THE JAGUAR AND THE MAYANS.

Monumental ruins prove that the Yucatan Peninsula has been home to people for about a 1,000 years.
The ruins contain elaborate Jaguar imagery, testifying that Jaguars shared the forest with humans who saw them as entities possessing strong forces. Admired for its hunting prowess and strength, feared for the same reasons, the elusive Jaguar came to represent beauty, power, cunning and mystery entwined in rituals and stories.
The people have a saying: "Spread the Jaguar's skin, and you spread the heavens of a starry night." In some of their stories, the soul of the Jaguar prowled the heavens in day as well.
According to another myth, the Jaguar was a supernatural being who represented the Sun, who rose each day in the East and prowled the West, aging along the course, until finally plunging into the Darkness of the West. Then the Jaguar Sun fights the Lords of the Underworld (Xibalba) all night. Through his strength and cunning soul, the Jaguar Sun wins the right to rise each day in the East. Thus the Jaguar Sun dominates both Day and Night.
Such duality sparks fear and admiration through fables and myths about the Jaguar, but at least one story recognizes why this 3rd largest feline in the World doesn't have a reputation of 'man-killer.'
"As God created people out of mud, Jaguar curious watched. God didn't want Jaguar to know how this was done, so God sent the Jaguar to the river to fetch water, using a leaky calabash to fill a jar. God figured to finish people by the time Jaguar returned. At the river, as Jaguar was mindlessly scooping water with the leaky calabash, Frog advised patching the holes with mud. Very quickly, Jaguar filled the jug and returned to God who had finished 13 of the people and 12 arms; God was in the process of making a Dog. Jaguar said to himself: 'the Dog looks tasty.' God said that the Dog was to serve people and that the arms were to teach Jaguar respect. When the Jaguar boasted superiority, God made the Jaguar stand in the distance, and one of the men harm the Jaguar in the paw. The Jaguar, after the human bandaged the paw, still claimed the Dog as a good meal. This time, the man sent the Dog after the Jaguar who ran up a tree to escape; the human wounded its paw again. That is how Jaguar learned to leave humans alone."
In spite of this story, the Jaguar's powerful hunting skills strike 'fear and envy' in people's conscience.
But although these powers are alluring, the Jaguar also teaches that 'people should never try to be what they are not,' as in the story of the Opossum (an American family of nocturnal, largely arboreal marsupial mammals, and when threatened with danger or caught, they pretend to be dead) who asked the Jaguar to be Godfather to her son.
"Jaguar, to be a good Godfather, took Little Opossum hunting at the water-hole. Jaguar leapt on a very large animal. The Little Opossum and the Jaguar ate their fill. Later the Little Opossum took his mother to the water-hole where the Little Opossum leapt upon a very large animal, but the animal simply shook himself and threw the Little Opossum off into the mud. The Little Opossum called his mother for help, but when she came to him, she, too, was trapped, and they both died."
Another lesson that we find in the Jaguar stories is that power, by itself, is not enough.
"Three Jaguars were dying of hunger but didn't want to look for food. Rabbit asked, 'Why are you complained so, my friends? What about of your claws and fangs?' The Jaguars protested against the work of hunting. Rabbit offered to carry the Jaguars into the forest if they would climb into a net. Once they were in the net, Rabbit tied it shut, then found a long green guava stick and beat the Jaguars. 'You are built like great hunters, but you are lazy beasts.' "
Thus the soul of Jaguar can be wise and foolish, powerful and week. Other contradictions appear in some stories as well. For instance , while the Jaguar Sun has the wisdom and mystery: Day and Night;
Life and Death, the soul of the Jaguar as a deity also has the power to eat the Sun.
Other Maya story says the the End of the Earth will come when Jaguars ascend from the Underworld to eat the Sun and the Moon; an eclipse will foreshadow this final event. Sometimes this almost happened, but people made noises, sang and honored the entities in control of the forces of nature, until, appeased, the Jaguar Sun reappeared.
The stories and details about the Jaguar are contradictory because people themselves are contradictory.
Humans protect the jungle of their own emotional feelings and share in its bounty, sometimes taking more than is needed for food, consuming their own self.