The Lords of Xibalba (Mayan myth)
The Lords of Xibalba are significant figures in Mayan mythology, ruling over Xibalba, the underworld known as the "place of fear." This realm is characterized by a treacherous journey filled with hazardous obstacles, including toxic rivers and various challenges designed to test visitors. The Lords, particularly Hun Camé (One Death) and Vucub Camé (Seven Death), are depicted as malevolent beings responsible for human suffering and misfortune, assisted by numerous subordinates who inflict various ailments and death upon humanity.
Xibalba is structured with six houses, each presenting unique and deadly trials, such as extreme temperatures or dangerous creatures. Visitors must navigate these treacherous environments to avoid fatal consequences. The myth culminates with the hero twins, Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, who confront and subdue the lords, restoring balance and diminishing their power.
Mayan beliefs about Xibalba reflect a broader cosmological understanding, where the universe is divided into the heavens, earth, and the underworld. The significance of caves and cenotes in the Yucatán region further emphasizes the cultural connections to the underworld, as these sites were often used for ritualistic practices, including human sacrifice, in honor of various deities.
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Subject Terms
The Lords of Xibalba (Mayan myth)
Author: Traditional Maya
Time Period: 999 BCE–1 BCE; 1 CE–500 CE
Country or Culture: Mesoamerica
Genre: Myth
PLOT SUMMARY
The journey to Xibalba (the “place of fear”) is long and hazardous. Unlucky travelers undertaking the trek voluntarily or by command from inhabitants of Xibalba do so knowing they may never again see their families and might never return alive.
The footpath to Xibalba, the deepest level of the underworld, descends steep steps leading to a fast-flowing river. There are many obstacles to be overcome along the way, including toxic rivers of blood and sewage. If passage across such killing barriers is successful, the path continues to a crossroad where four roads intersect: red, yellow, white, and black. The black road leads down beneath the earth to a cavern of unknown dimensions. This cavern is the kingdom of the lords of Xibalba.
The dwellers of Xibalba are evil, death-dealing spirits—malicious and mischievous tricksters, hobgoblins, and imps—who are responsible for all of humankind’s pain and suffering. Supreme devil lords of the empire are Hun Camé (One Death) and Vucub Camé (Seven Death), once worthy of receiving sacrifices, still commemorated as two of twenty days on the Maya calendar. They have many subordinates, each with specific duties while working as teammates. Ahalmez (Filth Maker) and Ahaltocob (Wound Maker) leap from dust piles to stab humans to death. Ahalpuh (Pus Maker) and Ahalgana (Dropsy or Jaundice Causer) give people sores, make them swollen, and infect them with jaundice. Chamiabac (Bone Staff) and Chamiaholom (Skull Staff) make people waste away, die, and become skeletons. Quicxic (Bloody Wing), Quicrixcac (Bloody Claw), and Quicré (Bloody Teeth) cause assorted ills that weaken humans through loss of blood. Xic (Hawk) and Patán (Tumpline) squeeze the throats and hearts of people until they burst and bleed out. Xiquiripat (Flying Scab) and Cuchumaquic (Gathered Blood) cause blood diseases in humans.
The lords of Xibalba’s gloomy realm resembles an aboveground city with houses and gardens. Xibalba even boasts a court where ritual ball games take place. These games are sports contests in which players use their hips, heads, and forearms to propel a rubber ball through a stone hoop, with human sacrifice a possible consequence of losing. But the amenities are deceptive, designed to fool, trap, humiliate, and overcome unwary humans, and in Xibalba, the ball is made not of rubber but of sharp bone.
Xibalba contains six houses to challenge the wiles of visitors. The House of Darkness presents guests with a challenge: they must light the interior and smoke tobacco without consuming the pine-pitch torch and cigar they are given. The House of Cold dares entrants to survive the bone-chilling climate; the House of Fire is an all-consuming conflagration; the House of Knives is a thicket of flesh-cutting obsidian blades; the House of Bats is filled with gigantic, bloodthirsty bats; and in the House of Jaguars, carnivorous jungle cats prowl restlessly, waiting for fresh meat. Failure to solve the puzzle of how to survive in any house means death for unfortunate guests.
From the beginning of time, the lords of Xibalba have reigned supreme in their underworld, carrying out their dastardly work. They are only undone with the coming of the hero twins, Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, who subdue the demons and take away most of their powers.
SIGNIFICANCE
As a people, the Mayas flourished in southeastern Mexico and Central America longer than the Roman Empire, for some fifteen hundred years (ca. 300 BCE–ca. 1200 CE). When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World in the late fifteenth century, most Maya centers of population had been long deserted. Possible reasons for abandonment—disease, tribal warfare, drought, or overexploitation—are still hotly debated among scholars.
Though millions of Maya descendants still live throughout territories they once dominated, most of what is known about the ancient civilization and its mythology has been obtained from translations of hieroglyphs inscribed on temples, monuments, and stelae erected as early as two thousand years ago. However, the primary source for current study of Mayan myths is the Popol Vuh, meaning “book of counsel” or “book of the community.” A postconquest work, probably written between 1554 and 1558 and translated into Spanish by Father Francisco Ximénez in the early eighteenth century, the Popol Vuh is the record of oral recitations memorized and passed along from generation to generation.
According to the Popol Vuh, the Mayas, like many ancient cultures, divided the universe into three parts: the heavens, the earth, and the underground world. Similar to other civilizations, Mesoamericans based theological concepts on an elaborate mythology keyed to familiar flora, fauna, objects, landmarks, and events.
To the Mayas, the structure of the cosmos was illustrated through the example of the ceiba, a towering, thorny, fruit-bearing tropical tree. The ceiba is the national tree of modern Guatemala, where two of the last surviving Maya nations, the K’iche’ (Quiché) and Cakchiquel, ruled before the Spanish defeated them in the 1520s. The trunk of the ceiba, which the Mayas symbolized in glyphs and architecture with a cruciform shape, represents the physical middle earth, the domain of humans. The leafy canopy reaching for the sky illustrates the thirteen levels of the upper world, where gods lived in ascending order of importance. Spreading buttress roots plunging deep into the soil represent the nine layers of the underworld. The lords of Xibalba, the most potent of subterranean deities, with the power of life and death in human affairs, ruled in the lowest compartment.
The Mayas envisioned Xibalba as an actual physical location. The entrance to the place of fear was thought to lie among the vast network of limestone caves, some of which collapsed to form natural wells called “cenotes,” and freshwater rivers beneath the Yucatán and other parts of Central America. Explorations of such underground systems have uncovered considerable archaeological evidence, such as incense burners, statuettes of gods, pottery, skulls, and bones, that the Mayas used caves to worship many different deities, including gods of the underworld, in religious rituals that culminated in human sacrifice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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