The Popol Vuh: The Maya Story of Creation

maya culture and history has flourished for thousands of years and i'm sure you can't wait for us to dive into it before we begin discussing the origins of maya civilization we will consider the beliefs of the ancient maya themselves now the maya were a very spiritual people in antiquity just as the modern maya are today everyday activities were called great mythological events this rich mythology is due some attention in the form of a humble youtube video and today we're going to focus on the most famous piece of ancient maya mythology the popel vu the maya story of creation now there's a lot more in the purple vu than just the creation of the world the name popovu actually means council book and it contains a history of the kiche people from the beginning of time right down to the colonial era being a product of the kiche maya it's worth noting that what we may have may not reflect the exact creation story that all maya throughout the whole maya area may have believed nevertheless it's an invaluable glimpse into maya cosmology for today's episode we're just going to focus on the mythological parts of the text and ignore the history for now so how did this work survive at some point in the mid 16th century a kiche scribe transcribed the popel vu possibly from an even older now lost maya codex and kept it hidden from the spanish this was a time of radical change for the quiche maya as their traditional ways of life faded away under spanish dominion the popovu captures some of the anxiety of this transition with this sobering conclusion to the book this is enough about the being of kiche given that there is no longer a place to see it there is the original book and the ancient writing owned by the lords now lost but even so everything has been completed here concerning kiche which is now named santa cruz over a hundred years later a local parish priest francisco jimenez gained the trust of the local kiche people and was allowed to make a copy in spanish translation of the text jimenez's copy and translation have survived but the original has sadly never been seen again at first the true age of the story was debated among minus but once people began to identify specific scenes and people from the popovu and ancient maya art it became clear that this was a very old story the popovu is very important to understanding maya culture it provided them with important moral lessons and an understanding of the world around them without further ado let's start at the beginning in the beginning the world is only a dark sky and primordial waters below it in the waters are the maker and modeler alone sovereign plumed serpent the bearer and begetters all clad and quetzal feathers above them in the sky are heart of sky heart of earth newborn thunderbolt sudden thunderbolt and hurricane together they discuss the creation of the earth the animals and then mankind to this end they raise up the land and drain the water away once the earth is ready they desire to create beings that can honor them and so on their first attempt they create the animals and they command them name now our names praise us we are your mother we are your father speak now hurricane newborn thunderbolt sudden thunderbolt heart of sky heart of earth maker modeler bearer begetter speak pray to us keep our days unfortunately for the gods the animals can't speak can't pray and they can't keep the days they can only chatter squawk and howl the gods condemn the animals to roam the force and canyons to be food for others thus the first attempt fails next they create a human out of mud and sadly this doesn't fare too well either this being's head can't move it only babbles nonsense and it has no mate with which to reproduce so the gods dismantle it the second creation has failed now it's time to get serious the gods reach out to an elderly couple spieakok and shmukane whom they address as grandparents out of respect spiakak is a divine matchmaker and shmukane is a divine midwife the gods want to ask them if they should create mankind out of wood the couple gives their blessing and the gods fashioned men out of wood these wooden people look and talk like humans and they begin to multiply and spread over the earth now you might think that this is a victory for the gods but there's a problem the story states that there was nothing in their hearts nothing in their minds no memory of their mason and builder they could only wander aimlessly and multiply they never praised their creators as punishment heart of sky devises a flood to wash them away and also sends monsters to destroy them in very gruesome ways even the animals attack the people and grind them up and eat them the only ones that survive become the monkeys that inhabit the forests and jungles today now the narrative goes in a different direction here you'd expect that the next part of the story would be the fourth creation of mankind by the gods but the authors sidetracked to introduce us to the hero twins the hero twins are central mythological characters to the popovu and help prepare the world for humanity keep in mind that the hero twins and their relations are not people but gods this is before humans like us have been created the events occurred during