Talk:Hunab Ku

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Was there something wrong with my edit? I didn't think there was anything wrong with having minimal information on the god. T@nn 16:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] So-called "Hunab Ku" motif

The image of a motif (Image:Hunabku.jpg) which was has a couple of times now been inserted into the article is in fact not an authentic pre-Columbian Maya design, but rather a modern-day esotericism inspired and promoted by the likes of New Ageist eccentric Jose Arguelles. Although this design proliferates across a number of alternative and New Age sites and is described by them as a symbol of the Maya deity, the motif is a contemporary use of a similar-looking one found in the Codex Magliabecchiano of early 16thC central Mexico, as the investigation [1] here documents. To quote:

So, in summary, the "Hunab Ku" symbol was originally a rectangular symbol used by the Aztecs as a ritual cloak design... The symbol survives as a rug design being sold in central Mexico, but was associated with the Milky Way and the god Hunab Ku by day-keeper Hunbatz Men [a New Age practitioner of contemporary 'shamanism', ie not a precolumbian Maya]* in the mid-eighties. Jose Arguelles popularised this association in 1987, and changed the symbol to a circular one.

*My annotation.

The connection with genuine precolumbian Maya beliefs is extremely tenuous (in fact, non-existant). Unfortunately, thanks to Arguelles' co-opting and popularising Hunab Ku into his own syncretic theories, there's a good deal of wrong-headed confusion, which this article needs to be aware of.

The wikipedia image itself probably needs to be deleted anyway, as that particular version is certainly a modern-day drawing by someone, & is miss-tagged as Public Domain.--cjllw | TALK 10:03, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] revision

This is about all that can reasonably be said about Hunab Ku.Retal 22:18, 15 October 2007 (UTC)