At the beginning of all things, when the Gods finished creating this
world, they wanted to be recognized by their living creations. The animals
answered them with only a meaningless cacophony of sound, and for that they
where punished being destined to be the food of one another and of those creatures
who could name and praise their creators.
The gods made two attempts to create special creatures who would know them, first with clay and then with wood, but nothing worked. Finally, using maize for flesh and water for blood, they created human beings who could recognize and understand their relationship to their creators.
The earth and its creatures were created
through a sacrificial act from the Gods, human beings in turn were required to
be their providers and nurturers. Gods and humans can not exist without each
other. It was stated then that blood drawn from all possible parts of the body
was an act of self sacrifice and sustenance for the Gods.
Bloodletting was
basic to every stage of the Maya life, when buildings were dedicated, crops planted,
children born, marriages or the dead buried; blood was given to express piety
and call the Gods into attendance.
Blood letting
rituals can be interpreted as a “Vision quest”, through which the Maya have
sought to obtain divine guidance from deified ancestors or guardian spirits in
an alternate state of consciousness or ecstatic trance triggered not only
psychoactive plants but rather by a massive blood loss.
Today, we acknowledge that endorphins
produced by our brains in response to a massive physical jolt to our systems,
can induce hallucinogenic experiences; for the Maya this kind of experiences
were translated as the physical manifestation of visions, most of the times
represented as a great rearing serpent that symbolized the contact between the
supernatural realm and the human beings.