the last creation just before the wooden people were destroyed my apologies if this is a little confusing but this is just how the story is recorded the names of the twins are hunipu and shibalangkay and they are the grandsons of shibiakok and shmukane through their son one hunipu don't worry about genealogy for now there will be more on this in the following section if you're familiar with other indigenous mythologies this may be ringing a bell that's because the hero twins and hero brothers are a central feature of many indigenous mythologies all across the americas but that's a topic for another day for now let's get back to the story the next episode recounts the clash between the hero twins and seven macaw and his two sons zapachna and earthquake now who's seven macaw he was a great vain bejeweled bird who pridefully aggrandized himself by claiming to be the sun and the moon to the people he would say i am great my place is now higher than that of the human work the human design i am their son and i am their light and i am also their months so be it my light is great i am the walkway and i am the foothold of the people because my eyes are of metal my teeth just glitter with jewels and turquoise as well they stand out blue with stones like the face of the sky and this nose of mine shines white unto the distance like the moon since my nest is metal it lights up the face of the earth when i come forth before my nest i am like the sun and moon for those who are born into the lights begotten in the light it must be so because my face reaches into the distance his two sons similarly aggrandize themselves by claiming to be the maker of the earth and the destroyer of the sky so yeah this family has some serious ego issues and so hunipu and shiblance decide to do something about these three pretenders starting with seven macaw the hero twins managed to find seven macaw atop his tree eating a meal using their blow guns they shoot him right in the jaw which shatters his mouth and causes him to fall to the earth as hunipu races to seize upon seven macaw seven macaw manages to grab hunipu's arm and tears it off his body and then escapes he makes it home with the arm but his jaw is broken and his teeth are loose and he's in a lot of pain meanwhile hunipu and shibalanka need to finish the job and get back hoonapu's arm so they convince an elderly couple great white peckery and great white kawadi to pay seven mccaw a visit and offer to fix his face the twins will pose as their orphaned grandchildren sure enough they arrive at the home of seven macaw who receives them eagerly when he asks the couple who the boys are they just reply that they are their grandchildren who they've taken pity on the boys secretly instruct the couple to take out seven macaw's jeweled teeth and replace them with maze kernels and to remove the precious metals from his face seven macaw agrees to this to assuage his pain but once he sees himself he's saddened that he no longer looks like a lord and shortly afterwards he dies and hunipu gets his arm back first pretender down next up is zapachna he's usually depicted as a crocodile or a caiman his story begins when the gods of alcoholic drinks the 400 boys ask him to help them build a house zapachna obliges but the 400 boys are alarmed at his great strength and pride and they decide to destroy him they ask him to dig a hole so that they can crush him with a log but the plan backfires when zephnus survives and takes revenge by bringing down their new house on them and crushing them all so hudapu and shiblance decide to avenge them by cleverly creating a fake crab to lure zapachna they meet zapaknow when he's gone for a few days without food and they tell them that there's a huge crab in the nearby canyon that they could not catch but that zapachna can unbeknownst to zapachna this counterfeit crab has been positioned in such a way that it can't be reached without sepakna getting stuck and so just as they planned zapakna gets stuck in the canyon trying to get the crab and eventually he turns to stone and dies second pretender down the third is southern macaw's youngest son earthquake similarly to his ill-fated brother the twins decide to entice him with a meal they shoot some birds with their blow guns and begin to cook them earthquake can't resist the aroma and he asks the boys if he can have one of the birds to eat unfortunately for him hunipu and shiblance cook his bird in the earth and put a spell on it that will doom earthquake to also be covered in earth and so after he eats the bird he slowly loses his strength and dies and disappears into the earth with earthquake's demise all three lordly pretenders are destroyed and that concludes the episode not the video just this part of the story now the popovu backtracks again a bit in the chronology to introduce us to hunipu and shibalankay's father one hunipu and his twin brother seven hunipu no confusion here folks let me elaborate shbiacock and shmukane are the parents of the twins one hunipu and seven hunipu in case you're wondering why there are numbers with the names i should point out that these names come from specific days of the maya calendar one hunipoo is married to egret woman and surprise surprise together they have two twin