Balam - Jaguar

Balam Codice
Balam means Jaguar in the Mayan language and its mythology Balam was the protector God of fields and crops and was worshiped before starting agriculture. Balam were also used to name wise men or wizards.

The jaguar is the largest feline in the Americas and the third in the world (after the lion and tiger), is also the sole representative of the genus Panthera found on this continent and lives from places like the desert near the Arizona Desert or Mexican highlands until the Amazon rainforests.

The jaguar in Mayan culture

In the Mayan culture, the jaguar was called Balam or Chac and was a symbol of power. People who used to dress jaguar skin was a person with authority in society, usually represented in the codices. The God of the Sun, was transformed into a jaguar to travel during the night by the world of the dead. The mottled skin of this beautiful cat, representing the stars.

The Mayan ruins of Yucatan have produced several images of the jaguar. For the Mayas, the jaguar sun dominated the night and day, at the afternoon the sun jaguar battling against Xilbalban (the underworld) during the night, beating and emerging again at the sunrise the next day.
The Mayans identify the jaguar with the number nine, symbolic number of places of the underworld. The feline is the "Lord of the bottom." It is also the land which, with its jaws open, devouring the sun lights between dusk exhausted. And then, the dotted animal was mutates into black sun, the earth subterranean traveler bearing on whether a sea shell, representing the moon and, in parallel, Renaissance (being the Moon, Silver Women, which reborn in the night sky after three nights of death or absence).

His repeated victory in the infernal world, it gives the jaguar as psicopompo powers, guide the soul of the dead. In this edge of their existence, the cat is confused with the dog Xolotlan, god dog accompanying the jaguar-sun, sun-earth in their nightly raids by deeper lands. Is the ability of the jaguar as a guide which allows franking the nine rivers that prevent free access to Chocome Mictlan, the ninth heaven, immortal residence of the dead.

At its ctonic dimension, jaguar sister was also with the crocodile. Mixtec and Aztecs believed that the land arises from an alligator swimming in a primordial sea. For the Maya, the crocodile from the beginning carries on his back all geographies. At its telluric significance, the crocodile can replace the great jaguar as "Lord of the Worlds hellish." The horrific resident of the waters may also be the custodian of the four ends of the world as it happens with the jaguar in the Aztec worldview. The crocodile from the jaws open, in turn, as it appears in the images Maya, is identified with the jaguar whose jaws are expanded to land eating the sun in the twilight.
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