Art and Society in a Highland Maya Community by Allen Christenson

Author:Allen Christenson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2001-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fig. 5.9. Yo’x (twins) split-cob ears of maize hanging from the rafters of the Confraternity of San Juan. Such cobs are considered sacred as tokens of abundance.

Fig. 5.10. The image of Ruyo’xMari’y (Mary’s Twins) in the church. The two children are symbolically linked with split-cob maize and receive petitions for abundant harvests.

The Confraternity of San Juan may also be conceptually linked to the house of Xmucane, the grandmother in the Popol Vuh story. As noted in Chapter 4, this confraternity houses one of the major devotional images of Yaxper, the patron deity of midwives (Mendelson 1958a, 123; Tarn and Prechtel 1986, 174; Carlsen and Prechtel 1994, 100). The little figure of Yaxper is kept in a glass case on the altar (Fig. 5. 11a). She wears typical Tz’utujil dress, including the winding headband which Atitecos identify as a representation of a rainbow serpent. Yaxper is worshiped as the patron of the moon and is the only divinity in Santiago Atitlán commonly referred to as grandmother. The nature and attributes of Yaxper may also link her to the ancient Yucatec Maya goddess of the moon, childbirth, and midwifery named Ixchel (Goddess O). Ixchel’s name means Lady Rainbow (Taube 1992, 99; 1994, 658), and in artistic representations she too wears a serpent headdress (Fig. 5.11b), analogous to the rainbow-serpent winding headband of Yaxper. Like Yaxper, she is also an aged grandmother figure in her aspect as a goddess of midwives.

Mendelson’s informants described the Atiteco goddess Yaxper as “a very old woman of ancient times, crippled and bent, but still powerful” (1957, 458). Any woman suffering from sterility or parturition trouble went with an ajkun to call upon her because, as the great midwife, she “opened the path for the child” (Mendelson 1957, 458). A secondary cult image of Yaxper is kept in the Confraternity of Concepción (“Conception”), where she assists in birthing ceremonies.

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