A comparison with stories and practices of the colonial and modern Maya may supplement the evidence for circumambulatory performance among the ancient Maya. Accounts of counterclockwise movement exist in myths of world creation and ceremonies of world renewal in sources from Maya groups across a large geographical and chronological range, including the Yucatec Maya in the colonial period and the Chorti, Tzotzil, and Yucatec Maya in the twentieth century.
In multiple colonial-period Yucatec sources, including the Chilam Balam accounts, the space and time of the world are created after the cosmic flood through the erection of five trees in the four cardinal directions and the center of the world.
The raising of trees occurs in a counterclockwise direction, beginning in the east and moving to the north, west, south, and center. In each place, a tree of a particular color—red, white, black, yellow, and green—is set. These trees, as bearers of the sky, are analogous to the four bacabs that Diego de Landa describes as having been placed at the four points of the sky to hold it up “so that it should not fall” after the flood (Tozzer 1941:135-36). Other elements—including stones and birds—in corresponding colors appear at each of the directions and are listed in the same counterclockwise order as the trees.
In the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, for instance, after the destruction of the world by floods, or “a sudden rush of water” that caused the sky to “fall down upon the earth,” a series of trees was erected (Roys 1967:99-100). In this account, the name of the first tree is missing, but the Chilam Balam of Mani recounts that “after this cataclysm the red Imix tree was erected,” a sign of dawn (Craine and Reindorp 1979:119). In the Chumayel account, the Imix trees are referred to as pillars of the sky, yocmal caan, and in both the Chumayel and Mani books, the trees are erected at each cardinal direction in counterclockwise order, with the last at the world’s center: the red Imix tree in the east, the white to the north, the black to the west, the yellow to the south, and the green in the center (Craine and Reindorp 1979:118-19; Roys 1967:33, 99-100).
According to Taube, a corresponding account of world destruction and the subsequent tree erection appears in the Dresden Codex, a pre-Hispanic Maya screenfold book made of bark from the amate (wild fig) tree. Taube (1988b:219-20) compares the Chilam Balam stories to the flood on page 74 of the Dresden Codex and the scenes of deities making offerings to trees in the four cardinal directions on the codex’s new year pages, pages 25-28 (fig. 2.24). Although they are separated in the codex, Taube argues that they belong together—and that the flood page is integral to the new-year pages and should precede them.
The erection of and offerings to these trees in the Dresden Codex take place according to a circuit that moves through space and time, similar to the erection of trees in the Chilam Balam accounts. Taube (1988b:239-40) further observes that the bottom register of each new-year page shows a deity making an offering to a tree. Three trees show stone-markings on their shafts; the fourth tree, situated in the east, is dressed in clothing and jewelry and has the head of the deity Chahk. Each tree is associated with a cardinal direction, beginning with the east, where the tree is named chac itzam che, the chac (red) name correlating with the red Imix tree from the Chilam Balam accounts. The others are all named yax itzam che, identifying
Figure 2.24. Dresden Codex, 25c (Sachsische Landesbibliothek Dresden Mscr. Dresd.
R 310). Photograph of Ernst Forstemann facsimile by Linda Schele, © David Schele, courtesy Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., Www. famsi. org.
Them as yax (meaning first, precious, or the color blue-green), with no stated color variation among them. The subsequent ceremonies of tree offerings take place in the south, west, and north and thereby move through space, comparable to the other stories of tree erection, comprising, according to Taube (1988b:265), a “model and diagram of the world.” Their erection proceeds in a clockwise direction.22
Taube (1988b:239) also affirms that the trees in the Dresden Codex are marked with stone signs, and that the verb used may be the same as the ts’ap (“plant”) verb found in some dedication statements on Classic period stelae (see also Grube 1990; Stuart 1996:153-54; 1998a:375). The Dresden’s trees and the Classic period stelae may be analogous, and the planting of stelae recalls or reenacts the paradigmatic erection of trees at creation (Taube 1988b:239, 241; see also Newsome 1998:130). The circular, counterclockwise movement around each stela that I have described also correlates with the counterclockwise erection of trees at creation and would have been one way the Classic Maya performed and enacted world renewal.
Other colonial-period accounts also make reference to counterclockwise movement in calendrical ceremonies. In the sixteenth-century Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan, for example, Diego de Landa described new year ceremonies during the Uayeb, the five unlucky days before the start of the new year; these ceremonies were intended to stave off calamity and misfortune (Tozzer 1941:136). Landa described the ceremonies for each set of Uayeb days over a cycle of four years; especially important are the associations of particular years with cardinal directions and colors. Over the years, the cycle moves counterclockwise through space—south, east, north, and west—and the colors are the same as in the Chilam Balam accounts: yellow, red, white, and black, respectively (M. Coe 1965:99-102; Tozzer 1941:135-50).
