Chichen Itza - The Temple With The Mayan Gods

Chichen Itza - The Temple With The Mayan Gods

by Linda Patterson

The polytheistic Mayans are noted for worshipping and offering sacrifices to a complex pantheon of deities. The city of Chichen Itza is renowned for its magnificent temple pyramids that pay tribute to many of these gods; it's also one of the Mayan Kingdom's most powerful and enduring metropolises and among the most visited relics of today, yet only two of these Gods are represented with special frequency and they are Chak, the rain god, and Kukulkan, the feathered serpent.

Chak - The Mayan's God of Rain

One of the oldest gods is Chak; and in ancient Maya sites like Chichen Itza, you can find masks of Chak's face as a common adornment which are found in great numbers over the doorways and on columns of buildings. Chak is the Mayan's god of storms, rain and lighting and his thunderbolts are often in the form of fearsome serpents and he gained a great deal of respect among the Mayans. The cult of Chak still exists among the small number of surviving indigenous Mayans in South and Central America which is in fact a considerable triumph for a god to endure whose religion was generally demolished ages ago. At the sacred well of Chichen Itza, the Mayans make human sacrifices, specifically to curry favour with Chak. According to legend, the Maya were able to cultivate corn during the ancient times when Chak broke open a rock, wherein the original seeds of maize were locked inside. He was particularly significant to the Maya as a result of unforeseen nature of the weather in the Yucatan and also in nearby regions. Rivers are not of much abundance there and most communities relied so much on underground streams and cenotes for sustenance. Ample evidences pointed out that the growth of the Mayan cities was greatly devastated by periods of drought and prolonged drought have caused the decline of the Post-Classic of the entire civilization.

Kukulkan - The Feathered Serpent Deity Of The Maya

A lot of Mesoamerican cultures are discovered to worship a serpent god; this was Kulkulkan, for the Mayans, and more than a hundred years he went up in popularity being among the most widely-revered of all the different gods in the pantheon of the Maya. This was due in no small part to the rise of Chichen Itza being a significant political and also economic strength in the Yucatan. Kukulkan was portrayed as an enormous snake with gaping jaws and resplendent feathers in Mayan artwork; such depictions in great numbers can be found around the pyramid at El Castillo and the Great Ballcourt at Chichen Itza. On the fall and spring equinoxes, an occasion known as the Descent of the Serpent creates the shadows cast by the sun at the northern stairway in order to combine with the wonderful serpent heads at the bottom of the structure, making the picture of a serpent wriggling its way on the pyramid. Kukulkan was most commonly identified with the War Serpent motif, patron of warriors and successful military conquests during the early Classic period. These associations withered, and Kukulkan came to symbolize the divine right of ruler ship commanded by the city's kings, and by extension, the city itself over its surrounding tributaries as Chichen Itza rose in prominence.

The serpents were a sacred animals to the Mayans; they deemed that the planets and stars in the heavens, whose motions they seen with unfailing accuracy as well as interest, were transferred on the backs of legendary snakes. The Vision Serpent which they regard as a divine entity is associated with Kukulkan, and was responsible for facilitating communication between the Mayans' gods as well as their ruling elite. In the same manner, the common belief in Kukulkan aided to facilitate conversation and also trade through the Mayan empire. Being a wealth and importance of Chichen Itza, and the center of worship for the cult of Kukulcan, grew a shared reverence for this particular god helped to ease provincial barriers and joined disparate city states with different religious, political, and ethnic backgrounds, improving the Itza state at the same time uniting much of the Yucatan in a network of trade and communication.



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