Xpiyacoc- Maya PrimordialPrimordial"Divine Grandfather"

The Divine Diviners

Xpiyacoc and his wife Xmucane existed among the primordial beings before the current world took form. The Popol Vuh names them in the council of gods who deliberated how to create beings capable of worship. The first attempts failed badly. Animals were created first, but they could only squawk and howl, unable to name their creators or offer praise. The gods shaped humans from mud, but these dissolved in water. The wooden people came next: they could walk, talk, and multiply, but they had no blood, no moisture in their flesh, no hearts, and they forgot their makers entirely. The gods sent a great flood to destroy them, and even their cooking pots and grinding stones rose up against them.

After these failures, the creator gods turned to Xpiyacoc and Xmucane. The aged couple cast maize kernels and red coral seeds, counting out the patterns in the technique called chol q'ij, "counting of the days." The lots pointed to maize as the substance for true humans. Contemporary Maya daykeepers still invoke Xpiyacoc as the original master of their art when they cast their own seeds and read the sacred calendar.

Father of the Maize God

Xpiyacoc fathered Hun-Hunahpu, the Maize God who descended to Xibalba and was killed by its lords. His grandsons, the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque, later avenged their father and defeated death itself. Xpiyacoc did not venture to the underworld or confront the death lords. His part in the story was older and quieter: he cast the divination that showed how to create humanity, and he fathered the lineage through which life would outlast death.