two serpents intertwine and hold a grotesque figure and a blood-letter (an instrument that allowed one to draw one’s own blood for sacrifice to the gods). Performing sacrifice was sacred and vital to ...

And this is pretty obvious in the young maize god - the sculpture was apparently a manifestation of mythological beings resulting from the third Maya creation. There were eight mythological beings ...

Drawing several parallels to figures from ... it was a common symbol of artistic creation closely related to the maize god (the Maya god of creation), and several statues capture these creatures ...