Wayob

Wayob is the plural form of way (or uay), a Maya word with a basic meaning of 'sleep(ing)', but which in Yucatec Maya is a term specifically denoting the Mesoamerican nagual, that is, a person who can transform into an animal while asleep in order to do harm, or else the resulting animal transformation itself.

[1] Already in Classic Maya belief, way animals, identifiable by a special hieroglyph, had an important role to play.

These authors assert that a glyph representing a stylised, frontal 'Ahau' (Ajaw) face half covered by a jaguar-pelt represents the way, with syllabic wa and ya elements attached to the main sign clarifying its meaning.

[9] The Classic wayob include a far wider array of shapes than the 20th-century ones from Yucatán (insofar as the latter have been reported), with specific names assigned to each of them.

[11] The skeletal way prominent on a Tonina stucco wall carries the severed head of a defeated opponent.