There is nothing grandiose about Copan in its scale, or the heights of it's main temples. But Copan is a spectacular Mayan place. No other ruined classical Mayan city has Copans sheer mass of legible glyphs, and perserved, still sharply visible images of the Mayan world.
There is no more grandiose presentation of the Mayan written word than Copan's stairway of the inscription. The about 100 foot high stairway has every surface covered with glyphs. It could have been a comprehensive library of the Classical Mayan world view. But during a 19th Century "restoration effort" the text of the stairway was, perhaps, hopelessly scrambled.
Inside the stairs, the tombs of two great shamans have been found, a man and a women. They are described by the glyphs of being adept shape shifters able to take on the forms of jaguars, pumas, ravens, turtles, jungle rattlesnakes, other humans, and many other creatures.
The eminent Gnostic Scholar, Harold Blum, describes shamanism as being a proto-Gnosticism, as the seeing in the human the potential to transcend the human nature to venture into non-human realms, to take on non-human forms, to be full collaborators in the further creation of creation.
The many images of the Mayan world that survive in Copan always shows the human in this way. All the Mayan rulers depicted in Copan are recognizably in the posture of tripping hard on lysergic acid derived from the morning glory. All the artists and artisans who made the images were tripping hard when they made the images.
Christian Gnosticism portrays Rabbi Yeshua, as a kind of universal shaman, with the power to to create a universal shamanistic universe/reality. The resently re-discovered gospel of Judas protrays a Rabbi Yeshua, who no doubt is tripping hard.
In Copan the shamans ruled. The God/Kings who most guided the city's destiny were themselves ruled by the shamanistic universe.
Many modern visitors to the Classic Mayan ruined cities, which are often located in cattle country made by razing the jungle, are tripping hard on Psilicybin cubensis, which grows on the cow's manure. Many believe that the Classical Mayans were also tripping on these mushrooms.
If the Classical Mayan had cows, they probably would have. And if they had cows they would also have probably implanted the beef worms in their bodies to induce the blood letting that was achieved by piercing their tongues, or sexual organs with sting ray tails.
When I finally made it into the ruins of Copan, I was rid of the beef worms, and the blood and pus itzing volcanoes. But in all the other Mayan ruins that I've visited on this voyage I was especially itzing through the flesh volcanos in my head, in my shoulder.
I was told by the government workers at the ruins not to get blood on the antiquities, but the antiquities were made to receive the blood, the itz.
I never doubted that there was a shamanistic significance to the worm, to the itzing volcanos.
And it is no coincidence that in the pueblo of Copan Ruins, I was rid of the worm, rid of the old skin, and fully in the new skin.