RESOURCE: 20 traditional Maya textile symbols

6th Mar 2023

Mexicolore contributor Christine Eber

Scholars - such as the present author Professor Emerita Christine Eber, anthropologist and founder of Weaving for Justice - who have consulted with Maya weavers of Chiapas, Mexico, ritual specialists, and the archaeological record reveal a remarkable connection between contemporary and ancestral textile designs and an enduring commitment of Maya weavers to keep the universe in flower. Thank you, Christine, for sharing these profound symbols with our community...

ANCESTORS/ANTEPASADOS/TOTIL ME’IL/STOT SME’ The ancestors include the recently and long-ago departed who often merge with sky gods, saints and stars. The ancestors are guides in respectful human comportment. They inhabit caves and there in corrals keep the animal spirit companions of humans safe. They only release an animal companion when its mortal counterpart commits an offense against society. Three crosses sit atop holy hills serving as portals to the inner sanctum of the ancestral gods.

DEATH/MUERTE/JOCHBIL
This symbol exists only on ceremonial huipils from Santa María Magdalenas. It consists of a vulture warming himself in the sun, a worm, and a sleeping bat. The name for this design in Tsotsil means literally “worm-eaten”. The vulture features in the Maya creation story and like other characters in the story is depicted in textiles with three posts at the center of its body. The death symbol may have become the symbol of Magdalenas stemming from its history as a religious center where large numbers of people gathered spreading contagious diseases and leading to a high mortality rate.

GOLDEN OLIVE WOODPECKER/Colaptes rubiginosus /TI’
is the Tsotsil name for the Golden Olive Woodpecker. In Maya bird lore, this bird was one of God’s bird messengers. The Ti’s role was to wait in heaven for God - or one of the senior bird messengers - to send him or her down to earth to warn people that Pukuj, the devil, was going to bring harm to them. To this day, Maya elders pay close attention to birds in case their songs bring an important message. Only with prompt prayers can harm be averted. Traditional huipils from Venustiano Carranza are adorned with a row of Ti’ on the hem, protecting both the weaver and the wearer. Other birds, sent by Holy Mother Earth, sing to tell people that it will soon rain so that they can prepare their fields for planting.

CORN/MAIZ/IXIM
In Maya communities, raising corn (maize) and beans is not only essential to human survival, but a way to keep Earth, a supreme deity, fruitful and flowering. ‘The Classic and Postclassic Maya frequently depict maize ears as human heads, as if corn was a sentient being. In Maya mythology of highland Guatemala, the present race of humans are the people of maize, and were first fashioned from ground corn’ (Miller and Taube).
In the Chiapas municipality of Venustiano Carranza ‘red tree’ is the term for corn, to avoid calling it by name and possibly drawing danger to something so important to life. This symbol was brocaded on a dress by a weaver from Venustiano Carranza.

BUTTERFLY/MARIPOSA/PEPEN
The butterfly symbolises the sun and the center of the universe. In weavings it often appears at the center of the rhomboid cosmogram design. The association of butterflies with the sun may come from the arrival of butterflies in highland Chiapas at two seasonal pivots of the sun, between August 4-12 and September 20-23.
’In Late Postclassic Central Mexico, butterflies symbolised both fire and the souls of dead warriors [rising up to accompany the sun god on his daily journey]’ (Miller and Taube).

COSMOGRAM/COSMOGRAMA/TRUE DESIGN/VERDADERO DISEÑO)/BATS’I LUCH and GRAND DESIGN/GRAN DISEÑO/MUK TA LUCH
A rhomboid design is one of the most important and ubiquitous designs on textiles in highland Chiapas. It is a direct descendant of a design woven into the garment Lady Xoc of Yaxchilán wore in 709 C.E. It depicts the Maya cosmos, a quartered universe moving through time, uniting Earth and Sky. It also charts the path of Sun, a principal deity, from east (symbolised by the top diamond) to west (symbolised y the bottom diamond.) The design exists in various versions. In each viewers look straight down on Earth from just below the highest point in the heavens. Five diamond designs mark the four cardinal directions and the central diamond may stand for the nadir, the lowest point under Earth where Sun passes through at midnight on its circle back to the east. The curls or spiny appendages suggest the intercardinal directions plus the rise and set points for the summer and winter solstices. The curls also evoke the World Tree, the great Ceiba tree that stood at the center of the universe. In the crooks of the branches of cosmograms weavers put dots of brightly colored threads which they call “the eyes” of the universe and which suggest stars. Weavers represent the Sun in motion by repeating row after row of diamonds.
The recovery of this design began in the 1930s when weavers from Tenejapa went to Chenalhó to learn how to brocade. They adapted the cosmogram in Chenalhó called muk ta luch to create what they dubbed the dog’s pawprint. Eventually Chenalhó weavers took this design back but refer to it as bats’i luch (true design).

EARTH LORD/SEÑOR DE LA TIERRA/YAHVAL BALUMIL
The Earth Lord is the Lord of the underworld, giver and taker of life. On textiles he is depicted with flowery hands and often placed among flowering plants, the rain God, and toads, suggesting that he is as much about growth and life, as death.

