The Falling Woman

Notes for City of Stones by Elizabeth Butler

Robin, one of my students, is a reasonably intelligent, well-educated, young woman. Yet she claims that she sees no reason for human sacrifice. Her attitude, when she speaks of the ancient Maya and their sacrifices to the gods, implies that we are civilized now, we have left that nonsense far behind.

Robin forgets, I think, that her own religion involved human sacrifice. She is a practicing Christian. She partakes of Holy Communion, the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the human son of God who died and rose from the dead to bring back the word of his Father. She believes in the Resurrection, but only as something that happened long ago in a distant land, far removed from her day-to-day life. She believes in God, the Father Almighty. On the other hand, if her next-door neighbor were to claim that God had spoken to him in a vision, she would think him eccentric and possibly dangerous. Her God is a distant patriarch who demands that she attend church and follow a set of ten rules, but he does not deign to pass along new rules through common people. She is accustomed to a God who keeps his distance.

The gods of the ancient Maya are closer and more demanding. At the turning of the katun, the time comes for fasting and drinking balche, for cleansing the sacred books, for dancing on stilts and burning incense. At that time, the people gather at the Sacred Well at Chichén Itzá, a city fifty miles from Dzibilchaltún. The well is a place of power, home of many gods. At the turning of the katun, priests fling jade ornaments, gold bells, copper rings, painted bowls, and incense into the Sacred Well.

With these gifts, they send messengers to the gods. If the messengers do not wish to visit the gods, they are sent – hurled over the edge by muscular priests who only wish to do them honor. The messengers fall, bright feathers fluttering in the sunlight, their voices smothered by the shouting of the crowd, the processional music, the chanting of the priests. Far below, they float, specks of silent color on the jade-green water.

At noon, when the disc of the sun fills the well with light, only one messenger floats on the water. The others are gone, taken down by the Chaacob to the submarine rooms beneath the water’s smooth surface. The priests draw out this survivor, who has returned to tell the message of the gods, bringing the prophecy for the coming year.

It is not a simple thing, this human sacrifice, any more than the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a simple execution. The messengers who do not return are among the gods; the one who does return is the oracle, the interpreter for the gods.

The archaeologist Edward Thompson dredged human bones from the Sacred Well at Chichén Itzá. The bones that Thompson found belonged to messengers who failed in their duty.