Religion and mythology
Main articles: Maya religion and Maya mythology
In common with the rest of Mesoamerica, the Maya believed in a supernatural realm inhabited by an array of powerful deities. These deities needed to be placated with ceremonial offerings and ritual practices.[341] At the core of Maya religious practice was the worship of deceased ancestors, who would act as go-betweens for their living descendants in dealings with the denizens of the supernatural realm.[342] The earliest intermediaries between humans and the supernatural realm were shamans.[343] As the Maya civilization developed, the ruling elite codified the general concepts held by Maya society, and developed them into religious cults that justified their right to rule.[341] In the Late Preclassic,[344] the pinnacle of this process was the combination of ultimate political and religious power in the divine king, the k'uhul ajaw.[343] Although it is difficult to reconstruct the belief system through archaeology, some indicators of ritual practice do leave physical traces.[345] These include dedicatory caches and other ritual deposits, shrines, and burials and their associated funerary offerings. In addition, Maya art, architecture, and writing all assist in the reconstruction of ancient Maya beliefs; these can be combined with ethnographic sources, including records of Maya religious practices made by the Spanish during the conquest.[346]
The Maya viewed the cosmos as highly structured; there were thirteen levels in the heavens, and nine levels in the underworld; the mortal world occupied a position between the heavens and the underworld. Each level had four cardinal directions associated with a different colour. Major deities had aspects associated with these directions and colours; north was white, east was red, south was yellow, and west was black.[347]
Maya households interred their dead underneath the floors of their houses, with offerings appropriate to the social status of the family. There the dead could act as protective ancestors. Maya lineages were patrilineal, so the worship of a prominent male ancestor would be emphasized, often with a household shrine. As Maya society developed, and the elite became more powerful, Maya royalty developed their household shrines into the great pyramids that held the tombs of their ancestors.[342]
Supernatural forces pervaded Maya life, and influenced every aspect of it from the simplest day-to-day activities such as food preparation, to trade, politics, and elite activities. Maya deities governed all aspects of the world, both visible and invisible.[346] The Maya priesthood was a closed group, drawing its members from the established elite; by the Early Classic they were recording increasingly complex ritual information in their hieroglyphic books, including astronomical observations, calendrical cycles, history and mythology. The priests performed public ceremonies that incorporated feasting, bloodletting, incense burning, music, ritual dance, and, on certain occasions, human sacrifice. During the Classic period, the Maya ruler was the high priest, and the direct conduit between mortals and the gods. It is highly likely that, among commoners, shamanism continued in parallel to state religion. By the Postclassic, religious emphasis had changed; there was an increase in worship of the images of deities, and more frequent recourse to human sacrifice
o ward off disaster