Vucub Caquix

Every morning, in the grey half-light that stood in for day before there was a sun, a bird climbed a nance tree and ate. The fruit was small and yellow and sour, and he knocked it loose from the crown of the tree with the unhurried confidence of something that has never once been contradicted. His teeth caught what light there was and threw it back. So did his eyes. From the ground at that hour he would have looked like the only bright thing in the world, which is exactly what he said he was.

Seven Macaw said it out loud, and the Popol Vuh keeps the speech. He was the sun, he announced, and the light, and the moon. His eyes were silver, bright and resplendent as emeralds. His teeth shone like perfect stones, like the face of the sky. His nose gave off light the way the moon does. His throne was silver, and the face of the earth lit up when he passed in front of it. Then he closed with the line that gives the whole performance away: he was the sun and the moon for all mankind, because he could see very far.

He could not. The book is blunt about it. He could see as far as the horizon and no further, and he was not really the sun at all; he was vainglorious of his feathers and his riches. That was the whole substance of him. The faces of the sun and the moon were still covered, the sky had not yet dawned, and in that gap a wealthy bird with good teeth was able to pass for the source of daylight because there was nothing to hold him up against.

The text never says where he came from. He is simply already there in the twilight after the flood, in the wreckage of the wooden people, a leftover from an unfinished world. He had a wife, Chimalmat, and two sons who had inherited his particular disease. Zipacna made the mountains overnight and said so. Cabracan shook them and said so. Listen, said the father, I am the sun. I am the one who made the earth, said the elder son. I am the one who shook the sky and made the earth tremble, said the younger. Three voices in an empty world, all of them talking about themselves.

Heart of Sky had heard enough, and two youths were sent. Hunahpu and Xbalanque knew the tree and they knew the schedule, so they lay in the leaves at the foot of it and waited for breakfast. The pellet from the blowgun took him square in the jaw. He came screaming out of the treetop and hit the ground, and when Hunahpu ran in to finish it the injured bird caught the boy’s arm, bent it back at the shoulder and tore it off. Then he went home with it, nursing his ruined mouth, and hung his trophy over the household fire to smoke while he waited for the owner to come and ask for it.

That was the mistake. The Twins found an old man and an old woman, both white-haired and bent almost double, and put them in front as a pair of travelling healers with two grandsons trailing behind. Their advertised speciality was taking the worm out of an aching tooth. Seven Macaw was on his throne and in agony and could barely speak, and he begged them for help, and when they proposed pulling the teeth he refused, because his teeth and his eyes were the only reason he was a lord. They promised replacements of ground bone. The replacements were kernels of white maize. Out came the shining teeth, one after another, and in went the corn, and his face fell in on itself and he stopped looking like anybody’s god. Then they finished his eyes and took everything of value off him. He felt none of it by that point. He only watched. Chimalmat died with him, the arm went back on Hunahpu’s shoulder as good as new, and the old couple walked away with the emeralds.

Nobody had to kill him. They just took his jewellery.

His powers were never really his. The light came off the stones, the awe came from the fact that nothing else in the sky was competing, and the worship came from a population made of wood who could not tell the difference. What he did have was physical: he was strong enough to tear the arm off one of the two beings sent to destroy him, which is not nothing, and he passed his arrogance down to two sons who could raise and level mountains between one night and the next. His weaknesses came out of exactly the same place. He could not see past the horizon. His divinity was detachable, and detaching it was a dental procedure. A god who can be undone by a toothache and a con was never a god.

He is older than the manuscript that carries him. On Stela 25 at Izapa, carved in the Late Preclassic centuries before AD 200, a figure with one arm gone looks up at a great bird, and on Stela 2 two small figures flank a bird coming down out of the sky. At Copan, on the ballcourt facade, a serpent head set between the legs of an enormous bird holds a severed human arm. Modern students of the imagery call the creature the Principal Bird Deity and read it as the avian aspect of Itzamna, and the identification with Seven Macaw is widely accepted rather than settled. It also comes with a complication worth keeping: in most Classic Maya art the bird is not a macaw at all but a snake-eating laughing falcon, and the tree it perches on is usually a calabash rather than a nance. The macaw belongs to the Popol Vuh and to Copan. Elsewhere the great bird wears a different set of feathers.

There is one more sky in the story. Among K’iche’ speakers his name attaches to the seven stars of the Big Dipper, an identification recorded in the highland dictionaries and carried into Dennis Tedlock’s commentary, which notes that the months when those stars spend most of the night below the horizon fall neatly across the Mesoamerican hurricane season. Bringing Seven Macaw down out of his tree opens the way for the rains that end the wooden people.

And the thing they packed into his empty gums was white maize, which is what human beings would shortly be made of.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Vucub Caquix?

Vucub Caquix, whose K’iche’ name Wuqub’ Kaqix means Seven Macaw, is a jewelled bird deity from the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the K’iche’ Maya. He lived in the twilight before the sun existed and claimed to be both the sun and the moon. The Hero Twins were sent to destroy him so that the real dawn could take place.

How was Vucub Caquix killed?

Hunahpu shot him in the jaw with a blowgun while he was eating in his nance tree, but the wounded bird tore off Hunahpu’s arm before escaping home. The Twins then sent an elderly couple posing as healers who offered to fix his teeth, pulled out his jewelled teeth and replaced them with kernels of white maize, and stripped his eyes and his riches. Vucub Caquix died once everything that made him shine had been taken.

Was Vucub Caquix really a god?

The Popol Vuh says plainly that he was not. He was not the sun, he could see only as far as the horizon, and his light came from the gemstones in his teeth and the metal of his eyes rather than from any divine nature. He passed as a god because the sun and moon had not yet appeared and the wooden people of the failed creation had nothing to compare him with.

Who were the sons of Vucub Caquix?

Zipacna and Cabracan, born to Vucub Caquix and his wife Chimalmat. Zipacna claimed to have created the mountains and Cabracan claimed to shake them, each boasting in the same manner as their father. The Hero Twins destroyed both of them in separate episodes after dealing with Vucub Caquix.

What is the connection between Vucub Caquix and the Big Dipper?

Among K’iche’ Maya speakers the name Seven Macaw is attached to the seven stars of the Big Dipper, a link recorded in highland K’iche’ dictionaries and discussed in Dennis Tedlock’s commentary on the Popol Vuh. The period when those stars are below the horizon for most of the night matches the Mesoamerican hurricane season, which parallels the way his fall in the story clears the way for the destroying rain.

Related Entries

Zipacna, Huracán, Camulatz, Xecotcovach, Tecumbalam, Camazotz, Vucub Came and Hun Came, Itzamna, Vision Serpent, Kukulkan, Chac, Thunderbird, Garuda, Simurgh, Ziz