Each set of Uayeb ceremonies comprised various activities, including the making of clay figures and “statues” of gods, to which the Maya priests and noblemen made offerings of maize, incense, and food. In addition, they let blood from their ears and used it to anoint each acantun—or “set-up stone.” The set-up stones were of varying colors, that is, yellow, red, white, or black, depending on the year and cardinal direc-
Tion (Tozzer 1941:139-41; see also Newsome 2001:206). These activities took place in the house of an official in town. On the edge of town, ceremonial participants placed deity figures and statues on the special heaps of stones in the direction corresponding to the given year (M. Coe 1965:100; Tozzer 1941:140). Finally, one of the first activities of the new year—on the first day of the month Pohp—was to renew “all the objects which they made use of, such as plates, vessels, stools, mats and old clothes and the stuffs with which they wrapped their idols” (Tozzer 1941:151).
These actions were undertaken at the transition between old year and new and served not only to prevent calamity—as Landa mentioned—but also to re-create sacred space and renew the world and the local community. According to Taube (1998b:298-99), in contrast to the dangerous Uayeb days, the first day of the new year comprises “a return to order, and the re-creation of sacred space by the chacs surely marks not only the purification of a particular courtyard but also the community, the fields, and the world.”
Among various Maya groups in the twentieth century, ritual practices, dances, and other performances also often include counterclockwise movement. For example, regarding the Tzotzil Maya of San Juan Chamula (Chiapas, Mexico), Gossen (1972:140) points to “the overwhelming tendency of almost all Chamula ritual motion to follow a counterclockwise pattern” as a way to “move as the sun moves.” Gos-sen hypothesizes that the counterclockwise movement—proceeding to the right— relates to the sun because it “is the horizontal equivalent of the sun’s daily vertical path across the heavens from east to west.”
Counterclockwise movement also plays an important role in the Chamula Festival of Games, a commemoration of world destruction and renewal that takes place over five days, including Catholic Ash Wednesday and the four preceding days (Gossen 1986; see also Looper 2001:115). Gossen (1986:229) compares the Festival of Games to a mythical narrative of the death and rebirth of the Sun/Christ, in which the episodes of the perceived motion of the sun follow a counterclockwise pattern, beginning in the west and moving through the inter-cardinal and cardinal directions and ending in the universe’s northwestern quadrant, close to where the sun started. Gossen (1986:229) notes that with such a sequence, “the categories of time, space, and cosmic order are established in the beginning of Creation.”
Analogous counterclockwise circular movement is used in at least one part of the festival’s rites, on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, when the entourages of the Passions, the custodians of the sun, run around the plaza three times counterclockwise before performing the fire-walk on the trail of burning thatch across the plaza’s east-west axis, which symbolizes the sun’s ascent across the sky (Gossen 1986:232, 246-47). The counterclockwise circling of the plaza correlates with the sun’s path in the first-creation myth and is a fundamental part of renewal for the sun, the world, and the Chamula community.
Mid-twentieth century accounts of new-year world-renewal ceremonies of the Ch’orti’ Maya of southeastern Guatemala also rely on counterclockwise movement, particularly in priests’ placement of five specially selected stones in a quincunx pattern on an altar to create the sacred cosmogram. According to Rafael Girard (1966:29), the Ch’orti’ Maya considered the action of placing the stones in the cosmogram as a commemoration and repetition of the primordial act of world creation; this cosmogram did not simply represent the world but became the world itself.
Figure 2.25. Ch’orti’ Maya cosmogram made of five stones on an altar. Photograph by Rafael Girard (1962, plate 27). Courtesy of Dora Luna de Girard.
Figure 2.26. Diagram of the order of stone placement in the Ch’orti’ Maya cosmogram. Redrawn by the author and Kevin Cain after diagram by Rafael Girard (1962:40).
Girard (1962:40) observes that the priests were careful to place the five stones in counterclockwise order, which he interprets as following the sun’s perceived path, particularly in relation to the summer and winter solstices. In his diagram, the stones are placed at the inter-cardinal points in counterclockwise order: northeast, northwest, southwest, and southeast, and then center (figs. 2.25, 2.26). This stone placement, moving through time and space counterclockwise and thereby re-creating and renewing the world, is analogous to the counterclockwise erection of trees in the Chilam Balam and other colonial-period accounts. As Girard notes, this rite was a culmination of a series of actions and prayers for the new year, when the gods would be awakened—or reborn—to act anew (Girard 1962:21, 39).
