WHAT IS WITH ALL THIS CRAZY MAYAN SHIT?

You know, I really don't understand the Mayan obsession either. But Persona 2: Tsumi is just full of Mayan mythological references. I'll do my best to list them all, but if there's one I didn't catch, let me know, okay? This page doesn't have the mythology for Mayan personae; that's on the persona mythology page.

First of all:

MAYA VS. MAYA VS. MAYA VS. MAIYA VS. MAIA
It's kind of confusing in English, but all of the "Mayas" are written differently in Japanese.

OKAMURA MAYA: 岡村 真夜
AMANO MAYA: 天野 舞耶
MAYANS (Indians from South America): マヤ
MAIYANS (aliens from the Pleiades): マイヤ人
MAIA (persona, goddess): マイア

The Mayans were descendents of the Maiyans. Now, the Oracle is the Oracle of Maiya - it's the oracle from the aliens. In it, a Maiyan maiden - someone who is descended from the bloodline of the Maiyan aliens - has to be a human sacrifice. The two Mayas - Okamura and Amano - are presumed to be Maiyan maidens. Why? I don't know, because of their names? And Amano Maya uses the persona Maia.

All of these different groups are interwoven in the game, simply based on how their name sounds the same when said out loud: Maya. I can't explain it any better than that.

Clear as mud now, right?

IXQUIC
Everyone's favorite(?) cosplay girl Hoshi Akari became known as Ixquic when she joined the Masquerade. Ixquic (or Xquiq, depending on how unpronounceable you like your names- the name means "blood") was a princess of Xibalba. Earlier on, two hero-twins had entered Xibalba while playing ball, and after several trials, they had been sacrified and had their skulls hung from a tree. Underneath this tree, some skull-shaped gourds were growing, and the rule in Xibalba was that it was forbidden to eat these gourds. But Ixquic saw these gourds, thought, "Mmm, tasty!" and walked under the hanging skull one of the heroes to get at the gourds. When she passed under him, either blood or saliva or...something...dripped down from the hanging head, and Ixquic became pregnant. Ixquic eventually gave birth to a set of twins, Hun-Apu and Xbalanque, and these two boys had many adventures which aren't really relevant to this story anymore. So, in short, Ixquic was a princess of Xibalba who got impregnated by a severed head. Yes, exactly.

NAHUI OLIN
Leo-kun keeps ranting and raving about something called "Nahui Olin" that'll occur when Xibalba rises. Nahui Olin is actually part of Aztec mythology, but the Aztec and Mayan mythologies sometimes overlapped, it seems. In the Aztec calendar, there are five epochs, each with a different sun, and at the end of each epoch, there's a massive destruction of the world, and all humanity perishes. One destruction was by fire (volcanic eruption), one was by water (flood), one was by wind (hurricane), and so on. The fifth and last sun is called "Nahui Olin," and it's the Earthquake Sun. At the time of Nahui Olin, humanity will be destroyed permanently by a series of earthquakes...and wasn't the rising of Xibalba explained away as a giant earthquake? When Xibalba rises, you see an FMV of a giant carved stone - that's the famous Aztec stone calendar, with the symbols of all the suns and epochs carved on it.

XIBALBA
The big one. Well, as I'm sure you've heard, Xibalba ("The Place of Fear") was the Mayan underworld, located in the dark stripe down the center of the Milky Way. There were nine levels in Xibalba, each with its own deadly traps and guardian deity. There were six specific houses in Xibalba: Dark House (ak'ab na), Razor House (ch'am na), Cold House(sis'na), Jaguar House (balam'na), Fire House (k'ak'na), and Bat House (sotz'na). If you failed any of the tests in the houses, you were immediately executed. The lords of Xibalba were basically the masters of all the nasty ways to die; by swelling, starvation, stabbing, bloodloss, and so on. There were two kings of Xibalba - One Death and Seven Death. If you're really interested about the tests in Xibalba, go here for an interactive game. Avoid being sacrificed to One Death and Seven Death!

BOLONTIKU AND OXLAHUNTIKU
These were the two tribes of Maiyan aliens that killed each other in the great war, right? The Bolontiku were the nine evil "Lords of the Dead" who lived in the nine levels of Xibalba, and the Oxlahuntiku were the 13 benevolent "Lords of Heaven" that lived in the thirteen branches of the World Tree. (Notice the repetition of the numbers 9 and 13...important numbers in Tsumi...13 was the perfect number in Mayan culture, apparently.)

THE MAYAN SUNS
Apparently, there were twenty "suns" - or days of the week, so to speak - in the Mayan calendar. The event rooms in Xibalba are named after ten of these suns: Imix, Iiq, Akab'al, Kan, Chicchan, Cimi, Manik, Lamat, Muluc, and Oc. If you want to read some fancy astrological-type stuff about these suns, and see the glyphs for their names, go here.