Carol Karasik - The Little Book of Maya Gods and Monsters: Supernatural Stories from the Underworld and Beyond

OTHER BOOKS by Carol Karasik

Maya Threads: A Woven History of Chiapas, with Walter F. Morris, Jr.

The Drum Wars: A Modern Maya Story

The Turquoise Trail:

Culture and Jewelry of the American Southwest

E DITOR /P UBLISHER : Linda Ligon

A SSOCIATE P UBLISHER : Karen Brock

D ESIGNER : Susan Wasinger

T EXT : 2016 Carol Karasik

I LLUSTRATIONS : 2016 Alfonso Huerta except where noted

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016954660

Thrums Books

306 North Washington Avenue

Loveland, Colorado 80537 U.S.A.

Printed in China by Asia Pacific Offset

For XUN and MAXAM

All these stories have many versions.

All these gods have many faces.

Maya gods and goddesses live in a private world.

They seldom interfere in the great and small affairs of humanity.

They created human beings who would praise them, that is all.

When they are not summoned through offerings and prayers, they keep to themselves.

Left on their own, they change places, they multiply,

split in two, four, six, eight, and so on.

Perhaps they are part of one divine being, who is already twoOur Mother-Father.

Its no wonder that they created the world many times.

This, the fourth creation, began when the gods set up three stones in the center

of the universe. The stones are three stars in the constellation Orion.

The stones formed the first hearth, which the gods circle,

just as families sit around the fire in the middle of their houses,

eating, talking, and telling stories.

The gods are like a large family, made up of different personalities

and different powers,

but each depends on the other for their existence.

We praise their great and generous spirits for this life.

L ong before people inhabited the earth, the gods filled the world with noise. They hadnt planned it that way, but all the amazing creatures they madejaguars, howler monkeys, rattlesnakes, black-winged chachalacascackled and roared and hissed incessantly.

Witz, witz, witz, said the rat. Xpurpuwek, xpurpuwek, cried Whippoorwill. The gods couldnt sleep or think.

They know how to grunt and squawk, but they dont know how to pray. They cant even pronounce our names. And those rabbits and hairless dogs are always gossiping and telling tall tales. Soon theyll be stealing our secrets, the Creators complained.

All right, then. Well just let them slink around the Underworld, steal through the forests, beat their wings against the sky until they are hunted down and eaten. And so the gods decreed that the animals, birds, and insects would become food for one another.

The next race of beings didnt talk at all because the gods made them out of mud. Those people just waddled about aimlessly. They had no backbones, they had no brains. They were just crumbling lumps with lopsided faces. The mud people simply melted away in the rain.

The gods hung their heads in disappointment. Weve made a terrible mistake, they said. But lets try again. Lets make people who know how to praise us.

Next the gods made people out of wood, but the people of wood had no hearts or minds or blood or fat. They were as stiff as sticks, dry as bricks, and when they spoke, they had nothing good to say. And so the gods decided to destroy those stubborn, heartless, witless creatures.

Monsters with needle teeth chewed their wooden arms and crunched their legs.

Their dogs snapped and snarled. You cold-blooded people never fed us properly. Now well take a bite out of your stubborn shins.

The grinding stones crushed their ribs. All youve done is cause us pain. Screech, scratch, huqui, huqui! Now well do the same to you.

The cooking pots rose up in anger. You burned our bottoms. Our mouths are black, screaked the pots. Now well toss you into the fire.

The Lord of Thunderbolts sent down a rain of black pitch that darkened the earth and drowned the wooden people for good. Those that escaped to the trees turned into monkeys.

The flood washed away everything on earth. The sky collapsed and the mountains sank. There was no earth and there was no sky. All that was left was an ocean of water, and a deep, dark silence.

O ld Itzamna, the highest of the gods, was floating on his back in the middle of the sea, just daydreaming about this and that, when a brilliant idea popped into his head. He clapped his hands, and the seven Gods of Creation, who were quietly snoozing on their reed mats, sat bolt upright.

You know, said Itzamna, we should really make a new world. We need more excitement. We need some better company.

Its true, the gods agreed. But weve had bad luck before, and now look at the state were in.

Im just circling around without rhyme or reason, moaned the old Sun, Lord of Time.

Im so waterlogged Im beginning to lose my powers, the Lord of Thunder sputtered.

Yes, I cant remember who I am, sighed the Lord of Death.

Just as well, said the others.

Itzamna peered into his magic mirror and saw the world as it was and would be. He saw the reflections of the gods, who were reflections of himself, multiplying endlessly. The image of the world was also multiplyingworld after world after world, doubling, tripling, and quadrupling until they were bubbling over the edge of his black mirror.