sons but they aren't hunapu and shibalankay they'll come later but these twins are one monkey and one artisan eventually egret woman dies for unspecified reasons and shmukane becomes the only woman in the house one hunipu and seven hunapu spend their time playing the mesoamerican ball game with their twin sons one and seven hunipu are both gifted ball players but unfortunately for them their ball court is at the great hollow with fish in the ashes which happens to be right above the subterranean cavern inhabited by the lords of the underworld or more appropriately the lords of shibalba a quick word about the lords of shibalba the highest two lords are named one death and seven death below them are other lesser lords who specialize in causing various maladies and pains with colorful death metal worthy names like bone scepter demon of jaundice bloody claws and blood gatherer to name only a few the lords do not like the noise and ruckus that one hunipu and seven hunipu's ball playing is making so they send their messenger owls to the great hollow to summon them to a ball game in the very ball court of shibalba ominously named the place of ball game sacrifice one and seven hunipu leave one monkey one artisan and shmukane behind at home but before they leave they tie and secure their playing gear in the rafters of the house so that they'll be there when they return afterwards they follow the messengers to the underworld in the underworld the lords of death are waiting for the twins before they arrive the lords have set up two mannequins in place of the first two lords as a gag when one hunipu and seven hunipu arrive and greet the mannequins instead of the real one death and seven death the lords laugh at them and humiliate them next they offer the twins a seat on a bench which is actually a red-hot cooking stone not realize that the bench is hot they sit down and burn their bottoms much to the amusement of the lords of death i guess when you spend all your time with the dead laughs come pretty cheap but at any rate the lords have a series of tests for the twins before they can play ball for the first test the lords put them in the dark house they're given a lit torch and two lit cigars and instructed that the torch and cigars must be returned intact and unused in the morning okay well morning comes as you can guess the torch and cigars have all been used up and the lords of death sentence both of them to death and sacrifice both men and bury them in the ball court of shibalba which lives up to its name as the place of ball game sacrifice however one hunipu's head is cut off and hung in a calabash tree his skull in the tree becomes something of a curiosity to the local shebabans who come and see the tree even though the lords warn them to stay away one such person is bloodmoon the daughter of blood gatherer who is one of the lords of death now a quick side note the authors of the story take this moment to point out that when the calabash fruit dries out on the tree the calabash looks almost indistinguishable from one hunipoo's skull so when bloodmoon visits the tree to pick some of the fruit one hunipoo spits into her outstretched hand his skull speaks to her in the voice of one hunipu and seven hunipu it says to her the father does not disappear but goes on being fulfilled neither dimmed nor destroyed is the face of a lord a warrior craftsman orator rather he will leave his daughters and sons so it is that i have done likewise through you now go up there on the face of the earth this spittle impregnates her with the hero twins hunipu and shibalankay after six months blood gatherer realizes that his daughter is pregnant he's furious and orders his servants to sacrifice her and to bring him her heart in a bowl bloodmoon manages to persuade the servants to let her escape to the surface in turn they use a congealed nodule of croton tree sap in place of her heart which fools her father and the other lords once at the surface blood moon heads straight for shmukane the mother of one hunipu and explains that she's her daughter-in-law and carrying her grandchildren shmukane isn't convinced and gives her a test to make sure that she's not being duped she asks her to go out to a garden that one monkey and one artisan have planted and to come back with a full bag of maize when she arrives at the garden there's only one maize stalk that's born annie mae's ears in desperation she calls upon the guardians of food to help her this allows her to pull a single string of maize silk from the ear rather than picking off the entire ear the silk keeps producing maize and eventually she's able to fill the bag when shemokane sees her return with a full bag she realizes that blood moon is indeed her daughter-in-law months later blood moon gives birth to hunipu and shiblance as they grow up they're treated cruelly by their half-brothers one monkey and one artisan who are jealous of them hunipu and shibalangi take it all in stride because they know that revenge is a dish best served cold they get the better of their brothers eventually one day while hunting birds they ask one monkey and one artisan to go up into a tree to get birds that they've shot with their blow guns because they're too high up for them once one monkey and one