Art and Myth of the Ancient Maya by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos

Author:Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2017-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

BECOMING THE SUN AND THE MOON

A crucial problem in Mesoamerican solar myths is the contrast between the sun and the moon. Mythical narratives devote considerable attention to explaining the reasons why one of the heroes eventually became the sun, and the other, the moon, and the related question of why the light of the moon is weaker. Further questions include the origin of the moon’s sullied face and the explanation of why there is a rabbit on the moon. The narratives privilege some of these issues over others, and not all of them are addressed in every story. The distinction is clear in stories that describe the sun and moon heroes, respectively, as male and female, although the gender contrast is not always present, and there are numerous myths in which both the sun and the moon are male.

The moon was the sun’s mother in the Chiapas Maya myths. Rather uncommon elsewhere, this explanation reappeared in a Huichol myth compiled by Carl Lumholtz at the turn of the twentieth century. In the beginning, there was only the moon, but her light was not enough. Reluctantly, she gave her son to the principal men who came asking for him—a boy who was lame and blind in one eye. The principals adorned him and threw him in an oven, where he burned. Five days later, he appeared as the sun. Other Huichol versions do not always describe the boy as the moon’s son, but they consistently reiterate that he suffered from eye or skin disease and was covered with pimples.20

Some narratives in Chiapas explain the moon’s dim light: the mother cried so much for her son that her light faded. According to other versions, one of her eyes somehow got hurt, and she carries a rabbit because her son caught the animal that came at night to raise the trees and gave it to her as a companion. The moon was also feminine in Q’eqchi’ narratives. She was the wife of the sun and rose with him to the sky. In Thompson’s version, she was initially as bright as the sun. There was no darkness during the night, and people could not sleep until the sun dimmed her light, plucking out one of her eyes.21

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