The principal sources of our knowledge of the Maya deities are the Dresden, Madrid, and Paris codices alluded to previously, all of which contain many pictorial representations of the various members of the Maya pantheon. Of the very names of some of these gods we are so ignorant, and so difficult is the process of affixing to them the traditional names which are left to us as those of the Maya gods, that Dr. Paul Schellhas, a German student of Maya antiquities, has proposed that the figures of deities appearing in the Maya codices or manuscripts should be provisionally indicated by the letters of the alphabet. The figures of gods which thus occur are fifteen in number, and therefore take the letters of the alphabet from A to P, the letter J being omitted.
Unluckily the accounts of Spanish authors concerning Maya mythology do not agree with the representations of the gods delineated in the codices. That the three codices have a mythology in common is certain. Again, great difficulty is found in comparing the deities of the codices with those represented by the carved and stucco bas-reliefs of the Maya region. It will thus be seen that very considerable difficulties beset the student in this mythological sphere. So few data have yet been collected regarding the Maya mythology that to dogmatise upon any subject connected with it would indeed be rash. But much has been accomplished in the past few decades, and evidence is slowly but surely accumulating from which sound conclusions can be drawn.
We witness in the Maya mythology a dualism almost as complete as that of ancient Persia--the conflict between light and darkness. Opposing each other we behold on the one hand the deities of the sun, the gods of warmth and light, of civilisation and the joy of life, and on the other the deities of darksome death, of night, gloom, and fear. From these primal conceptions of light and darkness all the mythologic forms of the Maya are evolved. When we catch the first recorded glimpses of Maya belief we recognise that at the period when it came under the purview of Europeans the gods of darkness were in the ascendant and a deep pessimism had spread over Maya thought and theology. Its joyful side was subordinated to the worship of gloomy beings, the deities of death and hell, and if the cult of light was attended with such touching fidelity it was because the benign agencies who were worshipped in connection with it had promised not to desert mankind altogether, but to return at some future indefinite period and resume their sway of radiance and peace.