Yulner Diaz was a curious boy of nine, when he popped into a library in the Mexican town of Ciudad Victoria. What he discovered there, changed his life. It was a facsimile of the Dresden Codex. As the name suggests, the original is located in Germany. Dating to the 11th century, this meticulously painted, 74-page book is not just the oldest preserved text from the Americas but also one of only four Mayan writings that survived the book-burning frenzy of the Spanish Church. Its cultural value is inestimable.

The Maya were the most enduring and arguably the most advanced of Mesoamerica’s pre-Hispanic civilizations. They peaked during the so-called Classic period, between the 3rd and 10th centuries, as a federation of autonomous city-states. By the time the conquistadors arrived in the early 16th century, these magnificent centers had long been abandoned in favor of new settlements. It took Spain 170 years to crush the fiercely resistant postclassic Mayans. What remains of this civilization today is its grandiose architecture, such as the famed stepped pyramids, but deplorably little scripture.

Yulner was wonderstruck as he glanced through the Codex. He thought he had found a treasure. “I wanted to steal this book,” he admits. “My innards told me that it shouldn’t be there. It should be kept under maximum security.” Although it was merely a replica, he felt strangely protective, even possessive, of this artifact.

Yulner’s reaction may not have been unjustified. After all, there is a fair amount of Mayan blood, and perhaps even Mayan pride, running within him. But Diaz also claims European ancestors. Like most Mexicans, he is of mixed ethnicity. He was born in the Gulf Coast state of Tamaulipas, in a Huastec-speaking enclave. Huastec is one of 30 living Mayan languages. The remaining 29 are predominantly found further south, in the traditional Mayan territories in and around the Yucatan Peninsula and the Guatemalan highlands.

What Yulner experienced in the library was an instant visceral connection with his indigenous heritage. Actually, it was more than that: it was an awakening. Diaz suddenly felt he had been called upon to carry on the ancient Mayan culture. So he set about to familiarize himself with what he found most intriguing about this culture: the writing system. The Mayan script is one of exquisite beauty and complexity. It uses hundreds of hieroglyphs, some of which take the form of animals or deities. Symbols that stand for words are known as logograms while those that express sounds are called syllabograms.

When Yulner began his research, the decipherment of the glyphs was not nearly as complete as it is today. He had no internet access and literature on the subject was scarce and outdated. Scholars had been engaged in an aggressive yet ineffectual competition to achieve a breakthrough. Yulner was disappointed. He desperately wanted to read the Mayan writings but most translations were too speculative. Regrettably, Yulner had to put his curiosity to rest. That is, until recently, when experts finally, and almost fully, unravelled the mystery.

Since 2008, Diaz has been immersed in an intensive self-guided study of the Mayan script. As his understanding of the intricate glyphs grew, so did his visual acuity. He decided that his unique contribution to the Mayan legacy would be in the form of art. But Diaz did not want to become an artist in the service of archaeology and limit himself to objective illustrations. Nor did he want to go into restoration. Instead, Yulner wanted the freedom to express his own personal vision and to create what might sound like a contradiction: “contemporary Mayan art.” Diaz found that the terms “contemporary” and “Mayan” did not need to be mutually exclusive.

“As far as I know,” says Yulner, “I am the only living artist who produces original artwork using Mayan writing and tradition.” Today, Diaz is 27 and lives in Sarasota, Florida. To sharpen his skills, he began by making reproductions of existing Mayan writings. While copying an oval tablet from the palace in Palenque, Yulner simply couldn’t resist adding his own inscriptions around the edges. After that, he created Mayan art entirely of his own invention. His original paintings, drawings and installations may be small in number, but they are often large in scale and painstakingly precise in detail. Each of his works is a visual conundrum that both attracts and confounds the viewer. Every single mark seems to be charged with mythological, astrological or hidden personal meanings.

Central to Yulner’s art is his “Perception” series. “Perception I” is a work still in progress, an as yet unrevealed mural. Its followup piece, “Perception II,” however, has already been completed and exhibited. This imposing, heavyweight construction was designed as a monument to Mayan art. It consists of a base, a roof and an enormous wooden panel in between. Both the front and the back of the panel are painted and each side presents a different motif.

The Maya are well known for their magnificent temples, but they are notorious for the rituals they performed there. Mayan leaders had an undeniable flair for drama. They needed to show their subjects that they were linked to the gods and that their rule was thus rightful. To converse with the deities, they ingested hallucinogens. They also used stingray barbs to pierce their tongues, ears or foreskins and then ran spiked cords through them. The blood that flowed was smeared onto paper, which was then burnt and the resulting smoke interpreted for divine messages.

Just like the ancient kings and queens, Yulner had to ceremonially establish his own connection to the supernatural. “It’s the Mayan way,” he says. On the front side of “Perception II,” therefore, he depicts a temple, and in it, his own private ritual scene. Outlined in white against a blood-red background, we see two seated figures in profile, facing each other. On the left, holding a paint brush, is Yulner. His features are highly stylized and accentuatedly Mayan. On the right is an old man wearing a turtle shell on his back. This is one of a quartet of wind deities known as the Pauahtuns. Yulner and the Pauahtun seem to be engaged in silent communion, as if in a dream.

