Maya Deity of the Day: Ixchel

In modern representations Ixchel is usually sensualised. However, the Maya themselves liked to depict her as a hideous old crone crowned by a snake.

The confusion of identities persists to this day. It would seem that the classic Maya moon goddess was more often represented as a young and fertile woman, so Ixchel, as seen here, was probably associated principally with the waning moon, which the Maya like to describe as "our grandmother".

Diego de Landa referred to her as "the goddess of making babies," and we can today ascertain that Ixchel was venerated for her role in midwifery and other kinds of practical healthcare...and divination.

Las Casas relates a myth from Verapaz in which Ixchel and her hubbie Itzamná, have thirteen sons, two of which (corresponding to the Howler Monkey Gods) go on to create heaven and earth. In another she runs off with the king of the vultures and he has to enter his rival's palace in disguise in order to retrieve her.

In the 16th century Cortés discovered that Cozumel had become a major centre of goddess worship and the stack of feminine idols found on another nearby island by Hernández de Córdoba, led to it being christened Isla Mujeres.

Maya Deity of the Day: Chaac

This me, back in March 1988, sitting atop a carved mask of the god Chaac at Mayapan, political hub of the Yucatec Maya from the 1220s to the 1440s. 

Chaac or Chac - later to be known as Tlaloc by the Aztecs and Cocijo by the Zapotecs - is one of the most important deities in Mesoamerican culture as his remit covers agriculture and rainfall, with thunder and lightning as his call-signs. 

As with many other supernatural beings worshiped by the Maya, Chaac has both an individual identity and a manifold one (had to have helped the Maya get a grip on all that Holy Trinity claptrap) precipitating off into four distinct Chaacs, each with its own colour and cardinal direction. All share the same repitilian features with pronounced nose, curling fangs and tears streaming from spherical eyes. 

Over the centuries there have been many different rituals associated with Chaac, such as the rather bizarre Yucatec one where four young boys are tied up and made to croak like frogs. 

Chaac also features heavily in the twelfth century Dresden Codex and the walls of the Puuc city of Kabah are literally covered in impressive, protruding-snout Chaac masks, stacked one on top of another. 

It's not hard to see why Chaac has retained a significant role within the traditional religious practices of modern Maya communities. As Jared Diamond pointed out in Collapse, in spite of what the brochures say, the Petén jungle isn't technically a rainforest;  it's a tropical seasonal forest - which basically means that it doesn't rain there all the time. 

Worse still from the perspective of the various clumps of Classic Maya civilisation in the region, the ground underneath both it and the Yucatán peninsula to the north is made up of porous, limestone-based karst, which means that most of Chaac's bounty seeps away rather quickly. (To counteract this, the inhabitants of Tikal had plastered natural depressions in the karst to create reservoirs which could hold up enough water to meet the needs of around 10,000 people for 18 months.) 

The seasonal unpredictability of rainfall is compounded by a cyclical tendency towards truly desperate conditions: roughly once every 208 years -  apparently owing to variations in solar radiation - a severe drought settles on this region. We know that one such sequía from AD 125 to AD 250 can be associated with the pre-Classic collapse at cities like El Mirador in the north of Guatemala. And the one which began around AD 760 is thought to have been the worst in 7000 years. 

The great Maya centres in the forested lowlands seemed to have suffered the most severe brake on their cultural endeavours at this time, in part because the humidity there makes it that much harder to store corn for periods longer than twelve months. In comparison cities like Lamanai and Tulum, which could supplement their protein-starved corn diet with mariscos, and which were a little less ambitious in terms of ceremonial architecture, (plaster manufacture drove deforestation which in turn helped stifle rainfall), were able to keep up a more sophisticated way of life right up until the arrival of European pathogens. 

Maya Deity of the Day: Itzamná

Itzamná (or God D) was Maya civilisation's high priest and cultural czar, having provided it with both writing and calendrical science. He is also said to have taught them how to cultivate corn.

Most often depicted as a toothless old duffer with square eyes and squinty pupils, as well as sunken cheeks and a bulbous nose, Itzamná is sometimes said to be the child of the creator god Hunab Ku, and as such has inherited the latter's position as the paramount supernatural power.

He wears a petaled headband which holds a mirrored ornament and the akbal glyph for night and darkness.

His name means 'lizard house'.

Maya Deity of the Day: Ah Kin

Ah Kin, "He of the Sun" (aka Acan Chob; Chi Chac Chob, Kinich Ahau, and God G) is an ambivalently-natured deity whose remit includes the management of drought and disease.

If you've seen Apocalypto you might have acquired an exaggerated sense of the importance of the Mayan sun god within their pantheon, but his twin areas of expertise must have seemed comparatively important during the two great crisis moments for the Pre-Colombian Maya - the collapse of their Classic civilisation (due largely to unfavourable environmental conditions) followed a few centuries later by the arrival of the poxy Spaniards.

Ah Kin likes to spend his evenings in the murky Mayan underworld; Xibalba. He had a companion dog to help him find the eastern horizon and while he's down there he merges with the nocturnal jungle cat to become Balanke, the 'Jaguar Sun'.

In his youth he was something of a looker (presumably before he developed those t-shaped incisors and crossed eyes) and had a thing for Ix Chel, the future Moon goddess. The pair are said to have invented sexual union and became patrons of match-making and procreation until Ah Kin assumed his full responsibilities as sun god, a position which came with a fiercer, less approachable aspect and the requirement to act as the bringer of doubt.

His union with Ix Chel persisted, and together they also became associated with sorcery and medicine. After the conquest however, her identity was quickly blotted out by that of the Virgin Mary.

Maya Deity of the Day: Ah Puch

Ah Puch aka Hun Ahau or God A is the Maya God of Death and is said to reside in the ninth and frankly least pleasant level of Xibalba. The Aztecs later gave him the much less tongue-friendly name of Mictlantecuhtli.

He is seen here in perhaps his most popular get-up, that of a rotting corpse topped by a skull. Bells also dangle from his wrists and hair-bands.

One of his nicknames is 'The Flatulent One', just one of his many ways of demonstrating a doggedly malevolent nature.

The head of Ah Puch was also sometimes represented as that of an owl and some indigenous people in the region still believe that the screech of this bird portends an imminent fatality:

'Cuando el tecolote canta... el indio muere.'

As well as the owl, Ah Puch's constant companions are the dog and the Moán bird, also perceived as creatures of foul-omen.

He ranks ranks fourth in number of depictions in the codices, appearing 88 times in the three extant manuscripts.

See also ahhh puchis?!