1

JAGUAR
MEDICINE


AN

INTRODUCTION

TO MAYAN

HEALING

TRADITIONS

By

Kenneth
Johnson
&
Anita Garr




2































Published by Mystical Jaguar Productions
Momostenango, Guatemala

Copyright 2013 Kenneth Johnson and Anita Garr. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by an information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher
3


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments............................................................................. 4
Introduction....................................................................................... 5

PART I. THEORY

1. Body and Soul............................................................................... 9
2. Energies within the Body.............................................................. 19
3. The Call to Healing....................................................................... 28

PART II. PRACTICE

4. Healing with Herbs....................................................................... 42
5. Healing with Touch.................................................................... 75
6. The Sweat Lodge........................................................................ 84
7. Healing with Stones................................................................... 90
8. Healing with Dreams................................................................. 98
9. Healing the Soul........................................................................ 104

Our Sources: A Photo Gallery....................................................... 116
Appendix: The Day Signs of the Calendar.................................... 123
Bibliography.................................................................................. 131
The Authors................................................................................... 133






4


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Clearly, our first and foremost debt of gratitude goes to the healers who spoke with us,
hosted us, and taught us their ways. Listed here in alphabetical order, they are:
Lauro De La Cruz, San Cristobal de las Casas
Rigoberto Itzep Chanchavac, Momostenango
Maria Hernandez Ajanel de Itzep, Momostenango
Victoria Qiej Guix de Itzep, Momostenango
Javier Navarro, San Cristobal de las Casas
Crecencia Pu, Momostenango
Jos Sanic Chanchavac, Guatemala City
We would also like to thank Hector Jimenez and Luly Valdes of Monterrey, Mexico, for
serving as our friends and guides in San Cristobal de las Casas, with a special bow to Hector for
supplying us with his abundant notes on the Tzotzil.
Anita would also like to extend her thanks to the staff of the municipal library of San
Cristobal de las Casas for helping her to find a wealth of material on Tzotzil healing.
And last but not least, muchas gracias to all those who donated to this project, especially
to Wim and Aly Hospes, and to all those who helped us bring this book to completion.

Kenneth Johnson
Anita Garr
June 2013

5


INTRODUCTION


The world we explored while writing this book is a world in transition.
Before the arrival of the Spanish, there were schools that trained potential healers in
accordance with a cosmovision that was common throughout Mesoamerica. The early chronicler
Fray Bernardino Sahagn spoke with elderly Aztecs who had once been trained in these
calmecacs or wisdom schools. For millennia, Maya healers took care of the health of the people,
their energetic as well as their physical health. Archaeologists have even found remains of teeth
with inlays, serving as evidence that a type of dentistry was practiced among the Classic Maya.
When the European invasion took place, the schools of the healing arts were shut down.
Nonetheless, some of this knowledge was preserved and continued to develop. In the
midst of difficult and desperate circumstances, social resistance and survival strategies helped to
ensure the preservation of the ancient healing practices.
Sometimes, in the present day, traditional Maya healers find themselves in the role of
outsiders. The official health agencies often look down upon them and regard them as relics of
ancient superstition. Midwives who are not registered as part of the governments mandated
health system work undercover, as it were, and are often afraid of being found out by the
authorities.
At the same time, there is a groundswell of indigenous pride that exists in many Mayan
communities and which continues to grow stronger over time. People are once again becoming
proud of their culture. In this respect, many of the practices of traditional medicine are assured of
survival. Others are not; we hope that we may have played a role in preserving a few pieces of
knowledge that have not yet come to light among the general public.
According to Doa Crecencia Pu,
1
the administrator of Belejeb E, a Mayan womens
collective of healers which provides essential modern medical supplies to remote villages as well
as actively preserving indigenous healing methods: One goal or purpose of this type of
treatment is to avoid the pharmacy; if you have four different illnesses you might end up going to
four different doctors who prescribe various different medications, all of which are expensive.
Traditional Mayan medicine is very economical.

1
Personal conversation with the authors, January 14, 2013, Momostenango.
6

Indeed, the traditional healer seldom charges a large amount of money. His or her clients
are economically under-advantaged; they are the village Maya living in a Spanish-speaking
world. The traditional healer also considers her or his healing skills to be a gift, whether from the
spirits or from the energies associated with ones day sign, the Mayan Calendar day of ones
birth. And a gift is not a gift unless it is freely given; the healers life is a life of community
service. The healer receives a symbolic honorarium which is often left to the discretion of the
patient in small communities, everyone already knows who you are and how much you can
afford.
Doa Crecencia explains: People who live in towns or urban areas are more likely to go
to a Western doctor. Urbanized Maya have more access to Western medicine. Those who live in
rural areas see such practices as utterly foreign and rely more upon traditional or indigenous
medicine.
Our work was undertaken in two very different communities. San Cristobal de las Casas
in Mexico is a large city with a substantial population of what Doa Crecencia calls the
urbanized Maya. There are also a number of expatriates who frequent San Cristobal, and
therefore it is not unusual to encounter traditional healers who have also been influenced by
contemporary New Age philosophy. One of our sources, Don Lauro de la Cruz of the small
town of San Juan Chamula, near San Cristobal, is an excellent example of this cultural fusion.
His gift for healing manifested very early in his life, but his parents were evangelical Christians
who thought that their sons gifts were tricks of the devil. Consequently, they gave him up to the
citys most well known devil worshipers, the Tibetan Buddhist monks who have a colony in
San Cristobal. Sent to Dharamsala and trained there by Tibetans, Don Lauro is a cross-cultural
blend of different world traditions.
Momostenango, Guatemala, where the larger part of our research was conducted, is a
very different place indeed. It has long been known as a bastion of Mayan traditionalism, a place
where the rituals and ceremonies attendant on the ancient Mayan Calendar are still practiced, and
where indigenous medicine is far more common and available than its Western counterpart.
While some of our Momostecan sources are well traveled individuals, others have rarely been far
away from the Guatemalan highlands. It is not unusual to meet elderly people who speak no
Spanish but only Kiche Maya especially if they are from the villages rather than the town.
Despite the fact that foreigners have a lively interest in Mayan culture, there are many long-time
7

expatriates in Guatemala who have never even heard of Momostenango, despite the fact that its
reputation for preserving the ancient ways is well known among the Maya themselves.
It is the people of Momostenango and San Cristobal who created this book; we simply
made a record of what we witnessed and what we were told. If the book is somewhat lacking in
illustrations, it is because the clients of the healers were terribly shy; to flash a camera in their
faces while they had already been kind enough to allow two gringos to be present as they
received healing would have been the height of rudeness.
To the healers of the Maya world, therefore, we owe a great debt of gratitude. May their
paths continue to survive and to flourish.

8








PART I

THEORY
9



1. BODY AND SOUL

Every human being is a cosmos.
This concept lies at the very center of traditional Mayan healing:
In Mayan thinking, life is the result of the dynamic of all the energies of the cosmos. In
this sense, therefore, life is of the same energy as the cosmos itself, and of all the energy that
exists.
2

In Mayan thinking, a persons physical body is identical to the cosmos itself. The
microcosm and the macrocosm are identical. As above, so below.
Since the body is a cosmos, it is a sacred entity. Like the cosmos, it is ensouled. In this
sense, Mayan medical philosophy differs profoundly from that of Western medicine, in which
the body is treated as a thing entirely separate from the soul if, indeed, the existence of the soul
is recognized at all. The Maya also differ from traditions such as Hinduism and Christian
monasticism wherein the physical body is perceived as something vile and disgusting and only
the soul is thought to be valuable and real.
The Mayan outlook on health and wellness bears a closer relationship with that of
traditional Chinese medicine, in which both body and soul are worthy of reverence and respect.
The human being may be a singular entity and an individual, but the individual cannot be
separated from the larger cosmos of which it is a part and with which it shares a fundamental
unity. Don Lauro de la Cruz, a Tzotzil healer from San Juan Chamula, says that t his primordial
union of man and the universe is the order of things which was established by the gods
themselves at the moment of creation.
All traditional Mayan healers act within the framework of a cosmovision, a concept of
the universe. In the Mayan universe, there are four essential divisions of time and space. Long
before the arrival of the Spanish, the cross was a common symbol among the Maya to represent
the fourfold Tree of Life which defined their world view and their universe. Life itself is a wheel
comprised of four directions East West, North and South.

2
Sanic Chanchavac, Jose, Medicina Maya (Guatemala City, Consejo Maya Junajpu Ixb'alamke, 2012.), p. 13.

10

This concept of the universe or cosmos as a quaternity is virtually universal and can be
found in mystical systems all over the planet. Carl Jung taught that the human psyche itself is a
fourfold entity.
In Mayan cosmovision, each direction also corresponds to the four colors of corn, which
also celebrate the four races of humankind, and to the four elements: Fire, Earth, Air and Water.
3

To the ancient Maya, the fourfold Tree of Life was the center of all things, the artery
between the terrestrial and celestial worldsthe souls of the dead climbed the World Tree into
the world of the gods. The Milky Way, its visible symbol, was sometimes perceived as a road that
the souls of the dead travel to reach the gateway to the Otherworld which lies at the center of the
galaxy, the juncture of Scorpio and Sagittarius.
From the central World Tree emanate the four cardinal directions: East, North, West, and
South. Many are familiar with the significance of the four directions in other indigenous
American traditions, for they form the basis of the Medicine Wheel among the tribes of the Great
Plains. Since this book is fundamentally concerned with the Maya, the scheme given below is
gleaned from Mayan sources.
Don Lauro remarks: The sun travels through the sky every day. The cardinal points are
the sides of the sun: the east is heat that grows; the west is heat that diminishes; it is the death
of a cycle. The entire cycle, which is part of the core concept of four directions, is like this:
East is the direction of sunrise and of the spring. It is a symbol of beginnings, of the
energy that gives birth to action and idea, just as the energy within the greening earth gives birth
to the flowers of spring or the first rays of the rising sun give birth to a new day; red is the color
associated with the eastern direction. When a Mayan shaman works his path, he typically faces
east; thus he is facing his future, in both the spiritual and material sense. Fire is the element of
the eastern direction and its Year Lord in the ancient calendar is Kej (Yucatec: Manik), the day
sign that symbolizes the four pillars of the universe.
West is the direction of sunset, the direction of autumn. In the west, all things come to an
end; creatures die, just as the sun takes its nightly death when it dips below the western horizon,
or as the leaves die and blow away in the fall. But what seems to be the end is, in fact, only one

3
These are, of course, the same four elements familiar to many of us from Greek philosophy and Western astrology.
It seems unlikely that the Maya would have happened upon just these same elements; one would expect quite a
different cosmovision, as we find with the Chinese. Are the four elements adopted from Western civilization? Some
Maya Daykeepers assert that the tradition of the four elements was quite anciently known to them. In any case, if
they were borrowed, they have certainly been a part of Mayan culture for a very long time.
11

stage in an eternal process. The leaves that die in autumn will be reborn in spring. An action
or idea which has its birth in the east may dip below the surface of the symbolic western
horizon and experience an Underworld sojourn, but it will rise again reborn. Hence west is the
direction of transformation. This is the place of the ancestors, of all who have come before us
and who stand behind us to give us their support. Black is its color; earth is its element. In the
Sacred Calendar, its Year Lord is E (Yucatec: Eb), the Road. This is the road that leads from
birth to spiritual transformation, the Road of Life.
Another arm of the directional cross runs from North to South. In Classical times,
north was not just a cardinal direction; it also symbolized the concept of "above," the place of
the sun at zenith. North has the meaning of wisdom, the wisdom we acquire from the ancestors.
Its color is white and its element is air. The day sign which corresponds to the northern direction
and serves as its Year Lord is Noj (Yucatec: Caban), a word which simply means thought in
Kiche. Our ideas and aspirations are here, in the north.
The South is symbolic of the mysterious generative power that comes from beneath the
soil and makes the plants sprout and grow. As north may symbolize above, south may
symbolize below. Its color is yellow, the color of the growing corn. Its element is water. In
the south is the generative power that gives life to all things. It is the direction of abundance. In
the Sacred Calendar, its corresponding Year Lord is Iq (Yucatec: Ik), the wind or divine breath.
Where do human beings fit into this cosmic scheme of the four directions?
In the tradition of the Tzotzil Maya who live in the vicinity of San Cristobal de las Casas,
Mexico, the soul is called the chulel. Don Lauro de la Cruz says that the chulel is in the heart
and blood of the human being and is given to us by the ancestral gods; and yet the chulel is not
exactly equivalent to the heart, for the chulel travels around the body through the blood, because
it is from the heart that the blood is circulated to all parts of the body.
There are any number of spiritual qualities or entities which surround the soul like the
layers of an onion Don Lauro asserts that there are thirteen layers, matching one of the most
important foundational numbers of the ancient Mayan Calendar. These overlapping layers may
be correlated with what we call personal environment or even character. All the so-called
spirits or layers of the soul must be in harmony with all of the four pillars or cardinal directions
in order for true health or wellness to be present. To be in harmony means to be in a state of
balance between the four directions; to be in balance is to be at the center of all things. This
12

harmony must exist on both spiritual and physical levels; thus Don Lauro says that we, as human
beings, must be at the center of the four directions in our own symbolic house or, to use his
own phrase, our milpa, a Spanish word which signifies cornfield as well as at the center of
our multiplicity of souls. A true human being (winak) is integral to the milpa, the sun, the stars
and the universe as well as to her or his own body.
The cosmic space inhabited by the human being is not static; it is constantly in motion.
Don Lauro asserts that this mystical rhythm is based upon the number twenty. Thus the human
being, with her or his ten fingers and ten toes equaling twenty, participates in the flow of the
universal rhythm embodied in the twenty day signs of the Sacred Calendar.
Because the Mayan cosmos is comprised of four directions, as in a Medicine Wheel, the
human being, a miniature cosmos, is structured in precisely the same way. And because there is
no clearly defined boundary between body and spirit, both the human being and the cosmos can
be represented by the same diagram, as shown by Don Lauro:



In Don Lauros diagram, the yin or feminine polarity of the universe is represented by a
circle; the masculine or yang polarity by a square. Here we see the center of all things depicted
by the circle, the symbol of the Divine Feminine, with the four directions emanating out from it
just as the four basic aspects of human consciousness emanate from the center of the World Tree
which is also the center of our being. If this reminds you of the suns orbs with four rays shining
13

forth in all directions, youre right the symbolism is not by any means accidental. Another
circle symbolizes the entirety of the cosmos.
While the masculine element or square is implied rather than depicted, Don Lauro insists
that we may add it to the basic diagram to create a more complete picture of Tzotzil cosmology:




The square represents the four pillars, the boundaries of time, space, consciousness and
the physical body which enclose the totality of being. As we have already mentioned, all the so-
called spirits or layers of the soul must be in harmony with the four pillars in order for true
health or wellness to be present. To be in harmony means to be in a state of balance with the four
pillars of the universe as well as the pillars of the human being.

How, then, do we achieve a state of true, authentic health or wellness? Here again, the
Mayan cosmovision differs from both Western and some Eastern models, though it often
corresponds closely with Chinese Taoist thinking. In the West, our health is a matter for the
individual. If we eat the right food, exercise regularly, and thus maintain our personal physical
health, we are regarded as healthy. Our relationship with other people and the cosmos is not
taken into account.
In many traditions that originate in India, one maintains health through fasting, yoga,
and meditation upon the identity between the self and the divine. Withdrawal from the outer
14

world and its problems is encouraged. But in Mayan thinking, we are not separate from the world
around us or the people in it. We cannot reach that state of balance which exemplifies true health
and wellness by ignoring the world or withdrawing from its concerns. Instead, we must sustain a
harmonious relationship with our total environment. In this sense the Mayan conception of health
differs from that of both India and the West.
Jos Sanic Chanchavac, an academic and a writer on Mayan medical traditions,
recognizes three aspects of authentic health and well-being.
4

One aspect of well-being is good function of the body, good functioning of the physical
organism; you have no restrictions or limitations in terms of your job, your physicality, working
in the cornfields and so on.
The second aspect is good relationships with others in terms of developing respect, good
communication, good habits with others, and observing certain norms of communal behavior.
The third aspect is related to spirituality, a good relationship with Ajaw,
5
a good
relationship with the cosmos, with nature, developing the values that strengthen our relationship
with nature, with the cosmos, the four elements, animals, plants, the different aspects of nature
that make up God.
To achieve these aspects of well being, he names five key factors which must be in
harmony:
6


Our Mother the Earth (Kiche: Qanan Ulew), the physical world of nature its
valleys, rivers, oceans, clouds and breezes. We live upon the earth, and we fail to achieve true
health (balance) if we are out of harmony with it.

Our Ancestors (Kiche: Nan-Tat Kaminaqib), a concept which is interpreted quite
literally in traditional Mayan communities but which may also be taken in a modern
psychological sense as meaning our family system, the inheritance we bring with us into this life
from all of those who have come before us and contributed to the individual who is you.

4
Conversation with the authors, January 12, 2013, Momostenango.

5
Spelled as Ahau in Yucatec; this is the ancient, pre-Christian Maya term for the divine being.

6
Sanic Chanchavac, Medicina Maya., pp. 13-4.

15

Sanic Chanchavac says:
7
For us the ancestral component is something natural, logical,
and obvious as human beings that we remember past generations. We have the ability to
remember past generations and all the things that they have left to us. We accept this. The
ancestors lived in this world and had a physical presence in this world. They lived a life, they had
their sufferings and their joys and their problems. They had a physical existence. This is real. But
the Maya believe that there is an energy which emanates from the past and which continues to
exist now, an energy which is real and which persists. A person dies, and then there is a burial
and a set of ceremonies. On the next Ajpu day,
8
we may do another set of ceremonies for this
person. This second set of ceremonies is done for the purpose of placing this person among the
ancestors, placing him among those who have already passed on and are in another life. We
believe in their existence. And we must live in harmony with them in order to maintain well
being, because being in harmony with them is one of the things that generates well-being. We
must take into account all the generations to achieve harmony and well-being.
We are now speaking of faith and spirituality because we believe that dead generations
have a relationship with those of us who are alive now. So we must maintain this relationship,
this harmony with them. We believe this energy is real. This implies that if we dont have a
relationship with them or if we abandon them, this has an effect.

