Xibalba: the Hero Twins who went down into the Popol Vuh's underworld

This is the story of two twin brothers, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who went down to Xibalba, the underworld, and defeated its lords. It is told in the Popol Vuh, the book of the K'iche', a Maya people of the highlands of Guatemala. Before them, their father and their uncle had gone down the same road, and there they were defeated. How did the twins defeat the ones who had defeated their father? Down below, the lords of death and disease were waiting for them with six houses of the night: a dark house, a house of blades, one of cold, one of jaguars, one of fire and one of bats. Tonight we go down with them, step by step, as the book tells it.

It was written in K'iche', using the Latin alphabet, some thirty years after the conquest, by members of the K'iche' nobility whose names we don't know. That manuscript was lost. What we have is the copy made in the early eighteenth century by Friar Francisco Ximénez, parish priest of Chichicastenango, with the K'iche' in one column and his Spanish translation in the other. The friar called Xibalba hell, but that was his word, not the K'iche' word. Ever since, each translator has read some passages in their own way. Here we mainly follow two translations, those of Adrián Recinos and Allen Christenson, and where they differ on something that matters, we'll say so. The story of the twins really begins with the story of their father.

Hun Hunahpu, the twins' father, and his brother, Vucub Hunahpu, had been born at night. They were two brothers who only wanted to play ball. They played on the road leading down to Xibalba, a name that one of its translators renders as Place of Fear. And they played so hard that, beneath the earth, the lords of Xibalba heard them over their heads. The two highest lords were called Hun Came and Vucub Came, One Death and Seven Death. The other lords each had their own task: some brought disease, others misfortune near the home, others sudden death on the roads. The noise of that ball offended them, and they decided to summon the two brothers to defeat them at their own game.

The messengers of Xibalba were four owls. One was swift as an arrow, another had only one leg, another had a red back, and the last was nothing but a head and wings. They perched on the ballcourt and gave their message: the lords were summoning the brothers to play. Before leaving, the brothers hung their rubber ball under the roof of the house. Their mother, Xmucane, who in time would be the twins' grandmother, wept. They told her they were not going to die. And they began to go down.

They went down some very steep steps, between canyons and rivers, and crossed a river of blood without drinking from it. Apart from that, each translation describes the road in its own way. Then they came to a crossroads where four roads met: one red, one black, one white and one yellow. And the black road spoke to them. "I am the lord's road," it told them. One of the translators reads it as the road the sun takes when it sinks into the underworld. For the two brothers it was the road to the lords of Xibalba, and there, the book says, their defeat began.

When they arrived, they saw the lords seated in a row, on a long bench. The brothers greeted them as if they were Hun Came and Vucub Came, the two highest lords. But the first ones seated were wooden effigies, dressed as lords, and the Xibalbans laughed at the brothers. Then they were offered a bench. The bench was a burning-hot stone. Xibalba was full of houses of trial, and that night they were sent to the first, the House of Darkness, where there was nothing but darkness. They were given a burning torch of ocote, a resinous pine, and a lit cigar each. Everything had to be returned whole at dawn.

The torch and the cigars burned away during the night, and at dawn the brothers had nothing to return. For that, they were condemned. The lords sacrificed the two brothers and buried them at the ballcourt of sacrifice. The head of Hun Hunahpu was left among the branches of a tree beside the road, and at that moment the tree was covered in round fruit, just like that head. It is what we now call the calabash tree. From then on, the lords forbade anyone to go near it.

A young woman went alone to see the tree no one could touch. She was Ixquic, daughter of a lord of Xibalba, the underworld of the K'iche' Maya Popol Vuh. Among the tree's round fruit hung the head of Hun Hunahpu, a ballplayer sacrificed by the lords. The skull asked for her right hand and left its spittle in her palm, where it vanished. And so she conceived twins. When her father found out, the lords sent the owls to sacrifice her. But she won the owls over. They let her escape: to the lords, in place of her heart, they brought the red sap of a tree, and while the lords burned it, never seeing the trick, the owls led her to the surface.

Up above, Ixquic came to the house of Xmucane, the grandmother, who did not believe her. To test her, the grandmother sent her to fill a net in a milpa, a maize field that had only one plant, and the net filled up. The twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, were born in the mountains. Hunahpu bore almost the same name as his father. They grew up in the mountains, hunters with blowguns: with a single breath they shot clay pellets. One day they found, hanging under the thatched roof of the house, their father's ball, with his hip guard, his arm guards and his leather leg guards. It had hung there all the years the twins had been alive.

And the twins began to play. Beneath the earth, the lords again heard the ball over their heads, and they summoned the twins, as they had summoned their father. The twins had seven days to appear. Before going down, they left two maize plants in the middle of the house, on dry ground, as a sign for their grandmother. Then they slung their blowguns over their shoulders and took the same road as their father.

A mosquito went first into the hall of the lords of Xibalba, the underworld. It was sent by twin brothers, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who had been summoned to play ball; so the Popol Vuh of the K'iche' Maya tells it. They had crossed the rivers on their blowguns, and at the crossroads where their father was defeated, they already knew which road was which. The mosquito bit, one by one, those who were seated. The first ones, wooden effigies, did not answer. Each lord, as he cried out, said the name of the next. It wasn't really a mosquito, the book says, but a hair from Hunahpu's leg. Then the twins greeted each lord by name, and they did not sit on the burning stone.

