Time Lords and Sky Bearers
Winter Solstice 2008 marked a day four solar-years from the end of the Great Cycle, the 13-Baktun span marking our present age. This gives each of the four Mayan Time Lords one more opportunity to carry us and time forward before the end of the calendar.
Each solar year, or 365-day Haab year, is carried on the back of one of four Mayan Time Lords. These Bearers of Time are Nahual day spirits. The Nahual Time-bearer, or carrier, helps to give that year its quality, or personality, as the thread of time advances. The Time Lord is represented as carrying the burden and responsibility of the year as a pack on its back, supported by a mecapal, or tumpline, stretched across the forehead.
There are 20 Nahuales, one for each of the 20 days in the Mayan 20-day month called the uinal. Twenty is a number of completeness, the Mayan have used a base-20 counting system, in contrast to the familiar base-10 system, since ancient times. A related word, also meaning 20 is winaq (Kaqchikel), and this is also a word for human being: twenty digits, one complete person. Twenty can be divided by 365 eighteen times with 5 left over. Therefore, as the calendars advance, each January 1 the cycle of 20 Nahual day-names is shifted forward 5 days. Since these 5 days divide into 20 four times, the same 4 Nahwal day-signs repeat themselves every 4 years. These 4 signs, E’, NO’J, IQ’, and K’EJ, are the Bearers of Time.
E’ is the Nahual of roads. It means the path through life, and authority. It represents hard work and obedience. No’j is the Nahual of wisdom. It represents the day when the grandparents asked for wisdom from the creator. No’j is masculine, and represents decision-making and advice. The ancestors met in council on this day. Iq’ is the Nahual of the wind (spirit). It represents the air and wind that gives us life and the strength necessary to endure suffering. K’ej is the Nahual deer. It represents the four corners of the earth and holds up the 4 pillars of the sky: Balam Q'itzé (east), Baqlam Ac'ab (west), I'qui Balam (north), and Majukut'aj (south). K’ej is silent like the deer, a strong protector, and willing to sacrifice itself for the hunt.
The four Bearers of Time are directly analogous to the four pillars of the sky, or cosmos, and the four cardinal directions they represent. This analogy flows freely and logically in a cosmic view of space-time that is, in reality, one dimension, the thread of the space-time Mayan fabric woven of the same material. Just as the 19th century missionaries in the east called Chinese the ‘devil’s tongue’ because of their difficulty learning it, missionaries in the Americas called Native American languages the ‘devil’s tongue’ because of the lack of past and future tenses. How can you warn the Navajo of the impending judgment of Hell and Damnation if there is no future tense? Space-time; Time-space, all of time is present as we sit in our place on the woven space-time ‘mat,’ just as all of space, the different parts of the physical world, are present even when we cannot see them.
When First Father raised the sky at the beginning of creation, four brothers, the Bacabs, were placed at the 4 cardinal points to hold up the sky. I have heard these brothers called the pillars of the sky, pillars of the cosmos, the sky-bearers, the 4 gentlemen of the fire and the 4 stones. They are sometimes represented by trees, and sometimes assigned to tend the tree ‘pillars.’ They measure out the borders of the world and by doing so define the center. ‘Centering’ is a very important part of Mayan spirituality. When a house is built, town is planned, or new field is planted, a shaman is called to measure out the boundaries and mark the corners with stones, and then determine the center. In the home, it is the center where the hearth is found, the 3 hearth stones, or tenemastes, a reminder of the 3 stones on which the world was rested, now 3 stars in the Orion constellation, surrounding the ‘fire’ of the crab nebula, a furnace where stars are born.
Of the 4 gentlemen, Bishop Landa in the Yucatan wrote in the 16th Century, ‘among the multitude of gods worshiped by the people they adore four, each of whom is called Bacab.” One translation if Bacab is ‘representative,’ and the 4 Bacabs can be thought of as representatives of God.
At the center, First Father raised the Wakah Chan, Raised-Up Sky, the world tree, the ridge-pole lifting the center roof of the cosmos. It is represented by the green Ceiba Tree, connecting the underworld with the Heart of Heaven. It is the Milky Way, a white road traveled by gods and shaman-kings between the dimension of earth and the dimension of the divine. The Wakah Chan defines the fifth dimension, the ‘cardinal’ direction pointing up.
The gentleman of the north is Jakawit’z (Kaqchikel), Iq’ Balam. In Yucateca he is Zacal Bacab, the white Bacab, and associated with the year-bearer Muluc. The gentleman of the west is Awilix (Kaqchikel), Balam Aca’b. In Yucateca he is Ekel Bacab, the black Bacab, and associated with the year-bearer Ix’. Interestingly, the color for west was white, not black, among the Nahuas (Aztecs) and their west ‘Bacab’ was the white Tezcatlipoca, also called Quetzalcoatl. The gentleman of the east is Tojil (Kaqchikel), Balam Q’itzé. In Yucateca he is Chacal Bacab, the red Bacab, and associated with the year-bearer Kan. The gentleman of the south is Majucutaj (Kaqchikel), Nicaj Tacaj. In Yucateca he is Kanal Bacab, the yellow Bacab, and associated with the year-bearer Cauac.
The sky-bearers are also called the 4 stones, Kabawiles in Kaqchikel. In Yucateca Mayan these are the Acantuns, each associated with a directional color. Tun is the word for stone, and Acantun can be translated as stone stela. In the Yucatan stones are placed at the corners of the borders of a village, and 4 Balams (Jaguar guardians) come at night to sit on the stones and guard the village. When an altar is build for a Mayan ceremony the corner pillars and defined, and 4 men take their posts to represent the guardians.
Bishop Landa also recorded Chac names for the Bacabs. Chacs are rain deities, Tlaloques in Nahuatl, associated with the 4 corners and cardinal directions, close to the Bacabs. They hold 4 jars of water than can be poured out. There are also 4 Pauahtuns, wind spirits, which can be thought of as ‘the four winds.’ They blow from the cardinal points, from the tuns, stones, erected at the corners of the world.
The Mayan concept of an ordered universe, mapped and centered to define sacred spaces, has defined many of its elements into four parts. The next part of this essay will look at the 4 corns, and the 4 races of men they produced.