The Popol Vuh of the Maya: The Creation of Man, the Hero Twins, and the Myth of Xibalba
The Sacred Book of the Quiché In the highlands of Guatemala, preserved in a bilingual manuscript copied in the early eighteenth century by the Dominican priest Francisco Ximénez, lies the most precious literary heritage of the Mesoamerican world. The Popol Vuh ("The Book of the Council" or "The Book of the People") is the sacred creation myth of the Quiché Maya, a work that explains the origin of the cosmos, the generations of the gods, the trials of the hero twins, and the genealogy of the royal houses. Written in the Quiché language using the Latin alphabet shortly after the Spanish conquest, but drawing on ancient hieroglyphic codices and oral traditions, the epic is the ultimate witness of the Mayan spiritual coordinate system. The Popol Vuh is not a simple collection of folklore; it is a profound, cosmological meditation on the purpose of humanity . The narrative is divided into three primary cycles: the initial attempts of the creator deities to fashion a ...