Our Community (Kiche) Ajil-Tzaqat), meaning our neighbors and those with whom
we live in proximity. In this sense, the tradition of monastic withdrawal which exists in so many
religious traditions would not be considered holy in Mayan thinking; it would be considered
anti-social. We are all part of one community or another. Honor it. Work with it.

Grandmother Moon (Kiche: Qatit Ik). To be in harmony with Grandmother Moon
is a metaphorical way of saying that we must be in harmony with the waxing and waning phases
of nature and the cosmos of which we are a part.

7
Conversation with the authors, op. cit.

8
One of the day signs of the Mayan Calendar. See Appendix.

16

What does it mean to be in harmony with Grandmother Moon? Jos Sanic Chanchavac
says:
9
We believe that a complete energy exists. We believe that different aspects of our lives
need to be in harmony with the cosmos. But we start with the belief in an invisible energy that
we can neither see nor perceive, although we have faith and belief in it. We can demonstrate the
existence of this energy by observing the functioning of the Moon, the phases of the Moon,
because our organism functions differently with each phase of the Moon. Thus we seek harmony
with these energies of nature.

The Nawales. This word may be familiar to readers of Carlos Castanaeda and other
writers on contemporary Toltec philosophy under its Nahuatl spelling of nagual; but the Kiche
Maya use the term differently. To them, the nawales are the spirits who govern the various day
signs of the ancient Mayan Calendar, still widely used by traditional Maya in many parts of
Guatemala especially in Momostenango, which was the main focus of our research for this
book. To be in harmony with ones nawal or day of birth in the Mayan Calendar is another way
of saying that we must be in harmony with the rhythms of sacred time. While ordinary time is
embodied in the phases of the waxing and waning of Grandmother Moon as well as in the cycles
of the seasons, there is a rhythm of cosmic or sacred time as well, and this is embodied in the
260-day chol qij, the ancient Sacred Calendar of the Maya. This ritual calendar is both
academically and popularly called by its Yucatec form, tzolkin , though the 260-day almanac is
no longer used in the Yucatn; in fact we dont know what the Yucatec Maya themselves may
have called it. The term chol qij is the one used by the contemporary Kiche.
10

Sanic Chanchavac explains:
11
Your personal nawal is the day sign upon which you were
born, your archetypal or mythic template. We should know it, study it, accept it, maintain it, and
feed it. There is a Kiche expression, katzuqik ri nawal, which means feeding the nawal. One
feeds and maintains the nawal by doing certain rites and ceremonies. It is important to accept
your nawal and in the process of doing sacred ceremonies and feeding your nawal you are also
observing and keeping the days of the Sacred Calendar.

9
Conversation with the authors, op. cit.

10
A brief introduction to the Mayan day signs can be found in the Appendix.

11
Ibid.
17

Mayan medicine recognizes cosmic or energetic causes of ill health that enter into
peoples bodies and cause illnesses that can be healed by those who know all the philosophical or
cosmic principles. The example of a persons nawal or day sign is an illustration of such
energetic or cosmic causes. If one does not actualize or exemplify ones archetype, if one does
not take on the power of ones uwach ukij (literally: the face of your day), if one does not
make use of ones potentialities and the capacities of the nawal granted to us at birth, it can be a
cosmic or energetic factor in illness.
The uwach ukij or nawal of ones birth places an individual within the context of a
certain type of service to ones community. But for various reasons sometimes including the
imposition of other, non-Maya cultural patterns many people do not understand the
potentialities connected with their nawal; or perhaps they simply do not want to recognize or
accept them. If so, the person may have to undergo a crisis, become ill, generally with a problem
which resists treatment by ordinary Western medicine. The person may also have to confront
failures, problems, blows, and losses.
Until the person assumes a commitment to serve his or her nawal, he or she will not be
healed. It is known and believed that everyone is destined from their day of birth for a specific
task. To not accept ones task in society is to not accept oneself.
Each nawal fulfills a specific function for personal and collective life and empowers
people of both sexes who make a commitment to safeguard balance and harmony in a person and
in society. The nawales may endow us with either significant gifts or significant problems. If
nawales contribute to health, they may also serve as causes of imbalance.
Here is an example given by Don Jos.
12
One of the day signs or nawales is Ajpu
(Yucatec: Ahau), which is the day sign of the ancestors. This nawal may frequently bring ancient
family issues into a problematical prominence in our own lives. This often happens if one of the
parents is born upon the day Ajpu and therefore has a burden of family karma. Even if such a
person marries again, the problem will recur. With adequate intervention in time, the healers or
Maya priests may regulate such a family situation.
And just as every nawal has qualities which may place it out of balance, so does each one
have its special road to healing. In the example we have mentioned, the nawal Ajpu may be said
to be out of balance if a person born upon that day frequently leaves or doesnt attend to

12
Sanic Chanchavac, Medicina Maya, p. 28.
18

ceremonies at altars, whether household or otherwise the ceremonial places that the ancestors
have left behind. The nawal Ajpu may be said to be in balance if the native of that day sign
shows concern, respect and care for the sacred places of the ancestors.

These many factors all play a role in the Mayan definition of complete well-being. How,
then, can we achieve a state of balance with all these aspects of life which make up the totality of
our environment?
That is the goal of all traditional Mayan healing.

19



2. ENERGIES WITHIN THE BODY

Hot and Cold
In Mayan thought, there is a fundamental polarity which informs the universe and which
many have compared to the Chinese concept of yin and yang.
The Maya perceive the universe as an energetic whole made up of two opposing but
complementary polarities. Some writers describe this as dualism, but that is an incorrect term.
Dualism implies an absolute and irreconcilable difference between two forces such as good
and evil or God and the Devil. The Mayan pairs of opposites are more accurately an example
of polarities, meaning that the two cosmic forces are opposing expressions of a single unified
force. They mirror each other like opposites, but they are ultimately of the same essence.
Don Rigoberto Itzep Chanchavac, a traditional Daykeeper and teacher from
Momostenango, gives the following examples, first citing the masculine or yang
manifestation of the polarity, then its opposite feminine or yin principle:

Summer/Winter Health/Sickness Laughter/Weeping
Hot/Cold Birth/Death Capability/Slowness
Light/Darkness Joy/Suffering Gain/Loss

In a sense, the ritual ball game which was of vital importance all over Mesoamerica was a
symbolic combat between these two opposing principles of the universe, of the cosmos.
The concept of cosmic polarities may even be applied to the human soul. Though the soul
is a unity, it is a unity which encompasses the fundamental division of masculine and feminine.
Conceptions of the soul vary somewhat between different Mayan groups, though they all have
some ideas in common. Let us take a look at ideas about the human soul among the Kiche. The
Kiche Maya know the feminine polarity of the soul as uxlab. The Spanish word anima is often
used to describe this aspect of soul, since it is identical to what Catholic Christians perceive as
the soul. It is vested in the body and in breathing. It remains within the body until the moment of
our death.
20

The second or masculine aspect of the soul, the nawal, is quite different. As we have seen
in the previous chapter, this aspect of the soul is called uwach ukij in the Kiche language,
which literally means the face of his or her day. This is the energy template or imprint of the
day in the ancient Mayan Calendar upon which we are born. Our day sign soul is our nawal, our
spiritual essence, our archetypal imprint. And this is the soul which dreams. The anima may be
vested within the human body, but the nawal is not. It can roam freely through the astral world
while we are asleep; in that realm, it encounters many adventures (see Chapter 8).
13

Since each human body is a cosmos, it must include these two universal polarities. The
primary way in which the cosmic polarities manifest within the body is through conditions or
states of being that are either hot (yang) or cold (yin). The ideal, of course, is to live in a
state of balance between the two, though in a certain way the human body itself is linked
primarily with one side of the polarity in the sense that it is essentially warm rather than cold;
most illnesses in the Mayan concept of disease are caused by an excess of cold rather than an
excess of heat.
14
Therefore, we may say that the natural condition of the human body is primarily
one of balance between the two polarities but with a slight emphasis on warmth. Just as the
masculine polarity of yang originally referred in the Chinese language to the sunny side of the
mountain and the feminine yin to the northern or shady side of the mountain, so Don Lauro
asserts that men are slightly warmer by nature than women.
The daily verities of life in general may also be classified as hot or cold. In order to keep
our hot and cold elements in a state of balance, certain behaviors and eating habits are
encouraged, while others are considered a cause of imbalance.
For example, in our culture we might consider it refreshing to have a cold drink after
working or exercising in the hot sun. But in Mayan thinking, one ought not to switch too quickly
between one extreme and the other. When one is overheated, it is easier for cold conditions or
cold winds to attack the body. Therefore, Yucatec healers insist that the drinking of extremely
cold drinks or the eating of cold foods such as limes ought to be avoided; instead, more

13
Tedlock, Barbara, Zuni and Quiche Dream Sharing and Interpreting, in Dreaming: Anthropological and
Psychological Interpretations, ed. Barbara Tedlock (Santa Fe, NM School of American Research Press, 1992), pp.
105-131.

14
Garcia, Hernn, Antonio Sierra and Gilberto Balm , Wind in the Blood: Mayan Healing and Chinese Medicine,
trans. Jeff Conant (Berkeley, North Atlantic Books, 1999), p. 4.

21

balanced or neutral foods should be taken. While we might think nothing of mixing hot food
with cold drinks, the Maya warn their children against the intake of these two extremes at one
and the same time. One should be careful when going outdoors immediately after a warming
massage or bath; if a cold wind is blowing, the contrast between the two polarities can create an
imbalance. Since menstruation is also considered to be a warm condition, women should avoid
sudden exposure to cold conditions at that time.
15
Pregnancy is likewise a warm condition, and
cold foods should not be taken during pregnancy. Drunkenness and exhaustion, too, are regarded
as warm. Becoming too hot is avoided because it opens ones energetic system to the
opposite effect the acquisition of cold conditions or diseases.
People with a warmer constitution are stronger and more suited to hard work. Women
with cold hands or cold blood arent as good at cooking as the warmer women. A man with
cold hands is at a similar disadvantage: since all foods cooked by the h-menob or shamans for
agricultural rituals in the traditional Yucatec earth oven were regarded as sacramentally cold, a
man with cold hands or cold blood ought not to participate in the preparation of such foods it
adds too much cold.
People with a predominance of hot will be attracted to others who are the same; people
with a predominance of cold will have a similar attraction. People should marry someone else
who is of the same constitution mixing hot with cold does not create a balance.
16
Instead,
mixed marriages are detrimental to the health of one or both partners and may become a cause
of family disruption and illness.
17

A few examples may help to make these distinctions of hot and cold more clear. Bile or
biliousness (bilis) is a condition brought on by too many strong emotions, especially anger, and
therefore it is a hot condition. Cold remedies are required to heal it. One may recognize the
presence of bilis if nerves and irritability continue to plague an individual long after the event
which caused the upset. This leads to stomach problems, which in turn produce more anxiety,

15
Garcia et al., op. cit., pp. 42-3.

16
Kunow, Marianna Appel. Maya Medicine: Traditional Healing in Yucatan (Albuquerque, University of New
Mexico Press, 2003), pp. 63-4.

17
Redfield, Robert, and Alfonso Villa Rojas, Chan Kom: A Maya Village (Chicago, University of Chicago, 1962),
p. 163.

22

and the whole thing becomes a vicious circle. In the Yucatn, bilis is often treated with orange
juice, preferably taken before breakfast and often heated, with water and salt added to it.
18

On the other hand, pasmo is a cold condition. Its literal meaning is a chill, but it can
manifest itself in a number of ways, including tetanus, convulsions, a twitching of t he eyes, and
female infertility. It affects adults more readily than children. One ought not to mix hot and cold
elements in too radical a fashion, such as, for example, drinking an ice cold drink after working
profusely in the hot sun; pasmo may develop. In similar fashion, one ought not to eat too many
cold foods, as this too will be likely to induce pasmo, or at least a malaise, a weakness
characterized by anemia or loss of appetite. Since women are by nature colder than men, they
are much more likely to be afflicted with pasmo.
19

All foods are either hot or cold. Hot foods include honey, coffee, and beef, with honey
commonly considered among the Yucatec Maya to be the hottest of all. Wild turkey, rice, boiled
eggs, papaya, limes, pork, squash, and deer are all cold foods; in the Yucatn limes are the
essence of cold, just as honey is the essence of hot though the authors have noted that the
classification is somewhat different among the Kiche Maya, with limes being regarded as only
slightly cold. Therefore, limes are very effective in reducing fever (especially according to
Yucatec healers). A healthy person may eat either hot or cold foods, so long as their diet remains
in balance and does not run to excess.
20

Then, of course, there are foods which are equally hot and cold and therefore in a state of
balance, for example oranges, sweet potatoes, pineapple, tomatoes, sugar, beans, atole,
chocolate, and tortillas.
We can alter the nature of foods through our own conscious actions: If you add epazote,
marjoram or garlic all of which are hot spices to cold foods, they become neutral or
balanced.
21

A person with a fever a hot condition should never eat hot things, but should rely
on cold or balanced foods. In much the same way, a person with a chill, or a woman weakened

18
Kunow, op. cit., p. 64.

19
Ibid., p. 65.

20
Redfield and Villa Rojas, op. cit., pp. 161-2.

21
Ibid., p. 161.

23

by recent childbirth, should eat only warm or neutral foods. The process of digestion is perceived
as a kind of cooking. Cold foods require more cooking to bring them into harmony with the
basic human condition of warmth; hence they should be eaten in the morning, so that they have
an opportunity to cook all day.
Since a cold remedy must be employed in cases of too much heat, it stands to reason
that herbs, like foods and diseases, must be categorized according to their hot and cold
properties.

HOT BALANCED COLD
Chamomile
Dill
Eucalyptus
Fennel
Fenugreek
Garlic
Holm Oak (Encino)
Marijuana
Mugwort
Pine (all kinds)
Red Sage
Rosemary
Rue
Shepherds Purse
Wormseed
Wormwood

Alder
Aloe
Avocado
Basil
Dandelion
Elderberry
Guava
Lemons and Limes
Marigold
Orange
Roses
St. Johns Wort (Pericone)
Boldo
Cancerina
Flax Seed

Anthropologist Marianna Kunow notes that she was able to elicit very little information
from Yucatec healers regarding the classification of herbs as hot or cold.
22
We were more
fortunate; Doa Victoria Qiej, one of our principal Kiche sources, gave us the list shown here
of hot and cold plants. To this we have added, in Chapter 4, more information on hot and
cold remedies from sources published by the Institute for Traditional Mayan Medicine in San
Cristobal de las Casas (see bibliography). It will be seen that most healing herbs are categorized
as warming. This is in line with the essential concept of Mayan healing that physical illnesses
more often arise from too much cold rather than too much heat.

22
Kunow, op. cit.,p. 63.

24

If hot carries many positive connotations in terms of healing, it may carry quite
different connotations in terms of agriculture. In Yucatn the earth itself was sometimes said to
be either hot or cold. It used to be said that hot lands were those that dry out quickly after
the rain or those from which mists rise at night. Cold lands remain moist. On hot lands, trees
grow quickly, but they are also much more likely to wither and die quickly. On colder lands,
trees grow slowly but well. Plants that grow near cenotes are cold. In fact, most plants that are
green, grow near rivers, lakes and streams, and hold a great deal of water are likewise said to be
cold.
Just as a fever represents an imbalance or surfeit of heat in the body and is to be cured
with cold herbs, so a drought is regarded as a fever upon the body of the land; the
ceremonial foods once used in the Yucatn for agricultural ceremonies were all cold by
definition; they were a medicine against drought.
23


The Winds
The concept of the winds is a rather complex one; different Mayan societies have
different attitudes about them. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that in ancient times it
was believed that human beings were possessed of an inner wind or breath that was, in fact,
the spiritual essence of their human vitality; the Hindu concept of prana appears to be quite
similar. Perhaps the best example of this is a reference to one of the kings of Yaxchilan; the
hieroglyphic inscription reads: His white wind became withered. The term white can also
mean spiritual, and wind also signifies breath. Therefore the inscription might be read as:
His spiritual breath became withered. This is simply a poetic way of saying that the king died;
the vital essence contained in his spiritual breath or inner wind diminished until it was
gone.
24

For the most part, however, the idea of the winds in contemporary Mayan thinking is as
a cause of illness, of disease. There are winds that circulate like vital energetic forces within the
body and, if allowed to blow too freely, cause the kind of imbalance that leads to illness. There
are also the physical winds that blow through our environment; the Maya perceive some of these

23
Redfield and Villa Rojas, op. cit., p. 130.

24
Kettunen, Harri, and Christopher Helmke, Introduction to Mayan Hieroglyphs (Leiden, Wayeb & Leiden
University, 2005), pp. 13, 15.
25

winds as distinct entities of harmful spirits; in the Yucatn, some of these winds even have their
own names and characteristics. In general, villagers avoid being out in the wind if at all possible.

