Xibalba

“Xibalba” is the Mayan name for the “underworld,” and caves were the portals into that realm. It was in these caves I experienced total isolation. There was a moment to pause in our canoe inside the cave and turn off all of our lights. The darkness was something I’ve never experienced before. Black as black gets. It was absolutely the total absence of color. And the only sound I heard was an occasional water drip from the cave formations into the creek below.

And in that moment there was only me.

In the Mayan culture, the gods of nature dwelled in caves. My light on the cave walls revealed ominous and forboding skeletal remains (both real and as natural rock formations in the cave walls), which triggered anxiety. Bit they also included natural “sculptures” of birds and even a beautiful, majestic jaguar, which made me happy and connected to nature. So both positive and negative images appeared as I moved through the cave. They came and went depending on the angle of my light and my viewing anlge at any given moment.

Imagine what Mayan people saw in the caves as their flickering torches threw dancing light on these same walls. It was indeed the realm of the gods.

This part gets a little graphic, but stick with me. The Mayans had a set of rituals built around their needs for water. They lived primarily in an area without any natural sources of water. They had to collect it from the rain, and that was about it. No big lakes or major rivers or anything like that. They relied on their ability to collect and save water and on nature’s ability to provide rain. So when drought occurred, it got serious real fast.

Mayan rituals were performed by priests — often in caves. They were commonly associated with trying to bring an end to drought (although not exclusively). It began with offering food, then animals, then human bloodletting and finally, human sacrifice. As each step failed to bring rain, the next one was tried.

My question is not so much “why human sacrifice” as it is “who came up with the idea that the next alternative after sacrificing animals should be bloodletting humans and then sacrificing them, too?” What perspective and logic says, “Hey, there’s no rain. Offering food and animals to the gods didn’t work…Let’s get some prisoners, take them into a cave, get high on psychedelic drugs. And kill them slowly. That ought to do the trick.”

Who came up with that?

The Mayans had their rituals, and I have mine. Let’s leave it at that.