The Palace and the Pyramid
The massive platform supporting the Governor's Palace is over 50 feet high, with a grand ceremonial staircase leading up to it. El Adivino rises massively in the distance.
Note the contrasting orientations of these buildings. El Adivino's temples IV and V face the setting sun at the summer solstice, while the House of the Governor faces the point on the horizon where Venus first rises as the morning star.
The Palace faces Venus
The Palace faces the point on the horizon where Venus rises at the Morning Star, the Pyramid aligns with sunset on the summer solstice.
"The collocation of pyramidal forms obeyed relationships of celestial order and thus reflected the cosmos in the spatial relationships of the ritual center.
Kubler, Studies in Ancient American & European Art, p. 244
The Pyramid aligns with the solstice
The Maya worshiped out of doors to celebrate the great cycles of sun and planets.
The pyramid is an image of the world; in turn, that image of the world is a projection of human society. If it is true that man invents gods in his own image, it is also true that he sees his own image in the images that the sky and the earth offer him. Man makes human history of the inhuman landscape; nature turns history into cosmogony, the dance of the stars.
Octavio Paz, The Other Mexico, p. 294
Summer solstice dawn of 1995
This agricultural people lived in harmony with the great temporal cycles of sun and planet.