In the space between them grows the sacred ceiba tree, the tallest in the Mayan rainforest. It symbolizes the axis mundi, or center of the cosmos. This is where the four quarters of the universe, equivalent to the four cardinal points, converge and where contact between heaven, earth and the underworld is possible. Hanging in the tree branches is a double-headed snake, which represents the Milky Way. Through this “cosmic snake,” or vision serpent, the Pahuatun is passing his wisdom on to Yulner, in effect instructing him how to make this painting. For the Maya, the serpent was a conduit for receiving visions from the gods. The Pahuatun beckons to one of the snake’s heads, while the other head rests on Yulner’s shoulder.

The Maya were masterful mathematicians, architects and astronomers. They were extremely accurate in their calculations. Their scientific rigor even extended to their name-giving. Mayan names were determined by one’s date of birth as well as the phase of the moon and other planetary alignments on that day. Yulner, too, has such an “astronomical” name. In his art though, he prefers to use a self-invented pseudonym, Kinich K’uk’ Maax Kan, which translates as “Radiant Feathered Monkey Serpent.” A closer look reveals that Yulner depicted himself with a split tongue as well as an eye with a hook, or snake eye. These serpent attributes signify the divine vision that has been conferred on him.

The Maya revered all things serpentine. One of their principal gods was Kukulkan, literally the “Feathered God Snake.” The Aztecs knew him as Quetzalcoatl. According to legend, Quetzalcoatl opposed the custom of human sacrifice, which was prevalent in all pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. In protest, he went into exile, but left a date when he’d be back. Prophetically, or coincidentally, it was the same year Hernan Cortes arrived in the Yucatan. Light-skinned and bearded, Cortes had the same characteristics ascribed to the plumed serpent.

The Mayan religion states that the gods fashioned humans from their very own flesh. In return, they demanded sustenance. Blood was considered “the sustainer,” the most important possession one could give. It appeased the gods but it also kept them alive, for they were not necessarily immortal. Mayan sacrifices involved animals as well as prisoners of war and children. The priests determined the astrologically most felicitous times for these ritual killings and carried them out with clinical efficacy. In some ceremonies, the victim was taken to an altar atop a temple. He was slashed open and his still-beating heart ripped out and offered to the gods. Thus consecrated, the corpse was hurled down the temple steps. If credence can be given to the accounts of the Spanish conquerors, the dead body, in the end, was eaten, so that its divine substance could be absorbed.

It was a standard practice in Mayan times for an artist to sign his artwork with a personal statement across the top. Yulner, of course, followed convention. Noteworthy about his inscription is that it incorporates two glyphs, Ah tz’ib’ and Bacab. Ah tz’ib’ means “artist,” while Bacab is a title designating a “bearer of the universe.” In Mayan cosmology, four Bacabs (corresponding to the four Pauahtuns) are said to carry the sky above the earth, one in each world-quarter. The eastern Bacab is said to be red, the northern one white, the western one black and the southern one yellow. Interestingly, these colors appear at the respective compass points on the panel.

It’s quite a presumption to declare oneself a Bacab, but Yulner says he deserves the honorific. “As long as I depict Mayan culture, that is exactly what I’m doing: holding up the universe in the contemporary era.” Thus, Yulner’s full artist’s statement reads, “This sacred painting was made and presented by the bearer of the universe, the incense-burner, artist and sage Kinich K’uk’ Maax Kan.”

The reverse side of “Perception II” is an artwork in its own right. As far as Mayan artistic traditions are concerned, it features an anomaly: a realistically rendered family portrait. In early 2010, Yulner was commissioned to portray a Cuban single mother and her son for a public art project. He had no scruples about using the back of his temple painting. But why would he put an ostensibly earthly motif on the opposite side of a spiritual one? Yulner does not acknowledge this distinction. After having legitimized himself as a true Mayan artist in the ritual with the Pahuatun, he believes that his subsequent art cannot but transcend the mundane. “Whatever I paint,” says Diaz, “I look at it with my Mayan perception.” In essence, everything in Yulner’s art is associated with the realm of the sacred. On the roof of the piece, on both sides, he even inscribed the glyph for “sacred.”

Whereas the front of Yulner’s monument depicts a temple, the back represents a house, or, more specifically, two windows, the frames of which are made up of pictorial texts. Yulner painted his subjects twice, at two significant moments of their acquaintance. The view through the left window shows the mother and child at a beach under a cloudy sky. Yulner realized that both of their birthdays were related to water, hence the maritime setting. In this scene, he records his earliest impression of the family. When they first met, both parties were still stuck in pre- and misconceptions. The mother’s body language is stiff, her face somber and the boy is hiding shyly behind a giant waterlily, another water symbol. The dominant hues are cold blues and grays.

