Mayan Culture

The Mayan culture is known for their rituals and ceremonies. Everything done in their culture had its place and time. This allowed the priest in the Maya community to know when to plant, harvest, as well as knowing which seasons were wet and which were dry. In Mayan belief, blood sacrifice performed by Kings was important for major calendar cycle endings. The beginning or ending of a cycle was cause for ceremony in this culture. In addition, children in are named after the day they were born and each day had a specific name for boy and girl and parents are to follow that practice. Also, Mayan healers believed that there are male and female energies associated with the calendar. The male energy cycle ended on November 11, 2011 and is celebrated
Corn is so important to the Mayan community that they have centered their religious lives around it. The crop provided social and political stability as well as being a high-calorie food that was easy to store for tropical climates. In their ceremonies, the Mayans center their focus on corn and other agriculture to reflect this stability that the crop brings and for that to play out in their daily life. Corn was offered by Mayans to most of their gods, including the god of rain, Chac. Before the offering, the corn would be prepared in a form like tortillas and the spiritual part of the food would be consumed by the god, leaving the physical for the Mayans to
Atole was offered to gods and farmers would mix this with water from the morning dew or from a cave, which made the White Water beverage. In ceremony farmers would then light torches in thanks to the gods for the optimum conditions for the growth of their crop. This particular ceremony is know as Sac Ha. The Sac Ha is performed by Yucatec Maya farmers and it is a ceremony in which you pray for rain. An alternative name for the Sac Ha is the Agua Blanca or White Water, which is connected to the solar cycle in the Haab calendar. This ceremony is held several times a year in the stages of the corns growth cycle that are key. The Sac Ha is then put on an alter made of wood with five stones that represent the cardinal directions. One stone in the center represents the vertical connection between the earth and the sky. The other four rocks represent the directions. The corn and water mix is then poured over the rocks. Elders in the communities warn the future generations that such ceremonies must continue in the exact same way in order to keep the earth in