Five-minute digest
The Popol Vuh (Lewis Spence's account)
Summary
The Popol Vuh, the Book of the Mat or Council Book, is the sacred and historical book of the K'iche' Maya of highland Guatemala, written in K'iche' by anonymous nobles in the 1550s and preserved in Francisco Ximénez's copy of about 1701. The library's text is not a full translation but Lewis Spence's 1908 English study, which retells and partly translates the first books from Brasseur de Bourbourg's French and Ximénez's Spanish and then comments on them. Spence's First Book opens in primeval darkness, where Hurakan, the Heart of Heaven, calls out the word earth and land appears; with Gucumatz, the feathered serpent, and the ancestral pair Xpiyacoc and Xmucane he makes the animals and then people carved of wood. Because the wooden people do not remember their makers, a flood and a rain of resin destroy them; their dogs, hens, grindstones and cooking pots rise against them, and their descendants are said to be the monkeys of the forest. (The full text also tells of an earlier failed people made of earth, which Spence's summary passes over.) The proud Vukub-Cakix, Seven Macaw, then claims to be sun and moon, until the twin hero-gods Hun-Ahpu and Xbalanque shoot him from his fruit tree; the old pair, disguised as healers, replace his jewelled teeth with maize and take his eyes, and he dies. The twins also defeat his sons Zipacna, the mountain-maker, and Cabrakan, the earthquake. The Second Book goes back to the twins' father and uncle, Hunhun-Ahpu and Vukub-Hunahpu, whose ball-playing draws the lords of Xibalba, the underworld, to summon them; tricked and killed, Hunhun-Ahpu has his head hung in a gourd tree, where it causes the maiden Xquiq to conceive. She flees to Xmucane and bears the twins, who turn their jealous half-brothers into monkeys, find their fathers' ball-game gear, and are summoned in turn. Leaving canes in their grandmother's house that will wither if they die, they outwit the Xibalbans and survive the Houses of Gloom, Lances, Cold, Jaguars and Fire, though Hun-Ahpu loses his head in the House of Bats before he is restored. Finally they let themselves be burned, return from the river as wonder-workers, and destroy the lords of Xibalba by killing them in a feigned trick of revival. Their father and uncle rise as sun and moon. In the Third Book the gods make four men of yellow and white maize, dim their too-perfect sight and give them wives; the people receive the god Tohil and others at Tulan, cross the sea and greet the first dawn. The Fourth Book traces the K'iche' royal lineages. Spence then discusses the cosmogony, gods, metre and early Spanish sources, with notes and a bibliography; the book appeared in London from David Nutt in 1908.
Top Lessons
Creation and remembrance
In the Popol Vuh the gods make one people after another, seeking beings who will remember and honour their makers. The wooden people are destroyed because they do not think on Hurakan; the maize people, by contrast, pray for the dawn and greet the sun with song.
Pride brought low
Vukub-Cakix believes his jewelled eyes and teeth make the sun and moon unnecessary, and his sons boast of making and unmaking mountains. The twins humble all three, and in Spence's account the false sun loses his glittering teeth and is given maize in their place.
Cunning against death
The Hero Twins succeed where their father and uncle failed, not through strength but through foresight: they send Xan to learn the lords' names, refuse the red-hot seat, and finally turn their own deaths into the trap that defeats Xibalba. The story presents wit, courage and fidelity to the dead as the means of overcoming the powers below.
Reading a sacred book through a translator
Spence's book is a summary of a summary: he retells a French translation of a K'iche' text copied by a Spanish friar. Students can learn from it how sacred traditions pass through many hands and why scholars return to the original language.
Verified Quotes
“The "Popol Vuh" is the New World's richest mythological mine.”
“The name "Popol Vuh" signifies "Record of the Community," and its literal translation is "Book of the Mat,"”
Frequently cited
“Over a universe wrapped in the gloom of a dense and primeval night passed the god Hurakan, the mighty wind. He called out "earth," and the solid land appeared.”
“They climbed to the roofs of the houses, but the houses crumbled under their feet; they tried to mount to the tops of the trees, but the trees hurled them from them; they sought refuge in the caverns, but the caverns closed before them.”
“Before their departure they each planted a cane in the middle of the house, which was to acquaint those they left behind with their welfare, since it would wither if any fatal circumstance befel them.”
Frequently cited
“These young men were busied at Xibalba with paying fitting funeral honours to their father and uncle, who now mounted to heaven and became the sun and moon, whilst the four hundred youths slain by Zipacna became the stars.”
Frequently cited
“The Creator and Former made four perfect men. These beings were wholly created from yellow and white maize.”
“These men were too perfect. They knew overmuch.”
Medical Lens
The medical interest is incidental. In the Vukub-Cakix episode the proud being, wounded in the jaw by the twins' blowgun, is tormented by toothache; the divine grandparents come disguised as healers, persuade him to be operated upon, replace his jewelled teeth with maize and take his eyes, and he dies. The scene shows healers who travel and treat pain, used here as a ruse, and is sometimes cited as an early American reference to tooth extraction, though Spence reads it as an allegory of maize replacing the green turf of the earth. Cabrakan is weakened by a bird poisoned with earth. The twins' final wonders, cutting a man in pieces and restoring him, belong to the poem's theme of death defeated rather than to any medical practice, and the deaths of the lords of Xibalba follow from their wish to experience death and return.
- The myth of Vukub-Cakix (First Book)
Spence's summary of Vukub-Cakix's jaw wound and toothache and the disguised grandparents' false operation on his teeth and eyes.
- The myth of Vukub-Cakix (First Book), close
The twins give Cabrakan a bird poisoned with earth, after which his strength fails.
- The Second Book, the twins' wonders in Xibalba
Spence's account of the twins' self-chosen death, return, and display of killing and restoring men and animals before the lords of Xibalba.