The Lightning in the Blood
A few words ought to be said regarding yet another energy within the human body. While
we have no knowledge of how widely known this energy may be among the speakers of various
other Mayan languages, it is a well known concept among the Kiche and usually called koyopa
in that language. In common speech, koyopa refers to sheet lightning of the type which flickers
above mountains and lakes. But this phenomenon of the natural world has its correspondence
within the human body; koyopa can also mean the body lightning or the lightning in the
blood. Spiritual seekers who have spent time among the Maya have drawn attention to the close
correspondence between the Mayan concept of koyopa and the Sanskrit kundalini. Both are
connected with serpent imagery. Yogic texts describe the kundalini as the serpent power. Bolts
of lightning are envisioned by the Maya as sky serpents.
The existence of a powerful bio-psychological energy within the human body has been
postulated by many civilizations; the Sanskrit kundalini is simply the best known example. The
kundalini is in essence a goddess just as much as it is a form of energy. It travels through
different energetic centers in the body, known as chakras, and can be manipulated through
meditation and spiritual practice. The feminine power known to Kabbalists as the Shekinah,
which also dwells in centers within the body, is an analogous concept.
The koyopa is an energy upon which shamans draw for some important rituals,
especially the divination ritual in which the day signs of the chol qij are represented by groups
of seeds from the sacred tzite tree. A shamans hand may literally shake with the power of the
koyopa as he holds it over the divining seeds. Sometimes the koyopa awakens as a pulsing in
ones leg or some other limb.

26



The koyopa, like the kundalini, is essentially feminine because it is associated with the
thirteen numbers of the chol qij or 260-day calendar, which are regarded as the wives of the
twenty day signs. Koyopa collects in reservoirs (Don Rigobertos term) which correspond to
the thirteen major joints of the human body, which thus form a Mayan analogy to the chakras. It
is from one of these thirteen points that the pulsing and hand-trembling will have their origin.
Since the koyopa dwells within the body, it is connected with the feminine, bodily soul or uxlab.
Here, then, we see a deeper esoteric significance at work. The day signs are a masculine
energy that represent the immortal soul or nawal, while the numbers are a feminine energy that
represent the indwelling power of the bodily soul and its koyopa.
Some people are born with the koyopa or lightning soul fully activated; other people either
develop it or have it awakened through powerful spiritual experiences. Some people never
experience it at all. But those whose koyopa is awakened dream differently than other people;
they have a greater capacity to experience archetypal or shamanic dreams.
Other people may experience an awakening of the koyopa due to unusual spiritual
experiences or because of formal shamanic training. If the koyopa is awake, the gods themselves
27

may contact us directly through our dreams, using the koyopa energy as a communicative medium
between their world and ours.
Don Rigoberto Itzep Chanchavac explains:
25
In our cosmovision, the koyopa is a mode of
communication. In certain parts of the body it may give us messages, but it is different for
different people in each part of the body. When people develop their abilities and spiritual
powers, they receive messages and communications through the koyopa energy, and thus they are
transforming energy into communication.
A spiritual guide perceives the messages through the movements of energy in his or her
body like magnetic waves. This varies from body to body and is very individual. There are many
spiritual guides who understand these contacts and movements of energy; they use these energies
or manage them with great skill. Those who understand the signals know that there are messages
that represent past, present and future. There are other guides who have many energy movements
in the body but dont understand the messages. There are also some Maya people who have the
connection but are not spiritual guides.
We use the term koyopa (lightning); it hits you in a certain place as if you were struck by
lightning. There are three types. One goes up and down; another feels like being punched.
Another type feels as if it were pushing up and coming forth from the body.
The koyopa and dreams are both systems for diagnosing illness. In the case of dreams as
diagnosis, both the dreams of the guide and the dreams of the patient are taken into account. The
guide interprets the patients problem through dreams. These are two means of resolving the
patients problems.





25
Personal conversation with the authors, January 12, 2013, Momostenango.
28

3. THE CALL TO HEALING

There are several ways in which a person may receive the call to healing. Some are
peaceful and natural; others are intense and traumatic.
Don Jos Sanic Chanchavac explains:
26
People receive the call to healing through some
manifestation of their life or existence. They start out not knowing or studying. But when
members of their community approach them and ask them for help with a problem or to cure an
illness, and then they try to help those who approach them and are successful, they begin to
understand that this is their destiny though they might already suspect as much in accordance
with their nawal or Mayan Calendar birth sign.
Life has called upon them to heal people and to liberate people from problems or
suffering. When they try to help, they see results. So they discover, little by little, that they have
the power and that it is their vocation to be a healer. They discover this on their own and through
their life experiences. A healers reputation is acquired mostly by word of mouth. They may get
patients in their own villages if someone has been successfully treated and healed by them.
Sometimes a person may help a co-worker who spreads the word to others. This process take
place more easily in villages or towns as opposed to large urban centers. The neighbor talks to
other people and tells everyone that so-and-so treated her and made her better. Therefore
someone with a similar problem will go there too; consequently it is a process that unfolds
automatically. It is simply destiny.
The potential healer may also undergo a process of self discovery. One may have dream
messages indicating that one is destined to be a healer. But it happens mainly through the
persons relationships with others and the type of comments and feedback that come from other
people in the community.
It starts with people who are well known, such as neighbors. The person with potential
manifests a certain energy; sometimes he or she or people close to them will simply know they
have this potential because of their nawal.

26
Personal conversation, op. cit.

29

The day upon which one is born may mark one as a potential healer; indeed, it may also
point toward a specific healing specialty.
27
Jos Sanic Chanchavac writes
28
that the day sign
most powerfully associated with traditional healing is Tijax (Yucatec: Etznab). The day Tijax
represents a double-edged obsidian blade. Two different types of individuals may wield the
knife; the warrior and the healer. Thus one of Tijaxs functions is medicine. It is the nawal of
Mayan medicine; healing is not possible without the decided intervention and help of the spirit of
the day sign Tijax. Tijax corrects imbalanced or negative energies that affect human health.
Day signs, like everything else in Mayan culture, may be either in or out of balance, and
when Tijax is out of balance it represents a state of psychic, physical, moral and social pain.
Thus it is said that, in its negative manifestation, Tijax shapes individuals who are quarrelsome,
angry, perhaps often in trouble or even in jail for fighting. But ultimately, in its positive
manifestation, Tijax is meant to correct bad actions, injustices that cause pain, problems and
suffering.
Those born on this day bring with them, from birth, a responsibility that they are
supposed to fulfill in terms of healing sick people or those in a state of suffering, trouble, and
pain, whether moral, physical or psychic. When someone born on a Tijax day is not guided and
educated about the healing destiny which marks the natives of that day sign, the person can
suffer all kinds of pain until she or he recognizes the necessity to take the healers path.
As well as representing the born-to-it healer, Tijax is also a day upon which important
healing rituals may be performed. On this day one invokes and supplicates the nawal or ruling
spirit of Tijax for good individual and collective health. On this day difficult illnesses are cured,
especially those that are hard to treat because they arise from not having observed the norms of
respectable behavior called awas, a word that can signify both the harmonious outlook toward all
the things we have mentioned (such as Mother Earth, Grandmother Moon, ancestors and
neighbors) as well as the behaviors which may place us out of harmony with all these things.
There are other nawales that contribute to the over-all, holistic nature of communal and
personal health and wellness. For example, the day Batz (Yucatec: Chuen) is useful for the
solution of marital problems. The nawales E (Yucatec: Eb) and Noj (Yucatec: Caban) signify

27
Those who are unfamiliar with the day signs of the traditional Mayan Calendar should consult the Appendix of the
present volume for a brief survey of the symbolism and meanings associated with the day signs.

28
Sanic Chanchavac, Medicina Maya, p. 18.

30

indigenous Maya priests who give spiritual guidance to the community; and it is part of
community collective healing to seek such advice upon those days.
29

Most sources name the day sign Kawoq (Yucatec: Cauac) as a day with special energy
for female healers, especially midwives and herbalists. But Doa Victoria Qiej,
30
a celebrated
healer or curandera of Momostenango, gives more subtle subdivisions of the healers art: she
states that Tijax is for male healers, Kej (Yucatec: Manik) for midwives, and Qanil (Yucatec:
Lamat) for herbalists. The nawal Kan (Yucatec: Chicchan) represents indigenous Maya leaders
who are charged with looking after community well being and social justice, the peace of a
harmonious town. While Victoria links Kej with midwives, Sanic Chanchavac asserts that this
day sign does double duty as yet another representative of those who watch over the peace and
harmony of the village or the town.

Of the seven Yucatec healers extensively interviewed by Marianna Appel Kunow, four
were taught by older and more experienced healers, while three were taught primarily by spirits
who came to them in dreams.
31
The dream teachers were always of the same sex as the dreamer,
and were always elderly people dressed in archaic clothing, as if they had lived a hundred years
ago or more. In every case, the dream teacher visited the apprentice on a regular basis,
sometimes even every night over a period of two or three years.
The apprentice healers were instructed by their dream teachers in very specific matters
which herbs to use to cure certain diseases, where such herbs could be found, the proper chants
and ritual gestures for particular ceremonies, and so on. All the healers asserted that the right
herbs were generally to be found growing in the exact locations indicated by their dream
teachers.
One of the most important tools for Yucatec healers is the sastn or seeing stone,
which is often but by no means always a quartz crystal. The healers reported that they had
been guided to their sastns by their dream teachers and that they always found the right stone
just where the dream teacher indicated it would be, even if it were embedded in the fork of a tree.

29
Ibid., p . 20.

30
Personal conversation with the authors, January 2013.

31
Kunow, pp. 35-9.

31

Such dream teachers are often linked in Yucatec folklore with nature spirits known as
balams. These spirits, like the dream teachers of the healers, are perceived as little old men
with white hair,
32
dressed in the garb of people from long ago. Sometimes called guardian
spirits, the balams are also known as Jaguar Lords, and indeed, the word balam can
commonly mean jaguar in Yucatec Maya. These spirits are sometimes helpful, as when they
give instruction in dreams, but they also have a dark side, and some villagers believe that they
steal children and replace them with changelings who are crippled or mentally deficient.

Wounded Healers
Another way in which people are commonly called to healing is through an illness. It is
believed that many of those who suffer from intense or unusual illnesses have become afflicted
because they themselves are meant to heal; and their first duty on the healing path is to heal
themselves.
Thomas Hart records the following story
33
from the Mam people of the Cuchumatanes
Mountains:
She had fallen ill with cramps, and she had these cramps in her hands, her
feet, her stomach, with the result that she could only get about doubled up, and
she couldnt very well stretch herself.
Thats how she was until she began to practice; she [previously] had some
knowledge of medicine, but women would come to her, and ask if she had time to
go to their homes and do cures, but she would refuse and say to them, No, I dont
have the time, or I cant do much. So she suffered a great deal, she fell ill.
So then she got to thinking, Why do I have this illness? Where does it
come from? So, without having a consultation about her gift, that is, without
consulting any [Mayan] Priest, she got to thinking, Well, I suppose Ill do it, Ill
accept it, Im going to have to start curing.
So people came, and they called for her and asked, Can you cure this for
me?
Ah, fine. So she dedicated herself to curing. And little by little, her
illness went; it left her.


32
Kunow, ibid., points out that the balams are never recorded as being female, though the female healer she
interviewed who learned from a dream teacher asserted that her teacher was a little old woman, likewise dressed
in archaic garb.

33
Hart, Thomas, The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press,
2008), p. 127.
32

Barbara Tedlock
34
supplies some information on specific types of illnesses which are said
to indicate that the sufferer ought to become a healer:
Snake illness, which is characterized by sudden, painful cramps in the arms,
legs, torso, wrists, elbows, ankles, knees and neck.
Before the horse, characterized by extreme muscle cramps, especially in the
arms and legs.
Twisted stomach, the symptoms of which are a churning of the stomach and/or
intestines.
Dislocated bone, suffered by people who are constantly falling down and
hurting themselves.
Inebriation, which is just what it sounds like. The rationale seems to be that
those who drink to excess clearly want to live in the Otherworld rather than this
one, but they are simply going about it in the wrong way.
Loses his money, in which the sufferer is the constant victim of shysters, con
artists, and bandits.

But of all the tales of wounded healers that abound in the literature, the most
extraordinary story we have heard is one that we recorded ourselves in Momostenango on
January 14, 2013.

My story was very sad. I suffered much in the process of discovering my gift for healing.
Much poverty, much suffering, many problems. In the process of all this hardship and suffering I
discovered that I had a gift.
I lived in much poverty and had many problems in my life. There were problems with my
husband. All my sons died. My husband suffered much. He had many failures in his life; he also
had an accident. He was left sick after that.
I suffered for twenty-five years. Poverty, death, much suffering.
For three years I was very sick. I had two years of hemorrhaging because of all the
suffering I had. I even became blind. My feet and my stomach were swollen. My hands shrank.
All my hair fell out. I could not get out of bed. I could only crawl upon the ground.

34
Tedlock, Barbara, Time and the Highland Maya (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1982), pp. 54-8.
33

I consulted different aj qijab [daykeepers] and asked why is this happening to me. Why?
Why am I suffering? The aj qijab told me that I was a Maya priestess and a curandera, a
midwife, and that was the reason I was suffering, because I was destined to become these things.
When we succeeded in investigating the situation, the nawales [spirits of the day signs of the
calendar] wanted me to be their lawyer or advocate.
Once I succeeded in discovering the truth and the reason for all my suffering, I began
learning and working toward my vara sagrada [sacred bundle]. Once I received my mesa
35
and
my vara sagrada, I became well. I recovered by receiving my gift from El Ajaw [ancient (and
non-Christian) Mayan term for the divine power]. Now I have no illnesses. No nothing. I got
healthy once I started working as a spiritual guide.
I began to do ceremony and helping our people, our sick people. I started helping people
who were in jail and businessmen as well. I healed children, young people, and men, all with
natural medicine. I healed the children and the women with massage and washes and plants.
I give people medicine, I do massage, I do ceremonies for people. I am a Maya doctor of
natural medicine. My work is to be an aj qij and a curandera, a midwife and a huesera [bone-
setter], as well as a promotora, an educator in natural medicines and alternative healing. I also
have training in Western nursing, but most of my training is in natural medicine and the use of
medicinal plants. I make capsules, salves, tinctures, and I also make natural shampoos and
soaps from the medicinal plants themselves.
I can transform plants into medicines. How does this transformation take place and
what is the history of the plant? One must know how one sows the plant and how one cuts it. One
must pay attention to the phase of the moon and the nawal upon which it is gathered. One must
know how to dry the plant and disinfect it, how to prepare the salves and the rubs.
Each plant has its function in healing. The calendar is related to all of these functions. It
all has to do with the calendar.
I have been upon the medicine path for fifteen years, and I give thanks to Ajaw for all the
medicine knowledge that I have.
Doa Victoria Qiej Guix de Itzep


35
Literally table, the term has many uses. While in Peru it may a simple blanket where the shaman performs his
operations, among the Kiche it usually signifies ones household altar or shrine; in this instance, howeveer, Doa
Victoria is referring to an initiation into a specific rank as a priestess.
34


Healing Practitioners
Healers are drawn to their profession either voluntarily, and thus taught by older, more
experienced practitioners, or else involuntarily, for example through a shamanic illness or
through an archetypal or revelatory dream. In the Yucatn, such dreams are believed to be sent
by supernatural beings called balams, who use divining stones or crystals (commonly called
sastns) in their dream teachings.
36

Many, or perhaps most, healers specialize in a particular style of healing. All the same,
the categories listed below should not be regarded as mutually exclusive. Some healers practice
two different styles, or even more; Doa Victoria is an herbalist, a midwife, a bone setter, and a
prayer maker. Thus one might call her an ilol, one who is skilled in all branches of healing.
The words and terminology of the various healing specialties may vary from place to
place and from language to language; the healing vocations of the Yucatn may be listed
somewhat differently than among the Maya of the western highlands. All the same, most of the
categories of healers are similar. Our information here comes from our two principal research
locations: Momostenango and highland Chiapas.

The Herbalist
The vocation of herbalist may be the quickest and simplest to describe, but as we shall
see in Chapter 4, the herbalist possesses a great arsenal of remedies, perhaps more abundantly
than any other healing specialist.
Herbalists walk in the mountains and gather medicinal plants. The Maya have their own
taxonomy of the various classes of plants, quite different from our own. Their categories are
based upon the illnesses for which the plant is a remedy, whether the herb is cold or hot, strong
or weak, for children or women, for a shorter or longer time. Sometimes the whole plant is used;
sometimes just a part of it. There are plants that one boils or that one mashes up raw, others that
are heated up on the housheold comal
37
or tortilla griddle. Herbalists keep all the secrets of the
plants in their heads.

