Kukulkan

Kukulkan is the feathered serpent of the Yucatec Maya, honored at Chichen Itza and Mayapan, and remembered in Spanish-era accounts as a great lord who came from the west and was worshipped as a god.

The Name

Kukulkan (in modern spelling K'uk'ulkan) is the Yucatec Maya name for the feathered serpent. K'uk' refers to the quetzal and its precious green feathers, and kan means serpent, so the name means the same thing as Nahuatl Quetzalcoatl. The two figures are closely related, and the spread of feathered-serpent imagery across Mesoamerica in the centuries after 900 CE is one of the clearest signs of contact between the Maya and central Mexico.

The Story

Almost no Maya myth about Kukulkan survives in its own words. The main written account comes from the Spanish bishop Diego de Landa, who wrote his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán around 1566. Landa reported that Maya informants said a great lord named Kukulcan once ruled at Chichen Itza alongside the Itza, having arrived from the west. He was remembered as a just ruler who brought order, and he was said to have founded the later capital of Mayapan before returning to Mexico. Landa added that the people of central Mexico counted him among their gods as Quetzalcoatl, and that the Maya worshipped him too. Landa also described a yearly festival held in his honor.

This blend of god and human ruler mirrors the Aztec stories of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl of Tula. Scholars still debate whether a historical leader took the god's name, whether the stories describe a movement of people and ideas from central Mexico, or both.

Appearance

At Chichen Itza, Kukulkan is shown as a rattlesnake covered in feathers. Huge serpent heads with open jaws sit at the foot of the north stairway of the great pyramid now called El Castillo or the Temple of Kukulcan, and feathered serpents form columns and balustrades on other buildings at the site. The serpent columns of the Temple of the Warriors stand with heads on the ground and rattles raised to hold up a roof.

The Equinox Serpent

Around the spring and fall equinoxes, the late-afternoon sun throws a row of triangular shadows down the edge of El Castillo's north stairway. Together with the stone head at the bottom, they look like a serpent's body sliding down the pyramid. Thousands of visitors gather to watch it every March. Whether the Maya builders designed the effect on purpose is still debated, but it has become the best-known image of Kukulkan today.

Legacy

Kukulkan gives his name to the pyramid at Chichen Itza, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and to many hotels, streets, and festivals in Yucatán. Like Quetzalcoatl, he is a sky-and-earth serpent associated with wise rule rather than a monster to be slain, which sets him apart from the dragons of European legend.

Related

• Quetzalcoatl: Quetzalcoatl is the Feathered Serpent of Mesoamerican religion, an Aztec creator god of wind, the morning star, learning, and maize, whose serpent form joins the quetzal bird's green plumes to a snake's body.
• Q'uq'umatz: Q'uq'umatz is the feathered serpent of the K'iche' Maya, one of the creator gods of the Popol Vuh who, together with Heart of Sky, raised the earth from the primordial sea and shaped the first people.
• Xiuhcóatl: Xiuhcóatl is the fire serpent of Aztec religion, a turquoise-scaled serpent with an upturned snout that served as the weapon of the war god Huitzilopochtli and as an emblem of the fire god Xiuhtecuhtli.
• Quetzalcoatl
• Dragons Across Cultures

Sources and Further Reading

• Diego de Landa, Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatan, trans. and ed. Alfred M. Tozzer (Papers of the Peabody Museum, vol. 18, Harvard University, 1941)
• Mary Miller and Karl Taube, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (Thames & Hudson, 1993)
• Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston, The Maya, 9th ed. (Thames & Hudson, 2015)

Cite this entry: “Kukulkan,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/kukulkan.