Chac the Rain god is represented in the codices with a long proboscis and two tusks curving down from his mouth, one forwards and the other backwards. The adornment that he wears on his head is generally a knotted band. The hieroglyph of his name contains an eye, in which the Tro-Cortesian codex is distinctly T-shaped.

It has been suggested that this element represents tears flowing from the eye which, in turn, may symbolize rain and thus fertility. This symbol is also the hieroglyph for the day Ik, whose patron deity was probably the rain god, as Itzamná was of the day Ahau.

Chac was a universal deity of the first order, and would have to be considered even more important than Itzamná. The figure of Chac appears 218 times in the three known Mayan codices, while Itzamná is only represented 103 times, and not at all in the Peresian Codex. Chac was, first and foremost, god of rain, and, by association of ideas, a god of wind, of thunder and of lightning. By extension, he was considered a god of fertility and of agriculture in the widest sense of growth and germination, and lastly as god of corn sowing.

The rain god was not thought of as a single deity, but rather as four gods at the same time. That is, there was a different Chac for each of the cardinal points, each point having a particular color associated with it: Chac Xib Chac - the Red Man Chac of the East; Sac Xib Chac - the White Man Chac of the North; Ek Xib Chac - the Black Man Chac of the West; and Kan Xib Chac - the Yellow Man Chac of the South.

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Introduction|Itzamna|Chac|Yum Kax|Ah Puch
Ek Chuah|Ah Katun|Xaman Ek|Ixchel|Ixtab