Two brothers were given a torch, a cigar for each of them, and orders to return everything whole at dawn. They were the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque, on their first night before the lords of death, in the House of Darkness. The scene comes from the Popol Vuh, written down by the K'iche' Maya. The same trial had cost their father and their uncle their lives: the torch and the cigars ran out before daybreak. The twins did not light the torch. They put the red tail feather of a macaw on it, and on the tips of the cigars, fireflies. The guards saw them glow and thought they were lit. At dawn, the twins returned the torch and the cigars whole.

The next day they played ball with the lords. The Xibalbans wanted to use their own ball, and out of it came a sharp blade; then they played with the twins' ball. They wagered four calabash bowls of flowers, and the twins let themselves lose on purpose: now it was up to them to fill the bowls. That night they were sent to the House of Blades. The twins told the blades that the flesh of animals would be their food, and the blades stood still. Meanwhile, the twins sent the zompopos, the leafcutter ants, to the lords' garden. It was guarded by some night birds that only knew how to sing. The ants cut all the flowers, and the birds, singing all night in the branches, felt nothing. At dawn, the four bowls were full.

Then came the House of Cold, full of hail, and the twins drove out the cold. Then came the House of Jaguars, and they gave bones to the beasts. Then came the House of Fire, and they did not burn. Each house was a whole night, and every morning, at dawn, the twins were still alive. With the houses of Darkness and Blades, that made five. The sixth remained: the House of Bats.

That night, in the House of Bats, the twins slept inside their blowguns. In that house lived the bat the text calls Camazotz; Christenson translates it in the plural, death bats, and Recinos describes it as a great beast. Inside the blowguns, the twins were safe. All night long the bats shrieked, quilitz, quilitz, and before dawn they fell still. Then Hunahpu wanted to see whether dawn had come. He put his head out of the mouth of the blowgun, and the bat cut off his head. Afterwards, Christenson writes, only the rustling of wings was heard.

An old animal of the night darkened the sky four times, to buy time for two brothers. The K'iche' Maya tell it in their book, the Popol Vuh. In Xibalba, the underworld, the twin Hunahpu had been left without a head, and his brother, Xbalanque, gathered all the animals so that each one could choose its food. The last one made Hunahpu a new head: a turtle, according to Recinos; a coati, bringing a squash, according to Christenson. Eyes were carved into the head, and sages came down from the sky. But the sky was beginning to redden, and the head was not finished. So that old animal darkened the sky again. At dawn, Hunahpu had another head.

A rabbit came hopping out of a tomato patch, and the lords of Xibalba, the underworld, ran after it. They thought it was the ball. It was a ballgame from the Popol Vuh, the book of the K'iche' Maya: on one side, the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque; on the other, the lords. Hunahpu's real head hung over the court, where the lords had put it, and he was playing with a new head the animals had made him. Xbalanque struck the ball and sent it out of the court, to where the rabbit waited in hiding. While the lords chased the rabbit, the twins recovered the real head and gave it back to Hunahpu. Then, on the court, they smashed the false head.

Then the twins learned what the lords were preparing: they meant to kill them in a great fire. They didn't flee. First, they told two seers what to advise the lords about their own bones. Then they stood face to face, spread their arms and went into the fire together, of their own will. The lords ground their bones and threw them into the river, and the bones sank.

Up above, in the grandmother's house, the two maize plants still stood in the middle of the house. The twins had left them as a sign: if they dried up, the twins would be dead; if they sprouted again, they would be alive. When her grandsons went into the fire, the plants dried up, and the grandmother wept before them. And then they sprouted again. So the grandmother burned copal, the resin offered as incense, and gave the plants names, in memory of her grandsons.

On the fifth day after the bones were thrown into the river, the water gave back two young men who looked like fish. The next day, two vagabonds appeared, in rags, who danced and worked wonders. They danced animal dances, like the armadillo or the centipede. They would burn a house, and the house would stand whole again. They would sacrifice each other, and come back to life. They were the twins, disguised as poor men. And then the highest lords of Xibalba, Hun Came and Vucub Came, sent for them.

Before the two lords, the vagabonds sacrificed the dog of one of the lords, and the dog came back to life wagging its tail. They burned his house, and the house stayed whole. They sacrificed a man, and raised him. And at last, Xbalanque sacrificed Hunahpu, and Hunahpu rose at a single word from his brother. The lords, delighted, asked to be next. They asked to die and come back, as in the dance. First the twins sacrificed Hun Came, the chief of all the lords, and then Vucub Came. But this time no one raised them. The rest of Xibalba fled into a canyon and surrendered, and the twins told them who they were, and whose sons they were. From then on, the book says, the lords of Xibalba can no longer seize just any person.

With Xibalba defeated, the twins went to the ballcourt of sacrifice, where their father and uncle lay buried, to honor them. They wanted to restore the face of one of them. They asked him to name his mouth, his nose and his eyes, but he barely spoke. The translations disagree on which of the two it was: their father, in Christenson; their uncle, Vucub Hunahpu, in Recinos. The twins promised them they would be invoked first, and that their name would not be lost.

Then the twins went up to the sky. One of them arose as the sun, and the other as the moon, and the vault of the sky and the face of the earth were lit. The book doesn't say which of the two became the sun. Four hundred young men went with them and became stars. So ends, in the Popol Vuh, the descent of Hunahpu and Xbalanque. For many Maya in Guatemala it is a sacred book, and a living tradition. Down below lies Xibalba, with its houses of the night. And above, every day and every night, the light of the two brothers returns to the earth.