In a modern secular society, people usually define a spiritual reality based upon their religious values, while they define physical reality by agreed-upon scientific principles. A chair is a chair, held down by gravity. But the ancient Maya lived (and some still do) in a world in which these two planes of existence inextricably interlock - defining the material world as a manifestation of spiritual reality and vice-versa. Their humanity and the worlds of nature and spirituality were, in some ways, all one. The gods of the Otherworld influenced fate: they were capable of bringing drought or rain, disease or health, victory or defeat, life or death. Yet the gods depended on the actions of mortals for their welfare as well (the cosmic crocodile monster of the sky would shed its own blood as rain in response to the royal sacrifices from the earth below). Leaving nourishment and sustenance as an offering to departed souls is an ancient custom that continues today.

The Maya conceived their world as having three regions: the bright world of heaven, the stony Middleworld of earth and the dark water of the Underworld. These worlds were sacred, alive and bound up with one another. At sunset, for example, the Underworld rotated above to become the starry night sky.

The principal axis of existence was the path of the sun as it blazed across the sky. Each direction of the compass had a god and a color associated with it. East, the most important direction because of the sun's birth, was red, while west, where the sun died, was black. South was yellow and north, from where rain came, was white. In the Maya view of the world east, not north, belongs at the top of maps. These directions were also seen in relation to the center (blue-green, yax), where a Ceiba tree, known as the World Tree (Wacah Chan), links all three domains - its roots in the Underworld, trunk in the Middleworld and branches holding up the Otherworld sky.