MythicThe Maya Ceiba Yaxche', the World Tree at the center of the cosmos
UBSacred tree at the center of the world, carrying blood, water, and spirit
Sacred tree at the center of the world, carrying blood, water, and spirit = The Maya Ceiba Yaxche', the World Tree at the center of the cosmos
The Connection
The Maya cosmos is organized around the Yaxche', the great ceiba tree whose roots reach the underworld, whose trunk supports the middle world, and whose crown holds the heavens. Maya kings are depicted at Palenque and Tikal sitting in the axis of this world-tree. The UB identifies the Tree of Life as the actual plant at the center of the Prince's temple on Dalamatia, later moved to the first Garden, and notes that "there once existed a universal cult of the tree of life" across the ancient world. The Yaxche' is the Mesoamerican expression of the same universal memory.
UB Citation
UB 66:4.13, 73:6.1, 85:2.4
Academic Source
Schele & Freidel, A Forest of Kings (1990); Freidel, Schele & Parker, Maya Cosmos (1993)
Historical Evidence(Moderate evidence)
Linda Schele documented the Yaxche' as the central organizing axis of Maya royal cosmology, depicted on King Pakal's sarcophagus lid at Palenque with a bird in its crown and a serpent at its base, the same three-level structure that characterizes the Assyrian Sacred Tree, the Norse Yggdrasil, and the Slavic Dub. The worldwide persistence of the cosmic-tree motif with bird, serpent, and divine king attending is hard to account for on independent-invention grounds alone, and the UB's Tree of Life offers a single seed for what spreads into these cultural variants.
Related Mappings
The 132 Andite sailors who crossed the Pacific from Japan to South America
= Quetzalcoatl / Kukulkan, the fair-skinned bearded culture-bringer
Post-rebellion flood memory (Dalamatia submergence, Eden submergence, regional floods)
= Aztec, Maya, and K'iche' flood cycles (Popol Vuh; the Five Suns)
Teaching-pair pattern: a god of wisdom and his brother or rival
= Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, cosmic brothers who contest creation
Amadonite and Sethite priesthoods preserving astronomical knowledge
= Maya calendrical and astronomical priesthood