Tohil

Also Known As: also spelled Tojil; K’iche’ Maya, on the root toh, which means rain and also tribute or payment; titled Qajawal Kej, “Our Lord Deer”; called Belehe Toh by the Kaqchikel and Hun Toh, “One Rain”, by the Rabinal, both of whom held that these were the same god under another name
Region/Culture: Mesoamerica and the Caribbean
Mythos: Mayan Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He makes fire out of nothing by turning inside his own sandal, and he fixes the price at which it is handed over.
Role in Mythos: He is the patron god the K’iche’ carried out of Tulan Zuyua, the giver of fire and the origin of their standing obligation to feed him blood.
Relation to Humans: He gives people the one thing they cannot survive a highland night without, then names a price taken out of their own chests, and the Popol Vuh likens his taking of it to an infant nursing at its mother. Every lineage that accepted those terms became his, and the one lineage that stole the fire instead has been at odds with the K’iche’ ever since.

The rain came down black, and then it came down as hail, and every fire on the mountain went out inside a few minutes. The first people stood in the dark with their arms crossed over their chests and their teeth going. One of them, a man called Balam Quitze, carried a bundle strapped across his back, and the thing inside the bundle could speak, and had been speaking to him since they left the east.

What came out of that bundle did not kneel down and strike a spark off a stone. Tohil pivoted once inside his own sandal, the way a fire drill turns in its socket, and flame came up out of the leather. That is the whole of the miracle as the Popol Vuh gives it, and the economy of it is the point. The god was fire. He had no need to go and find any.

His name looks simple and is not. It rests on the root toh, which in K’iche’ means rain, and also means tribute, payment, the thing that is owed. He carried all of that at once. He was the fire deity of the K’iche’ and the patron of their ruling Kaweq lineage, and at the same time a god of rain, of the sun, of thunder and lightning and the sunrise, of the mountains and of war, which in the Guatemalan highlands were never separate concerns. One of the twenty named days of the calendar was his day, Toh, and offerings went to him on it.

The trouble began when the other tribes saw the smoke. They came down out of the cold with their hands out, shivering, asking for a share, and the thing they were asking was reasonable and small. Tohil’s answer was neither. He wanted to know whether they were willing to give up their waist and their armpits, whether they would let him embrace them. They agreed before they fully understood, and what the embrace meant was a blade opening the side of the body and a hand going in after the heart. The Popol Vuh describes his consumption of that blood as a child suckling at its mother, which is a gentler image than the act deserves and was probably chosen for exactly that reason. The price of fire was the human chest.

One group declined to negotiate. The Kaqchikel came in under cover of the smoke and simply took what they needed, walking out with fire and no contract, and the K’iche’ account of this has the sour tone of a creditor describing a defaulter. It is given as the origin of the enmity between the two peoples, which outlasted both the alliance and the conquest.

He had come to them at Tulan Zuyua, the place of seven caves, which the four founding fathers reached after crossing the sea from the east. The tribes gathered there to be given their languages and their gods, and what each lineage received was a god who could be picked up and carried. Balam Quitze took Tohil. Balam Acab took Awilix and Mahucutah took Jacawitz, and those three formed the triad that ran the K’iche’ state, sun and moon and mountain, so closely bound that the sources sometimes call all three of them Tohil and leave it at that. Iqui Balam, the fourth founder, is recorded as having received nothing and having no descendants, a detail the text drops without comment.

Nobody describes his body. There is no face in the record, no height, no colouring, and the absence is not an accident of transmission but a fair description of how he was actually met: as a weight on a man’s back, wrapped and unopened. He was embodied in a deerskin bundle, and one of his titles was Our Lord Deer. Deerskins are still blessed and worn with the head and antlers attached in highland Maya villages today. What he looked like when he moved is unrecorded, and what he looked like afterwards is not, because at the first true sunrise Tohil, Awilix and Jacawitz all stiffened and turned to stone where they stood, along with the first animals of the world.

