Maya religion
Offerings and sacrifices

Offerings serve to establish and renew relations ('contracts', 'pacts', or 'covenants') with the other world, and the choice, number, preparation, and arrangement of the offered items (such as special maize breads, maize and cacao drinks and honey liquor, flowers, incense nodules, rubber figures, and also, cigars) obey to stringent rules. In the same way, a drink made of exactly 415 grains of parched maize was to be offered to participants in a pre-Hispanic New Year ritual, and on another occasion, the precise number of 49 grains of maize mixed with copal (incense) was to be burnt. A well-known example of a ritual meal is the "Holy Mass of the maize farmer" (misa milpera) celebrated at an improvised altar for the Yucatec rain deities. Particularly Lacandon ritual was entirely focused on the 'feeding' of the deities, as represented by their incense burners.

The forms of sacrifice might take vary considerably. In contemporary sacrificial rites, there is an overall emphasis on the sprinkling of blood, especially that of turkeys. In the pre-Hispanic past, sacrifice usually consisted of animals such as deer, dog, quail, turkey, and fish, but on exceptional occasions (such as accession to the throne, severe illness of the ruler, royal burial, or drought and famine) also came to include human beings, adults as well as children. The sacrificed child may have served as a 'substitute', a concept known from curing ritual. Partaking of the sacrifice was common, but ritual cannibalism appears to have been exceedingly rare. A characteristic feature of ancient Mayan ritual (though not exclusive to the Mayas) were the "bloodletting" sessions held by high officials and members of the royal families, during which the earlobes, tongues, and foreskins were cut with razor-sharp small knives and stingray spines; the blood fell on paper strips that were possibly burnt afterwards.

In the ancient Maya cities, all sorts of offertory items including sacrificial implements were also stored and buried in deposits (caches) below architectural features such as floors, stelae, and altars; in these cases, the intention may often have been a dedication to a specific religious purpose, rather than an offering to a divine recipient.
punctuation:no_comma