Maya_Mythology_Overview

In common with other Mesoamerican civilizations, each of the cardinal (or world-) directions were ascribed certain properties and associations. These attributes held a particular significance, and they provided one of the major frameworks which interlinked much of Maya religion and cosmology. The Maya world-view recognized the four primary compass directions, and each of these was consistently associated with a particular color- east with red, north with white, west with black and south with yellow. These associations and their respective glyphs are attested from at least the Early Classic period, and also figure markedly in the Postclassic Maya codices.A fifth 'direction', the "center", also formed a part of this scheme. Associated with a blue-green color, this was most frequently represented by a great ceiba tree, conceptualized as the "tree of life". In Maya cosmology this formed a kind of axis mundi which connected the Earth's center with the layers of both the underworld and the heavens. It is believed that living ceiba trees were maintained at the center of many pre-Columbian Maya settlements in symbolic representation of this connection, and alternatively one was placed at each of the four cardinal directions as well.[2]