Maya is also a word derived from Sanskrit. It means the sense-world of manifold phenomena held in Vedanta to conceal the unity of absolute being; broadly ,ILLUSION.

Maya is also the name of one of my friends.

The Maya are probably the best-known of the classical civilizations of Mesoamerica. Today, they number about six million people, making them the largest single block of indigenous peoples north of Peru.

Maya is also the title of a book by Jostein Gaarder. Like all of his books it combines fiction with philosophy. In Maya the main theme is whether or not human existence has a deeper meaning, and, not surprisingly, the Hindu concept of Maya also features in the story. In a way this book is a sequel to The Solitaire Mystery. The Joker reappears and plays an important part.

Maya is one of the asuras in Hinduism. He is the architect and craftsman of the gods, the builder of illusions.

In the Mahabharata, Maya built the fantastically beautiful palace or assembly hall for the Pandus.

In the Ramayana, he built Pushpaka -- an intelligent flying city, or vimana.

His home is underground in the land of the Nagas or snake gods. Mandodari, his daughter, marries the demon Ravana, the villain of the Ramayana.

(Hinduism, Sanskrit: ma "not" + ya "this")

  1. material atmosphere in which the conditioned soul tries to enjoy without God; this material universe; the Supreme Lord's deluding potency.In the Mahabharata, maya tactics where adopted by the rakshashas during the war; or
  2. in the Mahabharata, an architect who managed to escape from the Khandava fire. He built the Sabha for Yudhishthira.

Maya is also the name of a high-end 3D program made by Alias Wavefront. It is essentially a modeling, character animation and visual effects system designed for professional animators and game designers. Built on a procedural architecture called the "Dependency Graph" (nodes attatched to other nodes...imagine!), it is extremely powerful and flexible in generating digital images of animated characters and scenes.

Maya was a shape-shifting character introduced in the second and final season of the ITC space opera Space: 1999. Maya was played by actress Catherine Schell.

In the episode "The Metamorph" (first aired in 1976), Maya was the stunningly beautiful, side-burned daughter of Mentor. Mentor and Maya were the last of a race called the Psychons. The Psychons mastered the secrets of molecular transformation and they could shape shift. Alas all their science did not save them from the near destruction of their planet's environment. Psychon, once a beautiful verdant world, now resembled a British sound stage complete with hunks of rock grey foam and shredded green plastic trash bags made to resemble alien foliage. So what I mean to say is Psychon was one huge volcano. Volcano planet. You dig? It wasn't a super great place to live.

Alas, Mentor's desire to return his world to a verdant paradise knew no ethical limit. He was like a Raelian crossed with a Scientologist crossed with a Microsoft biz dev guy. He believed the citizens of Moonbase Alpha could be turned into bio-batteries that would help power a super computer that could restore the planet's original environment. How that was all going to come about was a bit hazy but this was 1976. If a computer could understand human speech in The Six Million Dollar Man, by 1999 a computer could certainly handle the trivial task of teraforming a shattered planet. Know what I'm saying there, Action Jackson?

Maya -- a sweet innocent bearded version of Prospero's daughter Miranda -- was made aware of her dad's malevolent plans and helped the Moonbase Alphaians to escape by blowing up her dad and her home world. After slaughtering her father, she joined the Moonbase Alphaians and used her shape shifting, advanced scientific knowledge, pluck, and sexiness to save Walter Koenig and crew many a time.

Swedish slang for marijuana. Other spellings are "maja" and "majja".

Other synonyms are:

  • Gräs (grass)
  • Braja
  • Narki
  • Ganja

Somewhere in a daydream, there is a world that is a bit like earth was during Antiquity. It is full of vast treasured kingdoms and mythological emerald hills, and it is called Maya.

Maya is real, yet imaginary. In the native tongue there, "mya" means illusion, as they consider it a dream-world. Each inhabitant of Maya knows they came to there from someplace else, whether from another planet or heaven or hell. Each at some point settled into that enchanted land, and most did not want to leave it. If Maya were only a dream, then there is a kind and gentle rhyme to how its dream links into the soul, so that the two cannot be untied easily.

Like all lands, Maya went through epic mortal cycles, of empires and war and feuding ancient wizards. Finally it reached the end of its history, for an apocalyptic prophecy had initiated itself. And at this point, a group of immortal beings intervened in Maya's history — which appeared like all-powerful angels from distant worlds — and those beings were called the Firmament, five in all. The Firmament began to construct a new era of enlightened society, towards which all life in that realm would mystically evolve towards.


After the Firmament’s arrival, there underwent warring between their followers and adherents to the native religion of the Seven Muses derived from Maya's Creator. It was quite diplomatically declared by the high alchemists that those who followed the Firmament into the heavens would study a new science of spirituality, and those who remained behind in Maya would continue to operate within the old Creator’s order.

The history of Mandala became the story of mortal evolution. Every kingdom was decimated by the Last War, and many left completely dead and barren. The Firmament built a rainbow bridge between Maya and the afterlifes, and they ferried spirits of the dead across. This was all guided by a higher order that not even the Abode could dispute.

Many kingdoms remained on Maya, bargaining with Muses to restore their world to a fertile and livable lands. The Muses were generous towards the survivors, and granted them not only the steady regeneration of terrestrial Maya, but also the technology and wisdom to construct in the heavens above the earth.

Thus Muses presented mortals with blueprints for Mandala, the city in the sky. By constructing in the heavens, the Muses promised that mortals would come to intimately understand their magical nature of being, and to rule over their lifespan, death, and rebirths.


Mandala sits just above Maya, its foundations laying atop the cloudline. It is the overworld above the planet’s surface, surrounding much of the globe like a patchwork of heavens constructed by mortal hands. Occasionally columns dip below the clouds, and reach towards the snowy mountain peaks like a god’s marbled fingertips. From its heavens, Mandala yearns to align its magic with the earth below. For Maya's part, any evidence of old structures upon which Mandala was scaffolded, or even the ruins of construction sites, are mysteriously absent.

Indeed, life is inexplicably better upon the overworld — more opportunities, people who feel liberated and free. It is difficult to describe, as inhabiting a place like Mandala is more a state of mind than it is a sight to behold — and it is quite magnificent on both counts.

Ma"ya (?), n. Hindoo Philos.

The name for the doctrine of the unreality of matter, called, in English, idealism; hence, nothingness; vanity; illusion.

 

© Webster 1913.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.