The Flayed God: The Mesoamerican Mythological Tradition

Human sacrifice, symbolic bloodletting, divine kingship and other pre-Columbian Mesoamerican rites and customs can be understood only in the context of the mythological traditions of the Aztec, Maya and Olmec, assert the authors. Their captivating study amplifies key Mesoamerican mythic narratives, hymns and prayers with 100 reproductions (25 in color) of ancient ceramics, stone sculptures, paintings, monuments and masks. Beginning with simple yet profound female figurines, this panoramic survey moves on to the Great Mother Goddess, hero twins, feathered serpents, were-jaguars and the fourfold development of the gods, the cosmos and humans from the unity of the creative principle. The Markmans, who cowrote Masks of the Spirit: Image and Metaphor in Mesoamerica , take readers inside a strange yet exalted universe whose inhabitants--mythic and human--participated in a cyclic drama of death and regeneration. (Feb.)