[Aztlan] Paddler Deities

[Karen Bassie]

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book on Maya sacred geography 
that gives an overview of the Paddler gods, and suggests that they are 
parallel to Xulu and Paqam of the Popol Vuh. Karen Bassie

There is an old pair of diviners in the Popol Vuh named Xulu (Descended) 
and Paqam (Ascended) who are given the title eta'manel "sages" which is 
also used to describe the creator grandparents and the other diviners. 
Christenson (2003a:177) noted that colonial sources also describe Xulu 
as "[spirit] familiars appearing alongside rivers", and ah xulu as a 
diviner. When the hero twins realized that the lords of death were 
planning to kill them by pushing them into the oven pit, they devised a 
plan so that they would be able to be resurrected later. They had to 
make sure that the death lords disposed of their bone remains in a 
manner that would allow for this resurrection. Knowing that the death 
lords would consult Xulu and Paqam about the best means of getting rid 
of their remains, the hero twins summoned the two diviners, and told 
them to have their bone remains ground like corn into a fine powder, and 
then sprinkled on the river that "winds among the small and great 
mountains" (Christenson 2003a:177-178). It is unclear which river the 
bones of the hero twins were scattered on, but the description implies 
that it was on the surface of the earth, and of the four major rivers, 
it is the Chixoy that winds back and forth.

            In Classic period art, there is a pair of old male deities 
who are also associated with a river. They are frequently pictured 
together in scenes, and they are named as a pair in hieroglyphic texts. 
They were initially nicknamed the Paddler Gods because they appear 
paddling a canoe on a series of bone carvings from Tikal Burial 116 
(Freidel, Schele and Parker 1993:90). The first old deity has the 
attributes of GIII including the jaguar characteristics and fire cord 
over his nose while the other has a sting ray spine through his nose, 
and he often wears a headdress in the form of a xook "shark". The close 
association of this latter Paddler God with stingray spines is seen in 
an effigy stingray spine in the Peabody Museum collection. The caption 
text on this stingray spine identifies it as belonging to him (Stuart, 
Houston and Robertson 1999:II 46).

            The celestial nature of the Paddlers is indicated by their 
appearance in the sky on a number of monuments where they cling to "s" 
shaped scrolls used to designate clouds and mist, and they are 
consistently identified as lords of a place call Na Ho Chan which has 
been translated as First Five Sky. On Jimbal Stela 1, they are called 
Chahks "thunderbolts", and on Sacul Stela 1, they carry a title for an 
office that is represented by a supernatural bird wearing a plain 
headband (Stuart 2006). This headband bird also represents the day name 
Men. In the highland calendars, Men is called Tz'ikin which is a general 
word for bird in most Maya languages. No satisfactory decipherment of 
the headband bird sign has been established, but the office was also 
held by secondary lords who are dressed in the accoutrements of Maya 
priests (Zender 2005; Stuart 2005b). A clue to the function of the 
headband bird office may be found on a wooden box from the Tortuguero 
region (Coe 1974; Stuart 2005b). This box was used to hold stingray 
spines, and the text carved on it refers to a priest/diviner of 
Tortuguero who acquired the headband bird office in A.D. 680. One of the 
duties of a Maya priest was to draw blood from various parts of his body 
to give as an offering to the gods, and the primary tools used to 
perforate the skin in this endeavor were stingray spines. Given the 
stingray spine attribute of one of the Paddlers, it seems reasonable to 
suggest that one of the duties of the headband bird office was related 
to blood sacrifice using sting ray spines (Stuart 2005b).

<>            Like many of the gods, the names for the Paddlers are 
often represented by their portraits, but these portraits can be 
replaced with two paddle-like cartouches that have k'in and ak'bal sign 
infixed on them. This pairing of day and night signs has been 
interpreted to mean that they represent the opposition of day and night 
or that they are a metaphor for a day and a night or that they represent 
twilight (MacLeod in Schele 1992:257-58; Schele and Mathews 1998:414; 
Wichmann 2004). In the contexts of the Distance Number Introductory 
Glyph, day and night signs are paired to convey the concept of 
complementary opposition, and it may be that the k'in and ak'bal signs 
in the paddle cartouches have a similar function. What is interesting 
about the k'in/ak'bal paddle name is that it indicates the close 
association that these two deities had with their canoe, and by 
extension the river. Xulu and Paqam and the Paddler Gods were two pairs 
of old diviner priests closely associated with rivers, and I suggest 
that they were parallel deities.