artisan are up in the tree the hero twins make the trees grow even higher which maroons them in the canopy and then they eventually turn them into monkeys similarly i might add to the eventual fate of the wooden mannequin men with their half brothers gone hunipu and shibalanke decide to plant a garden as one monkey and one artisan had done but they aren't very good at it every morning the forest reclaims the plot that they've cleared out they eventually discovered that the animals of the forest are causing the force to reclaim the plot so one morning they try to trap the animals but only manage to catch a rat they try to get the rat to talk but the rat has no intention of being tortured and he has a plan he says to the twins i will not die by your hand gardening is not your job but there is something that is said the rat where is what is ours go ahead and name it the boys told the rat very well it's something that belonged to your fathers named one hunipu and seven hunipu who died in shibalaba what remains is their gaming equipment they left it up under the roof of the house their kilts their wrist guards their rubber ball but your grandmother doesn't take these down in front of you because this is how your father's died remember one hunipu and seven hunipu had stowed away their ball gear in the roof of the house before they left for shibalba while shmukane is out of the house fetching water the rat helps them get the gear down from the roof rafters and the boys are overjoyed to have their father's ball gear before long they head out to the great hollow and start playing things take a familiar turn when the lords of death hear the ball game above and send out the same messenger owls to shmukane to summon hunipu and shiblance to shibalba within the next seven days shmukane is heartbroken having to witness her grandson suffer the same fate as their father but rather than be a bearer of bad news she sends a laos to relay the summon to the boys the laos gets swallowed by a toad who then gets eaten by a snake who then gets eaten by a falcon the falcon happens to fly over the ball court where hunipu and shiblance shoot it down with their blowguns i can imagine these blowgun toting boys were not too popular with the local birds the falcon says hey i've got a message for you who then spits up the snake who vomits the toad who finally vomits the laos thus the message gets delivered to the boys and they return to the house to prepare to leave before they depart for shibalba they tell their dismayed grandmother we're on our way dear grandmother we're just giving you instructions so here is the sign of our word we'll leave it with you each of us will plant an ear of green corn we'll plant them in the center of our house and when the corn dries up this will be the sign of our death the boys take the same route that their father and uncle did being the cunning young men that they are they decide to send a mosquito ahead as a spy to investigate shibalba the mosquito flies into the court of shibalba and bites each lord of the underworld now recall what happened to one hunipu and seven huniput they entered shibalba and got fooled by the dummies that the lords had set up the mosquito bites the mannequins and discovers to his presumed disappointment that they are not actual lords but wooden dummies but he does bite every other lord and when they yell out in pain from the bite it prompts the other lords to ask what's happening so it's like ouch something bit me what happened one death why are you yelling and so on and so forth until the mosquito discovers the identity of each lord as well as the wooden mannequins armed with this intelligence hunipu and shiblance enter shibalba and probably not without a hint of smugness address the lords of death and call out the mannequins as fakes the lords then offer them a seat on the hot bench just as they had their father and the boys decline and tell the lords that the bench is actually a cooking stone and they're not falling for that irked at this unexpected success the lords usher the boys to the first trial and tell them to get into the dark house figuring that this is gonna be their end just like before they're given a torch and two cigars and told to return them intact in the morning the twins use the tail feathers of a macaw as a substitute for a burning torch and put fireflies on the ends of their cigars to make it appear that they're burning clever boys in the morning the lords are handed back the torch and cigars perfectly intact now the lords are starting to get a bit worried and begin to wonder who the heck these boys are but they can't wonder for too long because it's time to play ball the boys have brought their ball but 1 and 7 death want to play with their ball which is actually a skull with a dagger inside the boys discover the trick before the dagger can kill them and they object the lords then agree to use the boy's rubber ball and make a wager on the game the loser has to provide the winner with four bowls of flower petals hunipu and shiblance hold their own during the game but lose deliberately this thrills the lords of death who know that there's no way for the boys to come up with the flower petals while they're in the underworld and they give them until