Wayob

The lexical root of way/wayob is the Maya verb meaning 'sleep(ing)'; sources do not provide a single creation myth. Instead, the concept derives from this verbal meaning and is used to name a culturally recognized phenomenon in which a person and a non-human companion or alter-form operate together: the human is associated with an animal or apparition that acts while the person sleeps. Ethnographic and Classic accounts treat the relation as a personal, and sometimes contractual, tie but no single origin narrative is recorded in the cited sources.

Ethnographic (post-Contact) descriptions, especially from Yucatán, commonly report wayob appearing as familiar domestic or domesticated animals and occasionally as ghostly apparitions (one attested image: a creature with wings of straw mats). Tzotzil terms (wayihel, chanul) also cover animal companions and meteoric/igneous powers. Classic Maya iconography (glyph wa-ya) shows a wider typology: many animals (notably jaguars and birds), hybrids (e.g., deer × spider monkey), walking skeletons, a self-decapitating man, and figures associated with fire; recurring iconographic attributes in Classic depictions include a shoulder cape or scarf tied in front, jaguar-spotting or jaguar traits, an upturned 'jar of darkness' attribute, and fire elements. Some skeletal way figures are explicitly tied to underworld transformer imagery (ah uaay xibalba) and death gods.

Wayob function as personal companions and transformative agents: a sleeping person may become or project an animal or apparition (the way) that acts in the world. Ethnographic accounts attribute harmful uses to wayob — Yucatec descriptions emphasize nocturnal animal transformation used 'in order to do harm'; Tzeltal Cancuc ethnography explicitly describes the animal companion as a 'caster of disease'. Tzotzil sources extend way powers to igneous or meteoric phenomena such as lightning. Classic inscriptions and imagery associate certain way forms with underworld transformation and with rulership emblems, indicating roles in death, otherworld journeys, and elite ritual agency.