Ritual Serial Murder and the Birth of a Ruling Class: Popol Vuh, Title of Totonicapán (Maya, 16th c.) [PREVIEW]

The Kingless Generation

At the end of the ancient mythology section we discussed last time, the Popol Vuh (here paralleled by the Title of Totonicapán) depicts the restoration of militaristic class society in the K’iche’ corner of the Maya world in the 13th c. CE, after some centuries of relative freedom and equality following the overthrow of the Classic Maya around 950. The founders of the new ruling class are an itinerant, mountain-dwelling secret society who begin their attack on the stateless, classless society around them by prosecuting a covert campaign of ritual serial murder. For perhaps obvious reasons, this passage seems practically untouched in modern scholarship—the most recent English translation of Popol Vuh silently cuts it entirely!—but we of the Kingless Generation have all the right tools to make sense of it in our own little way: the immortal science of historical materialism, the anthropological theories of Brian Hayden regarding the roots of ruling classes in secret society religion, and leftist parapolitics research on Fort Bragg, Marc DuTroux, the Atlanta child murders, and many other modern instances of ritualized abuse and murder for which good evidence exists for the involvement of a wider network of Euro-American military, intelligence, and high bourgeois elements.

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