the morning for the second night and the second test the boys are put in the razor house before the knives in the house can cut up the boys they promised the knives the flesh of all animals for the rest of time this halts the attack and allows the boys to summon ants to sneak past the guards and gather flower petals from the lord's own garden the ants are able to accomplish this without being noticed and in the morning the boys have the flower petals much to the wrath of the lords of death next the boys are put into the cold house and the jaguar house followed by the firehouse the boys survive each one without a problem and then comes the bat house the house is swarming with vicious bloodthirsty bats hunipu and shibalangkay spend the night inside their blow guns being a god allows you to hide inside of a blowgun i guess as morning approaches and the bats quiet down hoonapoo sticks his head out of the gun to see if the dawn has arrived and just as he pops his head out a bat takes it right off and it rolls away to the ball court shibalankay thinking quick as always fashion's a replacement head from a squash for hunapu with this set's head ready to go it's time to play ball with the lords of death at first the lords of death try to get shibalanke and the headless hoonapu to concede the match but the boys insist that the game proceed for the ball the lords of death use hunipu's freshly decapitated head shivalanki manages to knock the ball out of bounds into a ball bag using a rabbit to distract the shibalbins shibalankay is able to quickly swap out hunipu's head with the squash and reattach it to his body when the game resumes the squash soon bursts upon impact and the lords of death realize that they've been had again clever boys now at this point the boys have passed every test that the lords of shibaba have thrown at them but they realize that the lords of death aren't just gonna let them go and that they'll eventually plan to kill them so to get around this they find two seers shulu and pecam and instruct them on how their remains should be disposed of after they're killed by the lords of death afterwards they're invited to a great fire pit where the lords are roasting various ingredients for alcohol the lords of death instruct the boys to jump across the pit as part of a contest while the boys cut the contest short and just hop right into the pit to their deaths the lords are ecstatic to finally be rid of them when they consult shulu and pakam about how to dispose of their remains shulu and pakam true to their promise tell the lords to grind up their bones and to dump them into the river back at home shmukhani realizes that the maize that hunapu and shiblance planted has wilted and in a moment of painful sorrow she knows that they've died after five days hunapu and shibalankay are reborn in the river as catfish the next day they become human again but disguise themselves as traveling performers as performers their performances begin to gain fame throughout shibalba in particular their magic tricks proved to be a big hit their most popular act involves setting a house on fire without burning it and sacrificing someone without killing the victim eventually word of this act reaches the lords of death and they're invited to perform at the court which they accept the boys don't reveal themselves but pretend to be scared little boys as they prepare for the performance as the boys light the houses and sacrifice the animals without any destruction or death the lords of death began getting excited finally shibalankay goes as far as sacrificing hunapu and chopping off his head and pulling out his heart and then bringing him right back to life at this point the crowd's going wild and 1-7 death can't contain themselves and among that excitement this exchange happens do it to us sacrifice us sacrifice both of us said one and seven death to little hoona poo and shivalankay very well you want to come back to life what is death to you and aren't we making you happy along with the vassals of your domain i don't think i need to say what happens but i'll indulge you anyways the boys sacrifice one and seven death and surprise don't bring them back to life at this point to cap off one of the greatest what just happened moments of mythology the boys reveal their true identity and the identity of their father and declare to the shebabans all of you listen you shabbalbins because of this your day and your descendants will not be great moreover the gifts you receive will no longer be great but reduced to scabberous nodules of sap there will be no cleanly blotted blood for you just griddles just gourds just brittle things broke into pieces further you will only feed on creatures of the meadows and clearings none of those who are born in the light begotten in the light will be yours only the worthless will yield themselves up before you these will be the guilty the violent the wretched the afflicted wherever the blame is clear that is where you will come in after this triumph hunapu and shibalankay returned to the sheban ball court place of ball game sacrifice with the intention of reviving seven hunipu remember seven hunipu's head and body are still there his resurrection depends on his ability to name all the parts he once