Huracán

Also Known As: K’iche’ Juraqan; also Hurakan, Jun Raqan; called U K’u’x Kaj, Heart of Sky
Region/Culture: Mesoamerica and the Caribbean
Mythos: Mayan Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: The power of the sky expressed as the thunderbolt, whose speech alone is enough to bring the earth up out of the water.
Role in Mythos: He is the creator in the Popol Vuh who makes humanity four times over, destroys the failures, and afterwards speaks from the sky to direct the Hero Twins.
Relation to Humans: He wanted beings who could speak his name and remember him, and he wrecked three drafts of them for failing to. When the fourth draft could see as far as the gods themselves, he fogged their eyes rather than share the view.

Before there was anything to stand on there was a flat sea under a dark sky, and neither of them moved. No sun. No shore. Nothing had a name yet, because nothing had been said. Then the sky spoke, and what spoke in it was lightning.

The Popol Vuh, written down in the K’iche’ language in the sixteenth century by men who were preserving what they could under Spanish rule, gives that voice a name at once: Heart of Sky, and Heart of Sky is Huracán. K’ux, heart, is not only the organ. It is the animating spark, the seat of thought, the thing that makes a thing itself. So the god is not the owner of the sky. He is what the sky has instead of a soul.

He is also, immediately and confusingly, three. Thunderbolt Huracán is first, Youngest Thunderbolt second, Sudden Thunderbolt third, and the text says without apology that these three are Heart of Sky. One god arriving as a shaft of lightning, a young lightning, and the green flash of a bolt that comes without warning. The K’iche’ generally name their gods in pairs, which makes this trinity strange even inside its own book.

What his name means is a genuine argument. In its simplest reading Juraqan is jun raqan, One Leg, and one-legged sky gods turn up across Mesoamerica; the Classic Maya K’awil, god of kingship and lightning, is shown with one human foot and one serpent. But raqan also means length, or height, or something long and gigantic, and the Popol Vuh uses the word a line later for the lightning bolt itself, a long flash. K’iche’ speakers have told translators that leg can serve as a counting word for living things, the way English counts head of cattle, so One Leg might simply mean one of a kind. Allen Christenson, who has translated the book line by line out of the original, says plainly that the etymology is too complex to settle. That is the honest position, and it is more interesting than the tidy one.

Creation begins as a conversation. Heart of Sky comes down to the water and meets Sovereign and Quetzal Serpent, who lie in the sea under blue-green quetzal and cotinga feathers, and the two powers talk it through: sheet lightning on the water, thunderbolts in the air, arguing about how to make something that will speak. Then they say Earth, and the earth comes up like a cloud, like a mist unfolding, and the mountains break the surface with water already cutting their sides into rivers. Cypress and pine cover the new faces of the hills. It took a sentence.

The rest took four attempts, and three of them were slaughters. The animals were made first and could only shriek and cackle, so they were told their flesh would be eaten and sent off into the ravines. A person of mud was tried and could not hold together; it slumped, it was blind, it dissolved in water. Then came the wooden people, who walked and multiplied and had children, and who had no memory and no heart, and so did not once look up at the sky that made them. Huracán drowned them. A thick black resin poured from the sky and it rained by day and it rained by night, and animals large and small came into the houses, and then the houses turned. The grinding stones spoke. The griddles and the water jars and the cooking pots spoke, all of them saying the same thing, that they had been burned and scoured and worn to nothing, and now it was their turn to do the grinding. The dogs joined in. The wooden people ran for the rooftops and the roofs threw them off, ran for the caves and the caves shut in their faces. Their bones were smashed and their faces crushed, and the survivors, the story says, are the monkeys in the forest, which is why a monkey looks like a bad drawing of a man.

The fourth attempt worked. Ground white and yellow maize became flesh, and the four first men could see to the ends of the earth and up through the sky and knew everything there was to know. They gave thanks beautifully. And the gods stopped, and said that this was too much, that these were not people but copies of themselves, and so they breathed a mist across their eyes and blurred the sight in them like breath fogging a mirror. From then on humans could see what was near. That is the whole of the deal. He crippled his best work on purpose, and the reason given is that he did not want company.

After that Huracán mostly speaks. When the false sun Seven Macaw sat glittering in the tree taking the credit for daylight, it was the voice of Heart of Sky that sent Hunahpu and Xbalanque to bring him down, and the same voice that ordered them on to his sons, Zipacna the mountain-maker and Cabracan the mountain-breaker. He does not descend and fight. He gives instructions from a great height, which is a thing storms also do.

His powers follow from that. His word makes and unmakes; his hand is the lightning bolt, which is water and fire in one stroke and which the highland Maya still hold to be the thing that fertilizes the ground, splits the seed, and speaks in a diviner’s own blood as a tingling under the skin. What he lacks is independence. He cannot make anything alone. Every act in the book begins with him coming down to the sea to consult, and even then he gets it wrong three times running and has to destroy his own work to try again. And he needs to be remembered, which is the only real leverage anyone has ever had on him. The gods of the Popol Vuh are not fed by blood so much as by being named out loud. A creation that forgets to say the name is not a disappointment. It is a failure of the whole design, and it comes down in black rain.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Huracán in Maya mythology?

Huracán is the K’iche’ Maya creator god known as Heart of Sky, the power of the sky in the form of the thunderbolt. In the Popol Vuh he speaks the earth up out of the primordial sea together with Sovereign and Quetzal Serpent, and he makes and destroys three failed versions of humanity before the fourth succeeds.

What does the name Huracán mean?

The K’iche’ name Juraqan is usually read as One Leg, from jun (one) and raqan (leg), and one-legged sky gods appear widely in ancient Mesoamerica. The word raqan also means long, tall or gigantic, and the Popol Vuh uses it of a lightning bolt as a long flash of light. Translators have never agreed on a single definitive meaning.

Does the word hurricane come from Huracán?

The connection is real but the route is not settled. Spanish sailors took the word huracán from the Taíno of the Caribbean for the great swirling storms, and English had hurricane from Spanish by the sixteenth century. Whether the K’iche’ name and the Caribbean word are the same word travelling, as Daniel Brinton argued in 1890, or two similar words meeting, is still an open question.

Why did Huracán destroy the wooden people?

The wooden people walked and talked and had families but had no hearts and no memory, and they never once thanked or named the gods who made them. Huracán answered with a flood of black rain, and their own animals and household objects, the grinding stones, griddles, pots and dogs, turned on them and destroyed them. The monkeys in the forest are said to be what was left.

What did Huracán do to the first true humans?

The four first men made of maize could see to the four corners of the earth and knew everything, which made them too like the gods. Huracán and the other creators breathed mist over their eyes so that their sight was blurred, as breath blurs a mirror, and human beings have seen only what is near them ever since.