The ancient Maya believed in a pantheistic worldview where all of creation was connected through a single spiritual force. This article explores the stories of two powerful Maya deities, Huracán and K’awiil, and how their teachings can guide us in our relationship with the natural world. It delves into the Maya’s belief that damaging nature is tantamount to damaging ourselves, a message that remains relevant today. Key concepts include pantheism, Maya mythology, and the interconnectedness of all things.
The Storm God Huracán
The ancient Maya thought that everything in the universe, including the natural world and personal experiences, was connected to a single powerful spiritual energy. They were not polytheists who painted different gods but pantheists which thought that different gods were simply personifications of this force.
In the deities of Maya mythology, Huracán is one of the most connoted. Huracán was originally also a god of the K’iche’ people, one of the Maya groups living in Guatemala’s highlands. He is a major character in the 16th-century religious text Popol Vuh. He was the most important god of creation and also known as a weather god, considered to be the deity who gave rise to all positions on this planet earth, his real name means “one leg” in K’iche’ language.
The Powerful God K’awiil
The Maya god K’awiil was another deity who served a dual role: that of god both of agriculture and the state. K’awiil was venerated in southern Mexico and western Honduras during the first millennium CE, being portrayed as a near human figure with two arms, two legs, and one head. But, when it came time to represent him on foreign soil, his forehead would often sprout an antler; a flint ax or flame was added for good measure and he had been replaced by a serpent with an open mouth on one leg.
K’awiil was thought to represent the underlying principle of force in combining (as well as separating) creation and destruction. K’awiil was a deity whom the Maya believed could aid them in communication with other creatures and realms, so the lords would attend these ceremonies. Power was to be ever in motion and never to rest, for according to the ancient Maya it could not be static or possessed.
A Maya´s interconected cosmovision
The ancient Maya, it would appear from their pantheistic beliefs saw reality not as something static but rather an eternal succession of changes. Nature for them was timeless, no clear cut distinctions from one space or time to the next, the forces that governed its controls regardless of what was observable in either plan or animate world. All things were fluid, all was part of the other, and anything could become something else.
We see this perspective play out in the Popol Vuh, where Huracán the storm god is actually written into the narrative as restricting human vision, making it so that we couldnt even perceive the universe as he did. Basically, the real lesson is that human reality is an illusion – not like different things exist (they do), but they are separate and distinct. In his destruction they destroyed Huracán himself. It is a strong reminder that man is not outside nature but instead, it encompasses part of it. Anything we do to the environment is also done to us.
