Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Maya class of the priests is sometimes thought to have emerged from a pre-existing network of shamans as social complexity grew. The classic Siberian shaman is characterised by his intimate relationship with one or several helper spirits, 'ecstatic' voyages into non-human realms, and often operates individually, on behalf of his clients.
Contemporary Maya priest in a healing ritual at Tikal. Knowledge of the earlier Maya priesthood is almost entirely based on what their Spanish missionary colleagues have to say about them (Landa for Yucatán, Las Casas and others for the Guatemalan Highlands).
This is a list of deities playing a role in the Classic (200–1000 CE), Post-Classic (1000–1539 CE) and Contact Period (1511–1697) of Maya religion.The names are mainly taken from the books of Chilam Balam, Lacandon ethnography, the Madrid Codex, the work of Diego de Landa, and the Popol Vuh.
One example of early Mayanism is the creation of a group called the Mayan Temple by Harold D. Emerson of Brooklyn, a self-proclaimed Maya priest who edited a serial publication titled The Mayan, Devoted to Spiritual Enlightenment and Scientific Religion between 1933 and 1941. [15]
The Maya priesthood was a closed group, drawing its members from the established elite; by the Early Classic they were recording increasingly complex ritual information in their hieroglyphic books, including astronomical observations, calendrical cycles, history and mythology.
Important rituals such as the dedication of major building projects or the enthronement of a new ruler required a human sacrificial offering. The sacrifice of an enemy king was the most prized offering, and such a sacrifice involved the decapitation of the captive ruler in a ritual reenactment of the decapitation of the Maya maize god by the Maya death gods. [1]
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
Quetzalcoatl (Aztec) / Kukulkan (Yucatec Maya) / Q'uq'umatz (K'iche' Maya) / 9 Wind (Mixtec) - Plumed Serpent; god of wind, priests, merchants, and the link between the Earth and the sky. Tezcatlipoca (Aztec) - "Smoking Mirror"; guileful omnipresent deity of cosmic struggle, feuds, rulers, sorcerers, and warriors; the jaguar is his animal ...