Pauahtun

The sky in this cosmology is a weight and someone is under it. Pauahtun is the old man doing the holding, and the Maya put him under thrones and roofs as well, which makes the architecture an argument: the building stands the way the sky stands, on the same god. He is also the reason this batch records the Bacabs as four persons and him as one — the Yucatec sources give the four names and directions and colours, and the Classic art gives one god quadrupled, and rather than choose, the records carry the relation.

Domains

• sky bearing
• cardinal directions
• rain

Relations

• manifested as: HobnilThe eastern aspect. The Bacabs are recorded here as four figures and Pauahtun as the one they are aspects of, because the Yucatec sources name them individually and the Classic material treats them as a fourfold form of one god; both facts are true at once and the records say so.Reference treatment of the four aspects of Pauahtun as the Bacabs, one at each compass point. (secondary)
• manifested as: Can TzicnalThe northern aspect.Reference treatment of the four Bacabs as the four aspects of Pauahtun. (secondary)
• manifested as: Zac CimiThe western aspect.Reference treatment of the four Bacabs as the four aspects of Pauahtun. (secondary)
• manifested as: HozanekThe southern aspect.Reference treatment of the four Bacabs as the four aspects of Pauahtun. (secondary)

Sources

• Pauahtun, God N, is the Classic Maya sky-bearer, an aged god shown emerging from a turtle or conch shell holding up the sky, whose four aspects are the Bacabs at the four directions, and who stands beside Chaac in the Dresden Codex rain almanacs.: Reference treatments of Pauahtun / God N and of the Bacabs. (secondary)