36
Kunow, op. cit., p. 2.

37
This is a large, rounded metal griddle used for making tamales and tortillas in traditional Mayan households.

35


The Midwife
Women healers play an essential role in Mayan society; and if there exist both men and
women who carry out various healing practices, it is only the women who are in charge of all
cases related to pregnancy and birth. Most midwives are women over forty; many speak only
Maya. They have obtained their knowledge through an informal apprenticeship and they have the
respect and recognition of the community, sharing their vision of the world with it. Many of
these women have other specialties in the health field; they can also be herbalists, iloles, or bone
setters.
The social responsibility of helping women to give birth falls completely on the midwives
because of the fact that they share the culture and the condition of being a woman. Because
midwifery is related to parts of the body considered intimate and surrounded by rules and taboos,
the experience of giving birth is more easily shared with someone that has already lived the same
situation, above all a woman that has similar concepts about the body and the natural or
supernatural phenomena that influence its functioning. In the highlands of Chiapas and
Guatemala, attention to birth is generally carried out by midwives in urban areas as well as rural
ones. In towns, they attend to 70% of the births, while in the villages they attend to practically
all of them.
Midwives are the repository of a community-generated knowledge that has been
transmitted from generation to generation and includes the lore of herbalism, the rites necessary
to conquer evil spirits, and a system of care and advice that must be offered during pregnancy,
birth and postpartum. This knowledge is shared with the women of the community.
Learning through family relations is habitually the path to becoming a midwife, joined
with an inheritance or gift that they bring with them from birth. Many midwives assert that
family tradition has been decisive in the start of their practice. Our friend Doa Lidia learned the
art from her mother, Doa Victoria.
If we analyze the type of care that the midwife provides during pregnancy and normal
childbirth, we can see that the identification of signs and symptoms she handles and the care she
provides are essentially similar to the concerns of allopathic medical practice. There is nothing
involving the complications of pregnancy, childbirth and delivery that the midwife isnt capable
of resolving with the resources and knowledge at her disposal.
36

The services of the midwife start at the very beginning of the gestation process itself; the
midwife begins to counsel and help the mother-to-be from the earliest days of her pregnancy. In
Momostenango, the healing visits of the midwife during the prenatal period take place every
twenty days, in accordance with both the Mayan Calendar and the phases of the moon.
38
The
midwives learn to diagnose the position of the new being that lives in the mothers abdomen;
they use massage to keep it in the proper position within the uterus.
During this period, the pregnant woman is advised about what to eat or not eat. She is
warned not to carry heavy loads, but to go ahead and satisfy her peculiar food cravings.
However, she is not to contradict elders of either sex, and she is to avoid problems, upsets, and
enemies. These health and lifestyle recommendations that the midwife gives to the pregnant
woman are aimed at protecting her, at least during the pregnancy, from certain innate influences
of negativity that exist in the world all around us. It is for this reason that they stress the
importance of the man being happy with the pregnancy so that the woman and the child are
healthy.
When the moment of birth arrives, the midwife offers services of moral and material
support. Childbirth care is carried out in the intimacy of the home and the participation of the
husband, parents and/or in-laws of the pregnant woman is fundamental; this type of personal,
loving care cannot be provided by medical services or health institutions. Only traditional
customs and lifeways can fill ones surroundings with the necessary loving-kindness.
To the extent that complications appear, as in cases of miscarriage, prolonged labor or
retention of the placenta, the difficulty falls upon the shoulders of the midwife, who may invoke
either natural causes or supernatural phenomena, including being out of harmony with the
collective awas, the lifeway of the community. Illness can be caused by spirits, by envy, or by
selfishness; the spirits can be anywhere, in the wind or in the water, on the mountain or on the
road.
Therapeutic elements are varied; the midwife more often than not has a strong command
of herbalism; she utilizes it for hastening labor if prolonged, against the threat of miscarriage
or breach birth, and against the retention of the placenta. In Chiapas it is said that midwives also

38
The association of the moon with the number 20 goes back to the Classic Period (200-800 CE); the hieroglyph for
the moon can double as a marker for the number 20. There are 20 days from the old moons disappearance until the
next full moon.
37

use resources of animal origin such as powders from rams horn, armadillo shell and possum tail
to manage the birth, though we did not hear about any such practices in Momostenango.
Prayer plays a fundamental role from the start of the pregnancy and during childbirth. In
the Chiapas highlands, it is often necessary to light candles for several days in the house and in
the church. Spirituality is a fundamental healing element during the complications of childbirth;
thanks to her divine gift, the midwife ilol pulses the pregnant woman in order to make a
diagnosis; once this is done, Chiapas midwives may light a white, green or red, large or small
candle, depending on the cause of the problem.
Birth is a family and social event that constitutes a whole process of activities. At birth,
the baby is washed and received in clean clothes. The placenta and the umbilical cord will be
buried in a special place this varies according to the local customs of ones community. In any
case, the placenta is never thrown in the garbage, as this would place the child outside of the
community norms called awas, which could create social problems later on. Some people bury
the placenta behind the sweat lodge or temescal. The umbilical cord is often tied in the highest
part of a tree that stands near the family home it is said that a cypress is the best. It is also said
that if the umbilical cord is placed high in a tree the child will never suffer from fear of heights
and will also become strong in life, just like a tree.
For nine days, the mother will bathe in the sweat lodge, called a tuj in Kiche or
temescal in Spanish (see Chapter 6). During this time, she will take special care to avoid cold
water. After nine tuj baths, the process of rejuvenation will end with a final bath, not in the tuj
but in hot water. It is said that bathing in hot springs is the absolute best thing to do.
In the meantime, an aj qij or indigenous priest (commonly known in popular literature as
a Daykeeper) who is a member of the family or at least a close friend will visit the family altars
and, in ceremony, he or she will inform the cosmic energies that there is a new being in the
family. Nine days after the birth, the child is ceremoniously presented at the main family altar
where he or she had been previously announced by the indigenous priest.
39

The midwife is a pediatrician as well as an obstetrician; the care of the children from the
beginning of postpartum until well past the toddling stage is a part of the profession. It is during
these early years that children may suffer from what is called a falling of the fontanel, which is

39
Sanic Chanchavac, Medicina Maya, pp. 65-7.
38

its failure to close or mature in the right way; it is during these years that children are most
susceptible to mal ojo or the evil eye.


The Huesero (Bone Setter)
The profession of bone setter has been practiced since Pre-Columbian times; bone setters
are specifically mentioned in the Popol Vuh or Mayan Creation Epic. The bone setter is
responsible for alleviating fractures or broken bones, zafaduras (a colloquial Spanish term for
dislocated joints), sprains, inflammation or swelling, bone pain and the breakages/fractures of
the soul.
The hueseros treatment a kind of indigenous chiropractic or massage therapy is
aimed at re-aligning the bones or the dislocated joint through pressure maneuvers, traction and
counter-traction, and rest. Some healers (hueseros) know how to re-position the fracture. This
takes away the pain and reduces the swelling. With more serious fractures, the person needs a
plaster cast and recourse to Western medicine.
Some hueseros carry out diagnosis through the pulse in order to recognize when its a
matter of a fracture, sprain, or cold or hot inflammation. The principle of opposites is also
applied here: a hot plant is applied for a cold sprain; if the bone pain is because of heat, healing
plants or flowers are mashed up in cold water. Touching, blowing, whistling and praying are the
four fundamental elements of treatment. In general, bone setters have a limited knowledge of
herbalism, except in the case where they are also iloles.
Hueseros learn to heal by observing and assisting an older healer, but they also say that
their knowledge can be acquired through dreams, by inheritance, through their intelligence,
and occasionally by the same process we described earlier an illness or accident may alert one
to the need to become a healer.

The Prayer Maker
The prayer maker is a Tzotzil specialty, called a koponej witz in that language and a
rezador de los cerros or mountain prayer maker in Spanish. These healers climb to the tops of
mountains to offer up prayers of protection for the community against illnesses and natural
disasters.
39

In Tzotzil society there are afflictions caused by the transgression of the social and moral
rules of the group the concept of awas we have already mentioned from our Kiche sources.
According to Tzotzil tradition, people suffer these illnesses only once in life and they appear in a
cyclical manner; among them are measles, chicken pox, small pox, whooping cough, and fever.
This type of affliction can be prevented by prayers in the church, on the hills, or at springs; the
treatment should be performed three times a year and the prayer maker is the one responsible for
praying to prevent these diseases. He also prays in a few caves or hills where the gods reside,
and his prayer requests serve to help the community avoid poverty and cold so that there is
sufficient corn, beans, vegetables and water. He asks forgiveness for the sins of the people so
that epidemics dont appear; he also prays when disasters actually do occur. He lights candles
and incense, and during the ceremonies conducted by prayer makers there are songs, chants and
celebration.
The mountain prayer maker participates in various ceremonies that are performed before
planting and after the harvest; the people of the community collaborate and help with these
rituals. One of the most important such ceremonies in highland Chiapas is the one on May 3rd,
the day of the Holy Cross. The wooden cross is regarded as the god that guards the home, the
altars, the streams, and the ceremonial center, and people relate it to well-being and the recovery
of health. The prayer maker also prays for the purpose of freeing people from all the illnesses of
sorcerers (brujos). He prays to the god of the sky not to send punishments to the people, not to
afflict them with measles and fever.
After such a prayer, he goes to the hills, to the rocks where the angels and the gods are
the nature spirits who serve as shepherds of bulls, horses, pigs, chickens and turkeys. He asks
the spirits to tolerate what these animals do, to free them from all harm, illnesses and plagues.
He offers candles, fireworks, copal and music with drums and flutes to the angels. In June,
when the corn starts to grow, he goes to the cornfield and offers candles, fireworks and music to
the angels of the land in order to free them from the four cardinal winds.
The mountain prayer maker is one of the specialists in shortest supply in the region of
highland Chiapas, though it could be argued that, since prayers in Kiche society accompany all
rituals and frequently take place on hill tops, this art is alive and vitally well among the Kiche.


40

The Ilol
In Kiche the term ilol literally means one who sees, but the vocation or office is much
wider than the literal translation would imply. An ilol not only sees but observes, diagnoses,
and understands; he knows and analyzes. In Tzotzil, the term specifically refers to one who
diagnoses through reading a patients pulse, though once again, in reality the word has a much
broader application.
The ilol is recognized as the healer who possesses the widest range of knowledge which
allows her or him to heal those who are ill, whether in body or in soul. She or he provides care
to patients with chronic, acute and serious illnesses; the ilol knows which illnesses have been
caused by a wind, by lightning or water, and whether they have been acquired through dreams,
envy, food or socially unacceptable conduct. An ilol is, first and foremost, an energy healer.
An ilol may be either a woman or a man. An ilol may also be a midwife, bone setter, or
prayer maker. Normally the iloles are people of mature age; the presence of young iloles is rare,
in spite of the fact that healers often receive the call while they are still children Don Lauro
de la Cruz began to heal when he was only five years old. Even though many of them have
acquired their gift through dreams, there are other forms of achieving knowledge, such as
through sheer intelligence or being taught by an elder. What is certain is that among all these
healers there was a deep desire to be an ilol; some prayed or lit a candle asking God or Ajaw to
grant them grace.
The ilol considers illness to be the product of an imbalance between the patient and her
or his social or supernatural surroundings, as detailed in Chapter 1. The diagnosis is often carried
out by palpation of the radial pulse; through such simple means, the ilol is able to know
everything related to the sick person, from the illness that afflicts him to the social rules that he
has transgressed; through the heartbeat, the ilol feels a current of blood that goes from the heart
to the thought. Everything is known through the pulsing of the blood.
After feeling and reading the heartbeat and pulse, the ilol asks questions about the
patients life and activities, symptoms, dreams, and so on. Keeping in mind that transgression of
social rules and regulations is regarded among many Mayan communities as a principle cause of
illness, the ilol must use her or his power with integrity, as she or he may cause harm by
knowing so many of the patients hidden desires and the revelations contained within ones
dreams.
41

The ilol is the mediator between cosmic energies and social ones, and heals on both
levels integrally. It is commonly believed that certain illnesses cannot be healed by allopathic
medicine but only by the skills of an ilol. Disturbing sexual dreams, mood swings, susto or
fright, illnesses caused by witchcraft or harmful winds fall within the world view of the ilol but
not the medical doctor. The same may be said of the evil eye, or diseases caused by frolicking
spirits.
The common factor in spiritual illnesses is that they are attributed to loss of soul,
which may occur when a person has an unpleasant experience that results in the abandonment of
the spirit; examples are falls, meteorological phenomena (like rain or wind), the closeness of
dangerous animals, or the witnessing of unpleasant things such as cadavers. Another form of
loss of soul occurs when the soul is kidnapped by a spirit of nature or through bad air or
an evil wind.
The ilol, as a complete energy healer, uses a wide range of resources for treatment:
ritual (retrieving the soul that has been lost), prayers (in caves, in the church, in the house, in the
place where the illness was acquired), candles, cleansing by spraying the person with liquor or
some other liquid which is transformed into a soft mist as it emerges from the healers mouth,
physical manipulation in the style of the huesero or bone setter, and, above all, plants, whether
imbibed in the form of a tea, ground up with water, or smeared on as poultices, in baths, and so
on. Depending on the illness, the ilol specifies how to place the altar, whether the healing should
be carried out during the morning, in the afternoon, at night or at midnight, and the size, color
and type of candles to be used. She or he knows which part of a plant to use for each illness; one
may use the root, stalk, leaves, flower, fruit, or the whole plant as well. As with diagnostic
procedures, the use of plants is extremely varied.




42



















PART II

PRACTICE

43


4. HEALING WITH HERBS

The body needs balance. In the past, the first people had a strong relationship with both
nature and other humans. They observed and experimented with plants for healing stomach or
intestinal problems through their experience. They did this at first with food because they did not
know which foods were good for them and which were bad, hence through trial and error they
found the right foods and medicines which helped rather than harmed. The key is balance.
In the past they would use things that were like glass, break them, and use the shard to
pierce the skin. They also used maguey spines to pierce and then remove blood, seeing the
consistency of the blood, whether it was too thick or too thin, thus reading a persons condition.
They also used stones that contain lightning
40
for the evil eye; they cleaned the stones
carefully; the water was given to people to drink.
They also passed this stone over the body for adults and children, especially if someone
had a fever or strong blood, such as the blood of a pregnant woman who may have had an
interaction with a child that was negative and the energy was passed into the child, who then
gets fever and vomiting. They used water in many treatments, both in ancient times and now.
Fire as well as water is used. If a person passes out, water is poured in the face to revive them.
Sometimes if people have lower back pain (kidneys), hot or burning, it is treated with a cold rag
soaked in water as compress.
If someone has a urinary tract infection, a basin is filled with cold water and the person
soaks in the water. This also helps vaginal infections.
The fire is powerful; people interpret the message of the flames during fire ceremony and
receive information for diagnosis.
Originally the people used fire, water, stones, and shards to puncture and extract blood.
Later they developed a more sophisticated herblore.

Crecencia Pu
Momostenango
January 7, 2013


40
Stones that had been struck by lightning.
44

Herblore is perhaps the first line of defense in Mayan medicine. While various
specialties exist, as detailed in the previous chapter, almost all healers, of whatever variety, are at
least partly familiar with the rudiments of herblore.
Not only is herblore a common path of healing among the Maya, it is also a spiritual
practice. One must have faith in the plants and their energy. Remedies must be prepared in a
sacred manner, in peace and harmony. No fighting or arguing among friends or family members
should be indulged in while one is preparing the medicines, or else they will turn out badly.
Before beginning the process of preparing medicines, one must pray and ask for
permission from El Ajaw and Mother Earth to gather the sacred herbs from their natural habitats.
A Yucatec healer remarks: ...plants have only emotions; they dont think, but they can
communicate with you....A plant is connected to the same flow of life as we are. All the plants of
the earth are connected with the same flow of energy, with la vida, and we are the same. We
arent connected with the same direct connection as the plants, but we are connected isnt that
so?
41

In Chapter 1, we named being within the flow of the cycles of Grandmother Moon as a
component of complete health and well-being. It is said that cures are more successful when the
moon is full. Fruits cut on full moons ripen well, while those cut in the first quarter do not
mature properly, but become watery. Wood cut on a full moon is resistant to moths, but that
which is cut on a tender moon is not as resistant and may become moth-eaten. It is the same
thing in the human organism. When the moon is weak, human sensitivity increases; but children
born on a full moon are more resistant to illnesses.
Doa Victoria Qiej, an ilol of Momostenango, insists that the best time to gather plants
for medicinal purposes is when a Qanil day in the Mayan Calendar corresponds with a full
moon, since the day sign Qanil is the nawal of plants in general and therefore the best day of the
ancient calendar upon which to gather herbs.
42
The actual healing ceremonies which accompany
the more worldly herbal medicine are also frequently performed upon a Qanil day.


41
Kunow, pp. 24-5

42
While the Western astronomical definition of full moon means the exact moment when the sun and moon are
opposed to each other in terms of celestial longitude, the Maya simply mean those few days when the moon appears
full to the naked eye. Using this definition, a full moon and a Qanil day will correspond two or three times during
the course of a calendar year.

45

To Dry and Prepare Plants for Medicinal Use
After the plants have been gathered, with the appropriate prayers for cutting them, wash,
soak, and disinfect them in water to which a few grams of salt or bicarbonate of soda have been
added.
After five minutes of soaking the herb in the mixture of water and bicarbonate of soda,
remove the plant from the liquid and shake it well.
Place the plant in a basket for drying. Fill the basket to the top. Traditionally, the plants
are folded around the edge of the basket in layers until the container is full.
Next, cover the basket and tie it up with string while the herbs are drying. The Maya,
being the pragmatists that they are, frequently cover their herb baskets with common black
plastic hefty bags. Place the basket in the sun during the day but bring it in during the night,
keeping it tied up with the string.
Continue this process for seven or eight days.
When the plant is finally dry, it can be chopped into pieces. When cutting the plant, as
when first gathering it, say: In the name of Ajaw.
Another technique is to cut or chop the plant first, then place it in the sun for seven days
to dry. This is a simpler method, as it is much easier to cut the plant while it is fresh rather than
when it is dry.
If you have many plants (as in the case of a professional healer like Doa Victoria), you
can use a box to create a plant dryer. Place chicken wire mesh or some other sort of strainer in
the box, and place the plants on top. Keep the different plants separate from each other, for their
energies are unique and do not always mix well.
Sometimes a drying shed is constructed with a corrugated tin roof. A simple one can be
made using four posts (to represent the four pillars of the universe) and black plastic walls. The
drying boxes are placed inside.

