Download Religions of the World: The Religion of the Maya AudioBook Free
"Greater than a assortment of quaint mythology and unique rituals, [Maya] faith was an efficient definition of the nature of the world, answering questions about the foundation of humanity, the goal of human life on earth, and the partnership of the given individual to his family, his society, and his gods. It is a faith which talks to central and enduring problems of the civilized individuals condition: electricity, justice, equality, specific purpose, and public destiny." - A Forest of Kings: The Untold Tale of the Ancient Maya In the years before 2012, there has been much involvement in the Maya calendar. Generally, this is because the calendar will complete its 5,200-year cycle on December 21, 2012, which auspicious event has been misinterpreted as signaling the end of the world. For the Maya, the endings of calendar amount of all lengths (cycles ranged from 20 times to centuries in length) were very important and required various types of rituals and offerings to be properly acknowledged. Often, the best acceptable "offering" was individuals blood vessels, and Maya elites employed in autosacrificial bloodletting to appease the deity presiding within the transition in question. Combined with detailed Maya knowledge of astronomy, the calendar system functioned for Maya priests and elites to learn which particular god in their packed pantheon was ruling at a specific minute. The Maya assumed that each period of time, embedded in products like your day, the night time, the solar time, the k'atun (20 time cycle), the lunar cycle, and Venus's cycle, was governed by the certain deity.
