Tohil

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Tohil (IPA: [toˈχil], also spelled Tojil) is the Maya god of fire. He is a deity of the Kʼicheʼ Maya in the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerica.

At the time of the Spanish Conquest, Tohil was the patron god of the Kʼicheʼ.^[1] He was included in the Tolteca pantheon that was influenced in the highlands Maya culture in the Postclassic Period. Tohil's principal function was that of a fire deity and he was also both a war god, sun god and the god of rain.^[2] Tohil was also associated with mountains and he was a god of war, sacrifice and sustenance.^[3] In the Kʼicheʼ epic Popul Vuh, after the first people were created, they gathered at the mythical Tollan or Tula, the Place of the Seven Caves, to receive their language and their gods. The Kʼicheʼ, and others, there received Tohil.^[4] Tohil demanded blood sacrifice from the Kʼicheʼ and so they offered their own blood and also that of sacrificed captives taken in battle. In the Popul Vuh this consumption of blood by Tohil is likened to the suckling of an infant by its mother.^[5]

Tohil was originally part of the Tolteca pantheon and was introduced in Postclassic Maya culture. He has been compared to the same god Qʼuqʼumatz, and shared attributes of the feathered serpent with that deity,^[6] but they later diverged and each deity came to have a separate priesthood.^[7] Sculptures of a human face emerging between the jaws of a serpent were common from the end of the Classic Period through to the Late Postclassic and may represent Qʼuqʼumatz in the act of carrying Hunahpu, the youthful avatar of the sun god Tohil, across the sky.^[8] The god's association with human sacrifice meant that Tohil was one of the first deities that the Spanish clergy tried to eradicate after the conquest of Guatemala.^[9]

Indeed, it's known that the Kaqchikel tribe was against the human sacrifice demanded by Tohil to bring them fire. For this reason they stole the fire from the deity — Kaqchikel means “fire thieves.” This is the principal cause of enmity between the K'iche and Kaqchikel peoples.