THE MAYANS,
A Story of Our True Gods
The Mayan Gods: Deities of Wisdom, Power and Nature.
The Mayan civilization, one of the most advanced and fascinating in the pre-Hispanic world, developed a complex and vast pantheon of gods that reflected their worldview and their relationship with nature and the cosmos. Through their deities, the Mayans explained natural phenomena, the forces of the universe and the essential aspects of daily life. These gods were worshipped through ceremonies, sacrifices and monuments that today continue to reveal the cultural and spiritual wealth of the ancient Mayans.
Duality and the Cycle of Life in Mayan Religion
Mayan religion centered on the belief in a continuous cycle of life, death, and regeneration. This cycle was intrinsically linked to nature and agricultural cycles. Mayan gods, for the most part, embodied dual aspects of life, representing both the positive and the negative. Sacrifices and offerings were a way to maintain balance in the universe, ensuring fertility, health, and protection of the community.
Furthermore, the Mayans believed that the universe was divided into three planes: heaven, earth, and the underworld, with gods acting as guardians and mediators between these worlds. Cenotes, caverns, and mountains were considered sacred places where humans could connect with the gods.
The conquest was a moment of a very strong cultural shock, in which indigenous communities and their ancestral knowledge were strongly affected.
What happened was a colonization of the minds, and one of the fundamental actors in this process of epistemic inculturation was, clearly, the Spanish Catholic Church.
For this reason, it can be said that the initial arrival of the Catholic Christian religions was aggressive towards the native peoples, who suffered strong abuses, both cultural and physical, since, in many cases, they were attacked for speaking their mother tongues or for not submitting to the cults brought by the Spanish.
Today, different indigenous groups work to maintain what remains of their beliefs, their languages and their customs, as an effort to not let that original identity disappear that should make Latin Americans so proud.
True Gods Before the Religion
“There was a lot of belief in the forces of nature; the sun, for example, as one of the main deity forces in the Muisca people, as well as the moon. Starting from here, some masculine and feminine principles are understood,” says anthropologist David Henao.
He assures that, for the different indigenous peoples, with very varied beliefs, respect and the value of life, for which the presence of the sun and the moon is necessary, was always maintained as an important factor.
Additionally, as part of ancestral knowledge, it was always relevant “to look up, to try to understand everything that the universe contains. From there a very important intellectual development arose, regarding the stars, the cosmos, the constellations, etc.”
For his part, Rubio clarifies that each indigenous group has different beliefs, despite having particular coincidences, such as the fundamental role of nature as a giver of life and its necessary character for humans.
What do you think?
In this blog we are supporters of ancestral culture, if our ancestors were faithful believers of the universe and its constellations as well as its strength and majesty, we must ask ourselves what is greater than us and if we are prepared for that course or if the ancestral gods are the same as modern Catholicism or any other current religion.
