Ancient Maya Prophecy And Belief
Reading the future; healing body, mind and spirit
A prophecy is a message that comes from a deity, delivered to a person attuned to receive it. Typically, the message expresses the divine will regarding the future. Ancient cultures all had prophets who delivered prophecies. And people believed what they heard, were willing to kill and die to be true to it. Gods, after all, were to be trusted.
Anthropologist Mircea Eliade noted that tribal societies believed that their stories, about the gods and sacred ancestors overcoming the forces of chaos, created a sacred cosmic and social order in which humans could safely dwell. He said their myths and rituals divided the world into two realms, the sacred and the profane. Those who live the sacred order are human beings; all others are strangers who come from the realm of chaos and are different and those differences threaten the life-sustaining stability of their sacred order. Around the world, he showed that ancient tribal societies saw themselves as living at the center of the cosmos, the place where the gods and ancestors brought things into being. In such a physical and mental space, trusting the will of the gods and sacred ancestors was inborn, automatic, a matter of life, destiny and death.
As part of the divinely created order of the cosmos, to maintain personal safety and stability in a tribal society, human beings needed to model the cosmic order—maintain the center. There were many threats—rivalry, disease, beasts and demons that roamed the wilds, malevolent deities, climate fluctuations and outsiders. So it was necessary to understand the will of the benevolent gods and appeal to ancestors who in death became guardians of the sacred order.
It is not surprising that, according to archaeologist David Freidel, the Maya institution of “divine” kingship derived from the much earlier Olmec culture in southern Mexico. Maya kings were more than elites who ruled. Their power, at least until the Late Classic period, derived mainly from their ability, along with their priest-daykeepers, to discern the will of the gods and divine the future.
Privileged to meet and photograph a Maya shaman in his Santa Catarina, Guatemala healing center, I took the above picture of the sacred items he used to do a “layout” that would inform him about a client’s health and prognosis. Using two types of beans and crystals, his procedure was to arrange them in rows using sacred numbers. On a trip to Belize, I met a shaman who used beans and crystals in the same way, but an important part of his discernment had to do with the feelings he got in different parts of his body.
Maya kings used psychoactive drugs, auto-sacrifice and ecstatic dancing to commune with the gods and deified ancestors. In the modern era, prophets emerged and we built religions around them. And today there are individuals who claim to be gifted with precognition, the ability to foretell the future. Whatever the underlying reality, then and now, there is no question that belief is one of our most powerful capacities. It’s the rudder that steers the canoe and the ocean liner.
This is a make-believe world. We make it according to our belief.
Jerome Perlinski
Your beliefs become your thoughts.
Your thoughts become your words.
Your words become your actions.
Your actions become your habits.
Your habits become your values.
Your values become your destiny.
Mahama Gandhi
Prophecy Of The Cloud Kings At El Mirador
Excerpt From Jaguar Rising (p. 57-59 )
“According to the prophecy there were to be two trials,” White Grandfather said. “Our grandfathers survived the first. Now it comes to us. And it will not pass when the k’in bearer sets his burden down. It will only pass when the gods see how we are shouldering this, their final trial.”
The same man spoke again. “Respect, Grandfather, people are saying that Laughing Falcon has not bargained well with the gods, they are not honoring his requests.” When others in the crowd agreed, White Grandfather shook his head and looked side to side. Someone called out. “Enough talk! Release the food! Give us the food!” The people shouted, stomped the ground, and clapped their hands. “Food! Food! Food…”
White Grandfather took a step forward and pointed to the crates and baskets beyond the guards. “Do you know where this comes from?” he shouted.
“From us!” someone yelled. Another called out, “Tribute!” Someone else complained that it was his family’s sweat that filled the storehouse.”
“All that we have, all that we receive is a gift from the gods,” White Grandfather said. “Lord K’in provides the heat and light for your crops. The Chaakob water them with rain. One Maize gives us the maize to eat and the seeds to plant. All this and more is given through the appeals, the blood sacrifices, petitions and offerings of Our Bounty. Turn away from what you lack. Instead, fix your gaze on the bounty that is coming, that has been foretold…”
A calmer voice interrupted, “With respect, Grandfather, how can I, when my family is starving? My eyes are fixed on their misery.” The man turned and pointed beyond the guards. “We cannot eat the words of a prophecy.”
White Grandfather bent down. “We understand. We know it is difficult—” A noblewoman next to the man got his attention and spoke. All I could see was nodding behind a deer headdress with a spray of macaw feathers. White Grandfather stood straight again. “The lady asks why the trial has been so long and severe. Those who gave the prophecy did not say. But they understand—when sustenance is withheld, trust, belief, and hope are all challenged. By standing firm against the drought, against the fields of rotting maize, the pain of hunger and the loss of our elders, we show ourselves to be worthy of the abundance they promised.”
“What prophecy do you speak of?” the lady asked. “When and where was it given?”
“The Cloud prophecy, given nine k’atunob past, at Mirador.” In a voice only those around us could hear, a round-faced guard said a one-hundred-eighty-year-old prophecy could not be trusted. He said it was no longer valid.