had but he only gets as far as the eyes ears and mouth i guess three out of five senses ain't bad for a dead guy but unfortunately that means that they'll have to leave him in shibalba but they promise him that he'll always be prayed to and that his day will always be honored now this next part isn't part of the pope vu text itself but we know from other mayan art that it's part of the same story so i'm going to include it other sources in maya arch show one hunipu journeying back to the surface in a canoe with two aged deities and two young women who restore his jewels and headgear that he had previously lost after a turbulent journey their father emerges from a crack in the surface of the earth and is reborn as the maze god this is beautifully captured by this maya pot where the maze god emerges from a turtle's carapace hunipu and shibalankay then ascend into the sky and become the sun and the moon oh and the 400 boys are resurrected and join the twins in the sky as the stars now we aren't done yet because we need to return back to the primordial gods who still desire to make humanity the gods are searching for a material with which to fashion humans from fox coyote parrot and crow discover a mountain filled with yellow and white maize and inform the gods of this with this maze shmukane grinds the maze kernels from this mountain and with water creates dough that will become the flesh for humanity she creates the first four men named jaguar kitse jaguar knight not right now and dark jaguar the first four heads of the kiche lineages this is the fourth creation and interestingly enough the maya actually had a date for this august 14th 3114 bce this was the date that anchored the maya long count if you want to know more about that you can check out my episode on the mesoamerican calendar what follows after the creation of man is a history of the kiche people but since we're focused on the creation story this is where we'll stop but if you want to read more there are free copies of the pulpal vu that you can find online and good modern translations are not expensive it's hard to understate how important this myth is in understanding the maya in this story the maya described the creation of the world and the phenomena around them some scholars have pointed out that the characters and events we've described are mirrored in the cyclical movement of the stars and the planets i'm not gonna go into all the nitty gritty details here but i'll give you a few highlights just so you can get a sense of the flavor of this for example seven macaw is represented in the sky as the big dipper and his wife shamal mat corresponds to the little dipper plus a few other stars in mid-july he begins to fall in the night sky as the hurricane season approaches he continues to fall and then by mid-october he goes back up into the tree another example when the blood moon appears in the sky it waxes in the west which is the same direction that is associated with shibalba thus when lady bloodmoon escapes from the underworld she naturally appears at the appropriate place in the sky but there's even more than that the cycle of mars is often connected to one monkey and one artisan and the cycle of venus is often associated with the lords of death and their struggle against the hero twins so there's a lot going on in the night sky indeed if shakespeare had been a maya he could have said that all the world's a stage where all the men and women are merely players but the heavens are a greater stage where only the gods can be players the popovu also lent a special gravity to everyday events my favorite example of this is with the seasonal planting of maize putting seeds into the earth and burying them invoked the mythical journey of the maze god to the underworld and his death and rebirth when the maze was planted it was sent symbolically to shibalba and then it was reborn thanks to the maze god's intervention in fact the late michael coe has written that this mythic cycle was closely related to maize fertility this was so ingrained in the maya that colonial jeremiah would identify the resurrected christ with the maze god another example which again involves maize sorry many maya to this day hang ears of maize in their house but do not consume it or use it as seed but rather as a reminder that the maize remains alive the entire year between the harvest and the next season's planting this recalls hunipu and shiblance's planting of maize before they left their grandmother and their promise that the maize would always remain alive as long as they did when we continue to explore the maya we'll see scenes characters and themes of the popovu displayed beautifully in maya art and design until then don't forget to like and subscribe to ancient americas if you want to support the show you can support us on patreon the link will be in the description below also you can follow us on facebook special thanks to my patrons especially those listed below alright take care [Music] you

Channel: Ancient Americas

Views: 28,861

Rating: 4.9244394 out of 5

Keywords: popol vuh, popol, vuh, maya, creation, myth, mythology, ancient, americas, ancient americas

Id: ktIL-uc2Kuw

Length: 32min 39sec (1959 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021