The
ancient Maya
believed in recurring
cycles of creation and destruction and thought in terms of eras lasting about 5,200 modern years. The current cycle is believed by the Maya to have begun in either 3114 B.C. or 3113 B.C. of our calendar, and is expected to end in either A.D. 2011 or 2012.
The Maya civilization believed the Earth to be flat and four-cornered. Each corner was located at a cardinal point and had a colour value as red for east, white for north, black for west, and yellow for south. At the centre was the colour green. The sky was multi-layered and that it was supported at the corners by four gods of immense physical strength called "Bacabs". Earth in its flat form was thought by the Maya to be the back of a giant crocodile, resting in a pool of water lilies. Heaven had 13 layers, and each layer had its own god. Uppermost was the muan bird, a kind of screech owl. The Underworld had nine layers, with nine corresponding Lords of the Night. The Maya had a bewildering number of Gods, with at least 166 named deities. This is partly because each of the Gods had many aspects.
Some Maya sources also speak of a single supreme deity, called Itzamná, the inventor of writing, and patron of the arts and sciences. His wife was Ix Chel, the goddess of weaving, medicine and childbirth. She was also the ancient goddess of the
Moon. The role of priests was closely connected to the calendar and astronomy. Priests controlled learning and ritual, and were in charge of calculating time, festivals, ceremonies, fateful days and seasons, divination, events, cures for diseases, writing and genealogies. Human sacrifice was perpetrated on prisoners, slaves, and particularly children, with orphans and illegitimate children specially purchased for the occasion.
The Maya believed that when people died, they entered the Underworld through a cave. Great nobles were cremated and funerary temples were placed above their urns. Most Maya today observe a religion composed of ancient Maya ideas, Animism and Catholicism. There is also a supernatural belief in the spirits of the forest. Some villages today have four pairs of crosses and four jaguar spirits or balam at the village's four entrances, in order to keep evil away. In agricultural rites, deities of the forest are still invoked, and it is still believed that evil winds loose in the world cause disease and sickness.
Astronomy
Of the world’s entire ancient calendar systems, the Maya and other Mesoamerican systems are the most complex and accurate. Calculations of the congruence of the 260-day and the 365-day Maya cycles are almost exactly equal to the actual solar year in the tropics, with only a 19-minute margin of error. Maya astronomer and priests looked to the
heavens for guidance. They used observatories, shadow-casting devices, and observations of the horizon to trace the complex motion of the
sun, the stars and planets in order to observe, calculate and record this information in their chronicles. From these observations, the Maya developed their calendars and determined movement of time. The Maya also kept detailed records of the moon.
In Maya cities, ceremonial buildings were precisely aligned with compass directions. At the spring and fall equinoxes, for example, the Sun might be made to cast its rays through small openings in a Maya observatory, lighting up the observatory's interior walls. The Maya built observatories at many of their cities, and aligned important structures with the movements of celestial bodies. Another temple at Uxmal contains hundreds of Venus symbols.
Astronomical metaphors and celestial events defined the Maya
rulers major ruling decisions and the related. Transfers of royal power, for example, seem to have been timed by the summer solstice at certain centres.
Maya murals and carvings show rulers wearing symbols of the heavens, including a belt or sky-band made of a chain of symbols relating to the Moon, the Sun, Venus, day, nit and the sky. Rulers are also depicted carrying bars decorated as sky-bands to indicate that they had the mandate of heaven. Sometimes they are seated, surrounded by a sky-band, which gives the ruler a halo of celestial authority. Rulers also liked to associate themselves with auspicious gods of the sky such as the Sun God. The Maya believed that the Gods guided the Sun and Moon across the sky. Even in the darkness of night, the Maya believed that the Sun and Moon continued to journey through the Underworld, threatened all the way by evil gods who wanted to stop their progress. For this reason, the Maya believed that the heavenly bodies needed human help, which was provided through scared rituals such as self-mutilation, torture, and human sacrifice. The repeating cycles of creation and destruction as described in Maya mythology were a reminder of the consequences if humans neglected their obligations to the Gods.
Maya calendars, mythology and astrology were integrated into a single system of belief. The Maya observed the sky and calendars to predict solar and lunar eclipses, the cycles of the planet Venus, and the movements of the constellations. These occurrences were far more than mere mechanical movements of the heavens, and were believed to be the activities of gods replaying mythical events from the time of Creation.