V. Of what little archaeological evidence from Calakmul remains today, some is in the one-stela pattern first observed at Piedras Niegra, but depicting fe/male pairs. One side of the stela shows a male image on the face of the monument, while a female image is featured on the other (Miller, 1999 at 108). An oval tablet from the site depicts Hanab Pakal receiving his commission from his mother, Lady Zac-kuk, designating not only the prominent role of women in the life of this great Maya center, but pointing towards a possible matrilineal succession to leadership. Palenque represented the height of Maya technology and power as is signaled by the Venus Tower; a four-level structure probably constructed for military purposes as much as anything else, but, no doubt, used for astronomical observations as well. Hun-Ahaw is often symbolized by Venus and the morning and evening stars. The Venus Tower and its association with Hunahpu alludes to Xmucane and the creation of the universe.
If kings were the earthly reincarnation of the ancestral Hero Twins (ahaw), Hanab Pakal may have understood Lady Zac-kuk to be the worldly reincarnation of the first-mother Xmucane (S. Cominsky and R. Tarbell, March, 2002, graduate lecture in Maya Art & Culture, Rutgers University---Camden, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences). Yax-Balam, meanwhile, is associated with the sun and Hun-Ahaw often symbolizes Venus. The Venus cycle in turn is likely the basis of the 260 day (kin), or ritual calendar (Tzolkin), and may be related to the female gestation period (Cominsky and Tarbell, 2002; and, Freidel and Schele, 1990 at 114 and 125). Given the material and symbolic significance of corn to the Maya, and considering their unified, harmonized, and balanced view of the nature of reality, the importance of the fertility cycle, both human and vegetative, and their relation to cosmic cycles assumes added meaning.
Northrup Frye said: “In the solar cycle of the day, the seasonal cycle of the year, and the organic cycle of human life, there is a single pattern of significance, out of which myth constructs a central narrative around a figure who is partly the sun, partly vegetative fertility, and partly a god or archetypal human being (Northrup Frye, The Fables of Identity, 1963 at 606).
The imagery of the Hero Twins descending into the underworld to endure a series of tests and trials parallels the hero cycle as outlined by Henderson (Henderson in Jung, ed., 1968 at 101). The twin’s journey into Xibalba may also symbolize the act of penetration of the middleworld, and their reception into the earth, through which they eventually experience rebirth and reincarnation. By analogy, the descent of the ancestral twins into the under-regions of the universe may reflect the planting of kernels in the milpa from which maize springs to life. The Hero Twins are formed from the dough of maize ground by Xmucane. Freidel and Schele have written that “…as sustainer of life, and a plant that could not seed itself without human intervention, maize was an ultimate symbol of Maya social existence in communion with nature.” (Freidel and Schele, 1990 at 243). Indeed, maize as substance of human flesh and as the staple of the Maya farmer was viewed as more than just a sign of life: it was the very source of Maya creation, and the hero twins were frequently depicted in their dual nature, or nahual, as maize gods (Miller, 1999 at 139-140; and, Miller and Taube, 1993 at 122).
VI. The concept of dualism---or the principle of the unity of opposites---is apparent in the persistent motif of the Hero Twins that pervade Maya art and culture from the earliest times to the present. Recognizing this fundamental component of Maya ideology is essential in order to move towards an understanding of the Maya both ancient and modern.
When students in the west read Rigoberto Menchu’s account of childbirth practices and rituals among the modern Maya in Guatemala---ceremonies that involve abuelos (grandparents) and incorporate temascal (sacred satchel to hold placenta), pom (incense), the burning of candles to symbolize earth, water, sun, and mam, and the use of lime---their understanding is deepened by knowledge of the Hero Twin cycle and the role it plays in Maya worldview (R. Menchu, “Birth Ceremonies,” in Carol J. Verburg, ed., Ourselves Among Others, 1994 at 76-87). When looked at in Maya terms, it is not a matter of truth or falsity. The Maya worldview is profoundly oriented in directions that widely diverge from western views steeped as they are in the separation, isolation, and opposition of Cartesian duality.
It is precisely this compartmentalism, this disentanglement of what belongs together, the untwining of yarns, that Jung laments in modern man. “…[C]ivilized consciousness has steadily separated itself from the basic instincts,” he says. “Modern man protects himself against seeing his own split state by a system of compartments.” The universe, to western man, is divided up into private and public spaces, conscious and unconscious spheres, “…kept, as it were, in separate drawers and are never confronted with one another” (Jung, ed., 1968 at 72).
The first encounters between the Spanish and the Maya of Central America resulted in an all too familiar pattern of death and depopulation that decimated indigenous peoples. On the eve of Spanish conquest, the native population of Central America stood at some 25 million persons. By 1620, just a century later, and nearly a half millennium after Hanab Pakal’s remains were placed at the base of the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque, the indigenous population of Central America numbered under two million people. While traditional Maya medicine was unable to stem the rapidly rising tide of death and destruction that struck after Spanish discovery, exploration and conquest of the New World, traditional Maya art forms and cultural rituals have been retained---both intact and changed---and passed onto the descendants of the Hero Twins: the modern Maya (D.J. Boorstin and B.M. Kelley, A History of the United States, 1996 at 18).
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