Chaac the Mayan Rain God
Chaac the god of rain lives in the cenotes. The Maya believe that Chaac flies on top of a flying snake called Itzamna. He flies out over the sea and scoops up water into bowls. Then he flies back and sprinkles the water over the land, onto the Mayan people, their crops and fills up the cenotes.
The Water Cycle
This is wonderful visualisation of the water cycle. So simple that it could be a story for children. It represents the classic cycle of water we all learned at school.
The People made of Corn
The Maya people associate as being people formed from corn. In the Popol Vuh the Mayan holy book written in Kiche Maya it tells the creation story. It says that the first people are made of clay, but they didn’t honour the gods. So the gods killed them. That is why at the bottom of the cenotes we can find a layer of clay. The second people are made of sticks, but they didn’t honour the gods. So the gods killed them. The third people, the Gods made from corn and they did honour the gods. So these are the ancient ancestors of the Mayan people.
How the Mayan made Corn
The Maya genetically engineered corn over thousands of years. Originally it was just grass. with a few seeds at the top. Early people would pick it and eat the seeds. Where they picked the good ones. When they walked they either accidentally dropped or deliberately planted the good seeds. The process of just selecting the bigger and tastier seeds meant that over time corn has developed into a nutritious staple that many rely upon as a basis for their daily sustenance. There is a wide range of different types of corn. As the corn became a nutritious food, so the Mayan people developed their culture.
As is Above is Below
In the same way that Chaac goes out over the sea to collect water in his bowls, the Mayan people would have gone to the cenote to collect water in their bowls. They carried the water back to their home where they would use it for drinking and watering their crops. Corn is the staple food in Mesoamerica so would have been grown in abundance in ancient Mayan cities, as it is today. Similar to the actions of Chaac sprinkling water onto them, the people of the corn. What is happening above in the celestial realm is being mirrored by the Mayan people below on Earth.
Ritual offerings to Chaac
The Mayan people would want to make sure Chaac was happy. If he wasn’t happy maybe he would bang his axe on the sky to make thunder, lightning and maybe send a hurricane. So they would often make offerings to Chaac. They would break a bowl and place the broken bits into the cenote. When we are scuba diving in the cenotes we often find broken bowls close to the entrance. Different ages of pottery demonstrate that this ritual has continued over time.
Of course the clay for the pots could have come from the cenotes and is the remnants of the first people destroyed by the gods. So they would be returning the clay to where they got it from. Maybe they believed that they needed to return some of the bowls to the cenote to give balance to the universe.
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