The Long-Nosed Rain God with the Lightning Axe
Chaac has a long, down-curling snout, hooked fangs at the corners of his mouth, a body of reptilian scales, and a shell dangling from each ear. One hand grips a serpent, the other swings a stone axe: its fall is the lightning, its crack the thunder. Catalogued as God B, he appears in the bark-paper codices more often than any other deity, presiding over almanac pages on planting, rainfall, and the prospects of the year. For farmers living on maize, the rain god was the harvest itself.
He is four gods as much as one: the red Chaac of the east, white of the north, black of the west, and yellow of the south, matching the color-coded quarters of the Maya cosmos. The architecture of the Puuc hills set this cult in stone; the facade of the Codz Poop palace at Kabah is stacked with hundreds of long-snouted masks traditionally identified as Chaac. From the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá, dredgers recovered jade, gold discs, incense, and human bones, widely read as offerings to the rain god.
The cult never died. In dry years, Yucatec villages still hold the Cha'a Chaak ceremony: an altar is raised in the fields, maize drink and fowl are offered, and four boys tied at the altar's corners croak like rain frogs, calling the four Chaacs to bring the storm.
