The Falling Woman

Notes for City of Stones by Elizabeth Butler

A society defines what is normal and what is crazy – and then says anyone who challenges the definition is crazy. In our society, for instance, self-destructive acts – self-mutilation or suicide – are considered mad. If you slash your wrists, you are locked up as a crazy person.

In Mayan society, suicide was a perfectly respectable act. The patron goddess of suicide was Ixtab. She is generally pictured as a woman dangling over emptiness, supported only by the noose around her neck. Her eyes are closed, her hands are relaxed, and her expression is calm, as if she were raptly contemplating an inner vision. Ixtab escorts people who die by suicide or sacrifice directly to paradise. Self-mutilation was also an essential part of many rituals: piercing the ear-lobes, lips, and tongue so that they bled profusely was an act of worship.

The gods of the Maya were demanding, much more demanding than the distant patriarch of a God that most Christians worship. Mayan gods governed each day’s activities, and each day a different set had to be praised and propitiated. And a Mayan who ignored the dictates of the gods and decided to behave as he pleased would be as mad, relative to his society, as a resident of Los Angeles who ignored the traffic regulations and decided to drive as he pleased.

You may consider the comparison a frivolous one. Maybe you believe that traffic laws are for your protection and ignoring them would be dangerous. If you asked an ancient Mayan, he would explain that the rules for behavior laid down by the gods are for your protection. Ignoring them would be very dangerous. It would be dangerous, for example, not to offer a share of the honey to Bacab Hobnil, god of the bees; foolish to offend the Yuntzilob by hunting on the wrong day.

We find the Mayan pantheon peculiar. By our standards, suicide and human sacrifice are unacceptable. We tend not to notice the peculiarities of our own culture. We accept the thousands of children who wear braces to correct their teeth, yet we consider the Maya odd for filing teeth to beautify them. Each culture defines its own idiosyncracies and then forgets that it has done so.