Before that, the tribes tried one more thing. Two young women, Xtah and Xpuch, were sent to the river where the gods bathed, with instructions to come back with proof that the gods had taken them, so that the gods might be shamed and broken. The gods declined, and sent them home with three painted cloaks instead. Balam Quitze had drawn a jaguar on the first and Balam Acab an eagle on the second, and Mahucutah covered the third with hornets and wasps. The lords of the tribes put them on one after another to admire themselves, and when the third went over a man’s shoulders the insects came off the cloth alive and set about him.

His powers all grow from that single root of fire and payment. He gives warmth and the sun and the rain that raises maize, and he grants victory in war, and the Popol Vuh has him promise hornets and wasps to his people as weapons when their enemies come. He was worshipped in the highest building at Q’umarkaj, the K’iche’ capital, a radial pyramid with stairways on all four sides and a summit shrine facing the sunrise, its stucco painted with a jaguar. His priests, the Aj Tohil, were drawn from the Kaweq and offered him quetzal feathers. Writing at the end of the seventeenth century, Francisco Ximénez recorded the tradition of what happened on the platform: the victim tied before the image of the god, the chest opened, the heart taken out, and the body sent down the front stairway to be beheaded for the skull rack at the base.

His limits are the limits of a god who trades. He can be paid off, which means his favour is contingent and can lapse, and he can be cheated, as the Kaqchikel proved with no apparent consequence to themselves. Stone was the end of his mobility. And the same appetite that made him powerful made him the first target the Spanish clergy went after in Guatemala, since a god who eats hearts is easy to preach against. They did not manage it cleanly. In Rabinal he was folded into Saint Paul and kept most of his character, and in Santiago Atitlan a traditional priesthood still addresses a figure called King Martin, Lord of the Three Levels, Lord of Rain, Lord of Maize, and Lord of all the Mountains, whose feast falls on the eleventh of November, just before the maize comes in, and whose ceremony turns on the blessing of deerskins.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Tohil?

Tohil is the fire god of the K’iche’ Maya of highland Guatemala and was the patron deity of the K’iche’ at the time of the Spanish conquest, particularly of their ruling Kaweq lineage. He is best known from the Popol Vuh, the K’iche’ book of creation and lineage history. Beyond fire he was also a god of rain, the sun, thunder, mountains, war and sacrifice.

How did Tohil give fire to the K’iche’?

After black rain and hail put out every fire the first people had, Tohil produced new fire by pivoting inside his own sandal, in the manner of a fire drill turning in its socket. He gave it freely to the K’iche’, who carried him, but when the other tribes came asking for a share he set a price. He required their sides and armpits, meaning the opening of the chest and the offering of the heart.

Why did Tohil demand human sacrifice?

Tohil made sacrifice the standing payment for fire, and the K’iche’ understood the arrangement as a debt rather than a cruelty, which is reflected in his name: the root toh means both rain and tribute or payment. The Popol Vuh compares his taking of blood to an infant nursing at its mother. The K’iche’ met the obligation with their own blood and with captives taken in war.

Which people stole fire from Tohil?

The Kaqchikel took fire without agreeing to Tohil’s terms, slipping in under the smoke and carrying it off, and so avoided the debt the other tribes accepted. The Popol Vuh presents this theft as the origin of the long enmity between the K’iche’ and the Kaqchikel. It is one of the few times in the text that anyone gets something from Tohil for free.

What happened to Tohil at the first sunrise?

When the sun rose for the first time, Tohil turned to stone where he stood, and so did Awilix and Jacawitz, the two gods who made up the K’iche’ triad with him, along with the first animals of the world. Before that dawn the gods had spoken, moved and given instructions to the founders who carried them. Afterwards they were venerated as objects, above all as the wrapped deerskin bundle that embodied Tohil and gave him the title Qajawal Kej, “Our Lord Deer”.