Xibalba

Mm.

So it was great to hear, like, how you pronounce the Mayan underworld, Xibalba.

Yeah.

And Martín and, um, Hun-Kamé and Wa- wa- Wakub.

Because she, like, jabs a piece of the bone into her body.

Um, and the story just kind of unfolds from there.

So we, we get a tour through the underworld, which I can't wait to talk about.

Oh my God, yeah.

Continuing on their way, they reached a point where four roads converged: a black road, a white road, a red road, and a green road.

Now Hunahpu and Xbalanque knew that their first test would consist of being able to discriminate between the princes of Xibalba and the wooden effigies robed to resemble them, also that they must call each of the princes by his correct name without having been given the information.

To secure this information, Hunahpu pulled a hair from his leg, which hair then became a strange insect called Zan.

Buzzing along the black road, the Zan entered the council chamber of the princes of Xibalba and stung the leg of the figure nearest the door, which it discovered to be a mannequin.

By the same artifice, the second figure was proved to be of wood, but upon stinging the third, there was an immediate response.

By stinging each of the twelve assembled princes in turn, the insect thus discovered each one's name, for the princes called each other by name in discussing the cause of the mysterious bites.

Having secured the desired information in this novel manner, the insect then flew back to Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who thus fortified, fearlessly approached the threshold of Xibalba and presented themselves to the twelve assembled princes.

When told to adore the king, Hunahpu and Xbalanque laughed, for they knew that the figure pointed out to them was the lifeless mannequin.

Across continents that never touched each other, across religions with nothing else in common, the same image keeps appearing.

A tree connecting the divine and the earthly, life and death, heaven and the underworld all at once.

Following the same pattern we traced across 17 prophecy traditions last episode, worth sitting with each of these before we return to Genesis itself.

Norse tradition holds Yggdrasil, an enormous ash tree so vast it connects nine separate worlds at once.

Anuradhapura, where that tree still lives today, now recognized as the oldest human planted tree in the world with a documented planting date.

When the original at Bodh Gaya was lost for good, a cutting was eventually carried back from that very same Sri Lankan tree and replanted at Bodh Gaya in 1881. meaning the tree standing there today is a descendant returning home after 17 centuries, destroyed repeatedly by human hands and preserved every single time through a cutting sent onward just before the loss, worth sitting with as its own kind of resurrection story.

Mesoamerican tradition, particularly Maya, holds Wakachan, the world tree, depicted rising through three distinct levels at once, its roots reaching into the underworld, Xibalba, its trunks passing through the earthly realm and its branches extending into the heavens.

frequently placed at the exact center of Maya cosmological art and temple architecture.

What does the-

They would, they would all start in the lower world, the underworld, but then the spirits of the royal family's bloodline would ascend up into the heavens where the gods were.

The nice gods.

There were less nice gods in the underworld.

Really?

Yeah.

In their early days, their grandmother raises them, and she tries to tell them they're not ball players and hide that, because that's how their fathers died.

And then they, the story goes on where they eventually beat these terrible lords of death.

The light rises from within the land, from within the caves.

Shibalba, the underworld, the nine levels of the underworld where you learn to remember your truth is more important.

If you give your power to others, you will not succeed and you will be doomed to repeat the failures and the pain again and again.

Now the hero twins are walking with us and the great Seba tree of life is opening her doors saying, you are the tree of life.

Um, Tlalocan, Mictlan.

Xibalba.

Xibalba.

Oh, Xibalba would be great.

Um, and The Feathered Serpents for the legion name.

Like it.

Those are all, those are all really good.

Those are really good.

The song is a cover of a well-known track written by the legendary Brazilian musicians Ayrton Moreira and Flora Purim, which appeared in 1970.

The title is an alternate spelling of Ziabalba or Shibalba, which comes from ancient Mayan mythology.

In the Ka'ish Maya language, Shibalba translates roughly to the place of fright or place of fear and represents the Mayan underworld.

Paprika Soul is a UK collaboration of Alan Barnes and Andrew Spiller, along with varying lineups of musicians.

Lots of great songs from them.

This deity resided in a paradise called Tlalocan, imagined as an eternally verdant garden where those who experienced particular forms of passing, such as by lightning or drowning, would dwell in abundance.

The Maya, meanwhile, developed an elaborate understanding of the underworld they called Xibalba, described in detail in the Popol Vuh.

This realm was not simply a place of ending, but rather a challenging domain through which souls journeyed, facing tests and trials.

The hero twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, famously descended into Xibalba and outwitted its lords through cleverness and skill at the ballgame that was sacred throughout Mesoamerica.

Their eventual transformation into the sun and moon demonstrated that even the celestial bodies had to undergo trials and transformations.

The Mesoamerican ballgame itself carried deep mythological significance.