Consecrating the Herbs for Healing
Before the washed and dried herbs are used for healing, they must be consecrated or
rendered sacred. As mentioned above, herbalism is considered a spiritual practice, a spiritual art.
The ceremony of consecration typically takes place at the shrine or altar which is to be
found in the home of any Mayan traditionalist or costumbrista. Once again, Doa Victoria
46

asserts that the best day upon which to consecrate the herbs is a Qanil day.
43
Place four small
white candles at the four points of the altar. These represent sunrise, sunset, north (where the air
enters), and south (where the wind departs).
44
Place the medicine plant or herb on the altar as
well.
Now one must talk to the spirit of the plant. Doa Victoria teaches that one must address
it with great respect and ask the spirit of the plant to collaborate and assist in the healing of a
particular patient on a particular day. She says that one must ask the plant to fully participate in
the healing and release its power to facilitate the cure.
It is important to pray that the herbs you employ for purposes of healing will be blessed
by the ancient Mayan deities and by the nawales or spirits of the day signs involved. Doa
Victoria taught us always to pray to Ajaw (the pre-Christian, traditional Mayan concept of the
Divine Spirit that governs the universe), and to Mother Earth (upon whose body grow all the
sacred plants). She taught us also to pray to the nawal or Calendar day sign Qanil because of its
connection with herbs and all growing things, to the nawal Kawoq because of its connection with
all forms of healing generally, and to the nawal of the day upon which the healing is taking
place.
Doa Victoria insisted that this ritual of consecration is a form of communication
between the healer and the spirit world, especially the spirits which watch over the sacred plant
medicines. Therefore it is to be performed at ones own household shrine, not in the presence of
the patient. The healer should perform the ritual of consecration before going to visit the sick
person.
As will be seen in the herbal which follows, plant remedies are administered either as
teas, tinctures, salves or washes (lavados). A few quintessential examples of how to create
tinctures, salves and medicinal soaps are given here, as taught to the authors by Doa Victoria.
(Note: All the recipes contained in this section are better when cooked over a wood stove,
because the heat is slow and regular.)


43
If performing the ceremony of consecration in the evening or at night, choose the night before the Qanil day
rather than the night of the Qanil day itself. This will always be a Kej (Yucatec: Manik) day. This is because the
energy of a new day sign always enters into being on the evening of the previous day. By the time the sun has set
and the evening of the Qanil day itself is reached, the following day sign Toj will already be starting to assert its
energy.

44
For more on the concept of wind and aires, see The Winds in Chapter 2, Energies Within the Body.
47


Eucalyptus Tincture
Use 6 leaves of eucalyptus per 5 squares of camphor.
Mince or dice the eucalyptus leaves into small, fine pieces.
Cut the camphor squares into extremely small pieces and crush them into a powder with
the flat of your knife.
Add a bit of marijuana for seasoning.
Combine the mixture with about 1/8 liter (125 ml) of Quetzalteca or other anise liqueur.
Shake well. (It is somewhere between difficult and impossible to obtain Quetzalteca outside of
Guatemala. The most commonly available anise liqueur in Europe or the U.S. is probably ouzo.)
Date the jar. Then wrap the jar in several layers. A black hefty bag is common in
Guatemala; the idea is to keep the tincture away from sunlight and heat. Store in a cool, dark
place.
Allow the tincture to ferment for 20 days, shaking it well every 3 days. After 20 days,
strain it and preserve it in a tincture bottle. Its potency will last for a year and a half, then it will
become ineffective.
The tincture can be used for bronchial problems, fever, asthma, bronchial pneumonia,
sinusitis, etc.
Drink some drops of the tincture in a tea (for example barley tea w/ cinnamon), the
dosage to be adjusted to the patients age:
Infants: 2 drops every 4 hours
8 thru 16: 5 drops every 4 hours
Adults: 10 drops every 4 hours
For sinusitis, inhale the tincture from the bottle, closing one nostril with the fingers while
inhaling with the other.
Eucalyptus tincture can also be effective for delayed menstruation.

Eucalyptus Salve
The salves are typically used during massage therapy (see Chapter 5).
Cover the bottom of a skillet with olive oil (about 70 ml) and heat.
Crush 1 oz. or more of dried eucalyptus leaves by hand, then dice finely.
48

Add the eucalyptus leaves to the skillet.
Add 1 large, heaping tbs. (or more) of camphor pomade and lb. of white vaseline to the
skillet.
Add approximately 1 bud of marijuana for seasoning.
Mix well and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring until the entire mixture is melted.
Strain the mixture with a strainer.
Pour the remaining mixture into a vessel, then into vials. The mixture will congeal into a
pomade in approximately 15 minutes.
While she was in the midst of waiting for the mixture to congeal, Doa Victoria danced
around the room, singing this chant which, she says, is employed to empower the salve:
Pomade eucalipto, me voy echar.
Pomade eucalipto, me voy echar.
Pomade eucalipto, me voy echar.
Pomade eucalipto, me voy echar.

Me voy por aqui,
Me voy por alla.
Me voy por aqui,
Me voy por alla.

Pomade eucalipto, me voy echar.

The salve is used by rubbing it into the back and shoulders during massage to cure hot
ailments such as sore bones, arthritis, or fever.

Rue Salve
Chop approximately 2 oz. of rue (Ruta graveolens L), keeping the leaves and flowers but
discarding the stems.
Cover the bottom of a skillet with olive oil.
Add the rue to the skillet.
Add approximately 2/3 lb. of white vaseline to the skillet.
Add approximately oz. of marijuana for seasoning.
Mix well and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring the mixture until all is melted.
Strain the mixture with a strainer.
49

Pour the remaining mixture into a vessel, then into vials. The mixture will congeal into a
pomade in approximately 15 minutes.
Rue Salve is used in massage for bruises and blows. It is also massaged into the legs to
treat varicose veins.
Rue is said to be an excellent remedy for psychologically based illnesses (see the herbal
in this chapter as well as Chapter 9), especially sadness or the evil eye; it is also said to be highly
effective against susto (literally fright, but bearing a strong symptomatic resemblance to what
we would call panic disorder, viz. Chapter 9.) However, Doa Victoria says that rue is more
effective with grief (sadness due to a real world event) rather than with clinical depression. It is
also used as a remedy against high blood pressure. The flower is sometimes used to induce
abortion. One can drink rue in a tea or one can use the salve described above in massage. Rue
banishes evil spirits and draws away bad energy. In that sense it is similar to the way in which an
egg is used in limpias.

Here is an example of a salve made up of several different ingredients:

Emoliente Salve
Finely chop approximately 1 oz. of pimpernel, 1 oz. powdered flax seed oil, 1 oz.
fenugreek seeds, and add a pinch or dash of achiote (annatto) and an equal amount of marijuana.
Cover the bottom of a skillet with olive oil.
Add the herbal mixture to the skillet.
Add 1 large, heaping tbs. (or more) of camphor pomade and lb. of white vaseline to the
skillet.
Mix well and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring mixture until all is melted.
Strain the mixture with a strainer.
Pour the remaining mixture into a vessel, then into vials. The mixture will congeal into a
pomade in approximately 15 minutes.
Emoliente Salve is used to relieve labor pains by rubbing it on the abdomen, lower back
and stomach of the woman. The pimpernel can be taken by itself as a tea every four hours to
cause the water to break and/or relieve labor pains.

50

Bao Maria
(Note: This soap takes its name from the main ingredient, a thistle which is locally known
as cardillomaria and which is commonly referred to in English as golden thistle.)
Chop up the thistle, some nettle, and mallow (malva). These are the principal ingredients.
Other plants may be added in smaller quantities: milenrama (a fern-like species of yarrow),
wormseed, plantain (of the various meanings of the English plantain, the reference here is to a
medicinal herb called llantn in Spanish), dandelion, and sbila or, as the Kiche pronounce it,
sbilola (aloe). Doa Victoria never mentioned specific quantities for any of the ingredients.
Mix the ingredients in a blender with water, then strain carefully, using a spoon.
Use a large bar of soap as the foundation or base for this medicinal soap. (The bar of
sticky pink soap used by Doa Victoria was quite large, equivalent to about 3 bars of ordinary
American soap.) Shave it and cut it into small pieces, then add it to an empty pot.
Place the empty pot inside a larger pot of water. Boil the water. Place the shaved and cut
soap into the empty pot.
Gradually add about 2 cups of the herbal mix while constantly stirring the soap. As the
mixture develops, add water until the entire mixture finally reaches the consistency of bread
dough.
Place a bit of olive oil in the bottom of some plastic soap containers. Lubricate the hands
with olive oil, then pack the mixture by hand into the soap containers, shaping it to fit the
container. (Be careful; its hot.)

Washes (Lavados)
A wash or lavado may be a tea as well as an enema or douche. Each day, boil one liter of
water for five minutes, then remove it from the flame. Steep the herbs for five minutes. Then
strain the mixture. Doa Victoria remarks: By making washes from plants, one can heal
infections, gastritis, gastric ulcers, and constipation. Flax seed is especially good for
constipation. So is aloe.
For gastric or ulcerous infections, use a wash of plantain (the herb; see note above),
mallow, and dandelions. One may use fenugreek for all kinds of stomach and abdominal pains.
Marigold and wormseed are also effective for infections of the stomach.
51

To clean the blood, there is a wash with herbs called boldo and cola de caballo (a variety
of horsetail). Aliso (alder) and alamo (poplar) are other remedies.
One has to measure out the wash carefully, by the glass, in accordance with the patients
age. Adults may drink a glass a day for seven days. Then stop for seven days, then repeat the
process for another seven.
This mixture (above) is also good for colon and bladder infections, as well as those of the
liver and kidney. It is effective against urinary tract infections as well. It can heal ovarian
infections and prostate problems. For prostate, drink a glass every four hours for thirty days.
To clean the blood, take one glass per day in the morning for seven days. Then stop for
seven days, then take the remedy for seven more days.

A KICHE AND TZOTZIL HERBAL
(collected from Doa Crecencia Pu in Momostenango, Janaury 2013, with additional material
from Victoria Qiej Guix de Itzep, Maria Hernandez Ajanel de Itzep, and the publications of the
Institute for Traditional Mayan Medicine in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico)

Most previous work on Mayan herbalism has taken place in the jungle environment of the
Yucatn peninsula.
45
Some writers have commented on the extraordinary continuity of Mayan
culture in this region; many of the herbs mentioned in an 18
th
century medical text entitled The
Book of Chilam Balam of Kaua are still used today, and for the same purposes.
46
Those who are
familiar with this material and the great number of indigenous plants used by the Maya may be
surprised at the number of introduced herbs from other lands which we note here as common in
the Tzotzil and Kiche highlands. It should be remembered that we are dealing with two entirely
different ecosystems. While Yucatn and nearby Belize are tropical lowland environments, the
city of Momostenango, where most of our research was accomplished, lies at a high altitude
almost 7,500 feet. Hence, despite its tropical latitude (only fifteen degrees north of the equator),

45
See Arvigo, Rosita, and Michael Balick, Rainforest Remedies: One Hundred Healing Herbs of Belize (Twin
Lakes, WI, Lotus Press, 1993); Bricker, Victoria R. and Helga-Maria Miram (trans.), An Encounter of Two Worlds:
The Book of Chilam Balam of Kaua (New Orleans, Middle American Research Institute, 2002); Garcia, Hernan,
Antonio Sierra and Gilberto Balam (trans. Jeff Conant), Wind in the Blood: Mayan Healing and Chinese Medicine
(Berkeley, CA, North Atlantic Books, 1999), and Kunow, Marianna Appel. Maya Medicine: Traditional Healing in
Yucatan (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2003).

46
Bricker and Miram, An Encounter of Two Worlds, op. cit., pp. 79-81.
52

it is a much more arid environment than the Yucatn. The indigenous Yucatn flora is much
richer and more varied.
The adaptation of so many different plants with differing origins, then, may be regarded
as a testimony to the pragmatic ingenuity of Kiche and Tzotzil healers. They use whatever
works!
Orange, eucalyptus and rosemary are the plants that Doa Crecencia described as the
three great healers in the Momostenango region.

Alder
(Kiche: lemob, Sp: aliso) Balanced.

A commonly used tree is the alder. Its leaves are used for kidney problems, while the
bark is used to treat vaginal infections that involve white secretions. To use the bark, it has to be
boiled for at least ten minutes in hot water. If people swell up from too much water (what we
would call water retention), it is good to use alder leaf tea. If people have spots on their skin, it
shows that the blood is dirty. The blood can be cleaned by the tea of alder leaves, but one must
drink it for ten days straight, then stop for a few days, then take it for another ten days. One can
also bathe in alder leaves to purify the blood. This is the most important use of the alder tree.

Aloe
(Latin: Aloe Vera, Kiche sbilola, from Spanish sbila,) Balanced.

As here in the Western world, this plant is made into a shampoo. In fact, the shampoo and
skin salve are probably the most common local uses. There is a commercial product in Mexico
which is a powder that is used for general detoxification of the body.
47
Among the Kiche, the
packets of powder are dissolved in water.
The inside of the leaf (the gel) is most often used to treat gastritis, bruises, burns, and
fever. It is very good for the skin; one can either rub the gelatinous part directly onto the skin or
a salve can be made which is good for burns and which also makes the skin very soft and
smooth. The hard outer peeling of the leaves is used to treat liver problems.

47
We have been unable to discover the name of this powder.
53

In liquid form, aloe is good for cleansing the stomach and the digestive system. If your
food disagrees with you, take the liquid form and it will clean out the digestive system.

Angels Trumpet
(Tzotzil: campana nichim, Kiche florefundo from Spanish florifundia) Cold.

This plant can be dangerous; it is a variety of datura, therefore both poisonous and
hallucinogenic. The bush can reach five meters in height. Its flowers are white and hang down in
the form of a bell. It is often cultivated in gardens; a widespread plant, it is found throughout
both the highlands and jungles of Chiapas. The leaves are used as a palliative for bone fractures
and other physical injuries. To prepare the plant for medicinal usage, the leaf is warmed up on
the comal. The hot leaf is then placed upon the affected area two times a day. Datura should not
be ingested by the patient. It is a psychotropic drug (made famous in Carlos Castanedas books)
and in large doses is quite poisonous.


Avocado
(Kiche oj) Balanced.

Guatemala is sometimes called the land of avocados. They are used with cucumbers to
make a variety of ice cream; they are also used in a drink. Avocados used to be eaten with chile
peppers or chirmole, with the fruit used as a bowl and the chile placed on the top and on tortillas
for breakfast (this custom seems no longer to be very common). Avocado is also used in soup or
stew.
Apart from being a food, the fruit is used to speed up labor and is consumed by pregnant
women two months before giving birth in order to soften the body; there is a great deal of oil in
the fruit and the body needs to be soft in order to open up and allow for easier birth.
When a woman is in labor, the leaves can speed things up. One leaf per cup of water is
boiled for three minutes, removed from the heat, and the solution is imbibed. It lessens pain as
well as speeding up the birth process.
54

The leaves are used in bath water (not too hot) to help the recovery and recuperation of a
woman who has just given birth. This can be combined with red sage, as the two plants work
well together. The steam from the leaves of the mixture of avocado and red sage in boiling water
can help the new mother to recover more quickly. Boiling water (very hot) is put in a big
steaming bucket; the woman stands over the bucket with steam entering into her to heal any
possible tearing from birth and close the uterus. Blankets are placed around her so that she may
receive the full benefit of the steam.
The avocado pit can be used for contraception and to induce abortions.
48
The pit is
chopped up, then a tablespoon of mix per cup of water is boiled for five minutes and imbibed.
Avocado also serves to strengthen the intestines and to clean out the digestive system
when people eat food that is too hard or rough and which therefore gets stuck in the system,
becoming hard to digest. The oil within the avocado coats the digestive system and makes the
food slide through it and come out more easily. If someone has a cough and a hoarse throat, the
avocado will soften the throat. Avocado can also be used to make a nice shampoo. It makes the
hair smooth and shiny. The fruit can be rubbed into the scalp to heal or avoid dandruff.
The pit is also good for toothaches, especially in the molars. The pit is mashed and the
patient takes a bit of the ground-up pit in the mouth under the afflicted tooth. The pit may also be
simply placed on the tooth. This is not something to be done on a regular basis, but only to
alleviate pain before going to a dentist.
People with bloated stomachs may blame it on avocado, but it is actually an aire or bad
air or bad wind in the stomach.


Chamomile (Manzanilla)
(Latin: Matricaria Courrantina, Kiche: kxlan qinom) Hot.

This refers to the flower, not the manzanilla tree known in California. In the past the
Maya used the leaves, but later discovered that the flower had most of the medicinal properties.
It is used for blood problems, as it is said to normalize the blood. When the blood appears too

48
Doa Crecencia seemed reluctant to mention this use of the avocado. She said that people around here just dont
like to talk about it.
55

thick or has too dark a color (not bright red), it indicates poor circulation. When a person has
dirty blood it can cause tonsillitis. Manzanilla (chamomile) tea is given for this. If someone
has a headache and fever from tonsillitis, they may use about a liter of boiled chamomile; the
person bends over a basin to breathe the vapor, his or her head covered with a towel. This should
be done perhaps three nights in a row.
Chamomile is also good for the throat in general, as well as being used for stomach
problems. Whether the stomach is painful and swollen, or whether there is vomiting, chamomile
heals many stomach issues. A gargle is good for healing infections in the mouth. It can be used
as a nice beverage when mixed with cinnamon. This herb is also considered to be a blood
cleanser or purifier; if you drink the tea regularly it cleans the blood. It is also used just as in the
Western world, to calm the nerves.
This herb grows wild, almost like a weed, and needs no care. Throw the seeds in your
yard and they will grow on their own without the need for cultivation. Doa Victoria uses it in
douches for women in order to help heal vaginal infections and other reproductive problems; she
also uses it as a steam; the woman leans over a bucket filled with steaming chamomile Doa
Victoria states that this is good for both female problems and throat problems.
Chamomile is also used as part of a remedy for conjunctivitis. In one glass of hot water,
soften the tip of a rue plant. Drink a lukewarm tea made of it. Repeat three times a day before
meals for nine days. At the same time, boil four branches of chamomile. Let them stand to cool
down and then, with a clean rag, clean the infected eye, little by little.


