Maximón (pronounced maa-shee-MOHn) is a folk saint venerated in various forms by Maya people of several Guatemalan towns in the highlands of Western Guatemala. His effigies are found in Nahualá and San Jorge La Laguna, and is especially famed in Zunil, San Andrés, Itzapa, and Santiago Atitlán (Eidt 2012). He is one of Guatemala’s goodtime guys. A snappy dresser, he loves a drink and a cigar, and has a reputation as a womanizer. Despite this, Maximon is a cult figure, a special sort of saint in the highlands of Central America. Depending on who you ask, Maximon is a god, a pagan saint, Jesus’ brother, Judas Iscariot, or a devilish deity. In the name Maximón, ximon means “tied or bound one,” and Ma is the title of respect given to adult men. …show more content…
Regardless of representation, he loves to smoke and drink. Petitions should be accompanied by gifts of alcohol, cigarettes, and cigars (Eidt 2012). A god of travelers, merchants, medicine men/women, mischief and fertility, that was conflated with the Christian figure of Saint Simon. His visitors are men and women from the village, businessmen from the capital, prostitutes from the coast, traders from Mexico. They come to him to ask for cures, for money, for cattle, for a husband, or to kill an enemy (Hart 177). He is held as the principal healing god above Jesus, for he is incarnated form their own dying and reborn Maya hero/demigod Hun Hunahpu. If one’s “dream soul” encounters Maximon on the road at night, he often induces terrible fright in the dreamer— “susto”—causing illness from “loss of soul.” Yet, it is Maximon the priests call upon to retrieve the dreamer’s soul and restore the person back to health (Shalit …show more content…
Ironically, in Aztec mythology, Maximon is a trickster deity (Stanzione 15) who creates conflict (Bezanilla 8). Even though Maximon is not explicitly seen in the surviving Maya texts, he appears most like Mayan deity, God L, “The Smoking God.” L was a god of the underworld; associated with agricultural fertility and merchants (Bezanilla 34) -- all attributes associated with Maximón. James Stanzione compares Mam (meaning sun in Mayan language) in his role as the “Lord of Sexual Hunger” to the deities of swirling rain clouds, thunderbolts, earthquakes living in subterranean and celestial abodes, but does not name which one he is and states that, “Mam acts as much like the hero twins of the Popol Vuh as he does the Central Mexican Tezcat0lipoca. He is sometimes an axe-wielding rain deity not unlike Chak-Xib-Chak, while at other times he is the incarnation of the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado. Mam, therefore, is a multivalent being from many places and many times,” (Stanzione 13-16). There are also similarities to the god Ekchuah, a divinity of the merchants, who was dressed in black (Landa 46). It is not important to
A well-known Meso-American deity, Huitzilopochtli, is the Aztec god of war and human sacrifice. It is written that he had a constant battle with evil within himself and required human sacrifice for nourishment. It is believed that Huitzilopochtli’s mother, Coatlicue, an Aztec earth goddess, conceived him after she kept a ball of hummingbird feathers in her bosom that had fallen from the sky. Huitzilopochtli’s sister, Coyolxauhqui, plotted to kill her mother after discovering the shameful way she had become impregnated. When his mother was decapitated, Huitzilopochtli burst from the womb and killed his sister Coyolxauhqui ...
The religion and culture of the Aztecs played a role in the way the way they thought and fought. They worshiped the war-god Huitzilopochtli. He was identified with the sun and was called "the Giver of life" and "the Preserver of Life" (xxxix). The religion carried some ridiculous rituals such as human sacrifice along with using magicians and wizards to cast spells. In war conditions, human sacrifice played a big role because the Aztecs would not fight to kill,...
They had at least 128 gods, including but not limited to the divine beings of “rain, fire, water, corn, the sky, and the sun.” They were honored in numerous ways: ceremonies and festivals, dances and feasts, and by having humans sacrificed to them. (Background Essay) Read those last few words again. As said in the popular children’s show Sesame Street, “one of these things is not like the other”. The integration of human sacrifice into Aztec culture was not nearly as subtle as written above, though: The most important Aztec deity in their whole religion, Huitzilopochtli, was the sun god. According to Aztec creation myths, Huitzilopochtli required a great deal of power to raise the sun every morning and keep the night from overpowering day for too long. This strength was drawn from regular consumption of human blood and hearts. This in turn caused the Aztecs to strongly believe in needing to give these things to him. According to the Aztecs, sacrificing people to Huitzilopochtli was the ideal way to provide him with these
Tonantzin being the mother goddess of the Aztecs was blended with the Virgin Mary. Her indigenous likeness united the creole, Indian and mestizo who would later use her as a banner of insurgency against Spanish domination. Jacques Lafaye comes off the strongest when he explains the orgins of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Lafayes thesis is more solidified with the telling of Tonantzin-Guadalupe’s history because the iconography of this syncretic manifestation of New Spain is still seen today and is still very much a part of the collective psyche of Mexico’s national formation. Lafaye does an excellent job of explain the universality of this myth in all the sectors of colonial society. The author eloquently explained that for the Indians the virgin was their mother goddess, for the creoles the virgin gave them theological roots in the Americas in conjunction with their Spain roots and to the mestizos it was their origins story of a violated mother of
The Popol Vuh doesn’t fall short in referencing and glorifying maize. One such reference in the Popol Vuh categorizes maize as a way to determine fate; if an ear of maize is planted and dries up, it indicates death. The article, “The Flowering of the Dead” concludes, “In Atiteco religion, ‘Flowering Mountain Earth’ is a place at the world’s centre whose primary manifestation is a maize plant or tree.” (Carlsen 27). A “Flowering Mountain Earth” is the center of the world that represents life, beauty, and the gods. Among this place, maize is an important object that animates and projects the qualities of a Flowering Mountain Earth. Maize is axis mundi, the center of the world. It is a staple crop in the Maya people; it is essential to the people and heavily relied on. The Maya saw maize as a fetish that truly gave them everything. Without it, everything that ties the Maya together falls apart. Successful growth of maize represents the life and well-being of the Maya, while a dying maize plant all but points to death and the failure of civilization. It is with the importance of maize in Maya culture, that it is omnipresent throughout the Popol
A major element of Aztec life was religion, as often is in the case in ancient civilizations. The Aztecs were a polytheistic people, and they often made use of human sacrifice to please their gods. Diaz often makes reference to the blood-stained walls of the Aztec temples in his account of the conquest. In reference to the success of Cortes and his soldiers, an anci...
