Three shamen
This year’s festival in and near Tikal to celebrate the Mayan solstice and prepare for the beginning of the next Mayan 5,200 year long count era is upon us. We are back in El Remate for a week to participate and help with the festival, organised by Anne of Project IxCanaan. This year is special because the 19th December is the New Year’s Day of the 260 day annual Mayan sacred calendar – the first time in a while the new year and solstice are so close to each other.
Tata and Nana
Three Mayan shamen from the Guatemalan Highlands are leading sacred fire ceremonies each morning by the lake, keeping a sacred fire continually burning where they are staying, and giving information and consultations on the relevance of each person’s Mayan birth date before leading ceremonies with up to 2,500 shamen at Tikal on the 21st to 22nd December.
It is very interesting learning about the traditional Mayan spiritual world and the shamen who connect people with that world of energies that influence our lives. It is a continuation of a 3,000 year-old tradition that has outlasted the abandonment of the Mayan city states, Spanish Conquest and Inquisition, smallpox, denigration of indigenous identity, Civil War, genocide, globalisation and even North American evangelism.
Tata Pedro Cruz welcomes the sun
The people attending the festival, apart from the shamen, are approximately 25% Guatemalan and 75% North American or European. The latter are much the same people who would be attracted to stone circle paganism in Britain, except here there is a direct continuation of the tradition managed and perpetuated from one generation to another by generations of Mayan shamen.
Three things strike me at present.
The spiritual principles discussed by the shamen are similar in many ways to the principles of Hindu Yogis including reincarnation of a spiritual body, meditation, the body as connecting rod with the divine. Now that’s worth thinking about how we explain this without cynically kicking the question in to touch or getting all Graham Hancock over everything. What does this mean? I should find out afgter my consultation with the shamen.
Is it better for westerners searching for spirituality to hang out with people who know what they’re talking about or stone circles?
My birth date sign is a turtle which is highly significant for my life. The lake is my doctor. My birth date is 2 turtle, origin day is 7 monkey, my mission date 10 noj (not yet sure what animal this is). Together it means I am well-balanced, have lots of forward momentum and can go anywhere - sunrise, sunset, where the winds blow, where the winds hide to do my mission which may or may not be about healing but is to do with helpìng others in some way.
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