“I have not heard of it,” someone called out. “What did it say?”
White Grandfather opened his arms and waited for the crowd to quiet. “The prophecy said the destiny of the House of Cloud—and the challenge to its rulers—was to raise temples to Lord K’in and One Maize that reach to the clouds. It said that when this is fulfilled there will be many seasons of abundance, but first, there would be trials—to determine if the people living in the Cloud territories are deserving of such abundance. Further, he said there would be two long seasons when the skin of the earth and skins of the people dry up. There will be too much water and then not enough. A mingling of strong winds from the east and west will bring black smoke, a blanket of death. It advised that we, along with the rulers, make offerings of blood and incense—and stand tall through the trials.” White Grandfather walked closer to the shelter’s roof. “Already, we have raised temples that reach the clouds. Now, if we stand tall—like a forest around our Great Tree—offering our sweat and patience to the gods, the abundance will come.”
A young warrior raised his feathered spear and called from the middle of the crowd. “With respect, did the prophecy come from the Cloud ancestors—or from the gods?”
“Our ancestors gave the prophecy that we might understand what the gods want,” the old man said.
“What do they want?” An older warrior standing beside him asked.
Rather than answer, White Grandfather removed his three-leaf headdress and held it out. Mother whispered in my ear. “Remember what tell—about Those Born First?”
“How they wore three maize leaves in their headdresses?” I answered.
She nodded. “Tipped with jade beads.
“I forget what they were for.”
“Listen,” she said, pointing to White Grandfather.
“This is what they want,” he said. He pointed to the leaves and named them in turn: “Beauty—Respect—Gratitude. To your eyes, they look like maize leaves painted white. To our eyes, they are the seeds that, when sown in the hearts of men, flower into the coming abundance. When we make beauty in our houses and fields, when we show respect for the gods, ancestors, Our Bounty, our brothers and sisters of the caah—all that lives, when we have gratitude in our hearts for what we have been given, the gods will be satisfied. When they see the seeds of beauty, respect and gratitude growing in each of us and in the caah, they will be eager to sustain us, continue the world for another round and bring the promised abundance.”
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For a brief description of The Path Of The Jaguar novels: Go to the Home Page—Novels
Links To Amazon.com for paperback books and Kindle Editions
Jaguar Rising: A novel of the Preclassic Maya
Sacred Spaces
For the ancients, there was no separation between the secular and the sacred. Everything of the Earth was sacred, ensouled with a vital source that comes from the sun. Outside it was chaotic space, peopled by ghosts, demons, spirits and “foreigners” who were considered demons. Because human beings couldn’t live in chaos, life and living was all about maintaining order. And the model for it was (and remains) nature and the cosmos. In both, they and we observe constancy, beauty, pattern and cyclical motion, apparent features of absolute reality. Modeling these in architectural forms, they created sacred spaces, distinct from the “wilds” of chaotic fields and forests. In a way, using dimensions and forms found in nature, they consecrated a space by making is a universe.
For the ancient Maya, the parts of a house were correlated with parts of the human body and the cosmos. The floor was “feet,” the door a “mouth,” the thatched roof a “head of hair,” the walls the “bones,” and the four corners a replica of the cosmos. Houses were mostly for sleeping; the activities of daily life took place outside. Functional structures, such as kitchens, storehouses and workshops were generally separate from the house because it was not only sacred, it was a living entity. Doorways were open, without doors, to show hospitality. And for privacy, a fabric was pulled across the opening and tied to wooden pegs inserted into the walls.
Making a new structure a “home” a living entity required an Och K’ahk’ “Enters the Fire” ceremony where fire was drilled between three large hearthstones. (On a clear night a “cloud” in the center of three bright stars in Orion is visible—Alnitak, Saiph, Rigel. We know that cloud of gas, dust and stars as nebula M42). By investing the space with life—heat and light—the home reflected health and vitality. At the same ceremony, the shaman offered a blood sacrifice, usually a bird, to entice a spirit—often a deceased ancestor—to take up residence in the house as a protector.
Tikal Temple II
Temples, which were an extension of the Maya home, were considered the dwelling places of the gods. They also replicated caves, places where underworld supernaturals resided. When the temple curtain covered the doorway, the god was asleep in his resting place. At many sites, the inscriptions speak of three hearthstones being places in the sky as one of the founding acts of creation. The hearth in the temple was an essential conduit between it and the cosmic hearth planted by the Maize God. Ceibal, a medium-sized city in northern Peten, Guatemala may have been called “Three-Stone Place” anciently because there was a cache of three jade boulders under a stela in the center of a temple.
In his study of architectural dimensions, archaeologist Christopher Powell found that “the width of most Maya houses in Yucatan consisted of units called uinics ‘humans,’ which are measured by stretching a cord from fingertip to fingertip, with arms outstretched and perpendicular to the body. One uinic was virtually equal to the height of the person who was doing the measuring. Thus, a human being with arms outstretched and perpendicular to the body may be inscribed by a square.” This is seen in many temple doorways that are square. It calls to mind the drawing of the Vitrucian Man by Leonardo da Vinci.
