For many people in the Western world, Maya culture has been reduced to sacrificial rituals, disfigurement, bloodletting and other dark depictions of an ancient Mesoamerican civilization.
But this narrow fixation on ritualistic murder — a lurid gloss on a complex, shifting theology — obscures a great deal about the Maya and their gods. While the macabre undeniably played a part in this spirituality, it was only a small portion of a larger, dynamic belief system still held by Maya people today.
Earlier Maya civilization, as historians understand it, was deeply influenced by religion. Maya cities like Tikal and Chichen Itza, in modern day Guatemala and Mexico, respectively, contain massive stone temples where important rituals would take place. Ceremonies and observances honoring or appealing to their deities were interwoven throughout the year, and their rulers were seen as important intermediaries to the gods.
