The Popol Vuh is a text created in a language that is non alphabetic. Sometimes it is helpful to engage with a text in a modality other than writing to experience it in a different and oftentimes illuminating way. So, we selected scenes from the story of the Hero Twins’ descent to Xibalba and illustrated them, as best we could, given the distance between the story, its original language and our imaginations. In this way we also get to experiment and experience a text more visually. Our illustrations do not resemble Maya glyphs, but do take a step back from the English language as the only medium we have to experience the story.

A gallery of illustrated passages from the Popol Vuh – the Hero Twins Descent to Xibalba.