Itzamna

Water covered the world, and darkness filled the sky. Itzamna brought order to this empty realm. He lived in the upper skies. The waters were cleared, and land appeared. Mountains, valleys, lakes, and rivers took shape. The sky and earth were separated.

The gods then made living creatures. Animals lived in the wild and became subjects of hunting, but they could not praise their creators. The gods sought beings who could understand the world and recognise its makers. They first shaped people from mud. These beings melted when they became wet, so the gods destroyed them.

The next people were made from wood. They could walk, speak, and produce more of their kind, but they had no souls and behaved like animals. The gods rejected them. Their tools attacked them, or, in another account, huge birds did so. The wood people became monkeys.

The gods then made people from maize. They formed their bodies from corn and used corn meal for their arms and legs. These people pleased the gods and became the ancestors of the Maya. A world tree stood at the centre of the earth. It connected the earth with the thirteen layers of heaven and the nine layers of the underworld. Itzamna was also linked with the bird god Yaxcocahmut and with Gugumatz, another creator figure associated with the Great Feathered Serpent.

Itzamna took Ix Chel as his wife, and the two supreme deities shared care for the world. Ix Chel was known by several names, including Lady Rainbow, Chak Chel, and Goddess Q. She had great powers, though she was not as powerful as Itzamna. She sometimes matched him in kindness and in care for her people. Some legends described her as the moon goddess when Itzamna became the sun god. In those roles, they helped keep the world in balance.

Itzamna was celebrated as a patron of knowledge. He taught the Maya and helped them understand their world. The Maya credited him with inventing their writing system and their calendar. He demanded nothing in return for these gifts, and he gave them freely for his people to use. Ix Chel also cared about knowledge and learning. The Maya said that she was the first person on earth to weave, so she invented weaving. She taught the process to her people, and they used it to make clothing and other fabrics.

Ix Chel also became linked with the floods. Virtually all Maya legends said that she caused them. In one telling, she brought the floods through cruelty or as punishment for something the Maya had done, or failed to do. In another, the flooding happened by accident. That telling said that the floods came from Ix Chel’s love for her husband, because Itzamna often took the role of the sun god. The marriage therefore joined the moon and sun in the ordering of the world, before the floods came through Ix Chel’s power or love.