In ancient Maya society, as their religion involved lots of elements like nature, astronomy, and rituals, people understood the relationship between natural and supernatural spheres to be a constant interplay of dynamic forces. In ancient Maya thoughts, they divided the cosmic space to three reals in vertical space: the upper-world, the middle-world and the underworld. And horizontal space was divided into four quadrants spreading from a central axis.
The upper-world which served as a stage that the gods played out their actions out was constituted by the Sun and the constellations moving across the sky. And it was divided into 13 ascending levels. Like the upper-world, the under-world was associated with supernatural beings, the Maya have organized the under-world into nine descending levels.
The four quadrants in the middle-world represented the four cardinal direction, also were associated with the god. Actually, as in many
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The four quadrants and the central axis in the Middle-world could be drawn as a quincunx abstractly. Mayan constructed their houses with walls consisting of poles and woven branches and with roofs consisting with thatches leaves. The four poles at the four corners of the houses corresponded to the four cardinal direction, the fifth pole at the center of the houses, was identified as the tree which was regarded as the cosmic axis. Meanwhile, the quincunx was replicated on a human scale in the agricultural fields. Mayan farmers erected four poles at the corners of maize fields as a boundaries which circumscribed a green center full with ripening corn. While the ancient Mayan constructed altars for ch’a chak ceremonies to summon a rain deity to their fields, they built four posts which indicated the four cosmic supports and built a arches above the altar top to signify the cosmos, at the same time the surface of the altar meant the
In the article "Sacred Sustenance: Maize, Storytelling, and a Mayan Sense of Place," the author, Leah Alexandra Huff, is arguing that Ethnographers should pay more attention to stories because they allow for a deeper understanding of cultures. To support her argument, she uses the example of the significance of maize in the Mayan civilization as well as their sense of place. Huff first describes the importance of place in building and maintaining a community and developing it identity. She explains that place was important for indigenous communities such as the Mayans because land was part of their cultural and spiritual systems. Huff then goes on to detail the importance of storytelling. She argues that storytelling helps create identity,
In Europe, there were several advances being made that would affect our society today. However, simultaneously, societies across the world in the Americas would too be making these types of advances as well. One society in particular were the Maya. These people made technological strides that the Europeans themselves could not even fathom. But, what was their most remarkable achievement? One will find that their achievements of their trade network, a convenient method of transporting goods and messages; architecture, intricate buildings built in large cities on a massive scale; and number system, which takes into consideration some of our key principles in today’s math, have a momentous buildup to the Maya’s most remarkable achievement—their complex calendar, an astonishing nearly accurate calendar that governed Mayan society and is still seen in our own society today.
The Aztecs believed that in the beginning was the void. It was at some ancient time in the Aztec creation story that the dual god, Ometecuhtli/Omecihuatl, created itself. This god was good and bad, chaos and order, male and female. Being male and female, it was able to have children. It had four, which came to represent the four directions of north, south, east and west. The gods were Huitzilopochtli of the south, Quetzalcoatl of the east,Tezcatlipoca of the west, and Xipe Totec of the north.The directions were very important to the Aztecs, since their great empire was believed to be at the very center of the universe (Doyle and Vigil).
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.
According to Aztec legend, the first world was created by a dual god- meaning that it was both a female and male- called Ometeotl. The Aztec pantheon included hundreds of gods, all who originated from Ometeotl himself. The Aztecs also believed that the gods represented forces of nature, such as rain, and also human characteristics (Benson 504). Prior to the current world the Aztecs believed that there were four other worlds, all which ended with a major catastrophe. After the end of the fourth world all the gods gathered at the Aztec’s main city, or Teotihuacán, to discuss the creation of the fifth world. They chose two gods: a wealthy, healthy one and a poor, sickly one that would both jump into the sacrificial fire. When they were sacrificed the first sunrise of t...
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".
I personally believe that the theory of him controlling one is quite silly. You have to sit down and learn your Mayan art and symbols before you start assuming what the picture looks like to you. I do not believe that the World Tree looks like the outline of a spaceship. To some, it may look like one, but you can clearly see the World Tree reaching upwards and its roots reaching down towards the underworld. His body position does raise a small question as to why he is horizontal, but it makes sense that he is riding the sun monster into the underworld; therefore, he looks like he is sitting.
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.
The Mayan mythology believed in three levels of realms, upper world, middle world and underworld. There are also multiple levels in the upper world and underworld. The Ceiba tree is grown throughout all three realms. It is often used to interpret the cardinal directions. Out of all five directions, north, south, east, west, and center, the east is the most important direction, because the sun rises from the east, and thus it means the birth of
Every ancient society and civilization has creation myths that were passed down and keep alive throughout the passing of time by word of mouth. These myths are the world’s oldest stories and are vital to these cultures because they explain their beginnings and give purpose to their existence. By analyzing and interpreting different creation myths it becomes easier to understand different cultures and their connections and relationships with heir beliefs and god(s).
Chase, Diane Z. and Arlen F. Chase. Changes in Maya Religious Worldview. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2009. Print.
One of principle beliefs of the Aztec religion involved the origins of the universe. Aztec adherents believed that their city, Tenochtitlan, was where the forces of the heavens and the underworld were connected, a similar idea that is represented by the ‘World Tree’. The heavens of their religion were divided into 13 levels with Ometeotl, the supreme creator, living in the highest 2 levels. As the World Tree suggests, their city was connected through the roots to the underworld, which in the Aztec religion consisted of 9 levels of Michtlan. Their belief in a supernatural dimension that was beyond their human experience meant that the gods were responsible for the creation of the Aztec world and provided a moral framework for their lives. Aztecs believed the myth of the Four Past Worlds where Ometeotl’s four sons were given the task of creating the world and humans to live in it. The sons created, fought and violently destroyed each others’ worlds until the new Earth and Sun were born. The two Gods, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcotl, met a great Earth monster Tlaltecuhtli and killed her, threw her tail into the sky to make the he...
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.
Myths organize the way we perceive and understand our reality. Myths grant stability to a culture, and in this respect; serve to explain the unexplainable. From Barbra Sproul’s perspective, creation myths reveal basic religious concerns pertaining to how the universe was formed, and how people or societies are fashioned. Myths speak of the transcendent and unknowable aspects in a drama that attempt to reveal and give reason to human existence and where man stands in the cosmos. Through myth, the dimensions of space, nature and time are expressed in symbolisms that show how the holy can be experienced or conveyed if understood properly.
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...