Mam

Sources do not record a single origin myth for Mam. Rather, the term mam—literally 'grandfather' or 'grandson' in Maya kinship vocabulary—functions both as a social kinship label and as a category for venerable supernatural persons; in Classic inscriptions the element mam introduces ancestors or lineal relations, and in ethnography distinct local Mams are described as aged or ancestral deities embedded in lineage and landscape.

No single canonical appearance is described across sources. Local variants differ: a 16th‑century Yucatec Mam was represented as a straw puppet venerated during the Uayeb; the Tzutujil Mam Maximón appears in ethnography as a clothed human‑like cult figure or idol; Kekchi and mountain Mams are place‑bound mountain spirits without standardized bodily descriptions; Huastec Mamlabs are conceived as earth deities rather than as a single anthropomorphic form.

Mams function as elder ancestral powers tied to earthly and seasonal phenomena and to social domains. Specific attributions in the sources include: Kekchi mountain Mams (four Mams) associated with the four corners of the earth and, in Alta Verapaz, a Mam feared for links to earthquakes and inundations; the Huastec Mamlabs, including Muxiʼ, described as earth deities with Muxiʼ portrayed as the violent originator of the rainy season; and the Tzutujil Mam Maximón venerated as a deity of merchants, travellers, and witchcraft. The 16th‑century Yucatec straw Mam is ritually created and discarded during the five unlucky days (Uayeb), indicating a calendrical and liminal function.