The deities of Glyph C of the Maya Lunar Series as the patron gods of the phases of the moon

Abstract I present a proposal for the identification of the deities that appear in Glyph C of the Maya Lunar Series as the patrons of the Moon’s phases, based in two arguments. First, there are two cosmological narratives associated with the phases of the Moon. In the first, the Moon dies and is reborn at each new Moon. The waxing phase would be ruled by the Lunar Maize God whom is born just before the first visible crescent, and the Lunar Death God would rule over the waning Moon dying during the last crescent, remaining dead during the Moon’s invisibility period. Second the Moon transforms into a night Sun during the full Moon, which would be represented by the Lunar Jaguar God of the Underworld. This deity would govern over the days around the full Moon, as the nocturnal Sun. The second argument is that, as the calendar controlled by Glyph C was used, at least loosely, to predict eclipses, that occur during the new and the full Moon, and because these syzygies are governed by the proposed deities, the control realm of these gods was extended over the Glyph C semesters, to differentiate them, and reinforce their relationship to eclipses.