4762 JAGUARS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Amir Moezzi, Mohammad Ali. The Divine Guide in Early Shi Eism:
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cribed to ḠāEfar al-S: ādiq.” Arabica 23, no. 3 (1976): 296–
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Shi Eisme Imāmite Colloque de Strasbourg 6–9 mai 1968, ed-
ited by T. Fahd, pp. 132–142. Paris, 1970.
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Beirut, 1979.
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ran, Iran, 1968.
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ARZINA R. LALANI (2005)
JAGUARS. The jaguar (Panthera onca) is the largest na-
tive American cat, and for over three thousand years it has
been one of Central and South America’s most important
symbolic animals. Sometimes associated with the puma (Felis
concolor) and ocelot (Felis pardalis), the jaguar was a recurring
motif in the religious iconography of many major pre-
Columbian civilizations, including the Olmec, Maya, and
Aztec in Mesoamerica and the Chavín and Moche in South
America. In the twenty-first century, throughout tropical
rain-forest areas, the jaguar still plays an important role in
the spiritual beliefs of indigenous Amerindian societies.
As with all animal symbols, jaguar imagery is more than
artistic depiction. It represents the symbolic joining of ani-
mal and human features and qualities and epitomizes the
ways physical attributes and supernatural qualities could be
fused to represent deities, spirits, shamans, and divine rulers.
Beautiful and deadly, the jaguar’s strength and agility made
it a paragon of predatory male human virtues associated with
hunters, warriors, sacrifice, and war. Its stealth, night vision,
and nocturnal hunting habits identified it with sorcery and
the spirit realm. Its widespread status as “Master of Animals”
probably derives from its ability to hunt on land, up trees,
and in water, and from the fact that while all animals are its
prey, it is prey to none. Only humans kill jaguars, a fact that
may account for the perception that both share a spiritual
equivalence as equals.
In Mesoamerica the jaguar icon first appeared in the art
of the Olmec civilization (1250–400 BCE) as monumental
stone sculptures and intricate jade carvings, such as those
found at sites such as La Venta and San Lorenzo in eastern
Mexico. A common image is a half-human, half-feline crea-
ture with characteristic downturned snarling mouth, which
has been interpreted as a were-jaguar—the supernatural off-
spring of Olmec rulers and mythical jaguar beings. Some
sculptures depict what are regarded as shamans transforming
into spirit felines. Broadly contemporary was the cult center
of Chavín de Huántar in Peru (850–200 BCE), where star-
tling images of jaguars and animals and humans with jaguar
features were carved in stone, cast in gold, and worked in tex-
tiles and pottery. A decorative frieze at Chavín shows a pro-
cession of carved-stone jaguars and humans with feline fangs
and claws, some of which appear associated with the halluci-
nogenic San Pedro cactus and which in turn indicates a sha-
manic religion.
Once established, the symbolic and spiritual relation-
ship between the jaguar and human elites appears to have be-
come a widespread phenomenon. As an icon linking spiritual
dominance, rulership, sacrifice, and war, jaguar imagery be-
came a recurring feature in art. Among Mesoamerica’s Clas-
sic Maya (250–850 CE), jaguar pelts were worn by dynastic
warrior kings and were used to cover royal thrones, them-
selves sometimes carved in feline form, as at Palenque and
Chichén Itzá. Elsewhere, jaguar and ocelot apparel featured
as war regalia, and jaguar imagery was associated with hiero-
glyphic texts referring to war and human sacrifice.
Royal titles incorporated the jaguar icon, and deceased
kings were sometimes buried with the animal’s skin, claws,
and fangs. The sacrifice of fifteen jaguars by Yax Pac, king
of Copán, to his ancestors suggests a spiritual identity be-
tween royalty and the jaguar, exemplified perhaps by the
Classic Maya jaguar god of the underworld. At the later Tol-
tec-Maya city of Chichén Itzá, jaguars appear eating what
may be human hearts—perhaps symbolic representations of
human sacrifice by a jaguar warrior elite. On Peru’s north
coast, jaguar imagery was similarly associated with warfare
and human sacrifice in the Moche culture (100–650 CE).
Master potters depicted sacrificial victims, perhaps prisoners
of war, alongside jaguar figures, mountains, and possibly the
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION

San Pedro cactus. Anthropomorphic figures appear with
snarling jaguar fangs, giving the impression of a shamanic re-
ligion based on the transformation of powerful individuals
into a supernatural jaguar being.
The jaguar played an equally important, though better
documented, role in Mesoamerican Aztec religion and ico-
nography. Known as ocelotl, it was regarded as the bravest of
beasts, proud “ruler of the animal world.” Its association with
warfare was acknowledged in eponymous metaphors describ-
ing valiant soldiers, such as the elite Jaguar Warrior Society
(ocelomeh). Religion, mythology, and astrology combined in
the belief that those born under the calendrical sign ocelotl
shared the jaguar’s aggressive nature and were well suited to
a warrior’s life. Aztec sorcerers wielded the jaguar’s pelt and
claws as magical weapons during nocturnal rituals.
