Page "Lacandon people" Paragraph 21

Offerings burnt in the God pots included incense, food, and rubber figurines.

The food was often thought to sustain the Gods and keep order in the universe.

The figurines were made of sap from the Castilla elastica tree, which was seen as blood from the tree and is thought to represent the blood sacrifices in some of the Lacandon ceremonies.

These figurines were usually in the form of humans with specific body parts clearly represented but at times were also in the form of animals.

Part of the belief of the Lacandón entailed the Gods being able to partake in the offerings in the God pot by the figurine being burned in the God pot and becoming a messenger for the particular God invoked.

The smoke of the offering was seen as the essence, or soul ( pixan ) which is consumable by the gods.

Ultimately, there is not a great understanding of the exact meaning of the anthropomorphic rubber figures though the symbolism appears to be representative of human sacrifice.

It is known that the rubber figures would be splattered with red annatto dye before being burnt and that at sometime before the 19th century it was common for the Lacandón to participate in bloodletting where they would cut their earlobe or septum and smear the figurine with blood before burning it.

The belief was that the God could be sustained from the smoke of the burning blood.

Other beliefs, which signify a potential history of human sacrifice, include some Gods preferring human flesh and sacrificing other Gods and also that at the end of the world the Gods would sacrifice humans and would paint their houses with the blood of the humans.

The behavior of the Gods being similar to that of humans may point toward cannibalism and human sacrifice among the Lacandón historically though these practices were non-existent or unknown by the 20th century.