Counterclockwise movement is also seen among the Yucatec Maya in the twentieth century. Hanks (1990:244), for example, describes the counterclockwise calling of gods to bind altars before rites begin. The verb used is k’as (or kax)—to tie, lash, or bind. This action, he writes, makes the spirits present around the altar. According to Hanks (1990:336-37), the spirits are called and lowered to the altar in the order of their locations at the cardinal directions. In the opening phases of the rite, they are called in counterclockwise order, beginning in the east and proceeding to the west, south, and center. This is referred to as he’ik b’eel “opening the road,” or k’asik meesa “binding the altar.”23 Hanks characterizes this calling of the spirits as an act of centering that produces “a centered space out of an absolute one.” He also describes the counterclockwise ordering and binding of the altar as actions through which “the performance space itself is constituted as a zone of proximal copresence of a shaman, patient, and the spiritual lords” (Hanks 1990:351).
In summary, examples of circular—usually counterclockwise—patterns of motion appear in creation myths and renewal ceremonies from across the Maya world, from the Dresden Codex new-year pages to colonial-period Yucatec creation myths to twentieth-century Tzotzil, Ch’orti’, and Yucatec performances and rites. These are analogous to what we see in Classic period Maya monumental stone sculptures for the guiding of circular, often counterclockwise, motion around sculptures as part of world renewal rites and remembrances. The twentieth-century Yucatec Maya binding of the altar through counterclockwise calling of spirits may be especially relevant in comparison to the Classic period dedication of stelae, for the k’asik meesa phrase is analogous to k’al tuun, the most frequently used stela dedication phrase at Piedras Negras.
These examples cover an enormous span of space and time, and extensive differences across these periods make direct associations problematic. Furthermore, the particular rituals performed were not always the same. Even so, the similarities are powerful, and the ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources offer useful analogies to enrich our understanding of ancient Maya religion and the potential for performance and ceremony to activate objects and spaces in the ancient past.
In short, texts were carved on Piedras Negras sculptures in formats requiring a person to circumambulate the monuments to read the texts, and I propose that this movement was a sacred act fundamental to their dedication. Although private reading, looking, and movement may have taken place, it is likely that textual recitations were more common. Performers could have read texts aloud while moving around the monument, and the circumambulation could have been an integral part of a religious rite, with the audience both in the public spaces of the plazas and the more
Secluded spaces of the palace and other buildings. Such recitation may have been a fundamental part of the monuments’ ritual activation, comparable to the songs that the twentieth-century Lacandon Maya of Naha (Chiapas, Mexico) sang in the renewal ceremonies for their incense burners. As Virginia Dale Davis explained, these songs were intended to “awaken” the vessels and invoke them to open their eyes, to see, hear, and get up (1978:77, 82).
It is conceivable that the elaboration of the Classic period monuments constituted a sacred practice amid rites comparable to the prayers, fasting, and other procedural prescriptions surrounding the creation of wood effigies by the sixteenth-century Yucatec Maya (Tozzer 1941:159-61). Performances in counterclockwise motion around the monuments could have happened while the monuments were carved, during dedication and new year ceremonies, and as part of world renewal rituals. The movement of these performers, guided by the monuments’ physical design, recreated and renewed the world. Alternatively, the circular formats of the reading order of the inscriptions may have themselves materialized this circumambulation, embodying the cyclicality of time and world renewal through their material presence.
The guiding of circular movement around Maya stelae as a dedicatory action is also comparable to the dedicatory texts painted on some Maya ceramic vessels (Stuart 1995:99-100). Usually, this text is painted around the vessel’s upper rim and encircles it, and the last glyph meets the first in a continuous band. Practices of painting and reading required the painter or user to turn the vessel, and the physical act of turning may have been meaningful in the object’s sanctification. As with stelae, the circular process of reading texts on vessels may differ from looking at images, whose multi-figural scenes with complex pictorial narratives encourage handlers to turn the vessels back and forth. The differing forms of looking, reading, and movement were not contradictory but instead were compatible amid the varied possibilities of viewing.
Figure 2.27. Fallen Piedras Negras Stela 7, limestone, 721 CE, with the text visible on its top and right side. Courtesy of the Penn Museum.
World History
