Introduction
The Pax God, also known as the Patron of Pax or the Te’ God, is the personification of trees, a celestial messenger, and the frequent companion to the Jaguar War God. He is one of the few deities who has multiple forms; he can either appear with a human body, or he can appear as a tree, with his face embedded near the base.

Iconographic Traits
The Pax God is a part of a complex of deities that all share the large, singular T-shaped tooth. Although this tooth is not always present, it can be complemented or replaced by an elongated upper lip. Other than the tooth, the Pax God also has a large eye, which can have either a curled or square pupil depending on the context in which he appears. When he is with the Jaguar War God, he typically shares that deity’s curled pupil, but when he is on his own or when he appears as a tree, he typically has a square pupil, although a few exceptions exist. The Pax God is also marked by glyphs; he has both a forehead mirror and “god-markings” across his body. Both are usually marked with LEM ‘shiny’ glyphs, but there are examples where his forehead mirror has a K’IN ‘sun’ glyph and his “god-markings” are AK’AB ‘darkness’ glyphs.

The Pax God’s most recognizable traits are his missing lower jaw and his jaguar paw ear. While he shares the missing lower jaw with other deities, such as the Water Lily Serpent or the Bloody-Mouthed God, the Pax God is the only one to have a TE’ ‘wood’ glyph emerging downwards out of his upper jaw. I suspect that the reason he lacks an upper jaw is to depict how trees “bleed” sap, as the Maya saw tree sap as equivalent to blood (Houston et al. 2006:126). The Pax God is the only deity to feature a jaguar paw for an ear, so it functions as a good way to identify him. There are a few depictions where he lacks this ear, but in them, he instead has jaguar paw hands, so the jaguar paw is still present.

Extended Names and Titles
The Pax God’s head glyph, when not used in calendrics, almost always acts as the word te’, “wood/tree.” In many depictions of the deity, there can be a small SIBIK ‘ink/soot’ glyph either attached to or immediately in front of his nose. Marc Zender has proposed the name Sibikte’, “Ink/Soot Tree,” based on these criteria (2005:13). Somewhat unusually, other than this full name of Sibikte’, there are no other names, or even extended names for the Pax God known in the current Maya corpus.

Glyph Uses
As mentioned above, the main use of the Pax God glyph is to act as a substitute for the TE’ ‘wood/tree’ logogram. In addition, his head glyph can also serve as the head variant for the month of Pax, hence his nicknames the Pax God and the Patron of Pax.

Known Myths
The Pax God participates in two main episodes of myth, and he cameos in several others. First, the Pax God appears at the 4 Ajaw 8 Kumk’u event in God L’s underworld court (Figure 1F, K2796, K7750). Here, he appears with the other four T-shaped toothed deities, K’inich Ajaw, God I of the Palenque Triad, the Bloody-Mouthed God, and the Jaguar War God (Crim 2025). It is no surprise that he sits directly behind the Jaguar War God as the two are frequent companions.

The other major myth that the Pax God takes part in is the rescue and resurrection of the Maize God. He, along with the Jaguar War God, God I, the Bloody-Mouthed God, and Chahk, successfully hunts and defeats the shark monster from whose jaws the Maize God is rescued (K0595, K9152). In the following portion of the myth, the previously mentioned deities have passed the Maize God on to the Paddler Gods so that they can ferry him back to the world of the living. In the expanded version of this scene, depicted on the Star War Vase (K6340), the Pax God can be seen seated with the Jaguar War God in a giant EK’ ‘star’ glyph in the sky overwatching the scene below (Crim 2026).

There is a group of “codex-style” vases in which the Pax God is depicted as a bundled effigy, usually alongside a similarly bundled Chahk, though they can appear independently. Why they appear in these scenes is still unknown (Zender 2020:63), but the appearance of this bundled Pax God on the Star War Vase (Figure 1I) suggests that this may be a different aspect of the deity than the previously mentioned one who appears in the sky.

There are other scenes, too many to count, where the Pax God appears only in his aboreal form. As he is the personification of trees, it is more than likely that he is not participating, but that his appearance is used for artistic emphasis. This is done in a similar fashion with the Water Lily Serpent, who acts as a personification of the water itself (K9152). In these scenarios, it would seem that these deities only appear to represent a specific material or object, and that they are not active participants.

Roles and Associations
The Pax God’s main role is to act as the personification of trees, but he has others as well. One of these is to act as an ebeet, a messenger. The Amparo Throne, an unprovinced looted object, depicts the Pax God as a small being with wings attached underneath his arms (Zender 2005:Figure 9), where he acts as the ebeet of Itzamnaaj, and is arriving after having descended from the Location of Six Sky (Zender 2005:13). This role as a messenger, his companionship with the Jaguar War God, and the T-shaped tooth that he shares with other celestial deities all point to a possible planetary identification. In the Pax God’s case, he may be a representation of Mercury at dusk. Mercury is often interpreted as a messenger as it seems to erratically and quickly move from above the horizon to below it, or from the celestial world to the underworld. His frequent appearance alongside the Jaguar War God, who I suggest may be a representation of Venus at dusk, also fits with this idea, as Venus and Mercury are often seen side by side in the evening sky just after sunset (Crim 2025).

Pax God Scenes

Sources
Justin Kerr photograph collection, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, DC.
Crim, Alexander
2025 The Vases of the Seven and Eleven Gods: A New Interpretation. IMS Explorer 53, no. 9 (2025): 1, 3–4.
2026 Shark Hunters of the Horizon: Venus, Mercury, and the Rescue of the Maize God. Aztlander 6, no. 1 (2026): 14-16.
Houston, Stephen, David Stuart, and Karl Taube
2006 The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya
Zender, Marc

2005 The Raccoon Glyph in Classic Maya Writing. The PARI Journal 5(4):6-16.
2020 Disaster, Deluge, and Destruction on the Star War Vase. The Mayanist 2(1):57-76.