The Popol Vuh Part 2: Made to Serve from the Bleeding of Above

The second half of the Popol Vuh continued my imaginative experience in understanding the belief system and origins. Similar to the first half, every story carries with it a different feeling or emotion due to the descriptive nature of the text. From their summoning to ascension, the twins Hunaphu and Xbalanque went through different trials and tribulations. From creation to existence, humankind became formed as something through experiences. My two biggest takeways, which could be a misinterpretation, is that the Ki'che' belief system stems from brutal violence and that humanity has subalternity embedded into their existence.

In finishing each passage, the detailed description of violent actions made me stop reading numerous times due to the explicit writing. This pattern of destruction and revival would later be understood as serving the objective once I finished, but as I was reading it gave a feeling of mayhem. I believe it was the section when the twins were summoned involving a falcon, a snake, and a toad. The falcon was spying on the twins and after they noticed the falcon, used their blowguns to shoot the falcon straight in the eye. While interrogating they noticed writing on the belly of the falcon stating “once you cure my eye, I will tell” (pg. 140). After being cured, a snake was vomited and interrogated. In succession, the snake would vomit a toad who was  unable to puke which enraged them. The twins crushed the bones of the amphibian and pulled its mouth open, finding a message to meet with One Death and Seven Death. I thought the process was a bit gross, but once I continued to the trials it took very long for me to finish the reading. The images in my head became ones of them being “cut apart into chunks”, “bones splintered and cracked”, and no pun intended “the head of Hunaphu”. What was the intended message of these explicit experiences? 

The theme of subalternity in the dynamic between humankind and these higher beings is very interesting and reminds me of other religions. The evolution, hopefully I have not misinterpreted, of Hanahpu and Xbalanque becoming this literal light of the world gives the impression of others falling below. As they each became the sun and the moon, it confirmed to me the hierarchical nature of the stories. Humans are unable to live without the sun and at the time see without the moon. It traces back to the first section in that they become these forms that provide everyday guidance. Even in the description of the first four men created, it explicitly states that “their knowledge was completed by everything beneath the sky”. Whether it is the true meaning or not, having the twins become something above the sky with humans only knowing what is below it indicates to me that the purpose is to serve and remain under what is of a higher essence. 

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