Blood Rituals to Keep the World from Ending: Scenes in Ancient Mayan Pottery

Maya captives

Although the Maya practiced a comparable sacrificial ritual as the Aztecs, by slicing open a victim’s chest and extracting the dripping heart to offer to the gods, they much preferred the rite of decapitation.  This, they felt was necessary to feed the gods and keep the world alive.

One priest oversaw the rite while four aged men named “chacs” in honor of the Mayan rain god held the body of the victim on a sacrificial stone.  A priest known as the nacom cut open the victim’s chest and extracted the dripping heart to offer to the gods.

Maya blood ritual

Little known is the Maya practice of auto sacrifice, or offering of one’s own blood.  The Maya used a string threaded with thorns to cut their cheeks, lower lips, ears and tongues.  They collected the dripping blood in purified pottery vessels and smeared the offering on images of the god or on their own body.  Men also used sharp knives or the spines of stingrays to cut and draw blood from their penises for offering. 

Among the Maya, ritual bloodletting of this kind was considered a privilege and was performed by members of the nobility.  At important times such as the passing from one calendar cycle to another, the king and his family would perform the ritual in honor of his ancestors and on behalf of himself, the city state and his people.

The Maya also sacrificed animals such as turkeys, dogs and on special occasions, jaguars.  Jaguars were considered sacred and thus only sacrificed on occasions such as the ascension of a king or when a great calamity occurred that needed the intervention and easement from the gods themselves.

Mayan pottery and codices are full of illustrations of the gods themselves performing blood rituals in this manner.  Thus, man was expected to also perform them and feed the gods.