The Aztecs had many gods whom they worshipped by conducting human sacrifices. Human sacrificed assumed an unusually important role in Aztec life and reasoning during the 15th century (Strayer, 583). Tlacaelel, a prominent official of the Aztec empire, is often credited with setting the ideology of state that gave human sacrifice such immense importance. In accordance with Aztec religion, the Aztec patron diety Huitzlipochtli, tended to lose its energy in a constant battle against darkness. The Aztec world always hovered on the edge of catastrophe due to the possibility of endless darkness. To replenish the energy of the god and postpone the darkness, the sun needed the life-giving force found in human blood. Aztecs believed that the god’s sacrifices of creating the human race warranted their own sacrifice of their own blood and other humans. Because of this belief, the Aztecs were responsible to supply blood to their gods. This blood was supplied largely through wars of expansion and from prisoners of wars who were captured to be sacrificed (Strayer,
The Mayan interpretation of the cosmos included a plethora of gods: some benevolent, others malignant; some unattainable, others close at hand. Defining past, present and future, it concerned itself with death, the afterlife and reincarnation. Itzamna was a Mayan god that represented the earth and sky. This god was there to produce vegitables. The Aztec beliefs were very similar to that of the Mayan civilization. Both societies were very similar in their belief of gods, sacrificing, and wars. The ritual of human sacrifice was infulenced by the Toltec tradition. Praying, sacrifice, speaking in metaphors were all forms of speaking with dieties. The calendar was very accurate, more accurate then the calendars that we follow now. Europeans thought that Mesoamerican people were wild people because they were cannibals, believed in many gods, and "enjoyed sex".
Cults can be dangerous as manipulative strategies are used to control large groups of people into behaviour they may not usually be comfortable with. A cult is a counterculture that is an extremist group usually lead by religion and a charismatic leader (Winner 2011:417). Counterculture is the rejection of popular norms and values and replaces them with extreme views on violence, family and loyalty (Winner 2011:417). Cult leaders often preach about religious history as they take it very seriously. Usually, these religious views guide the bizarre behaviour and conformity within the cult. Anthropologists see cults as a way for people to find self-identity and belonging within a group which they are not receiving from outside of the group.
(Tablet I: 102-104) and endowed with the physical power of a hero. Upon his creation,
These three civilizations were focused on their religions, causing some similarities. They all built cities as religious centers. Both the Mayas and the Aztecs worshipped their gods through human sacrifice. The Olmecs were so dedicated to their gods that they transported 50 ton boulders from the mountains to the shore. For the Mayas, even their games were related to their religion. The Aztec society was constantly at war for the sole purpose of making sacrifices to their many gods. Religion dominated the cultures of these Mesoamerican empires.
The Popol Vuh is a collection of early Mayan religion and history and is divided into three parts. The first part is their creation myth, and states the world was created by Gucumatz and Tepeu – Mayan dual gods. They created the earth, animals that were food for the humans, and finally created humans from maize to worship them. “This generation, which includes the present human race, is able to worship and nourish the gods.” (Nicoletta Maestri). The second part of the Popol Vuh is the story of the Hero Twins. Hunahpu and Xbalanque were twin brothers who became great ballplayers. They played a ball game with the Lords of Xibalba who killed their father and uncle. They defeated the Lords of Xibalba and revived their father and uncle, and soon after the twins became the moon and the sun. The third and final part of Popol Vuh are narratives and details of the Quiche noble dynasties up until the 16th century. When Gucumatz and Tepeu created humans from maize, those first humans would become part of the Quiche dynasties. “They were able to praise the gods, and wandered the world until they reached a mythical place where they could receive the gods into sacred bundles and take them home.” (Nicoletta
Taube, Karl. “The major Gods of Ancient Yucatan.” Studies in Pre-Columbian Art & Archaeology 32 (1992): 11-27. Print.
Cults are organizations that generally portray their own types of religion and generate practices. Cults typically do not follow the common moral code of their surrounding societies. In other words, cults make their own society by drawing in members through close friends and family members. Organizations that have been targeted as cults include the Amway Motivational Organizations and Scientology. Not only are these organizations classified as a cult through their Pyramidal structure and regulation of member behaviors, but they are also classified as a cult through their psychological manipulation.
In "Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum," Finbarr Barry Flood expresses many ideas concerning Islamic iconoclasm. His focus was on the ."..iconoclastic practices of Muslims living in the eastern Islamic world, especially Afghanistan and India." Flood discusses issues with traditional patterns considering Islamic iconoclasm and the "many paradoxes" that "complicate" our understanding of Islamic iconoclasm. Throughout this essay we become familiar with "essentialist conceptions of Muslim iconoclasm" as well as "political aspects of what has largely been conceived of as a theological impulse." These points later provide a basis for analyzing the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha by the Taliban in March 2001. "It will be argued that their obliteration indexed not a timeless response to figuration but a calculated engagement with a culturally specific discourse of images at a particular historical moment."