In the creation account of the Popol Vuh, Huracan, the Heart of Sky, together with the Feathered Serpent Gucumatz (the Sovereign Plumed Serpent), brings the world into being. At the beginning there is only the still sky and the calm sea, and the gods, in the darkness and the water, take counsel together and simply speak: at their word the earth rises from the sea, the mountains and valleys are formed, and the forests and their creatures come into being.
The creation of humankind, however, takes several attempts. The first beings, made of mud, dissolve; a second race, carved of wood, can move and multiply but have no minds, no memory of their makers and no proper worship, and so Huracan sends a great flood and a rain of resin, and monsters and even their own tools and animals turn against them, to destroy them, and the surviving remnant, tradition says, became the monkeys. Only later are true human beings successfully made, from maize. Huracan is thus both the storm that destroys and the creative power whose word calls the world into existence, the Heart of Sky whose lightning is at once the terror of the tempest and the flash of the creating mind.