Chilacayote

(Latin: Cucurbita Ficifolia, Tzotzil: mail, Kiche: qoq) Cold.

This plant grows as a creeper with large, oval shaped fruit. It is commonly cultivated in
cornfields and on the patios of houses. It is the root which is used for medicinal purposes, mostly
for getting the milk of a new mother to flow properly. To prepare it, the healer mashes up a
handful of the raw root and boils it in one liter of water. The resulting tea is taken for either half
a day or one day after the birth, with the patient drinking one glass of it three times a day for two
days. The patient should only drink this plant once after giving birth.
56



Dahlia
(Tzotzil: cholep, Kiche: tunay) Cold.

The bush may grow up to three meters high, with long stems and flowers that have the
same shape as a sunflower but with pink petals that have a yellow center. Dahlia grows wild at
the edge of roads. The leaves, flowers and tender stalks are used for hemorrhaging in women. It
is prepared by boiling one handful in a liter of water. The woman drinks one glass three times a
day for four days. The patient should not eat chile or drink soda or eat hot foods while taking this
remedy.



Elderberry
(Latin: Sambucus Mexicana, Kiche: tzoloj che; Sp: sauco) Balanced.

Both the leaves and the outer bark are used; the leaves are used for tea, one teaspoon per
cup of water or either one large leaf or two small leaves for a cup of tea. The leaves can be
applied directly onto the skin for a headache or for high fever by placing the on the forehead. Tie
a rag or scarf around the forehead to hold the leaves in place. For foot pains, one can warm the
leaves over the fire and place the hot leaves on the persons feet.
The bark is used for vomiting; boil two small pieces of bark in two cups of water for ten
minutes. For constipation, the Maya take a tea made from the outer bark for a week; if this
doesnt work, just take it for longer.
For the flu, take a tea made from the leaves. It is also effective against bronchitis. You
can drink the tea for colds, flu or bronchitis, but as bronchitis is more serious, heat up the leaves
and place them on the patients upper back and shoulders to help clear things up. One needs to
use the type of sauco that has wide leaves. This variety of the elder tree is the one for medicinal
use; other types do not seem to have the same medicinal value.


57

Encino (Holm Oak)
(Latin: Quercus Sp., Kiche: kowalaj che or sometimes tu kar) Hot.

This species of oak has a red bark, whereas roble (another variety of oak) has a white
bark. The holm oak is used to avoid anemia, stomach ache, and cough. It is also helpful for good
circulation of the blood and makes the bones harder; if someone has weak eyes or vision
problems, they can drink water in which the bark has been boiled.
Encino is used to strengthen the teeth if they are chipped; one can clean ones teeth with
water in which the bark has been boiled, holding it in the mouth and then spitting it out. If the
teeth are rotten and it is causing pain, this concoction will help to clean the rot. If the tooth is
black, this may also remove the blackness, though it is necessary to use the solution at least a few
times. If a person has no appetite, this same remedy will also help to stimulate it. A piece of bark
(about an inch) per each cup of water is the proper quantity; it should be well boiled. It also
strengthens the blood and is used for women to regulate menstruation if they have amenorrhea,
as it regulates and normalizes periods.
The Maya also use the bark to provide a brown color to drinks such as lemonade. It is
also used by weavers as a dye for wool; by way of encino, white wool can be dyed brown. It is
one of the main ingredients in making pom (copal resin used as incense and burned in sacred fire
ceremonies as an offering). The red bark is ground up and mixed with pine tar, then boiled; the
result is one of the raw ingredients for the pom. (This applies to the various types of pom used in
Mayan ceremonies, such as cuilco, ensarte, etc.) If the mixture is not boiled for a long time, the
bark will give a reddish tone to the pom. The leaves of the holm oak are not used as medicine
because of hairs, but theys can be used to wrap tamales. A type of coal may be extracted from
the trunk of the oak and used to roast meat; the same coal that comes from the trunk is soaked in
water for about five minutes. It is good for sadness and fright. The leaves of the holm oak are
often used as a wrapping for tamales while the outer bark is used for both medicine and
ceremonial pom. Only the outermost layer of bark (cascara) is used in the preparation of pom,
while the inner bark (cortesa) is used medicinally.
The seeds of the encino are very bitter but they are good as brain food. The Maya toast
the seeds well, then grind them up and add a little bit to their atole (a type of porridge often eaten
for breakfast in Mexico and Guatemala). The tradition of using the seeds as a food supplement
58

for the brain is being lost, although some traditionalists still practice this technique. The bark is
also used to control hemorrhage and loss of blood. For example, let us say that a person gets a
bad cut and wants to stop the bleeding. Clean the wound, boil a liter of water with bark and allow
it to cool down; then the hand is placed into the solution to stop the bleeding.
The pomche and encino are complementary plants because both are used in the making
of pom.

Eucalyptus
(Latin: Eucalyptus Sp., Kiche calipto, from Spanish eucalipto) Hot.

In the Mayan sweat lodge or tuj, the branches are used, dipping them into a concoction of
warm eucalyptus water and then slapping the person lightly with the leaves. This cleanses and
detoxifies the body; it opens up the pores to release the toxins. This process of slapping also
helps to heat up the body, and therefore it is good for people whose bodies are naturally too cold.
It is common in the tuj to boil water with eucalyptus leaves, creating a medicine water; a basin
of it is poured onto the person after being filled with the hot eucalyptus water. It is restorative
and relaxing to take a bath in eucalyptus leaves. After a tuj treatment, one must stay warm and
not drink cold drinks, for these will cause cramps.
Eucalyptus is used as a tea to treat fever, colds and flu, catarrh, respiratory problems,
stomach aches, and nerves. Use two leaves for each cup of tea. If the healer is very familiar with
the plant and its effects, more can be used. Another method is to boil the water and then put the
leaves in to steep in a closed container, which is then taken off the fire and can be imbibed
afterwards. A tincture can be prepared (see above, p. 47), or a syrup. You can also make a
pomade or salve to be rubbed on the skin (see above, pp. 47-8). You can also bathe in it.
While the tea is primarily indicated for respiratory problems, it can be used as a mouth
rinse for tonsillitis; the tea or steeped eucalyptus mouth rinse is used like a gargle. The salve is
good for a sore throat, as are both the tea and the gargle.
If someone in the house has the flu and it seems contagious, the spread of the disease can
be stopped by burning eucalyptus leaves on the comal to release the aroma throughout the
household. But burning the leaves is simply a disinfectant. For deep healing, the bath or the tea is
better. Put a handful of leaves into bath water for respiratory problems.
59

Fennel
(Latin: Foeniculum Vulgare, Tzotzil: inojo, fr. Sp. hinojo) Cold.

This common kitchen spice grows as a bush with a moderately thick stem that is green,
smooth, and hollow. On the tip of the stem are fifteen little branches with small flowers. The
leaves are very narrow but like soft long hairs, green and very smooth, while the flowers are
yellow. Fennel is cultivated in houses and gardens, and in the Maya highlands it flowers in
March. The stem, flower and leaves are all used in healing. It is a well known remedy for colic in
the stomach. Boil one handful in a liter of water for five minutes and drink one glass three times
a day for three or four days; the taste is not bitter. The patient should avoid chile and other hot
foods. One should also not drink alcohol or soda.
Fennel and dill are regarded as the male and female halves respectively of similar plants.


Flax Seed (Wild Linseed)
(Tzotzil: vax te vomol) Hot.

This bush is characterized by leaves which are opposite each other; the flowers are
yellow and occur in abundance. The petals grow separated and form little stars. The fruit is small
and resembles a capsule in shape. It can be found in pine woods and also grows in the grass
stubble near cornfields as well as at the edge of roads and close to a tree which was described to
us as the tzotz te (the bat tree, apparently the liquidambar, see below). The leaves, flowers,
stem and root are all used for healing purposes, and flax seed is considered a standard remedy for
amoebas. To prepare it, boil one handful in a liter of water. Take one glass three times a day for
six days. The patient should not eat chile or cold foods or drink cold water.


Flor Morada (Purple Flower)
(Tzotzil: chin ak; English: Morning Glory) Balanced.

This is a creeping or climbing plant that reaches ten to thirty centimeters in height, with
thin stalks and with leaves in the form of a heart. It has medium sized flowers that look like a
60

pink bell with a purple background. The flor morada grows in cornfields and at the edge of
roads. It is the flowers which are used for healing, especially for inflammation of the liver.
Prepare the flowers by boiling one handful in a liter of water. Drink one glass three times a day
for ten days. The patient should not eat chile or drink soda.


Flor Rosada (Morning Glory)
(Tzotzil: chin ak, also chakal chikin) Cold.

This abundant plant grows as a creeper with a narrow stem that is somewhat hairy. It has
oval shaped leaves that are velvety on both sides. The flowers are in the form of a little bell
which is purple colored. It grows between groves of trees and the stubble around cornfields. The
flowers are used by herbalists for inflammation of the liver. One should prepare them by boiling
a handful in a liter of water. Drink one glass three times a day for seven days. The patient should
not eat chile or hot foods.


Garlic
(Latin: Allium Sativum, Kiche: anxux) Hot.

The roots (i.e. the heads) are the parts of the plant most commonly used, especially in
the context of ceremonies. Heads of garlic are employed for spiritual cleansing on all levels.
Often a healer will use four heads of garlic to do a limpieza (cleansing), whether spiritual or
material. For example: To heal a child of mal ojo (the evil eye), hold nine cloves of garlic in your
hand and pass them over the childs body, then throw them into a canyon or river or burn them.
Store owners hang garlic heads at the entrances of their shops to keep negativity and bad people
away from their store; it is considered especially useful against thieves and people who are trying
to pass counterfeit money.
The cloves of garlic are normally used for food, but they are also a medicine. Garlic
cloves are good for getting rid of worms and parasites. They are also used for problems with uric
acid, intestinal infections, for dirty blood or impurities of the skin. They stimulate appetite and
61

can be used for rheumatism and gout; they also lower blood pressure. You can use garlic for
parasites, but with children a salve is used because children generally dislike the taste of garlic
water. For rheumatism you can either drink a garlic beverage or use it as a salve or a rub. To
drink it, remove the outer skin and chop the garlic very fine, then put it in a covered pot and boil
it. One should use two large cloves per cup or four small ones. It is customary to cook beans with
garlic as well as using it to avoid parasites.

Guava (Guayaba)
(Latin: Psidium Guajava, Kiche: kaq) Balanced.

In the region of Momostenango, guava is commonly found in the villages, which are at a
lower altitude than the city. Healers primarily use the fruit, but they also use the leaves and the
outer layer of bark as a blood purifier and as a remedy for rheumatism, gout, bladder problems,
and kidney problems. Guava regulates the functioning of the large intestine. The leaves have to
be tender, young and fresh. Leaves that are old or mature dont work. Use two leaves per cup of
water, or, if chopped up, a teaspoon of leaves per cup of water.
The leaves and outer bark are both used for all the conditions mentioned above, but the
fruit is used differently. It is used for a dry cough (not moist or phlegmatic). A dry cough can
lead to fever. The fruit (fifteen to twenty very small fruits) is cooked in two or three cups of
water along with molasses and orange peel. If you dont have molasses or cinnamon, you can use
a bit of honey. If you dont have time to prepare the fruit in this manner, you can always just eat
the fruit raw to help a dry cough.

Hibiscus (Pinwheel)
(Tzotzil: chix jol ak, Sp: Rehilete) Cold.

This is a species of hibiscus that grows up to three meters tall and has narrow stems with
lots of spines. The flowers are red with five petals in the form of a pinwheel. It grows at the
edge of roads. The stem is used to control bleeding after childbirth. Prepare the remedy by
boiling thirteen little pieces of the stem, approximately two centimeters long, in one liter of
water. Add a handful of the leaf of another plant called chikin burro as well as thirteen little
62

pieces, two centimeters long, of satin root. On the first day after childbirth, the healer begins to
give the remedy to the sick person. If the bleeding is not serious, one may give the patient one
glass three times a day for one day. If there is more bleeding, one glass three times a day for t wo
days may be given.


Lemon
(Latin: Citrus Limonium, Kiche alamnx, Tzotzil elmunix) In Tzotzil tradition, this herb
is Cold, although our Momostecan sources regarded it as Balanced.

Lemons are among the most commonly used natural medicines. The spiny little tree
grows up to four meters tall. It has elliptical shaped leaves from five to seven and a half
centimeters long, as well as white flowers in the form of a star. The fruit is from two to four
centimeters in diameter; it is greenish-yellow with ten segments and has an acid taste. It grows in
fields and near houses.
The fruit of the lemon is often used for colds, especially when a fever is involved; though
Doa Victoria lists the lemon as balanced, it has a number of cold properties; drinking a cup
of coffee with lemon juice squeezed into it can help to lower a fever. The same remedy is
sometimes used for an upset stomach. If treating small children who have cold and fever with
lots of coughing but who do not want to drink lemon juice, you can squeeze it and rub it into the
forehead and scalp. Lemon can be used in this fashion for adults as well, rubbing it into the
forehead, scalp and the back of the neck to alleviate headaches.
If someone has gastritis and there is a fire from the stomach to the throat, (i.e.
heartburn), a combination of papaya and lemon is good. Lemon is not terribly effective by itself,
so pieces of papaya with pieces of lemon on top are taken; the papaya will prevent more
discomfort from the acidity of the lemon.
A lemon juice bath (using four large lemons) works well to rejuvenate someone who is
tired and lethargic; it relaxes them at the same time. Lemons are frequently used in Mayan
ceremonies to remove general negativity. A cross is slashed into a whole lemon with a knife
(though not all the way through). It is then passed over the person to remove the negative energy,
and afterwards thrown into the ceremonial fire. Doa Crecencia asserts that lemons are quite
63

distinct from limes when used for ritual purposes, as limes are used in ceremonies of thanks for
the harvest and offered up to the divine powers or spirits of agriculture.
49

The flowers are used among the Tzotzil Maya for an ailment called clouds in the eyes
or cloudy eyes. One handful is boiled in half a liter of water. One applies three drops three
times a day until the eye improves. There are no dietary or behavioral restrictions involved.
Coffee grounds placed on top of a lemon may be wrapped around the head to prevent a
headache.


Liquidambar
(Kiche: ucheal zotz; Tzotzil: zotzte) Hot.

This tree grows up to twenty meters tall with wide leaves and rounded fruits that have
spines. It grows in almost all areas, but especially in the hills. The bark of the trunk is used for
speeding up childbirth. To prepare the remedy, one liter of water is boiled with one piece of bark
about three centimeters long. If, after half a day, the labor pains have not advanced, another glass
is given. If that does not work, change the treatment to another herb called vik tal valaxik.
50
The
patient should not drink cold water or eat cold food.


Lobelia
(Kiche: may; Tzotzil: moy bankilal, known in English as wild tobacco.) Hot.

This plant is used for ritual purposes among the Tzotzil. Mixed with lime, it forms a
compound called pilico. Pilico protects people against envy and bad airs (winds), as well as
serving as a kind of talismanic charm for protection on the road, walking great distances, or
having to roaming around after dark (when the spirits are present). Hence its Tzotzil name, moy

49
These ceremonies are no longer common in the city of Momostenango itself but still take place in the surrounding
villages; they are often held upon the day 8 Qanil.

50
We have not been able to identify this plant. The language is Tzotzil.

64

bankilal, meaning my older brother, has the sense of he who takes care of me, a reference to
its protective qualities.
It is also said to be a palliative for stomach aches and nausea.
Pilico is prepared by pounding and mashing the mixture in a wooden mortar, one handful
of lobelia leaf to a pinch of lime and a bit of garlic. After it is well mashed, the powder is placed
in a small gourd vessel which one carries in a shoulder bag or perhaps in a pouch around the
neck.
One may take a pinch with three fingers and place it between ones cheeks and teeth. It is
passed from one side of the mouth to the other, and eventually swallowed, little by little. It has a
spicy taste.

Marigolds
(Kiche: koxwaj, Tzotzil: potsem nichim) Considered as Hot among the Tzotzil, but
Balanced among the Kiche.

The marigold is a bush that grows up to one and a half meters in height, with leaves
composed of eleven to seventeen leaflets. The flower is in the form of a rose but with a yellowish
orange color; it is extremely fragrant when squeezed or crushed.
51
The marigold has been grown
as an ornamental plant in the Maya country from the time of the grandparents. Use the leaves,
flowers, and stems for healing. Marigolds are often used as a remedy for a cough. Prepare one
handful boiled in one liter of water. Take one glass three times a day for three or more days
depending on the illness. It can be taken more often. The patient should not eat chile or cold
water or cold foods.
Marigolds are also good for treating worms in children but only in a salve; they are not to
be imbibed (the same is true of wormseed for parasites).
52
This salve should be rubbed on the
body from the feet up to the hips rather than directly on the stomach, then on the arms, upon each
finger separately (top to bottom, and the same for the toes), as well as upon the throat.


51
We have crushed our fair share of marigolds during ceremonies for the Day of the Dead, and they are, as our
sources assert, quite fragrant.

52
For the techniques of making salves, see pp. 48-9.
65

Mugwort
(Tzotzil: altamixa vomol, Sp: artemisa) Hot.

Mugwort is a plant that grows up to fifty centimeters in height. The leaves are in the form
of a palm. It grows almost everywhere, but especially at the edge of roads. The stalk and leaves
are used as a remedy for diarrhea. Prepare a handful boiled in one liter of water. Drink one glass
three times a day for two days. If the patient gets better or is healed on the first day, do not
repeat. If the diarrhea is strong, prayer is also commonly used. The patient should not eat cold
foods or drink cold liquids.


Mullein
(Tzotzil: tuxnuk vomol) Hot.

