[Aztlan] Itzamnaaj bird

[Karen Bassie]

This is a posting regarding the identification of the Itzamnaaj bird. 
Bardawil (1976) identified a number of supernatural birds, and named 
them the Principal Bird Deity. These birds exhibit several common 
features such as serpent wings and the talons of a bird of prey, but 
they also exhibit distinct characteristics that indicate they were not 
all the same bird. Nick Hellmuth identified one of these Principal Bird 
Deities as the avian manifestation of the creator grandfather Itzamnaaj. 
The identifying attribute of the Itzamnaaj bird is that he wears the 
headdress of Itzamnaaj and he frequently carries a double-headed serpent 
in his beak. This serpent is most clearly seen on the west wall of the 
San Bartolo murals that illustrates a number of Itzamnaaj birds carrying 
the serpent.

In several pottery scenes such as K4546 and K1226, the hero twins are 
depicted shooting the Itzamnaaj bird with their blowguns. In these 
scenes, the bird is situated in a tree. In the Popol Vuh, the hero twins 
shot the bird deity Seven Macaw when he landed in a tree, and most 
researchers identified the Itzamnaaj bird in these scenes with Seven 
Macaw based on the presence of the tree. But as Hellmuth pointed out, 
the Itzamnaaj bird is clearly not a macaw. There is, however, another 
bird deity in the Popol Vuh who was also shot by the hero twins, and his 
name was Wak. In this episode, the Underworld rulers sent their owl 
messengers to the household of the hero twins to demand that the twins 
come to the Underworld to play ball. When the owls arrived, only the 
grandmother Xmucane was at home so they gave her the message. Her 
grandsons were away playing ball at their ballcourt so she sent a louse 
from her head to give them the message. On the road to the ball court, 
the slow-moving louse encountered a toad who volunteered to carry him. 
The toad ate the louse and continued the journey. The toad then met a 
great snake who volunteered to take him at a faster rate of speed. The 
snake swallowed the toad and again the journey continued. Then the snake 
encountered the bird Wak who swallowed him. When Wak arrived at the ball 
court he landed at the edge and called out. The twins grabbed their 
blowguns and shot the bird in the eye because they wanted to know what 
his message was. Wak whirled around and fell to the ground where the 
twins seized him. Wak promised to give them their message on the 
condition that the twins first restore his eyesight. This they did by 
rubbing his eye with black rubber resin from their ball. Wak then 
vomited up the snake who vomited up the toad. In the teeth of the toad, 
the twins found the louse and then the louse finally delivered the message.

In his Popol Vuh translation Dennis Tedlock noted that Wak was a 
Herpetotheres cachinnans. This bird is called a waco or laughing falcon 
because it makes two kinds of calls: a "wa ko" sound and a "ha-ha-ha" 
sound like laughter. Another name for this bird of prey is snake hawk 
because it feeds almost exclusively on snakes including venomous one. To 
kill a snake, the laughing falcon first bites off the snake's head, and 
then flies into a nearby tree to eat the body. This is evident in one of 
the San Bartolo examples of the Itzamnaaj bird where one of the snakes 
held by the bird has its head bit off. Itzamnaaj was the first priest 
and rainmaker. Tedlock noted that Wak was a messenger bird and that the 
laughing falcon is viewed as a bird of omen from Central Mexico to 
Brazil. However, throughout Mesoamerica, the call of the laughing falcon 
is specifically thought to be an indication of the coming of the rains. 
For example, the Itzaj Maya refer to the laughing falcon as ajpäy ja' 
"announcer of rain", and the Ch'orti' say that the call of the laughing 
falcon brings the rain. The Maya word for water ha' and the laugh of the 
laughing falcon are the same sound. As pointed out to me by Alonso 
Mendez, the call of the laughing falcon is literally saying water, 
water, water. The greatest concern for the Maya was the timely arrival 
of the rains, and the Itzamnaaj bird was the messenger who announced 
this event with his "ha ha ha" call. The serpent wings of the Itzamnaaj 
bird are also related to the attributes of the laughing falcon. The wing 
feathers of a laughing falcon are stiff. When the bird hunts, it alights 
near a snake, and spreads one wing towards the snake to fend off a 
strike until it can grasp the snake's head with its talon. This behavior 
of the laughing falcon that juxtaposes the snake and the wing likely 
explains the conflation of the serpent and the wing.

Several contemporary Maya groups view the laughing falcon as a healer, 
and healing was one of the main functions of Itzamnaaj. Itzamnaaj was 
the paternal grandfather of the hero twins, and various episodes in the 
Popol Vuh refer to the fact that the hero twins inherited the best 
attributes of their grandfather including healing. It clearly states 
that the hero twins were spiritually superior to their half brothers, 
the monkey twins. The hero twins were able to defeat their half brothers 
because the monkey twins were not spirituality strong enough to 
transform themselves back from their monkey forms. When the hero twins 
wounded Seven Macaw in his jaw, it eventually resulted in his defeat and 
death. They were able to defeat Seven Macaw because he was not powerful 
enough to heal himself.

So why did the mighty Itzamnaaj bird allow himself to be shot by his 
grandsons? The answer lies in the critical difference between the 
shooting of Seven Macaw and the shooting of Wak. Unlike their encounter 
with Seven Macaw, the hero twins did not subordinate, defeat or kill 
Wak. They simply shot him in the eye, and then Wak forced them to heal 
it. They demonstrated to Wak that they were powerful healers, and this 
was a skill that was a prerequisite for their later defeat of the lords 
of death. After they healed him, Wak gave them their message which 
allowed them to depart to the underworld. After defeating the death 
lords, they rose up as sun and full moon on zenith passage and began the 
first corn cycle. Had the hero twins not been able to heal Wak, they 
would not have gotten their message and they would not have become sun 
and full moon. The testing of deities before they assume their final 
roles is common in Mesoamerica. For example, Nanahuatzin and 
Tecuciztecatl were tested before they were allowed to become sun and moon.
Karen Bassie