Aztec rulers also appropriated jaguar imagery. The em-
peror wore jaguar apparel in war and held court seated on
thrones draped with the animal’s pelt. Tezcatlipoca, the su-
preme Aztec deity, was patron of royalty and inventor of sac-
rifice whose alter ego was a huge jaguar known as Tepeyolotl.
At the center of the Aztec universe—the Great Temple of
Tenochtitlan (Mexico City)—complete feline bodies were
interred with balls of jade gripped in their fangs. The temple
was regarded mythologically as the “cosmic water moun-
tain,” jade symbolized water, and the jaguar was associated
with fertility.
The metaphysical associations of the pre-Columbian
jaguar survived into the colonial period, merging with the
imagery of Old World lions and tigers and influenced by
Christian beliefs. The animal’s spiritual ambivalence, vari-
ously signifying good and evil, fertility and death, also per-
sisted. In sixteenth-century Mexico sorcerers known as nahu-
allis were accused by the Spanish of devil worship, murder,
insurrection, and changing into jaguars. Elsewhere in Me-
soamerica the jaguar became Christ’s defender, its pelt sym-
bolizing its protective role in the passion. At the Maya village
of Chamula, in the highlands of the Mexican state of Chia-
pas, there is a New Year ritual called the “Jaguar Skin Dance”
understood as part of Christ’s passion. During this dance,
civil and religious leaders take turns to dance wearing a jag-
uar skin that symbolizes God’s jaguar, which defended
Christ against demons. The one who wears the skin imper-
sonates the defender of Christ. Images of the jaguar also re-
placed the lion at the feet of St. Jerome, and for the Maya
of Chamula only civic leaders and shamans could have the
jaguar as their animal soul companion. In Colombia, by con-
trast, aggressive aspects of jaguar imagery were mobilized
against the Spanish in the ferocious “tiger men” who fought
the white invaders.
In modern Central and South America, jaguar masks
and costumes are popular folk art items. In rural areas they
are worn by dancers in religiously syncretic springtime festi-
vals that mix Catholic beliefs with pre-Columbian ideas con-
cerning the protection of crops and livestock. In remoter
areas of Mexico echoes of ancient blood rituals survive in fi-
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION
JAGUARS 4763
estas, where young men dressed as jaguars fight to spill blood
for the jaguar deity, who then sends rain to fertilize the
maize. Jaguar masks can be mainly decorative and made of
wood or fabric and worn as part of dance costumes, as at the
village of Totoltepec in the Mexican state of Guerrero. They
can also be more like helmets, made from toughened wild
pig skin, and worn as protection during violent ritualised
fights between young men dressed as jaguars, as at the vil-
lages of Acatlán and Zitlala, also in the Mexican state of
Guerrero.
In the tropical rain-forests of lowland South America,
the jaguar remains a more visceral spiritual force as well as
a feared and admired predator. In Amazonian mythology the
jaguar was the original possessor of fire, though now only a
reflected glow can be seen in its mirrored eyes. Jaguar meta-
phors signify bravery in battle and success in hunting, both
in the physical world and the supernatural realm, where it
is the spirit helper of shamans and chiefs. For Amazonian In-
dians, meeting a jaguar on a jungle path can be an unnerving
experience, as one can never be sure whether it is the natural
animal, the shade of an ancestor, or a malevolent shaman-
turned-jaguar on a mission of vengeance against some
enemy.
As the natural jaguar is the rain-forest’s most powerful
and resourceful hunter, so the supernatural jaguar is the most
potent and dangerous spiritual force. Dominant shamans
identify themselves with the jaguar, their reputation as suc-
cessful curers based on their superior ability to defeat illness-
bearing spirits. These jaguar-shamans may wear necklaces of
jaguar fangs and claws, growl during trance, and eat the ani-
mal’s magical strength-giving flesh. The spiritual equivalence
between jaguars and shamans is sometimes made explicit in
the widespread belief that, under the influence of hallucino-
gens, some shamans transform into jaguars in body as well
as spirit.
SEE ALSO Mesoamerican Religions; South American Indian
Religions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benson, Elizabeth P. “The Classic Maya Use of Jaguar Accesso-
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Benson, Elizabeth P. “The Lord, the Ruler: Jaguar Symbolism in
the Americas.” In Icons of Power: Feline Symbolism in the
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Furst, Peter T. “The Olmec Were-Jaguar Motif in the Light of
Ethnographic Reality.” In Dumbarton Oaks Conference on the
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Kubler, George. “Jaguars in the Valley of Mexico.” In The Cult
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Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. The Shaman and the Jaguar: A Study
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