Mullein has a narrow stalk and its color is a dark medium brown. It has many soft little
hairs. The leaves are small, extended or elongated, measuring six centimeters long by one
centimeter wide, green in color, also with soft little hairs. The flower is white and very small and
in the form of a sun, with a consistency somewhat like cotton. It grows in cornfields and in the
surrounding stubble, as well as along the sides of roads. It is the flower which is used as a
remedy, primarily for a cough. To prepare the herb, one boils it in a well covered container of
one liter of water with one handful of flowers. Then one strains it with a clean rag. Take one
glass three times a day for three or four days. The patient should not eat chile or cold foods or
drink cold water or soda. Neither should the patient bathe in cold water.



Myrtle
(Kiche qichob, Tzotzil ajtees) Cold.

This small tree, two to four meters high, has a stem that is medium thick, of a brownish-
green color, and smooth. The leaf is oval shaped, five by three centimeters, smooth and green.
66

The flower is whitish and in the form of clusters. The fruit is pink when unripe; when ripe, it has
a black color and is edible. It grows in mountain groves, at the edge of roads, and in cold areas.
The taste is not bitter. It blooms in March. The stalks, leaves and tender flowers are used for
headache. To prepare, boil two handfuls of the plant in two liters of water for five minutes. Strain
with a clean rag. Take one glass three times a day. The patients head is bathed in whatever is
left of the preparation. One should not eat chile or hot foods or drink soda.



Orange
(Latin: Citrus Limonium, Kiche: alanxx) Balanced.

The entire plant is used.
A tea made of orange tree leaves is used to treat problems with nerves (two leaves per
cup), but Doa Crecencia told us that she likes to chop the leaves up really well and then boil
them to make tea.
The flowers from the orange tree, when in bloom, have a very strong odor, and smell like
nardo (spikenard in English). If someone has problems with nerves, they can smell the orange
tree flower and the smell will help to calm them.
Again on behalf of ones nerves, one can also take a bath in the leaves of the orange tree.
Take a handful of leaves, put it in the bath water, and then bathe in it. For mood swings, one is
given the water or juice of a bitter orange to drink daily for thirteen days in the morning.
You can also make a cream or lotion from orange tree flowers. The cream is very
calming. It is rubbed all over the body. This lotion is also good for the skin. Leaves and flowers
can be inhaled, made into a cream, made into tea, or simply used as orange juice. The peel has
uses the white part which is so commonly thrown away is good for treating gastritis or other
digestive and intestinal problems.
The peel is also useful because you can boil it to make a tea with cinnamon and molasses,
which is then given to patient for coughing. You can also just enjoy it (because it tastes good).


67

Pine
(Kiche: chj) Hot.

Pine needles are used to treat colds and respiratory or bronchial problems, gout,
rheumatism, and infections of the blood. They also stimulate kidney functioning and increase
urinary activity. The pine tree normally comes to a point at the top, and it is the needles from this
point that are most commonly used as an herbal remedy. One should take the pine needles from a
young tree that is not very tall. Use one point to make a tea of pine, or half a point in the case of
larger trees.
For respiratory or bronchial problems, one may either cook the needles that form the
point or make a salve from them (as per pp. 47-9), then place the salve on the throat, chest, and
the back of the shoulders.
For gout, one must drink pine as a tea rather than making a salve, because gout is a
systemic problem that affects the entire body. Drink one glass a day for ten days or, if the patient
is seriously housebound, drink three glasses a day for ten days. Since gout produces sore feet and
swelling, one may also bathe in pine needles, but be sure to use quite a few pine needles in the
bath water. This bath recipe is helpful for rheumatism as well. For blood infections, the tea is
best.
Pine needles are often used for ritual purposes and ceremonial events; the authors have
seen paths of pine needles scattered in front of Momostecan houses during the Day of the Dead;
the ground of the local cemetery was entirely covered in pine needles. It is said that they lift
peoples spirits. When a person is being initiated as a shaman or aj qij and receiving the vara
sagrada or sacred bundle, pine branches are used to decorate the initiates house and altars. Also,
when someone gets a new sink, it is decorated with pine needles because, as Doa Crecencia
puts it, they receive the water with joy. The ocote sticks made from pine wood are also used in
ceremony; once again, the purpose is to lift the spirits and dispense with any negativity. The
ceiba tree, sacred to the ancient Maya as the earthly manifestation of the World Tree, is in the
same family and can be used for many of the same purposes, but only young trees are used.
Of the varieties of pine trees, one is called pino blanco, another is called palo rojo, which
is kak chaj in Kiche. The resin of copal, used so extensively by aj qijab and other spiritual
guides, is extracted by taking a machete and slicing into the tree, but sometimes the pine resin
68

comes out with pieces of bark in it; thus one may sometimes see chips of pine bark in the
ceremonial offering. Sometimes the pom has a lot of pine resin in it and will glow when it is
burned in the ceremonial fire.


Pomche
We have been unable to establish the Latin botanical name of this plant, and it has no
common Spanish name; only the Kiche name was known to any of our sources. Still, it is so
important to Mayan tradition that it needs to be included here.
The pomche (tree of pom) has small fruits in the shape of small balls. It is found at lower
altitudes in the surrounding villages of the Momostenango district. Some grow as large trees and
others as bushes. The dried fruits can be mixed with pom cuilco.
53

Medicinally, the leaves and stalks of this plant are used in bath water for people with
anemia. For a stomach ache or especially for a swollen stomach, as well as when someone has
bodily aches because of the cold, pomche is very helpful. It is used as a remedy for a cough, as
long as the cough is simply light (not heavy or dry). It may also be used as a bath for women
who have just given birth; it warms up the body. One type of the plant is male with small leaves;
the female variety of the tree has wider leaves. A man who has problems with bodily aches
should consume the leaves of the female plant, while women should take the leaves of the male
plant for the illnesses previously mentioned.
Another common ritual use involves the sweat lodge or tuj (see Chapter 6), where the
branches are used for slapping the participants.


Rosemary
(Latin: Rosmarinus Officinalis, Kiche [adapted from Sp.] romer) Hot.

This herb is also very commonly used. It is for the treatment of stomach pain, nerves, and
headaches; it is used as a bath, and is also employed in sacred ceremonies for purposes of

53
This is pom or copal in the form of small, dried black chips.
69

saturacin.
54
Liquid with a rosemary basis may also be blown or sprayed upon a person as part
of the healing ritual during such ceremonies. It is helpful for protection and for the release of
negativity. While rosemary has its purely medical uses (stomach pain, headaches, etc.), its use in
ritual requires that the participant should believe in the power of the ceremony.
Many people bathe in rosemary, which serves as an over-all cleansing for the body. It
balances various physical problems; to bathe in it draws out negativity. It is also good for asthma
and bronchitis, especially asthma. It is good for the type of asthma which is caused by too much
cold in the body (other types of asthma are caused by too much heat).
Rosemary may also serve as a disinfectant. A small bunch of it is good to make a tea.
You can also make a salve from it.


Rue
(Latin: Ruta Chalepensis, Kiche: rora [derived fr. Sp. ruda?], and Tzotzil: lula) Hot.

The bush is approximately one meter high, the stem is medium thin, green, smooth, and
contains knots. It has small elongated leaves one centimeter long, green and smooth on the
edges. Its flower is medium yellow and in the shape of a small star. It is not bitter. It grows in
houses and gardens and blooms in March.
Rue is used for fevers, stomach aches, as an antidote for poison, and also for people with
epilepsy, cramps, and muscle problems. It is sometimes used to remove parasites, and is also
frequently administered by midwives to speed up a birth. The leaves, stems, and flowers are all
used. Add a small bunch of the plant to a cup of water. A Tzotzil method of preparation is to boil
a handful of the plant in one liter of water for five minutes, then strain it through a clean cloth.
The patient is to drink one glass three times a day for three or four days. One should not take
chile, cold foods, alcohol, soda, or cold water.
Rue is used as an offering in ceremonies, like rosemary, but a branch of rue may also be
passed over a person during the ceremony as a cleansing or purification. It is common to perform

54
In this context, the term saturacin (literally saturation in English) refers to a limpia or cleansing; the herb is
passed over the body to remove negative energies.
70

a limpieza or saturacin with branches of rue. (Both of these words refer to a cleansing.) The
branch is either thrown into a river or into the ceremonial fire afterwards.
Because of its efficacy in spiritual illnesses or the removal of negative energy, rue is
also used extensively against mal ojo or the evil eye in children or even adults, since adults
can also be afflicted with mal ojo. Doa Crecencia asserts that when one of her children had a
problem with mal ojo, it was healed with rue. This herb is useful for all nervous conditions, as
well as for people with symptoms of weariness and lethargy. One teaspoon per cup of water is
cut into small pieces; one may use a small handful or bunch if it is not cut up. It should be
boiled for three minutes; the pot must be covered so that the steam from the plant does not
escape.
Rue is also used as part of a remedy for conjunctivitis. In one glass of hot water, soften
the tip of the rue plant. Drink a lukewarm tea made of it. Repeat three times per day before meals
for nine days. At the same time, boil four branches of chamomile. Let them stand to cool down
and then, with a clean rag, clean the infected eye, little by little.


St. Johns Wort
(Kiche: iy, sometimes wiy; Sp: pericn) Balanced.

This is the botanical original of the well-known homeopathic remedy Hypericum
perforatum, a plant which, like rue, is sometimes used as a ceremonial offering. As a medicinal
herb, only the lower part of the plant is used, primarily against fever and stomach ache. It can be
made into a tea by using one teaspoon per cup of water or putting a handful into a liter of water.
It is also said to be effective against gout and arthritis, and can help to remove parasites. It is
equally efficacious whether fresh or dried.


Salvia
(Kiche: etamanel [used for all types of sage], Tzotzil: yaxal nich vomol) Hot.

71

The Spanish word salvia refers to all types of sage, and there are numerous varieties
throughout the Maya country. There is a particular type of sage which is a bush one and a half
meters tall with a thin green stem that has small hairs. The leaf is oval shaped, green, and
approximately two centimeters long. The flower is purple. It has a bitter taste. It grows in
mountain groves and in gardens, and blooms in August. The leaf, stem and flower are used for
rheumatism. Prepare the remedy by boiling one handful in one liter of water for six minutes. The
patient is to drink one glass three times a day for three days. One should not eat chile or cold
foods, nor drink cold water or soda. One should not bathe in cold water.

Salvia Cultivada (Cultivated Sage)
(Tzotzil: tsunbolal bakalnich vomol) Hot.

This plant measures up to eighty centimeters in height, with a narrow stem characterized
by little hairs; the leaves are extended and green, elongated, also with little hairs. The flowers are
in the form of purple clusters. It grows in gardens and is often cultivated near houses. Use the
leaves, flowers and stems as a remedy for a cough. Boil one handful in one liter of water. Drink
one glass three times a day for three days depending on the severity of the illness. One can drink
it for an additional length of time if necessary. The patient should not eat chile, drink soda or
cold water, or eat sweets.


Salvia Mazorquita
(Tzotzil: bakal nich) Cold.

This herb is sixty centimeters tall. The stalk is thin, green, hairy, and has knots. The
leaves are thin and measure four centimeters long by one centimeter wide. It has the form of a
spear. The flower is purple in the form of an ear of corn eight centimeters long. This variety of
sage grows at the edge of highways, roads, and in the forests or in mountain groves. The stem,
leaves and flowers are used for what traditional healers describe as a hot cough. Prepare it by
boiling one handful in one liter of water for six minutes. The patient is to drink one glass three
times a day until the cough goes away, and should not eat chile or hot foods or drink soda or
alcohol. It is also said that the patient should not smoke.
72



Salvia Santa (Red Sage)
(Kiche: etamanel [all types of sage]) Hot.

This variety of sage is a tree. In Momostenango the leaves are made into a tea which is
used for stomach ache and also rather extensively for women who have just given birth; they
bathe in the leaves. It may be used to stimulate appetite among those who do not like to eat. It is
also used to prevent diarrhea.
Red sage is a remedy against diabetes as it helps to control blood sugar. If someone eats
food that disagrees with them and causes a swelling in the stomach (Sp: repite la comida = acid
reflux), the tea of red sage is used. It both prevents and heals this problem.

Shepherds Purse
(Latin: Capsella bursa-pastoris, Sp: bolsa de pastor): Hot.

This herb is used primarily by women for infections. It can be employed in a variety of
ways. One can make a solution (a wash or lavado) for bathing the genitals of women; it is also
used as tea. It can be steamed in which case the female patient squats over a steaming pot of it
or bathes in it; it can also be made into a douche. It can help to prevent vomiting by taking one
teaspoon per cup of tea. The tea is also good for stomach ulcers. It often grows wild in cornfields
(milpas).

Tickleberry

(Tzotzil: chilibet vomol, Kiche: wukub ek; Spanish: lantana or cinco negrito) Hot.

This bush grows up to one and a half meters high, with leaves that are smooth and
fragrant. The stems are rectangular and not very thick. The flowers have the shape of a small bell
and are red with a yellow center. The fruits are rounded; they grow in tight groups and are black
when mature. This plant grows between trees and at the edges of highways and in the jungles.
The leaves, flowers and tender stems are all used for kidney illnesses. One handful of the plant is
73

to be boiled in one liter of water. Drink one glass three times a day for ten days. One should not
eat chile or cold foods.

An Experience with Doa Victoria Qiej
For several years, a gynecological problem had left me with constant pressure in the
lower abdomen. This, in turn, led to other issues such as pressure against certain organs and
recurring infections. In the spring of 2008, I decided to seek medical services from an outpatient
GYN clinic at a local hospital after an acquaintance expressed concern that the pressure could
be a symptom of ovarian cancer. I had no medical insurance whatsoever, but my income was
low enough to qualify for low cost services at this clinic. I was examined by a young Pakistani
doctor who was completing his residency in OB/GYN. He was polite, respectful, professional
and thorough. After the exam, he scheduled $2,000 worth of lab tests outside the clinic which
would have been out-of-pocket expenses for me had I not found out in time to cancel most of
them. Unfortunately, I didnt find out soon enough that any tests or procedures outside of the
clinic were not covered under my hospital program and I was unable to avoid a $500 bill for a
pap smear and several other unnecessary tests that had already been undertaken. The hospital
finance office allowed me to pay half that amount and later informed me that I couldnt qualify
for charity care; my income was low enough, but my bank account balances were above their
strict limits. So I decided to shop around for less expensive lab tests and ultrasound scans. I
returned to the clinic doctor with my ultrasound images and test results. He looked the data over
carefully and then told me that he couldnt find anything wrong with me. Although my doctor
had ordered an ultrasound scan of my stomach and intestines, when presented with the image, he
replied that he couldnt possibly read and interpret it as his specialty was OB/GYN and only a
gastro-intestinal expert could do that. I thanked him and left the exam room feeling that I had
just spent $550 in vain, completely in vain.
A year later, in Guatemala, I decided to approach Doa Victoria. The Kiche Maya
women of Momostenango have preserved ancient systems of massage, hydrotherapy,
gynecology, obstetrics and pediatrics. They have shared this knowledge with me in bits and
pieces over the years. Doa Victoria examined me and was able to pinpoint the problem
immediately. She was able to feel the organs in my lower abdomen and determine exactly what
condition they were in. She told me that my uterus was positioned too low and also filled with
74

air, two problems that were very easy to remedy. The first problem she solved with a deep tissue
abdominal massage that also involved lifting the uterus and repositioning it. The second
problem was resolved with an herbal wash. She boiled water with a variety of medicinal herbs
and then created a warm herbal douche that was very effective in releasing trapped air and
relieving the pressure in the lower abdomen. My abdominal muscles were softer and felt totally
different. She ended with a warm herbal intestinal wash, a type of herbal enema. I felt very
alive and energized after the treatment. It felt as if Id received a thorough cleansing and
detoxification. Doa Victoria charged me a total of $2.00 for all the treatments Id received.
Anita Garr
Momostenango
May 23, 2013





75


5. HEALING WITH TOUCH


If herblore represents the first line of defense in Mayan healing, massage is not far
behind.
There are certain elements of massage especially the techniques used by hueseros or
bone setters which focus on the healing of physical illness, though massage is perhaps most
important in relieving stress and bad nerves.

Mentality is a big part of health; many people, even in our traditional society, have
problems with their nerves. If you spend a lot of time writing or thinking, or on the computer,
you may sometimes have a backache or headache, or soreness in the head or arms. It is a
different kind of stress than farm work or other hard labor; mental stress makes it difficult to
sleep.
Massage returns the body to a normal condition. And while it is helpful for people who
have pain as a result of accidents, blows, or labor, it also helps people whose nerves are so
ragged that they dont even feel like getting out of bed. Massage returns their energy and relaxes
them at the same time, thus helping them to sleep better as well as endowing them with more
energy so that they want to do things.

