Lords of Xibalba- Maya GroupCollective"Rulers of the Place of Fright"

The Hierarchy of Death

The Lords of Xibalba ruled as a council of twelve. At the top sat Hun Came and Vucub Came, One Death and Seven Death, the supreme pair. Beneath them served ten subordinate lords arranged in five pairs, each administering a specific form of suffering: blood disease, swelling, wasting to bone, domestic misfortune, death on lonely roads. Every illness and every mysterious death had its lord in Xibalba.

The Trial Houses

The road to Xibalba led through six trial houses. The Dark House offered absolute blackness. The Rattling House, freezing cold. Then the Jaguar House, the Bat House where Camazotz waited, the Razor House of moving obsidian blades, and the Hot House of consuming fire.

When Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu descended to Xibalba, the lords gave them a torch and cigars at the entrance to the Dark House: keep them lit through the night, but do not consume them. The brothers could not solve the riddle. By morning the torch and cigars were ash. The lords brought them to the ballcourt and sacrificed them.

The Hero Twins came prepared. A mosquito named Xan had spied on the lords and learned their names, stripping them of the power that anonymity gave. In the Dark House the twins used fireflies for light, preserving their torch and cigars intact. They survived each house in turn with tricks the lords had never seen, and when they reached the ballcourt, they played.

Defeat and Diminishment

The Hero Twins' triumph did not merely destroy the two chief lords. It diminished the power of all twelve. After killing Hun Came and Vucub Came, Hunahpu and Xbalanque confronted the remaining lords and pronounced judgment: sap instead of blood, broken pots instead of fine vessels. Death's grip over the living loosened. The lords' power was reduced to afflicting the wicked and the careless rather than commanding all souls.