TOAD/SAPO/XPOKOK
The toad symbolises fertility of Earth, a sacred being in ancient Maya cosmology. During the first Spring rains, cornfields are filled with toads mating and singing. Maya elders say that when the toads sing they make the saints happy, who then reciprocate by sending rain. Weavers often refer to toads and saints as interchangeable. According to Zinacanteco stories, toads are the Earthlord’s musicians and some say his j’iloletik (shamans). The shaman toad could be henhen, the Tsotsil word for the toad biologists call Bufus marinus. This toad secretes powerful anesthetic and hallucinogenic chemicals. The toad appears on a cloak of Lady Xoc of Yaxchilán, Chiapas on a lintel from 109 C.E. On this occasion he represents the fecundity of the reign of her husband, Shield Jaguar. This symbol from Chenalhó depicts the toad “Antonia” who guards Earthlord’s cave.

PINE NEEDLES/TOJ and BROMELIADS/BROMELIAS/ECH
are only used to decorate holy places, spaces, and objects – churches, saints, crosses, and the ground beneath altars for Day of the Dead/Día de los Muertos/sk’in ch’ulelal. These symbols appear around the neck of ceremonial huipils. Pine needles are represented by a chevron design.

SQUASH/CALABAZA/CH’UM TE’
Squash, corn and beans are often referred to as the three sisters. Together they continue to constitute a major source of nourishment for Maya families, and were often intercropped, reducing the risk of weeds and increasing the crop yields. Squash have grown in Mexico for at least ten thousand years. The design is based on the chevron.

HOLY CROSS/SANTA CRUZ/CH’UL KURUS
Saints are powerful sacred beings in Maya communities of highland Chiapas. After the Spanish designated them as patron saints of Maya communities, Mayas found ways to incorporate them into their already existing pantheon of deities that helped them keep the world in flower. Along with their Maya ancestors and deities, saints are guardians of communities. This symbol depicts one of the three patron saints of San Pedro Chenalhó. It is traditionally woven on the hem of huipils from Chenalhó to identity the weaver as from this township. Over the centuries, Santa Cruz has had a less fixed identity than other saints. The saint is said to take the form of either a man or a woman and to be capable of both helping and harming people.

SUN/SOL/TOTIK/JESUS/JESÚS/OUR FATHER/NUESTRO PADRE/TOTIK
To Tsotsil Mayas Sun is Our Father and Jesus Christ. In rituals they pray before his flowery face. In myths flowers cover his road. In ceremonies his symbol looms as the flowery flag below.

SNAKE/SERPIENTE/CHON
PATH OF SNAKE/CAMINO DE LA SERPIENTE/BE CHON
The path of the snake often symbolises a road, a metaphor for royal office. When the Maya deities created the universe they placed three stones in the constellation of Orion to form the cosmic hearth that created Earth. The serpent was one of the three stones. Serpents are often associated with the fertility of Earth and bestower of good fortune, as well as of underworld entrapment by Pukuj, the devil.

THE PLUMED SERPENT/SERPIENTE ENPLUMADA/QUETZALCOATL/K’UK’ULCHON
The plumed serpent graces textiles as the double-headed feathered serpent. For Mayas, this animal represents a fertile earth. The symbol also stands for the planet Venus as it moves through the heavens. The two-headed serpent reflects the difficult discovery made by ancient Maya astronomers that Venus blazes forth as both the morning star and the evening star.

STARS/ESTRELLAS/KANALETIK
The star design appears in different forms but usually involves some use of a cross or plus sign and four or two dots of color. Some star symbols in contemporary weavings show a striking resemblance to the Classic Era Maya glyph for star. Stars are also the glowing crown of the saints.

MAN/HOMBRE/VINIK
Gender complementarity remains an important ideal in Tsotsil-Maya communities. The principle is symbolised by designs representing men and women. The man symbol has four fingers and toes symbolizing the four corners of the milpa, the corn and bean field, where men carry out their principal responsibilities to their families - to grow the food they eat.

WOMAN/MUJER/ANTS
Gender complementarity remains an important ideal in Tsotsil-Maya communities. The principle is symbolised by designs representing men and women. The woman symbol* has three fingers and toes and three lines descending from her body connecting her to Earth which is often referred to as “Our Mother.” Three is the ancient Maya number for women, representing the three stones that hold up the comal, the clay griddle on which women make tortillas. Still today, women complement their kinsmen’s work in cornfields by transforming corn into food for their families.

ZAPATISTA WOMAN IN A FLOWER/MUJER ZAPATISTA EN UNA FLOR/ANTS ZAPATISTA LI OY TA NICHIM
This embroidered design represents the centrality of women’s rights to the Zapatista movement and its potential to lead to a greater flowering of and respect for the original peoples of Chiapas and the world. The woman is shown with a face mask. Zapatistas say that they cover their faces to focus on their collective identities and to show, ironically, that until they organised to defend their rights they were invisible to those in power. Embroidery has become an important technique in recent decades in Chiapas with the growth of cooperatives that seek to find ways to make money for women who may not know how to weave.

BEE/ABEJA/CHANUL POM
This symbol is inspired by Civil Society the Bees, an organisation of Catholic families that formed in Chenalhó in 1992. Since the Zapatista uprising in 1994, the Bees have worked in solidarity with the Zapatistas to overcome social injustices through non-violent means. A tragic consequence of this group’s solidarity with the Zapatistas was the massacre by a paramilitary group on December 22, 1997 of 45 members of Abejas who were praying for peace in a chapel in Acteal, Chenalhó. Since then, children and mothers have been embroidering bees on various textiles, like book marks, with the name for bee in Spanish and Tsotsil.