Various Mayan codices detail religious symbolism about Mayan gods and goddesses. According to Mayan beliefs, dead people went to the underworld which was ruled by multiple Mayan gods, although some were more powerful than the others.

Only those who died during childbirth or were sacrificed could survive this fate. However, it is possible that there was never a unified concept of afterlife among the Mayans.

Mayans also had a concept of paradise in the afterlife where good people went after they died. Evildoers, on the other hand, were condemned to the underworld where they were eternally tormented.

The god of death and the underworld was known as Yum Cimil. However, while he was the most powerful god of the underworld, there were other gods and their assistants too who governed the underworld.

Mayans kings had A close relation with rituals offered to Mayan gods and goddesses. Kings were considered having descended from gods and rituals of kingship were supremely important during the Mayan Classic Period.

The blood of kings was considered sacred and thus the ritual of bloodletting was common among the royalty. Due to this sacredness of human blood, the human sacrifice of the kings also had more value and captured members of the enemy royalty were sacrificed for this purpose.

Religious rituals were also performed upon the ascension or death of a king. There is often a sign for darkness or night Ak'b'al or Akbal above or around his eye, and there is often a human femur in his hair.

Scholars say he is the deity of suicide, often illustrated as cutting off his own head. He is the one-legged creator god and idol and the Maya lightning god.

Illustrations of Huracan show him with a long, serpentine nose with belly scutes—horny plates like those seen on a turtle shell extending out from his abdomen—and a single, often burning serpent-like leg and foot.

Sometimes he carries an ax, a burning torch, or a cigar, and he often has a circular mirror embedded in his forehead. In the Popol Vuh, Huracan is described as three gods, beings who together initiated the moment of creation:.

Huracan is considered the god of fertile maize, but he is also associated with lightning and rain. Some Maya kings, such as Waxaklahun-Ubah-K'awil at Tikal, took his name and dressed as K'awiil to express his own power.

The bat-god Camazotz, or Zotz, is featured in a story in the Popol Vuh, in which the Hero Twins Xbalanque and Hunahpu find themselves trapped in a cave full of bats, great beasts with "snouts like blades that they used as murderous weapons.

The story of the Hero Twins trapped in a bat cave doesn't appear anywhere else, not in the Maya codexes or illustrated on vases or stelae.

But bats are sometimes labeled Ka'kh' Uti' sutz' "fire is the bat's speech" , and they do appear in Maya iconography in four roles: an emblem for some group; a messenger and paired with a bird; a fertility or pollination symbol, paired with a hummingbird; and as a "wahy being," a bestial form of a personified disease.

Zipacna or Sipac is a celestial crocodile warrior, considered a counterpart of the pan-Mesoamerican god Cipactli , the earth-monster, who had to be killed to create the earth.

Known mainly from the 16th-century highland account of the Popol Vuh, Zipacna also appears in oral traditions of rural towns in highland Maya regions.

According to the Popol Vuh, Zipacna was the maker of mountains, who spent his days looking for crabs and fishes to eat, and his nights lifting up the mountains.

One day he dragged an enormous pole to help out boys who were building a new house. The boys conspired to kill him, but Zipacna saved himself.

Thinking they'd killed him, the boys got drunk, and Zipacna came out of his hiding places and pulled the house down on top of them, killing them all.

In revenge for the death of boys, the Hero Twins decided to kill Zipacna, by toppling a mountain onto his chest and turning him into stone. Chac alternately spelled 'Chaac, Chahk, or Chaak , one of the oldest known gods in the Maya pantheon, can be traced in the Maya region back to the preclassic period.

Some scholars consider Chac the Maya version of the Aztec Quetzalcoatl. This god is illustrated with a long, pendulous and curling nose, and often holds axes or serpents in his fists, both of which are widespread symbols of lightning bolts.

Chac is closely identified with war and human sacrifice. The primordial couple of Xmucane and Xpiacoc appear in the Popol Vuh as the grandparents of two sets of twins: the older set of 1 Monkey and 1 Howler, and the younger of Blowgunner and Jaguar Sun.

Priests performed ceremonies to keep the gods happy. The Maya thought the world was divided into three parts the Heavens, the Earth, and the Underworld, which were linked together by a giant World Tree.

Mayan kings were also thought to become gods after death. The rainmaker god, Chac was often shown covered in scales and with fangs and a hooked snout.

When the deluge came, the four brothers escaped. Later Mayans associated the Bacab with urban architecture and honored him through different rituals.

Camazotz was a Mayan god who was associated with bats. He figures prominently in the Mayan saga of Hero Twins where he is one of the bats of the underworld.

According to the mythological saga, the lords of the underworld send the Twins to the House of Bats. The Twins shrink themselves and hide in their own blowguns.

When one of them looks out, Camazotz cuts his head and takes it to the underworld lords. Mayan god Chin was associated with homosexual relationships.

According to the Spanish monks who accompanied the conquistadors, it was customary among the Mayans to allow sexual relationships between young men and young boys.

Such relationships were encouraged by the fathers who saw this as a fulfillment of a tradition set by the deity, Chin. In Mayan mythology, the god Chin had a similar relationship with a demon.

This was seen as a religious acceptance of homosexual relationships among the Mayans. Hunab Ku in Mayan means the Sole God.