Bolon Yokte

Also Known As: in full Bolon Yokte’ K’uh, also written B’olon Yokte’ and Bolon Okte’; Ah Bolon-yocte in the colonial Yucatec books; bolon is nine and k’uh is god, and the middle part of the name has never been securely read
Region/Culture: Mesoamerica and the Caribbean
Mythos: Mayan Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Bolon Yokte is a Maya god, or company of gods, tied to war, conflict, the underworld and the great turning points of the calendar.
Role in Mythos: He is named among the gods gathered in the dark on the day the present world was set in order, and again on the one ancient inscription that looks ahead to the end of the thirteenth bak’tun in 2012.
Relation to Humans: Maya kings named him in the texts of their wars and their building dedications, and the colonial books of Yucatan made him the lord of a whole twenty-year period. No ordinary prayer or household offering to him is recorded.

A slab of limestone lies in pieces. It was once a wall panel inside a small, dark shrine at Tortuguero, in the wet lowlands of Tabasco, and it was carved for a king named Bahlam Ajaw, who ruled from 644 to 679. The stone is cool and pale, and the glyphs on it are cut in neat blocks no bigger than a hand. Most of the text is about the king. It tells of his wars, of blood that pooled and skulls that were piled up. Then, near the end, the writing does something no other Maya monument does in such detail. It leaps forward more than thirteen hundred years, to a day the scribe wrote as 4 Ajaw 3 K’ank’in, the close of the thirteenth bak’tun. On the modern calendar that day was 21 December 2012. And the stone says who will be there. It names Bolon Yokte.

The name is old and hard. Bolon is the Maya word for nine. K’uh, which often follows, means god. The part in the middle has defeated every reader so far. Ralph Roys, translating the colonial Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel in 1933, offered “the nine-footed one” and added at once that the meaning was uncertain. Later readers have tried Nine Strides, Nine Supports and Nine Foot Tree. Markus Eberl and Christian Prager, who gathered every mention of the god in 2005, left the middle of the name unread and said so. David Stuart has pointed out that with the word for god attached, the phrase may name a whole company of gods and not a single one. So the first thing known about Bolon Yokte is that nobody can say for certain how many of him there are.

He has no agreed face either. Maya artists drew their gods often and labelled them freely, yet no picture has been accepted as his portrait. What survives is the company he keeps. On two painted vases from the seventh or eighth century, known as the Vase of the Seven Gods and the Vase of the Eleven Gods, an old god sits on a jaguar-skin throne inside a house. He wears a wide hat of owl feathers and smokes a thin cigar. In front of him sit two rows of gods with their arms folded, and on the first vase the whole background is painted black, because the sun has not yet been made. The writing beside them gives the date 4 Ajaw 8 Kumk’u, the day in 3114 BC when the present world began, and says that on that day the gods were set in order. It lists them. The gods of the sky are there, and the gods of the earth, and among them Bolon Yokte.

That is the nearest thing he has to a myth. He does not make the world. The old god in the feathered hat presides, and Bolon Yokte is one of those in the room. But he is in the room at the very start, in the dark, with the smell of tobacco and the bundles tied and waiting on the floor.

He turns up again wherever Maya kings wrote about deep time. A carved tablet from Temple XIV at Palenque describes an event set more than nine hundred thousand years in the past, when the lightning god K’awiil was first taken up, and it says the act was overseen by Bolon Yokte. Other inscriptions along the Usumacinta river name him too. Eberl and Prager found a steady pattern in these texts, running from the early Classic period to the Spanish conquest. Wherever he appears, the subject is war, conflict or the underworld. That fits the Tortuguero panel, where his name shares a stone with pooled blood.

The longest life of the name is in Yucatan. In the Chumayel book, written down in the eighteenth century from much older material, each katun, a period of about twenty years, has its own lord and its own fortune. Katun 11 Ahau was the first in the count, and it was the katun in which the Spaniards came. Its prophecy says that the heavenly fan and the heavenly bouquet shall descend, and then: “The drum and rattle of Ah Bolon-yocte shall resound.” A wooden drum, a gourd rattle, and a god arriving with the foreigners. Roys judged from the passage that Ah Bolon-yocte was the lord, or the idol, of that katun.

So what was supposed to happen in 2012? The stone does not predict an ending. Stuart first read the damaged glyphs as a possible “descent” of the god. In 2010 Sven Gronemeyer and Barbara MacLeod gave a fuller reading: the thirteenth bak’tun will be completed, there will be a seeing, and it will be the display of Bolon Yokte in a great investiture. They took this to mean a ceremony in which the god’s image would be dressed, wrapped and shown to the people. Stephen Houston has argued that Maya scribes used far-off dates mainly to throw glory back on their own day, so that a king’s new shrine could stand in line with the turning of the ages. Either way it is a ritual, with cloth and an audience. Nothing burns.

His power, then, is one of presence. Bolon Yokte stands at the hinges of time: the first day of the world, the first taking of the lightning god, the turn of a katun, the turn of a bak’tun. When the count rolls over, he is there, and what comes with him is the business of war. Kings who named him were claiming that their own battles and buildings belonged to that same order.

His limits are plain in the record. He never acts alone. He oversees, attends and arrives, but no surviving text shows him striking a blow, fathering a child or speaking a word. He was not the maker of the world and no Maya source says he would be its destroyer. The world gave him one day of fame, in December 2012, for something his stone never said.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Bolon Yokte?

Bolon Yokte is a Maya god, or possibly a group of gods, linked to war, conflict, the underworld and the turning points of the calendar. The name appears in Classic Maya inscriptions, on painted vases and in the colonial Books of Chilam Balam. Bolon means nine and k’uh means god, but the middle part of the name has never been securely read.

What does Tortuguero Monument 6 say about 2012?

Tortuguero Monument 6 says that the thirteenth bak’tun will be completed on the day 4 Ajaw 3 K’ank’in, which fell on 21 December 2012, and that Bolon Yokte will be involved. The 2010 reading by Sven Gronemeyer and Barbara MacLeod describes a seeing and a display of Bolon Yokte in a great investiture. The text describes a ritual and does not predict the end of the world.

Is Bolon Yokte one god or nine?

Nobody knows whether Bolon Yokte is one god or nine. The name begins with the Maya word for nine, and David Stuart has noted that with the word for god attached it may name a whole company of gods. No Maya text settles the question.

What does Bolon Yokte look like?

No agreed portrait of Bolon Yokte exists. Bolon Yokte is named in the text of the Vase of the Seven Gods and the Vase of the Eleven Gods, which show gods seated in darkness before an old god in an owl-feather hat on the day the world began in 3114 BC. None of the seated figures has been accepted as his picture.

What is Bolon Yokte’s role in the Book of Chilam Balam?

In the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, Ah Bolon-yocte appears in the prophecy for Katun 11 Ahau, the katun in which the Spaniards arrived in Yucatan. The text says that the drum and rattle of Ah Bolon-yocte shall resound. The translator Ralph Roys concluded that Ah Bolon-yocte was the lord or idol of that katun.