Besides the human form, Dr. Powell also found that the ancients incorporated the shapes of flowers and shells which display Phi, nature’s most common proportion. Flowers have five petals or multiples of five petals. Projected onto the Maya world, there were four directions and a center. “The shapes of houses, milpas, and temples and their works of art all share the proportions inherent in three simple geometric forms: the equilateral triangle, square and pentagon. These three regular polygons, with their square root of two, square root of three, and phi rectangular expressions, provide an underlying structure that unites the Maya cosmos… Pentagonal arrangements of seeds in the cross-sections of fruit are common. The phi equiangular spiral is observed in seashells and snail shells and in the growth spirals of various plants. The Yucatec Maya word for belly button, “tzuk,” or division place, divides the human form by the phi proportion.
In the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiché Maya, there’s a passage that, according to Dr. Powell, may be viewed as a concise formula for measuring a phi rectangle with a cord.
It took a long performance and account to complete the emergence of all the sky-earth: the fourfold siding, the fourfold cornering, measuring, fourfold staking, halving the cord, stretching the cord, in the sky, on the earth, the four sides, the four corners, as is said, by the Maker, Modeler, Mother-Father of life, of human kind…
Christopher Powell
The ancients used cords (intertwined vines) of different lengths with knots along them to lay out the location and length of walls. To lay out a floor, for instance, a cord was dowsed with white lime powder (pulverized limestone), stretched taught at the specified location and then snapped to leave a white impression, along which the builders would lay their stones to build a wall. The cords were equivalent to today’s measuring tapes, providing a means to create and reproduce lines with consistency over time and place. In this way, they replicated the proportions found in nature and the cosmos.
Geometry and numbers are sacred because they codify the hidden order behind creation.
Stephen Skinner
Ensouling A House
Excerpt From Jaguar Rising (p. 74 )
When Grandfather Rabbit died, Thunder Flute decided that, rather than repair our house, which was next to his and badly in need of fixing, he would follow the common practice by terminating both houses and build a larger one over his father’s bones. Grandmother would move in with us.
Once the masonry platform was built, the house went up quickly. But before we could move in, its skin and bones had to be ensouled with a guardian spirit. Otherwise terrible things could happen. Somehow, within the seven days of the Fire Entering rites that invited a spirit to take up residence in the house, I needed to find a way to be alone with White Grandfather. I didn’t know what I was going to say, but with Thunder Flute being more willing to answer my questions now, I hoped I might learn something before then that would help.
I got my chance when he took me to an old quarry down by the New River. With the ensouling rites just two days away, he needed hearthstones to establish the heart of the house, the place where a spirit would enter. The three stones had to be a certain size and shape for cooking, so we used long-handled axes with wide flats to pull back the weeds, dig out the soil and expose a long section of white stone. The day was hot. Before we began to chop the stone itself, we sat on a ledge, wiped the sweat off our faces and took our keyem—a gruel made by stirring balls of maize dough in water. Mother spiced the dough with honey and chili powder, so I was eager for it.
“You can say your gratitude if you like,” Father said. He knew that Mother had gotten my sister, brother and me into the habit of offering a gratitude for everything we took from the earth, field, forest or water. I was embarrassed to say it in front of him, but he was allowing it. I took off my hat, put my hands flat on the stone and bowed my head.
With respect Earth Lord,
I stand before you—Seven Maize Rabbit.
I speak for myself and for Thunder Flute Rabbit.
In this place of beauty, we offer you our gratitude.
Forgive us for uncovering your face here,
For chopping your white beauty.
We need three of your little ones for our hearth.
We will honor them at the Fire Entering rites.
We will honor them as the heart of our house.
With respect Earth Lord, receive our praise and gratitude.
Thunder Flute scratched some lines in the exposed stone. Following them, he cut grooves with his chisel and hammerstone while I cut into the stone from below. It took all morning, aching muscles and buckets of sweat, but finally, we had a ledge. By stomping on it we broke off three large blocks and rolled them to a pool of water where we could sit in the shade and wash them off as we shaped them.
Using Measuring Cords (At Xunantunich, Belize)
Excerpt from Jaguar Sun (p. 246)
Approaching the broad steps of the temple, I saw again, high up, the beautifully stuccoed figures of men and gods that I’d seen from a distance. The deeply sculpted, brilliant red frieze wrapped around the temple like a headband. At the foot of the steps, Obsidian explained that he and the other workers were the only ones permitted to be up there, so I waited and watched while he and his brother-in-law took the cords to several men who were pacing on the floor above the sculpted band.
It was fascinating to watch my brother moving the measuring cords back and forth and dusting them with lime powder. I couldn’t see when they stooped down, but I knew a firm snap of the cord would leave a white line to show the placement of the walls and doorways so another worker could chisel small holes to mark them permanently for the stone setters.
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For a brief description of The Path Of The Jaguar novels: Go to the Home Page—Novels
Links To Amazon.com for paperback books and Kindle Editions
Jaguar Rising: A novel of the Preclassic Maya
Ancient Maya Cultural Traits 