Tepeu and Kukulkan (Q'uq'umatz) sat together in the primordial sea before creation, forming the sovereign-serpent pair whose deliberation and creative word brought the world into existence in the Popol Vuh.
Q'uq'umatz, Tepeu, and Huracan fashioned the first four men from white and yellow maize after failed attempts with mud and wood, grinding the corn and mixing it with water to form Balam-Quitze, Balam-Acab, Mahucutah, and Iqui-Balam.
Huracan, Q'uq'umatz, and Tepeu spoke the world into being over the primordial waters, raising the earth and establishing Yax Che, the great ceiba world tree, as the cosmic axis connecting heavens, earth, and underworld.
Quetzalcoatl and Kukulkan are the Feathered Serpent who created the world and brought civilization to humanity, worshipped from the Aztec highlands to the Maya lowlands with shared temples, iconography, and cosmogonic narratives spanning a millennium of Mesoamerican religious tradition.
In the Popol Vuh, the creator gods — Huracan, Q'uq'umatz, Tepeu, Alom, and Qaholom — consulted the divine daykeepers Xpiyacoc and Xmucane, who cast maize kernels and coral seeds to divine that corn was the substance from which true humans should be fashioned.
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