Iconic J: The Jaguar Goddess

As I write about iconic elements of The Feminine, or what are representations of essential aspects of figures that stand for women in various phases of life or in actions or behaviors that are inherently female, I try achieve some balance although biases are inevitable. All humans have biases. One of the biases that I would love to overcome is my Eurocentric bias. The world is a vast mixture of peoples and cultures. I am somewhat ashamed that I am not more global in my knowledge.
To overcome some of that bias, I want to travel to the world of the Maya who like so many other cultures have symbolically celebrated the wisdom and power of aged women in one of their Jaguar deities.

Jaguar. Panther Panthera onca
USFWS – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Digital Library SystemPublic domain image by USFWS – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Digital Library System

The incorporation of animal spirits into the gods and goddesses that helped the Maya give meaning and order to their world is essential to any understanding of their world view. Nature, people, and the animals and plants of their environment cannot be looked at individually. A pantheon of ruling and guiding spirits collectively influenced all peoples lives, not just human-formed deities, but mythic and magical beings taken from all aspects of the environment in which they lived.

Ixchel in the Dresden Codex

Ixchel or Ix Chel was the aged jaguar goddess of midwifery and medicine in ancient Maya culture. The continuation of people is such a basic need that only a powerful goddess could do it justice.

She wears a snake headdress. Crossed bones are sometimes present on her dress. Her hands and feet are often depicted with claws. Her ears are those of the Jaguar.

She is also the goddess of the moon, fertility, medicine, weaving, rainbows, songs and childbirth. Ixchel also watches over bodies of water, such as natural wells (cenotes), underground rivers and the ocean. There really are no above ground rivers in the territory where the Maya lived, then and now. The cenotes were the source of water and life. It makes sense that the Jaguar Goddess would oversee such a vital resource.

Like so much of Mayan culture, which was document in their literature, most was lost when the invading Spanish destroyed all their books, written records and scrolls, save a very small number recorded in items such as the Dresden Codex.

The Jaguar was the top predator in the Mayan world. It is easy to understand the awe given to the Jaguar by the Mayans if you have ever been in the wild near a large cat.
My own first such experience was in Arivaipa Canyon in Arizona when my daughter was young. We were hiking as a group of around 10 people including a couple of children. This was a permitted hike in the section managed by the BLM. A mountain lion walked with us all of one day, as far as we could tell, pacing us along a cliff-top trail. It was stealthy but once spotted, we kept the kids in the middle of the group so the cat would not get any ideas that it could snag a straggler. I was not afraid, but I was in awe. I was just a part of nature, as was the mountain lion. Jaguars are bigger than mountain lions.
As a side note, a border wall would further endanger these cat species which do include the mountain ranges and wilderness area north of Mexico as the northern part of their ranges. A jaguar was spotted a couple years ago in Madera Canyon near Tucson.
Gods still walk among us.

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