Vision
Rite of Lady 6 Tun
c.
755 A.D.
Lintel 15 Yaxchilan
Yaxchilán
is unique in its multitude of images of important female personages
engaged in ceremonial rituals.
Many depict women engaged in the ritual of bloodletting.
If this was a city of seers, as many believe it was, then
the bloodletting ceremony was undoubtedly the ritual magic
used to start the seer on their journey.
To quote Linda Schele and David Friedel in A Forest of Kings,
¨The aim of these great cathartic rituals was the vision
quest, the opening of a portal into the Otherworld through
which gods and the ancestors could be enticed so that the
beings of this world could commune with them.¨