The Popol Vuh: Maya Creation Myth

The Popol Vuh — often translated as the “Book of the Council” or the “Book of the People” — is the most important surviving text of pre-Columbian Maya literature. Composed in the K’iche’ language sometime in the sixteenth century, almost certainly drawing on much older oral traditions, it is the most complete account of Maya cosmogony, theology, and the origin of humanity (Tedlock 1996; Christenson 2003). Together with the Dresden Codex and the carved inscriptions of the Classic period, the Popol Vuh forms the textual backbone of Maya religion.

The text and its survival

The Popol Vuh as we have it was written down in Quiché (K’iche’) in the highland Guatemalan town of Chichicastenango, very likely in the years after the Spanish conquest, by an anonymous member of the K’iche’ nobility who was steeped in both the pre-Hispanic tradition and the alphabetic literacy introduced by the friars. The single surviving manuscript is a copy made by the Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez around 1701–1703. Ximénez was parish priest of Chichicastenango and one of the first Europeans to recognize the text’s antiquity. He transcribed the K’iche’ text, added a Spanish translation, and incorporated it into his history of the province of Chichicastenango. The manuscript survived in the archives of the Universidad de San Carlos in Guatemala and was first published in Paris in 1861 by the abbé Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg.

The Popol Vuh is therefore simultaneously a pre-Hispanic and a colonial document. Its K’iche’ forms preserve archaic religious vocabulary, but its alphabetic script is post-conquest. The text draws on oral traditions that almost certainly go back to the Classic period, as is evident from the close correspondence between its myth of the Hero Twins and the iconography of Late Classic Maya art.

The dating of the K’iche’ text is debated. Some scholars, following the early twentieth-century work of Hermann Beyer, have argued that the text was composed in the late Postclassic period and written down shortly after the Spanish conquest. Others have argued that the K’iche’ text incorporates material that is much older, perhaps going back to the Early Classic. The presence of the Hero Twins and the lords of Xibalba on the bench panels of Quirigua, which date to the eighth century, demonstrates that the basic narrative was already in circulation in the Classic period, even if the precise wording is post-conquest.

Structure of the text

The Popol Vuh is divided into four parts, conventionally corresponding to four “books.” The first recounts the creation of the world and the first three failed attempts to make humans. The second describes the journey of the Hero Twins’ father and uncle, Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu, to Xibalba and their death at the ballcourt. The third recounts the conception and heroic deeds of Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the Hero Twins. The fourth describes the third creation, in which the first true humans are formed from maize, and concludes with an account of the founding of the K’iche’ lineages in the highlands of Guatemala.

The three failed creations

The Popol Vuh opens with a description of the primordial world: silent, calm, and empty except for the waters and the sky. The first creators are the Heart of Sky, called Huracan (often translated “Lightning”), together with the Plumed Serpent, Gukumatz — the K’iche’ equivalent of the Yucatec Kukulkan — and the divine grandparents Xpiyacoc and Xmucane. These deities consult and create the animals, the plants, and the mountains, but the animals cannot speak the names of their creators and so are unsuitable as the bearers of worship.

The gods then fashion humans from mud. These mud people are shapeless, dissolve in water, and cannot sustain themselves. The gods destroy them. The third creation is the wooden people: human-like figures carved from wood, who walk, talk, multiply, and remember the gods — but their hearts are empty. They do not weep for their creators, do not offer sacrifice, and do not call upon the divine name. The gods send a flood, and the surviving wooden people are turned into the monkeys of the forest. According to a reading in some manuscripts, however, a few “pure” wooden people are preserved, and they become the ancestors of the K’iche’ lineage.

The third creation is the successful one: the gods now fashion humans from maize dough, kneaded and shaped by the divine grandparents. The first four men are made and given the gift of sight, but their wisdom offends the gods, who “limit their vision” so that they can see only what is near at hand. These four ancestors — Balam Quitzé, Balam Agab, Mahucutah, and Iqui Balam — found the K’iche’ lineages and the ritual capital of Q’umarkaj.

The first humans of the third creation are notable for several features that the Maya believed to be characteristic of true humans: they could see into the distance; they could call upon the names of the gods; they could offer thanks for their creation. The gods, fearing that these perfect humans might rival them, “blow mist into their eyes” so that they can see only what is near at hand. The mist is a metaphor for the human condition: limited vision, dependence on the gods, and the necessity of ritual to maintain the cosmic order. The four ancestors are the founders of the K’iche’ lineages, and their descendants are the historical K’iche’ nobility.

The Xibalba cycle in detail

The Xibalba cycle of the Popol Vuh is the longest and most elaborate section of the text, and it is also the section that has the closest parallels in Classic Maya iconography. The first Hero Twins — Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu — are great ballplayers whose noise disturbs the lords of the underworld. The lords, jealous of their fame, send four messengers — owls — to invite them to play ball. The brothers accept, descend to Xibalba, and are defeated. Hun Hunahpu is decapitated, and his head is hung in a calabash tree.

The decapitation of Hun Hunahpu is one of the most poignant episodes of Maya literature. The head of Hun Hunahpu is preserved in the calabash tree and, in a passage closely paralleled in the iconography of the Late Classic period, the head spits into the hand of the virgin Xkik’ (the Blood Moon), who is the daughter of one of the lords of Xibalba. The spittle enters her womb, and she conceives the second generation of Hero Twins. The calabash tree — sometimes called the “tree of life” — is a central symbol of Maya religion, and its appearance in the Popol Vuh and in the iconography demonstrates the antiquity of the symbolism.