Looking through the right window, the picture is a lot warmer and friendlier. This is the time when Yulner had won the family’s trust. The boy is peeking out curiously from behind his mother. They are both cheerful and wearing their favorite colors, purple and orange. The sky is a rich red and the sun is shining down on a windswept field of fluffy grass.

A multitude of facts and figures appear in this composition. They seem to serve as coordinates for determining the precise place of the artist and his subjects in an even the grander picture, the universe. Horizontally across the top is the date Diaz started the portrait. Across the bottom is the date it was first exhibited. Other glyphic inscriptions provide the mother’s and child’s birthdays, calendrical information about them as well as their Mayan and Cuban names, Nara and Enzo Fernandez. For Yulner, this portrait was less about achieving a likeness of the family than documenting their relationship to time and to the Mayan gods in their various natural manifestations such as wind, water, sand and grass. Whether or not Nara and Enzo actually believed in these gods was immaterial.

The question arises, how does Yulner’s art stand up to the scrutiny of an expert? Dr. Gabrielle Vail is an epigrapher and adjunct professor in Mayan archaelogy at New College of Florida. She examined “Perception II” upon its public unveiling and was astounded. Apart from the portrait of the mother and child, the piece, in her judgment, is extraordinarily faithful to Mayan themes and traditions. The execution of the writing is also impeccable.

Dr. Vail noticed that Yulner’s dedicatory artist’s statement is typical of pottery vessels. He combines several styles specific to different media, such as stone carvings and painted murals. In terms of authenticity, however, Diaz employs the script just as the Mayan scribes had done before him. “He’s using the same formula to speak of the time the object came into being, who the current ruler is, what the object is, what material it’s made of, who made it and who is depicted on it.”

There are not all that many Mayanists in Sarasota, and Diaz was no stranger to Vail. She first met him in 2008, when he began attending meetings of her glyph group. She recommended books and websites to him and he contributed a few of his reproductions to exhibitions she organized. Vail was awed that a self-schooled artist could acquire so much knowledge in a such a short time. “It’s incredible what Yulner has done,” she says. “He’s operating in the same ancient tradition. He must literally be spending every hour of every day reading and absorbing this information.”

Yulner was flattered and motivated by Vail’s comments. He plans to continue his art for a long time yet, certainly beyond December 21, 2012. This date marks the “end” of the Mayan Long Count calendar and, as some New Agers believe, a time of massive spirtual renewal or possibly even the end of the world. Diaz vehemently dismisses such doomsday notions. “The Maya had multiple calendars and not all of them end on that day.“

For the Maya, time was a cyclical phenomenon. They observed recurring events in the heavens and on earth and reflected them in their death and rebirth myths, their rituals and a variety of remarkably accurate calendars, many of which originated with their cultural predecessors, the Olmecs. One dating system recorded the cycles of the moon, another the cycles of Venus. The Haab was a 365-day solar year calendar and the 260-day Tzolkin calendar was based on the human gestation period. Used together, the Haab and the Tzolkin provided unique date combinations for a 52-year cycle, or Calendar Round.

To number individual years and measure time beyond a human life span, the Maya used the Long Count. This calendar combines five different units of time. There is the Kin (equal to one day), the Uinal (20 days), the Tun (18 Uinal or 360 days), the Katun (20 Tuns or almost 20 years) and the Baktun (20 Katuns or around 394 years). There are 13 numbered Baktuns, which make a 5125-year cycle. This period constitutes one fifth of the 26,000 years it takes the sun to pass through the Zodiac (the so-called “precession of the equinoxes”) and is also known as a World Age or Creation. Each Creation was said to be separated by upheavals, while each Katun brought about one of a set of 13 repeating astrological prophecies. The current 13th Baktun (supposedly the last) will end on the winter solstice in 2012.

Besides a solstice, what else is foretold to happen in 2012? The Mayan writings make no explicit predictions. Nevertheless, some eschatological researchers insist there will be widespread destruction, a reversal of the earth’s magnetic poles and a rare alignment of the sun with both our planet and the equator of the Milky Way. They argue that the Long Count was designed so that its end date would concur with this galactic alignment. Yulner, on the other hand, believes the calendar was synchronized with another event, an event not at its end, but at its beginning.

The Maya have an exact creation date, 3114 BC, which is when the Long Count started. Significantly, this date coincides with the first domestication of corn, the staple of the Mayan society. According to their creation myth, the Maya were made out of maize dough by the gods. Corn was the earthly embodiment of the gods, their flesh so to speak. The zero hour of the Long Count thus marked the birth of a culture. Moreover, it seems to have been unaccompanied by any catastrophes. Given the Mayan belief in repeating cycles, if the past is any indication, 2012 will be a time of formation, not annihilation. Perhaps we will see a rebirth of the Mayan culture. Yulner for one stands poised and prepared to take it into a brand new Baktun.

– Daniel Petrov, 10/8/10