Mythology:

According to the Mayans Copal was extracted from the Tree of Life and given to humans as a gift.

Among the northern Lacandón Maya of lowland Chiapas in southern Mexico:

The most common offering is copal incense (pom), which is made from the resin of the pitch pine (Pinus pseudostrobus). Young boys are given the task of gathering the sap from the
pine trees, which is collected by making shallow diagonal cuts in the trunk. The sap flows along the path of the cut and drips into a leaf cup placed at the base of the tree. The resin is then pounded into a thick paste and stored in large gourd bowls in the god house...Pom is important because it is the principal foodstuff given to the gods Although obviously not edible by humans, the Lacandón believe that when pom burns, the incense transforms into tortillas, which the gods consume

The Lacandón also fashion truncated cones, shaped somewhat like maize ears, made of copal, as part of a drinking ceremony, with eight smaller bits of the resin--like kernels of maize—surrounding a central one atop a "male" cone, and three disks of copal resin--like tortillas--atop a "female" cone. The male cones are similar to prehispanic copal nodule offerings found in the cenote at Chichén Itzá, as well as to a cone of copal retrieved from a lake in the Nevado de Toluca in central Mexico. The resin bits and disks differentiating male and female copal cones recall the nodular and disk forms in which copal is sold elsewhere in the Maya region today.

The copal offerings from the sacred well at Chichén Itzá were painted green­ish blue  and in some of them were embedded pieces of worked green jade such as beads and discs painting copal the color of jade recalls the fact that jade placed in the corpse's mouth in Maya burials has been interpreted as symbolizing maize as food for the soul of the newly departed, while copal itself is said to be food of the gods.