The serpent is one of the most familiar images in Maya visual culture, especially in sculptural art. Its presence on the buildings façades, usually associated with masks, dates back to very early times, adopting different forms and bearing different attributes. All these artistic manifestations furnished ideological messages of high symbolic content, hence the importance of an adequate analysis and interpretation of them. The discovery in La Blanca (Petén) of a sculptural relief with serpent heads associated with a mask has made us inquire, at the time of undertaking its study, about the continuity of this type of representations throughout time, in the variations suffered in function of its cultural mobility and in the different interpretations of which it has been object. What the ancient Maya experienced during the contemplation of these symbolic images during the celebration of rituals is another of the questions we try to answer in this contribution.
