Showing posts with label Mayan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mayan. Show all posts

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Mayan Temples


I have always had a fascination with the Aztec and Mayan culture. What impresses me the most about those civilizations was an interweaving of the spiritual, intellectual and physical world. This interweaving of the physical and spiritual world is most appearent in their elegant architecture, artwork and writing system. It is by no accident that the all three elements consisted of a dualism between the physical and spiritual world. The construction of massive pyramids in the south of Mexico and Central America are but one example of this dualistic world view. In one sense, the pyramids are a perfect representation of the obsession with the secular and heavenly or the mathematical and natural. This paradigm was so well imbeded in the culture that their great pyramidal structures allighned perfectly with corresponding celestial bodies as to precisely detect the arrival of winter, spring, summer and fall solstices.