Symbolism in the Glyphs of the Nahuales

Someone once told me it not necessary to study the nahuales or their meanings, because you can just stare at the glyphs and "download" the messages encoded there. Silly, of course.

But it is possible to find hidden meanings of the nahuales by examining the symbols and then looking through the Popul Vuh for passages containing the same symbols.

Imix/Imox (Crocodile), for example, shows lines depicting an alligator's back and, at the top, a water lily; these represent the land and the waters. When I looked up land and water in the Popul Vuh, I found the story of how Heart of Sky and Sovereign Plumed Serpent created land, which arose suddenly from the oceans when "...the waters were divided."

Vast continents suddenly rising from the seas all around the world at the same time must have created immense tsunamis that crisscrossed the planet, crashing into the new shorelines and rolling back across the oceans -- turbulence.

Turbulence is a form of instability, one of the key meanings of Imox. The glyphs and Popul Vuh tell me that Imox's meaning is based on the creation of the continents as described in the Popul Vuh. And that its core meaning is actually turbulence, a form of instability. I have found this method useful when seeking insights into other nahuales.

Symbolism of Lamat/Q'anil (Seed)
The four dots have many meanings, but the most obvious is the four seeds of corn used to create the four kinds of humans as told in the Popul Vuh. They may be colored red, yellow, black and white, so this symbolism also reflects the four cardinal directions and their colors. (This sign is sometimes called Rabbit in English.)

Muluc/Toj (Water)
I also discuss the symbolism of the glyphs with Maya and Western scholars in Guatemala. Recently I met Felipe Lopez, who works with Dr. Richard Hansen at El Mirador and who recently restored the frieze of the Hero Twins.

He was painting a mural that contained the glyph for this nahual, which has a feature that has been interpreted in several ways by various authors. It looks like the head of an animal with a set of lips or a bill on the right side. Scofield and Orr call it a fish. Others say turtle. I always thought it was a duck.

But Lopez laughed and said, "It's not an animal." He explained that it illustrates an abstract concept that has to do with child birth. Which makes sense, because this sign is typically associated with women. And the dot in the center is sometimes interpreted as symbolizing a drop of menstrual blood in order to conceive.

I'll be speaking with more experts at the Mayan Archaeology Convention in La Antigua later this week. My findings will appear here and in the 2012 edition of my book on Mayan astrology.

Until then, try it yourself. Select a nahual, pick out the symbols and read the Popul Vuh until you run across a correspondence and figure out what it means. Every one of the nahuales appears in the Popul Vuh, which for me is a users guide to the Sacred Calendar.

Shay Addams
9 Oc/Tzi (Dog), June 2012
Lake Atitlan, Guatemala