The second generation of Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, grow up in their grandmother’s house. They are unruly and mischievous, but they have supernatural gifts. They shoot birds with blowguns, summon rain, and torment their half-brothers. They also learn from their father, who visits them in the form of a small bird, about the ballgame and about the defeat of their grandfather and great-uncle. They accept the challenge of the lords of Xibalba and descend to the underworld.

The Hero Twins’ descent to Xibalba is a long and elaborate sequence. They pass through the testing houses, survive the trials by using magic, are killed, are resurrected, and finally defeat the lords by appearing as itinerant magicians. The defeat of the lords is celebrated as the triumph of cleverness over brute force, of the hero over the tyrant, of the new over the old. The Hero Twins rise into the sky as the sun and the moon, and the cosmic order that humans inherit is established.

The hero twins and the Xibalba cycle

The narrative then shifts to the myth of the Hero Twins. The first Hero Twins, Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu, are great ballplayers, but their noise disturbs the lords of Xibalba. The lords invite them to play ball in the underworld, where the brothers are defeated. Hun Hunahpu is decapitated, and his head is hung in a calabash tree. The tree bears fruit for the first time when the daughter of one of the underworld lords, the virgin Xkik’, approaches it; she conceives twins from the spittle of the severed head.

The second generation of twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, survive childhood, calm their mother’s anger, and grow into trickster-heroes. They summon rain, trick the arrogant bird gods Vucub Caquix and his sons, and accept the challenge of the ballgame in Xibalba. They pass the trials of the House of Gloom, the House of Knives, the House of Cold, the House of Jaguars, the House of Fire, and the House of Bats. They are ultimately captured and killed, but they are resurrected through their own magic, and they reappear as wandering dancers and performers. They perform a feat in which they cut a man in half and bring him back to life, and they agree to perform the same trick on a lord of Xibalba — but this time they do not bring him back. Outraged, the lords are defeated when the twins reveal their identity. The lords of Xibalba are stripped of their power, and the Hero Twins rise into the sky: one becomes the sun, the other the moon.

The third creation: humans of maize

The third creation comes after the victory of the Hero Twins. The gods now fashion humans from maize dough, kneaded and shaped by the divine grandparents. The first four men are made and given the gift of sight, but their wisdom offends the gods, who “limit their vision” so that they can see only what is near at hand. These four ancestors — Balam Quitzé, Balam Agab, Mahucutah, and Iqui Balam — found the K’iche’ lineages and the ritual capital of Q’umarkaj.

The Popol Vuh’s account of human creation from maize is the cornerstone of Maya theology: humans are made of the substance that sustains them, and the gods who made them did so only after several attempts to make creatures worthy of worship. The narrative is closely paralleled in Classic Maya iconography of the maize god and in the iconography of the Late Classic vessels from the Usumacinta region.

Comparative context

The Popol Vuh is one of several Mesoamerican creation accounts, and its themes can be compared with central Mexican sources such as the Codex Quetzalecatzin or the myth of the five suns. The story of the Hero Twins’ descent to Xibalba is paralleled in the Aztec journey of Quetzalcoatl to Mictlan, and the creation of humans from maize is echoed in central Mexican myths of the bones brought from the underworld. Within the Maya world, the same themes appear at Palenque, where the sarcophagus lid of Pakal depicts the king’s journey into the underworld, and at Tikal, where the Maize God appears in the San Bartolo murals — the oldest known Maya creation paintings, dating to 100 BCE or earlier.

The Popol Vuh also helps to interpret the Dresden Codex, whose Venus tables, eclipse almanacs, and New Year ceremonies presuppose a cosmology identical to the one in the book. A more detailed study of the Hero Twins and the Xibalba myth cycle appears in the related pages.

Why the Popol Vuh matters

The Popol Vuh matters for at least three reasons. First, it preserves in alphabetic form religious material that the colonial authorities tried to suppress: the names of gods, the mythology of creation, the Xibalba cycle, and the origin of royal lineages. Second, it provides the only continuous highland Maya narrative of the kind that the destroyed Maya codices once provided. Third, it offers a unique window onto the late Postclassic K’iche’ state, the formation of the highland Guatemalan polities, and the persistence of pre-Hispanic religious practice into the colonial era.

Its themes are echoed in the living Maya world — in the prayers of the daykeepers, in the syncretic Catholic-Maya rituals of the highland cofradías, and in the continuing use of the 260-day almanac. The Popol Vuh is therefore not a museum piece but a living text, in the way that the Long Count calendar is still maintained by some highland communities and the Caste War is still remembered as a foundational event in the modern Maya identity.

Sources

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Taube, K. A. (2010). Maya Deities and the Place of Vision: A Workbook on Maya Iconography. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press. — link
Tedlock, D., trans. (1996). Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings (rev. ed.). Touchstone. — link
Edmonson, M. S., trans. (1971). The Book of Counsel: The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya of Guatemala. Tulane University, Middle American Research Institute Pub. 35. — link
Bassie-Sweet, K. (2002). Corn From the Heavens: The Sacred Geography of the Ancient Maya. University of Texas Press. — link
Aveni, A. F. (2001). Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico. University of Texas Press. — link