Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Among the Maya, the central world tree was conceived as or represented by a ceiba tree and is known variously as a wacah chan [pronunciation?] or yax imix che [pronunciation?], depending on the Mayan language. [3] The trunk of the tree could also be represented by an upright caiman, whose skin evokes the tree's spiny trunk. [4]
The Temple of the Cross Complex at Palenque contains one of the most studied examples of the world tree in architectural motifs of all Mayan ruins. World trees embodied the four cardinal directions, which represented also the fourfold nature of a central world tree, a symbolic axis mundi connecting the planes of the Underworld and the sky with ...
The Ceiba, or ya’axché (in the Mopan Mayan language), symbolised to the Maya civilization an axis mundi which connects the planes of the Underworld and the sky with that of the terrestrial realm. This concept of a central world tree is often depicted as a Ceiba trunk. The unmistakable thick conical thorns in clusters on the trunk were ...
Among the Maya, the central world tree was conceived as or represented by a Ceiba pentandra and is known variously as a wacah chan or yax imix che in different Mayan languages. [44] The trunk of the tree could also be represented by an upright caiman, whose skin evokes the tree's spiny trunk. [42]
In the world's centre is a tree of life (the yaxche 'ceiba') [71] that serves as a means of communication between the various spheres. In Palenque, the tree of life is a maize tree, just as the central world tree in the Borgia Codex; a curving bicephalic serpent hovers around it, which some believe to embody the ecliptic. [72]
The Maya also believed that their pyramid temples were sites at which these worlds could be transversed. Maya kings, by undergoing ritual and trance , could open portals which would allow the gods - inhabitants of the sky and under worlds, to communicate with Middleworld.
Izapa Stela 5 (V. Garth Norman 1965) Night photography of stela 5 with acute side lighting relief of difficult to see details. Izapa Stela 5 is one of a number of large, carved stelae found in the ancient Mesoamerican site of Izapa, in the Soconusco region of Chiapas, Mexico along the present-day Guatemalan border.
The bas-relief carvings reveal Chan Bahlum receiving the great gift from his predecessor. The cross motif found at the complex allude to the names given to the temples, but in reality the cross is a representation to the World Tree that can be found in the center of the world according to Mayan mythology. [1]