Maya Yucatán: An Artist's Journey

Chapter Ten: Maya Yucatán

Traditional shaman ceremony held by syncretic Catholic Maya. 123 Living in Yucatán Late one night at the Yaxuná field camp I heard a strange throbbing sound coming from the far fields. An eerie sound, it seemed like great water engines at work, a deep rhythm in the night. It seemed so electronic , this phasing of the frequencies. For some time I tried to analyze the unearthly sound, but this one fantasy kept sticking in my head: this was the undulation of a space-alien gravity ship, resting in the fields out beyond the pyramids. Of course that was silly, and days later I solved the mystery by thinking it through: this great thrumming in the dark was created by many hundreds of frogs, singing in phasing unison , two or three different species that combined to make the uncanny music. For more than one reason, they were all happy that the rains had arrived that day, and everyone had to sing. That night I had wanted to go out to the fields and hear them more closely, but this was soon after my nighttime experience—related earlier—with the aluxes and dueños. After these spirits had followed me home at the conclusion of don Pablo’s nighttime benediction ceremony , I was more leery of venturing far at night. I could sense the aluxes in the dark line of trees beyond the cleared areas near the ruins. Likewise, after that time, when visiting cenotes I had the sensation that I would see them in broad daylight, peeking out from the hollows and sheer walls of the limestone sinkholes. I did not really believe in these creatures and other small spirits that dwelled in the woods, but I still thought it was a good idea to bless and spiritually purify, to the best of my ability, the field camp where we lived and slept. To that end I would fashion a little incensario, place on it a burning ember from our cooking fire, and set thereon a crystal of copal incense. This combination would smoke up into dense clouds of fragrance, and I would walk waving my incense burner around our comedor and cocina, our sleeping huts, and the corners of our plot of land. I think it was effective, this purification, for I never had nightmares in the field camp. For this same purpose of purification copal incense was and still is used by Maya shamans in many of their ritual ceremonies and in their everyday practice as well. I procured my copal in Valladolid at one of the small traditional tiendas a door or two off the principal market street. Copal is practically identical to the frankincense of the ancient Mediterranean and Catholic ceremonies, at least to my nose. I looked always for the large crystals of copal, some as big as the palm of my hand. On these shopping trips I would also look for cacao beans, a currency of ancient Mesoamerican trade. During his fourth journey to America, Columbus noted the use of cacao beans as money when he came across an oceangoing Maya trade canoe in the Bay of Honduras. In my case I often traded money for a small bag of the cacao beans and at night lay in my hammock to chew on my new currency. It was a pure chocolate hit, and of course I would not be able to sleep afterward. I soon quit chewing them at night and switched to an afternoon chocolate routine. In Yucatán, even if I did not really accept the aluxes, I did believe in certain small spirit creatures, one genera of which were the many butterflies of the peninsula. Every week during the rainy season, a different butterfly species poured forth thousands of individuals, like tree blossoms filling the air. These weekly issuings of different species would overlap each other, and gathering at the margins of mud puddles, they polychromed the ground. Watching them, I wondered from my reading of Maya mythology: are these the reincarnated souls of warriors? Or was that hummingbirds from the Aztecs’ myths? chapter ten Maya Yucatán 124 / Chapter Ten And if that were true, I wondered if the souls of warriors inhabit other gentle species? When I first came to Yucatán, one of the enchanting sights while driving at night was the small nighthawks that sat on the white dirt road that led down from Chich...