Maya death rituals

The tradition & historical record

Death rituals were an important part of Maya religion. The Maya greatly respected death; they were taught to fear it and grieved deeply for the deceased. They also believed that certain deaths were more noble than others. ¹

The Maya were ritualistic people, who paid great respect to the destructive nature of their gods. They had many traditions to commemorate the recently deceased and worship long-departed ancestors. People who died by suicide, sacrifice, complications of childbirth, perish in the ball game, and in battle were thought to be transported directly into heaven. The reason a violent death led to one souls being able to immediately enter the Maya heaven is because the gods are thankful for their sacrifice to them. People who were to eventually become sacrifices were paraded in litters by citizens before their death. Before Spanish influence, there may not have been a common idea of the afterlife. The Yucatec Maya believed that there were different routes after death. A pot from a Pacal tomb depicts ancestors of Maya kings sprouting through the earth like fruit trees and together creating an orchard. The Maya had several forms of ancestor worship. They built idols containing ashes of the dead and brought them food on festival days. Alternatively, a temple could be built over an urn. In those that were sacrificed, the most common way was cutting the abdomen, and taking out the heart. ¹

The Maya dead were laid to rest with maize placed in their mouth. Maize, highly important in Maya culture, is a symbol of rebirth and also was food for the dead for the journey to the otherworld. Similarly, a jade or stone bead placed in the mouth served as currency for this journey. Due to its green color resembling that of corn stalks, burying the deceased with jade was believed to allow them to follow the path of the Maize God, eventually leading to their rebirth. The practice of wrapping royalty was meant to localize their remains to a finite space. Mortuary bundles would be overlapped with depictions of deity bundles and covered in cinnabar signified rebirth. Marine artifacts in a tomb were meant to create a sense that the body has been set within a cave or upon the underworld. Bloodletting artifacts can be found amongst the dead at the Caracol site. A corpse being buried with these artifacts was to praise God A’. Most royalty were buried along with headdress, bracelets, and necklaces. Once a tomb was closed, burning took place on top of it to signify the soul leaving the royal body and transforming into an ancestral state. The human remains in a temple were believed to have had power to animate buildings. Often, whistles carved from rocks into the shapes of gods or animals were included in the grave offerings to help the deceased find their way to Xibalba (She-BALba). When a typical Maya citizen died their family and close friends would begin fasting and procuring goods. To which then they would hold an all-night vigil around the corpse and burn incense calling on their ancestors to watch over the new soul in its journey in the underworld. The elders would then wash and clothe the corpse; being buried naked was an insult in Maya culture. ¹

The Maya believe that the soul is bound to the body at birth. Only death or sickness can part the body and soul, with death being the permanent parting. To them, there is an afterlife that the soul reaches after death. In that, deceased ancestors can still contact their descendants, answering advice when they are asked. This contact can be used at certain times in the season, or when certain family matters pertain to the ancestors. Understanding the perception of what the deceased do in their afterlife can give ideas towards what rituals need to be performed and what types of items one must be buried with in order to successfully navigate the afterlife. ¹

The aspect of reincarnation is one strongly mentioned in Maya beliefs and religion. The Popol Vuh gives importance to the Maize deity, and how the Maya people themselves descended from maize people created by this god. In the Popol Vuh that the Kʼicheʼ Maya wrote, one of the few surviving codices, it tells the story of the reincarnation of the Maize god. In the tale, the maize god retreats to the underworld and with two hero twins battling the monsters and lords of the place, makes way back to the earthen world. He is reborn again, dies, and on and on the cycle continues. In this aspect, it is believed by the Maya that the Earth itself is a living being. As they came from corn, consuming corn or having sex then brings one closer to the earth. ¹

The concept of the afterlife, or Xibalba, differs between the Maya ethnic groups. Many have a generalized belief of all souls going to the afterlife, being reincarnated or having another role to participate in after death, but these ideas change dramatically with the rise of Christianity. With that came the idea of Xibalba being a location of punishment. The longer one spent in Xibalba, the worse a life they led while living. With this belief, heaven became a paradise for many to strive for. The Chontal of Tabasco are an example of this. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Maya death rituals”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Maya death rituals is part of Maya religion, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. ²