The Place of Fright: the Maya Underworld
Xibalba lies beneath the earth, ruled by One Death and Seven Death at the head of paired lords, each pair administering its own affliction. The Popol Vuh maps the road down in detail: a plunge of steep steps, a rushing canyon, then three rivers to cross - one churning with scorpions, one of blood, one of pus - before a crossroads where four roads meet, red, black, white, and yellow. The black road speaks aloud and beckons travelers on toward the council place of the lords. There the etiquette itself is a trap: dressed mannequins sit among the lords so that a polite greeting earns howls of mockery, and the bench offered to guests is a stone slab heated glowing hot.
The killing is done in the trial houses. In the House of Darkness each guest receives a lit torch and cigar that must be returned whole at dawn; beyond wait the Cold House, the Jaguar House, the Fire House, the Bat House with its blade-snouted bats, and the Razor House whose blades stir on the walls. The first pair of visitors, Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu, failed at the very first test and were sacrificed, buried in the ballcourt, one skull hung in a calabash tree. A generation later the Hero Twins survived every house, won the ballgame, and destroyed the two chief lords with their sacrifice trick. Defeated Xibalba was demoted: no more clean offerings, only the smoke of burnt sap, and no company but the guilty.
In Maya geography, caves and cenotes are the doorways of Xibalba. Deep inside Actun Tunichil Muknal cave in Belize lie calcified human skeletons and heaps of shattered offering vessels, read by archaeologists as gifts to the rain god and the lords below. Maya communities in Yucatán and the Guatemalan highlands still treat deep caves as ground not to be taken lightly.
