Yum Kaax

The Lord of the Forests and Maize

Domain: Maize, Forest & Agriculture
Alignment: Lawful Good
Element: Earth
Relics of Power: Ear of Tender Maize

Speak with Yum Kaax

The full Codex

4 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

See PRO Get the app

The People

People

Maya

Region

Mesoamerica (Yucatán & Guatemala)

Period

c. 2000 BC – 1500 AD

The Maya gods were worshipped in the city-states of Mesoamerica, such as Tikal, Palenque, and Chichén Itzá. Astronomer-priests read the skies and the calendar to honor them at the right time, in pyramid-temples now swallowed by the jungle. Many of their myths survive in the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiché Maya.

Maya kings and queens offered their own blood in bloodletting rituals to feed the gods, and the ritual ballgame re-enacted the duel against the lords of the underworld. Cenotes such as the one at Chichén Itzá received precious offerings, guided by the 260-day sacred calendar.

At a glance

Yum Kaax (in the correct Yucatec Maya spelling Yum K'áax or Yumil K'áax, literally translated as 'Lord of the Forest' or 'Master of the Virgin Jungle') is the traditional Maya guardian deity of native vegetation, of the uncultivated tropical jungles and of wild animals. In the 19th century, the pioneering researcher Paul Schellhas mislabeled the agricultural maize deity (God E in the codices) under the name Yum Kaax, creating a persistent historiographical confusion in popular literature. Contemporary iconographic and epigraphic research, consolidated by Karl Taube and David Stuart, has shown that the maize god is the Tonsured/Foliated Maize God (Ixim), whereas Yum K'áax is an autonomous and venerated entity of the wild forest, widely documented in colonial and modern ethnographic accounts of Yucatán, Campeche and Quintana Roo. As lord of the virgin forests and of wild animals (such as the white-tailed deer and the collared peccary), Yum K'áax is invoked with ritual care by traditional hunters and farmers before entering the forest or felling trees for the milpa. Hunters ask for formal spiritual permission and commit to killing only the amount necessary to feed their families, returning the bones of the slain animals to the recesses of the jungle so that the lord of the forest may regenerate the fauna and protect people from accidents and venomous snakes.

5 min read · Reviewed on September 28, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The ear of tender maize, the green sprout, the forest and the hoe

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Diego de Landa, Relación de las cosas de Yucatán. translation: Edition with commentary by Ángel María Garibay, Editorial Porrúa, México, 1959.
Anonymous (Yucatec Maya), The Ritual of the Bacabs. translation: Ralph L. Roys, University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.

Studies

Karl Taube, The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan. Dumbarton Oaks, 1992.
Robert Redfield e Alfonso Villa Rojas, Chan Kom: A Maya Village. Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1934.
J. Eric S. Thompson, Maya History and Religion. University of Oklahoma Press, 1970.

Name and epithets

The theonym is made up of the reverential noun yum (meaning 'lord', 'father', 'owner' or 'sovereign protector') and the noun k'áax (which designates the 'virgin forest', 'closed woodland' or 'wild jungle' in Yucatec May…

In the ancient sources

Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, c. 1566 CE. Diego de Landa reports the solemn festivities of the hunters in the month Zip and the invocations to the gods and guardians of the jungle.

The myths

The Hunting Permission and the Return of the Deer's Bones. In the living oral traditions of the Yucatec Maya recorded by anthropologists in traditional villages of Yucatán, Yum K'áax is the invisible owner of all the an…

Worship and archaeology

The cult of Yum K'áax developed mainly through field shamanic rituals and communal agrarian rites known as Loj and Jets' Lu'um ('Calming the Earth').

How the god was depicted

Unlike the anthropomorphic deities of the classic urban centers, which had monumental temples of polished stone, Yum K'áax is conceived in popular traditions as an agile, invisible spirit of the vegetation or as a hunte…

What scholars debate

Undoing the Confusion between the Maize God and Yum Kaax. Karl Taube, in his influential 1992 monograph on the gods of Yucatán, clarified the historical confusion that for decades permeated textbooks and encyclopedias:…

After antiquity

Yum K'áax is widely studied by contemporary environmental anthropology and ethnobotany as one of the most notable indigenous models of sustainable forest management and ecological ethics.

Did you know?

In many contemporary Maya communities of Yucatán, experienced hunters still leave a portion of the prey's liver and ears on a tree trunk in the jungle as an obligatory tribute to Yumil K'áax.

Codex relic

Ear of Tender Maize. The young ear that symbolizes the growing maize and the life that springs from the fields.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

The legends, the myth, the cult and relics are part of the full Codex. You can open 1 full entry for free every day; to open all 500 deities with no limits and no ads, subscribe to Codex PRO.

See Codex PRO Get it on Google Play