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Yum Kaax
Pronounced "yoom kosh," literally, "The Maize God," one of the most important deities worshipped by the Maya of Central Mexico. He is usually depicted as an androgynous youth, wearing a headdress of maize stalks and a curved streak on his cheek, and often with a sloped head and a small tuft of hair on the top, like an ear of maize. Frequently, he was combined with Yumil Kaxob, the god of flora. Unlike other gods, Yum Kaax was entirely dependent on other deities, especially the rain god, Chac, for strength and protection, and was vulnerable to the power of Yum Cimil, god of death, drought, and famine. Yum Kaax's association with creation derives from the belief that humans were formed from a paste of maize flour and rain water.
Yum Kaax's importance to the Maya can be seen through the enromous influence he had on their culture. Boards were tied on the front and back of the soft heads of infant children to give their heads the same elongated look as the god's. One of the most important sacrificial rituals among the Maya was done in Yum Kaax's honor. Priest-kings would pierce their penises with stingray spines, then draw a thin peice of twine to which were tied little thorns through into the wound and out through the urethra. His wife would pierce her tongue and draw a similar string through the wound. Blood which pour from the wounds was gathered on paper, which was burned to send the sacrifice to the heavens, and the shock and trauma was believed to send the priest-king and his wife into trances from which the will of Yum Kaax and the other gods could be divined.
Yum Kaax was also sometimes combined with the Creator God Hun Nal Ye or Itzamna, who was also referred to as the Maize God as well as the Plumed Serpent. It was this latter form of the god that eventually passed to the Toltecs and later the Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl, the god Montezuma II believed Cortez to be when the Spanish conquistadore came to Mexico in 1520.
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