they found, but a people whose rich spiritual traditions shaped and sustained them for thousands of years. These diverse spiritual practices legitimized nearly every aspect of Mesoamerican daily life, from science and architecture to art and politics (Carmack 295), in many of the same ways Catholicism did in Spain. The collision of these cultures in the Great Encounter and the resulting Spanish colonial state mixed not solely two different peoples—Indian and Spanish—but thousands of variants: elites and slaves, peasant farmers and traders, priests and traders, organized and local spiritual customs, all with different degrees of diversity in their respective religious practices. This diversity set the stage for the syncretic religious traditions that emerged in Mayan society and remain a vital part of that culture today.
These three civilizations were focused on their religions, causing some similarities. They all built cities as religious centers. Both the Mayas and the Aztecs worshipped their gods through human sacrifice. The Olmecs were so dedicated to their gods that they transported 50 ton boulders from the mountains to the shore. For the Mayas, even their games were related to their religion. The Aztec society was constantly at war for the sole purpose of making sacrifices to their many gods. Religion dominated the cultures of these Mesoamerican empires.
Rosenberg, Donna. World Mythology: An Anthology of the Great Myths and Epics. 5th ed. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Pub. Group, 1994. Print.
The Popol Vuh is a collection of early Mayan religion and history and is divided into three parts. The first part is their creation myth, and states the world was created by Gucumatz and Tepeu – Mayan dual gods. They created the earth, animals that were food for the humans, and finally created humans from maize to worship them. “This generation, which includes the present human race, is able to worship and nourish the gods.” (Nicoletta Maestri). The second part of the Popol Vuh is the story of the Hero Twins. Hunahpu and Xbalanque were twin brothers who became great ballplayers. They played a ball game with the Lords of Xibalba who killed their father and uncle. They defeated the Lords of Xibalba and revived their father and uncle, and soon after the twins became the moon and the sun. The third and final part of Popol Vuh are narratives and details of the Quiche noble dynasties up until the 16th century. When Gucumatz and Tepeu created humans from maize, those first humans would become part of the Quiche dynasties. “They were able to praise the gods, and wandered the world until they reached a mythical place where they could receive the gods into sacred bundles and take them home.” (Nicoletta
In the Central America, most notably the Yucatan Peninsula, are the Maya, a group of people whose polytheistic religion and advanced civilization once flourished (Houston, 43). The Maya reached their peak during the Classic Period from around CE 250 to the ninth century CE when the civilization fell and dispersed (Sharer, 1). Although much has been lost, the gods and goddesses and the religious practices of the Classic Maya give insight into their lives and reveal what was important to this society.
Thousands of centuries earlier the Europeans knew of America, the Native American’s entitled America home. Numerous Native American’s established empires and attended business with each additional, as well as fought one another. Throughout the historical period c.150-900, we learned about the domain of the Mayans. These people were very advanced in their system of mathematics and astronomy. Their religion practices consisted of consuming human sacrifices and that they studied stars. The Mayans provide just one of numerous examples of the type of spiritual practices that are implemented by the natives. Among all the natives, idols and detriments were common. According, documents that I came across in the past describe how human sacrifice seem it was “believed to encourage fertility, demonstrate play and to propagate the gods.” The Mayan spirits were believed to be sustained by human blood, and ceremonial bloodletting generated as the only means of creating a connection with them. The Maya’s thought that if they neglected these ceremonies, cosmic disorder and chaos would affect them. Therefore, these practices were extremely outrageous and dangerous to human beings.
Words can be on a much grander scale. The Popol Vuh is a story originating from modern day Guatemala with its oldest excerpt dating back to the early 18th century. The most recent translation is by Allen J. Christenson in 2007. The Popol Vuh follows the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque and their epic tales. The mythological story ripe with symbolism is often coined as the “sacred book” of the Maya people. Symbolism in the Popol Vuh is important because it explains life and death, satirizes human behavior, represents the creation of the Maya, and it depicts the importance of maize.
The most important idea in Allen J. Christenson's Popol Vuh is maize or often known as corn but to the Maya culture, corn has a bigger significance than just food. Corn has played a important role in empires, civilizations and people for thousands of years. The Maya have a lot of admiration to corn as a cornerstone of their culture and spirituality. Maize was so highly admired that the Mayans had a Maize God. Corn was a gift from the Gods and cultivating it and planting it was a sacred duty it was a really important process in which corn was to be planted and harvested. Temples were built for Maize Gods and corn was used to nourish workers and kings. To the Mayans, the Gods made humankind out of maize. The Maya also considered this crop to be the vegetation of life in order to eat and grow. This symbolized the fragile nature of corn, a crop that depends entirely on human cultivation for its reproduction with such deep meaning and that has deep culture and meaning.
Unlike “The Song of Creation” from the Rig Veda, the Popol Vuh thought the earth and humanity were birthed from spiritual gods. The Mayans believed in several higher powers and lionized them all. Both cultures had their individual views on how the earth was formed, who were the first humans, and who created them. This contradiction builds on the many aspects of today’s reality and how did it all begin.
Maya civilization was based mainly on agriculture and religion. Maya every day life revolved around an innumerable number of earth Gods. The most important God was chief, ruler of all Gods. The Mayans prayed to these God’s particularly about their crops. For example, they prayed to the Rain God to nourish their crops. They practiced their religion during ceremonies conducted by priests. They also practiced confession and even fasted before important ceremonies (Gann and Thompson 1931 118-138). The Mayans also b...