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from maize and agave), the leaves of wild tobacco plants and hallucinogenic mushrooms led the Mayans down the path of human sacrifice as a way of exerting some control over the elements, or at least creating the feeling that they were asserting themselves.
     
    A   P ANTHEON OF  G ODS
     
    The Mayans worshipped a large number of different gods and goddesses – at least 166 named deities – and each one required love and nourishment in order to ensure the health and wealth of the people. The people’s devotion needed demonstrating. This could take many forms, but the most extreme was that of bloodletting and human sacrifice.
    Mayan shamans controlled learning and ritual and were in charge of calculating time, festivals and ceremonies, fateful days and events, curing disease, writing and genealogies. The priesthood were not celibate, and the role was usually passed down through the generations from father to son. The Mayan year was dictated by a 260-day sacred round calendar and their rituals were based around this calendar which was controlled, like most everything else, by members of the priesthood.
     
    B LOOD  L ETTING
     
    Many Mayan rituals involved self mutilation and bloodletting in order to annoint religious objects. The motive for the ritual dictated where on the body blood was taken from, and what kind of sacrifice was made. The head of most Mayan households would give a small amount of blood every single night in order to stave off disaster.
    The Mayan elite were obsessed with blood, both their own and that of their captives. As the Mayan civilisation began to fall, kings of various territories rushed from city to city performing desperate blood-letting rights in order to invoke the protection of their gods. Some have argued that the reason for this bloodlust lies with the fact that meat was extremely scarce, and the people malnourished to the point of lunacy. Human sacrifice may have provided the Mayan aristocracy with their only reliable source of protein.
     
    F ERTILITY  R ITUAL
     
    In one particularly eyewatering fertility ritual, a king would use a stingray spine or an obsidian knife to make an incision in his penis before drawing a piece of rope through the wound in order to increase blood flow. He allowed the blood to collect on a piece of paper in a bowl. The paper would then be burnt, releasing human energy skyward and thus offering it as a sacrifice to the heavens in return for a son. It was believed that the gods could be seen in the smoke, communicating messages to their living subjects and issuing demands.
    The Mayan kings were able to do this, not because they had extraordinarily high pain thresholds, but through the use of potent hallucinogenic drugs, which propelled them to a place where pain no longer mattered very much.
    When a king acceded the throne, a captive would be sacrificed to the gods in order to cement the new king’s position. This was the most important ritual in a king’s life as it was the point at which he inherited the throne and became leader of his city.
    Human sacrifice was routinely practised on prisoners, slaves, orphans and illegitimate children who were specifically purchased for this prupose. The priests would gather on elevated platforms or on top of pyramids so that the people could gather beneath them to witness the special event. The priests were assisted in the sacrifice by four older men called chacs (after the Mayan rain god). These men would hold the arms and legs of a sacrificial victim while another man called a nacom opened up the chest. A shaman or chilam was also in attendance – he conversed with the gods in a trance-like state and relayed messages which were interpreted by the gathered priests.
     
    T HE  S ACRIFICIAL  V ICTIM 
     
    In this most exotic of rituals, the prisoner was first painted blue, and held over a sacrificial table by the chacs. The position of the altar meant that the prisoners chest was thrust upwards, making the following