Crecencia Pu
Momostenango
January 2013

Abdominal Massage
There are two principal styles of massage practiced among the Maya. In Momostenango,
the abdominal massage style popularized in the United States by Rosita Arvigo is regarded as
a specialty of midwives. Ms. Arvigo learned her techniques from a male healer in Belize, Eligio
Panti.
55
Don Eligio worked in the Yucatec tradition; in this region, the boundaries between

55
Arvigo, Rosita, with Nadine Epstein and Marilyn Yaquinto. Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer. (San
Francisco: Harper and Row, 1994)


76

mens arts and womens arts may be different from what we observed in the highlands,
where this technique would not normally be taught to men. Ms. Arvigo has been instrumental in
adapting this style of massage to both women and men as a factor in general health.
Among midwife healers, it is important to massage the abdomen of a pregnant woman.
This helps to keep the baby in its proper position inside the mother. The skilled therapist can feel
the position of the baby and understands whether or not it is in the right place; if it is out of
alignment, abdominal massage will bring it back to its proper position. This is done as a
preventive measure which helps to avoid problems during pregnancy. The therapist feels the
uterus by poking around with the fingertips until she locates the position of the uterus in the
womans abdomen. If it is out of alignment, she massages the abdomen to re-position it. This
sometimes requires rather hard pushing and an aggressive approach, but it is very helpful and
healing to experience the re-alignment. The technique given here was taught to us by Victoria
Qiej.
The first step is to locate the lower boundary of the uterus. Press the fingers in
deeply, using a fair amount of strength, and move the hands upwards over the
abdominal area.
In the case of pregnant women, it is the sides of the uterine area which should be
massaged, though this technique is applied more gently than the previous method.
The buttocks are pushed upon with gentle pressure and the therapists hands move
upward to rub the back.
The legs are massaged to relieve the stress of the extra weight placed upon them
during pregnancy.
There is another technique used for pregnant women, as the weight of the
pregnancy puts pressure on the legs and causes pain in the calves. One may
massage the calves if they feel hard to the touch. Grab the calf and massage it;
although some of the techniques we shall describe involve slapping the body
gently but firmly, in this case one kneads the muscle rather than slaps it.
The same routine is to be performed after the birth takes place, but with more
emphasis on lifting up the uterus. Sometimes a sash is bound around the abdomen
to assist the process. This technique (including the sash) is applicable not just to
77

pregnant women but to any woman with a lowered or displaced (i.e. prolapsed)
uterus.
Herbal salves are commonly used in massage. In this case, the eucalyptus salve
detailed in the previous chapter is perhaps the most common, as it is regarded as
being especially helpful for uterine problems. The emoliente salve, also described
in the previous chapter, is likewise very common.
Being able to feel the internal organs accurately is difficult to teach from a
technical point of view and the ability to do it is considered to be a gift from the
Supreme Being, El Ajaw.

Huesero Massage
The other style of massage is associated with the art of the huesero or bone setter.
While this healing specialty is more often than not identified with male healers, and while most
practitioners are men, the gender identification is by no means hard and fast; Doa Victoria was
a bone setter. This style of massage is applicable to everyone.
In the last chapter, we noted the versatility of Maya healers. An herb or healing plant
need not be indigenous or sanctified by the power of ancient tradition in order to be of practical
value. Many of the most common herbs used for healing in the Guatemalan highlands have their
origins in different parts of the world; the Maya are concerned only with what is effective.
Similarly, a fair number of Mayan healers have found the Western practice of foot
reflexology to meld quite nicely with their own, more traditional techniques. What follows came
to us from Crecencia Pu:
It is traditional for the massage therapist to begin by rubbing her or his hands
together vigorously up and down or sideways then shaking out the hands to
remove negative energy. This has the effect of warming up the therapists hands,
the better to treat cold conditions in the body. As we have noted, most illnesses
(with the exception of fevers, inflammations, and so on) are regarded as cold
rather than hot.
Though most huesero massage begins with the head and moves down the body,
the feet are sometimes examined first. This is because many Mayan massage
therapists regard reflexology as an important diagnostic tool. If a particularly sore
78

or sensitive spot on the foot is located, the massage therapist assumes that
something is amiss within the bodily organ that corresponds to that part of the
foot and will give that area more attention, massaging it to work through the pain.
Work in a circular fashion until release.
The initial foot massage serves more than a merely diagnostic purpose, for it is
said that sometimes you can heal an imbalance or condition only by massaging
the soles of the feet. Working on the feet is very effective for nervous problems.
If a person has a headache, work on the part of the foot that corresponds to the
headache (underneath the big toe on the sole of the foot), then massage the
temples, moving the fingertips in circles in one direction, then reversing the
direction of the circles. Sometimes a headache is the result of a problem in the
stomach, as for example if someone has not eaten for a while and gets a headache
nevertheless the problem has its origin in the stomach.
Stroke the back of the patients hand while the hand of the patient and healer are
held flat, both palms and the back of the hands. Use the same technique for the
feet. The healer should pull on all the fingers and toes of the patient. This removes
knots in the tendons and normalizes the connective tissue. The hands and feet are
considered especially important to massage in general.
Once the feet have been examined and potential problem areas located, the
massage proper may begin. Ordinarily, the patient lies on her or his stomach, face
down. Sometimes oils or salves are used and sometimes not. Good salves for
massage are marigold (scars and varicose veins) and eucalyptus (to warm up the
bones and tendons). With simple fractures, one can heal them by massaging a
salve containing tobacco and another comprised of eucalyptus gently over the
area of the fracture.
Then the therapist begins to work the entire body, from head to foot. When you
find a sore spot, work on that area with massage and focus on it for a while to
remove the pain and soreness, releasing the persons problems. Keep asking the
patient for feedback. Apply pressure to work through soreness and release it.
Massage the back of the neck and the amygdala, then the throat and face, using
the fingertips to press in, accentuating the temples, sinuses, cheekbones and chin.
79

The back of the neck and base of the head (amygdala) are especially important. If
you can hear the crackling of bones, it means that they are returning to their
proper place in alignment, having formerly been out of balance.
As we have already noted, massage is used to heal problems with the nerves.
Sometimes a persons nerves are out of control. They worry too much. Relaxation
massage puts the nerves back under control. It relaxes both body and mind, i.e.
psychosomatic issues, especially when working with the back of the neck and the
amygdala. Poke into the amygdala region using the tips of the fingers. This serves
to relax the mind so that the person lets go of worry and preoccupation. Such a
massage is helpful and effective when uncontrolled nervousness is present; it acts
on the mental and emotional level as well as the physical.
A massage therapist will use the palm of the hand to gently slap or strike the
patients arm up and down from shoulder to hand and from the top of the leg to
the feet, using a certain amount of pressure to press down with the palm. The
same technique is used for the shoulders and back, all the way down to the small
of the back.
If one has a fracture or other soreness involving the bones or tendons in the arm
and/or hand, the massage therapist seeks for the sore spots, massaging up and
down the arm with a fair amount of pressure. When sore spots are found, they are
worked with the fingers until pain is alleviated or released. In the case of
disconnection, an ace bandage may be wound around the arm or hand to keep
the adjustment in place. A massage therapist who is also a huesero or huesera will
probably tug on the hand and on each finger to adjust them.
The technique for working with fractures, sprains, etc. in the legs is almost the
same. The motion of the hands goes sideways, with the thumb and forefinger
around the leg bone, then one makes sweeping motions of the hand down each
side of the leg. As before, the sore spot is worked until alleviated. Also as before,
the therapist tugs on the heel as well as upon each toe. An ace bandage is
sometimes wrapped, starting at the foot and winding upward to hold the
adjustment in place.
80

When it comes to the abdominal area, the technique is slightly different than with
the style of abdominal massage practiced by midwives. The therapist gently feels
what is in there; this is not the stroking of the hands or the slapping but a more
gentle touching of the abdomen.
This type of massage is repeated as a treatment every other day until
improvement.

Mayan Acupressure
Surprising though it may seem, the Maya have their own form of acupuncture. Known
in the Yucatn as jup, this form of piercing the body is accomplished with a kit made up of
various tools thorns, stingray spines, porcupine quills, or even the fang of a rattlesnake. These
piercings are reminiscent some of the activities shown on sculptured murals from the Classic
Period (200 800 CE) which depict noble lords and ladies piercing themselves ritually, often
with stingray spines. Doa Crecencia had called our attention to a time, long ago in the past,
when the people used maguey spines to pierce and then remove blood, seeing the consistency of
the blood....
56
In a Yucatec collection of medical charms and incantations from the Colonial
period, the needle which bleeds and the needle which frees the blood are both mentioned.
57

While jup itself has a broad range of treatment methods, there is a style of jup known as tok
which is somewhat more aggressive and which consists primarily of bleeding and cupping.
This indigenous form of acupuncture makes use of certain points on the human body
some are identical to those employed in the Chinese system, though their interpretation may be
different.
58
One may use these points during massage in precisely the same way that one uses
acupressure points under the same circumstances. In fact, this acupressure is frequently
performed as an art of its own. Of the many different points, a few of the more important are
listed here. As well as being useful in massage, these points can also be accessed for healings
which involve herbal salves or poultices.

56
See p. 43 above.

57
Garcia et. al., Wind in the Blood, p. 109.

58
For a complete treatment of this fascinating subject which includes many other points and a detailed comparison
with the Chinese system, see Garcia et. al., ibid. pp. 111-25.
81

Between the Eyebrows: This is a point where, according to Mayan thinking, energy is
likely to collect, get stuck, and stagnate. This point is often pierced to release the flow
of energy, especially in children (in which case the procedure is usually performed only
once). It can also be used in a general way as an acupressure point.
The Sternum: This point is more specifically at the top of the sternum, in the depression
where the clavicles and the breast bone come together. It is used largely to relieve cases
of asthma, and sometimes pressure or piercing is applied to this area in the form of a
cross. The temples and the center of the forehead are frequently treated as well during the
same procedure for asthma. Poultices and salves made of various herbs that are effective
in the treatment of asthma and other respiratory conditions are often applied at the same
time.
Behind the Ears: Used for all problems related to the ears.
Between the Upper Lip and the Nose: This point is given pressure to relieve coughs
and headaches. This point too may be used in conjunction with herbs that treat the same
conditions.
The Middle of the Forehead and the Temples: As in common acupressure based upon
the Chinese system, these points are pressed to relieve headaches.
Between the Ring Finger and Little Finger: This area is said to be a repository for
winds in the body (see pp. 24-5) and is therefore a useful point to press on for general
relief and can be accessed frequently. It has a salubrious effect on the hands in general,
especially muscular soreness, and it also has a positive effect on the elbow.
Between the Second and Third Toes: This area has an effect upon the feet and legs
similar to that which is operative for hands and elbows with the point mentioned above.

Childrens Massage
For children, the technique is somewhat different. Massage is used on children when
there are parasites. In Momostenango, amoebas and parasites are common problems. A marigold
salve is used for amoebas, and wormseed for parasites.
One remedy is to take a salve made of epasote or wormseed and rub it on the neck, or
sometimes just below the neck, also just below the nose, on the forehead, the armpits, the soles
of the feet, and into the palms of the hands as well. Never put the salve on the abdomen or
82

stomach area of the child. You can put it on the leg, moving upward from the feet. This applies
to the shoulders and armpits as well, moving upward from the hands. The idea is to concentrate
the parasites into one place (the abdomen); the patient then drinks a liquid medicine to expel the
parasites.
The feet are stroked and the therapist works all the way up the legs, occasionally
punching at the soles of the feet.
One circles around the abdominal area with gentle massage motions, and works under the
armpits as well. Other areas on the childs body which are massaged are the neck and throat, as
well as the cheeks and temples. The nose is sometimes gently pulled upon, and the salve applied
just underneath the nose. The chin and cheeks are massaged with soft strokes, as is the area
behind the ears and around the ear openings. The hands and arms are massaged as well. The
entire back and the shoulders are treated with a combination of massage and gentle slapping up
and down the back. With children (but never with adults), even the anus is massaged.

Doa Marias Magic Touch and Cures
One morning last February, I woke up unable to move my left arm more than a few
inches. One or more major muscles had tightened and contracted during my sleep. Getting
dressed was almost impossible. When I described my condition to my friend Doa Maria
Hernandez Ajanel de Itzep, she had the perfect solution. The first night she massaged my left
arm with a salve she had made from the leaves of the alder tree. She told me that parts of my
arm were very cold to the touch. With open hands and pressing in lightly with her fingertips, she
made repeated passes down my arm from shoulder to wrist. She then massaged my left hand
thoroughly, taking care to loosen and stretch each finger by gently pulling on it. She repeated
the same massage strokes and techniques the following evening, using anisette liqueur instead of
the alder leaf salve. My range of motion improved dramatically after the first massage, and after
the second evening I was able to raise my left arm straight up in the air and point it toward the
ceiling. Almost all of the soreness was gone by then. Whatever massage techniques Maria used,
her magic touch enabled the contracted muscles in my left arm to release and relax immediately.
I was recently ill with nausea and frequent diarrhea for a few days, possibly the result of
eating outdated or tainted food. The diarrhea made it impossible to sleep and the nausea left me
with little desire to eat. After two days of this, I began to feel weak. When I shared my symptoms
83

with Maria, she prepared a special tea for me by adding wormwood, basil, mint, chamomile, St.
Johns Wort and cinnamon to boiling water; she allowed the herbs to cook for ten minutes, then
steep for awhile. She had me drink one cup of this medicinal tea before lunch and dinner and
then again afterwards. This process was repeated for three days with me drinking four cups of
the tea each day. After I drank the first cup of tea, my nausea subsided and my stomach relaxed,
releasing much tension. I was able to eat a little bit of lunch. That night I was able to sleep for
four hours. The following day I looked and felt much better. I had more energy and vitality, my
facial color returned and I no longer felt headachy. The diarrhea calmed down considerably
and I could go four hours without needing a bathroom. I was able to attend a sacred fire
ceremony in honor of the Mayan calendar holiday Wajshakib Kej (Eight Deer) and pray for my
healing/recovery. I slept well that night and the third day my appetite and normal energy level
returned. I felt renewed and refreshed, very alive and energized. As with the healing from Doa
Victoria Qiej, I also felt as if I had just undergone some type of cleansing and detoxification. I
was breathing more deeply and fully, feeling more connected to the elements.
Anita Garr
Momostenango
May 23, 2013



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6. THE SWEAT LODGE

Like other indigenous peoples, the Maya have a sweat lodge tradition. But in many ways
Mayan custom differs from some of the practices that may be familiar to readers from North
American sweat lodge traditions.
In the Kiche language, the sweat lodge is called a tuj, or, if speaking Spanish, a
temescal. The tuj is said to be a purifying spirit. It has a healing or therapeutic effect on
people, and Don Rigoberto teaches that it concentrates the energies of regeneration. He also
remarks that time spent in the tuj is like time spent in meditation. It helps to liberate one from
ones problems. It removes us from our worries and concerns. Don Rigoberto calls it a bath of
privilege.
The tuj is the setting for an entire set of cleansings physical, mental, and spiritual. Don
Rigoberto believes that the ancestors created the tuj to purify the body as well as simply to
remove weariness and promote physical recovery. He says: The tuj gives life to a house. It is
the heart and the center of the house.
Therefore the temescal is a resource and at the same time a procedure, a method or
technique often utilized, even since ancient times,
59
in order to cure various illnesses, most of
which are characterized by the presence of cold energy in the human body. The tuj symbolizes
the body of a woman, the womb of the mother. In it, rituals are conducted following the birth of
a baby and including the purification of the new mother; the tuj also serves as a family bath that
cleanses both body and soul at the same time, and purifies and revitalizes the breath or the air.
The temescal is a representation of the world or the earth and of course the human soul as well,
for the microcosm and the macrocosm are one. Upon entering the tuj, one penetrates into the
bosom of Mother Earth, and from there one leaves healthy, purified, and newly born through the
combination of fire and water, because the purifying steam is obtained through the union of those
two elements.

59
It is known, for example, that many temples, especially in Palenque and its immediate vicinity, contained special
chambers that were used for sweat lodge ceremonies. The sweat lodge was called a pibil in the ancient language.
Kings took part in sweat lodge ceremonies during important calendrical periods as part of rituals of world renewal
and rebirth. The famous December 21, 2012 inscription on Tortuguero Monument 6 in part commemorates a sweat
lodge rite of renewal undertaken by a Mayan monarch.
85

As a former carpenter and mason, Don Rigoberto has built any number of temescals. He
says: They used to make them from stone in the old days. After that they made them from
adobe. Now they often use concrete, but it is not the same and does not heat up in the same
way. Don Rigoberto himself prefers a tuj made of adobe.
The tuj is a closed structure, oval shaped, in which porous or volcanic stones have been
placed. The ones that we have seen were built in a domed or beehive shape and were somewhere
close to eight or ten feet tall. According to Don Rigoberto, the tuj should be built on a Kej day,
and the person who is building it should abstain from sex for one week.
Depending on the purpose for which it is used, the tuj is visited at different times of the
day. In general, a ceremonial tuj bath is done in the afternoon before dinner, but if you give a tuj
treatment to a woman who has just given birth, it should be done in the morning.
Inside the tuj, near the entrance, a fire is built. The tuj is constructed with a built in
fireplace that is open on both sides. One places logs and kindling in the fireplace, which looks
like a small oven. When the logs burn down to red hot embers, the tuj begins. Steam is created
by sprinkling hot medicine water on red hot embers.
In the tuj, one must enter backwards, kneeling and squatting down. Then the structure is
closed off from any air current at the entrance. Throughout the treatment, someone splashes hot
medicine water on the red hot embers to create steam every so often. People also place
eucalyptus leaves or rosemary on the hot embers to create steam.
One leaves the tuj moving forwards.
A prayer is recited before entering the tuj: Sa cha mak tat, sa cha mak nan. Don Jos
Sanic Chanchavac,
60
a professor of Mayan languages, notes that the phrasing is somewhat
dialectical, but in the singular form, Sa cha la nu mak tat, etc., means Forgive me, grandfather,
etc. Basically, the prayer asks for forgiveness from both the grandfathers (tat) and the
grandmothers (nan). Don Jos describes this as an expression of the principle of respect. One
must always maintain respect before the grandfathers and the grandmothers. The same
expression is also used in healings and sacred ceremonies.
Don Rigoberto adds that it is important to close the tuj and keep it covered up when not
in use.

60
Personal conversation with the authors (date).

86

Don Rigobertos wife, Doa Maria Hernandez Ajanel de Itzep, is a healer who is deeply
experienced in the sweat lodge tradition, and the details of the process as written here came from
her. She spoke in Kiche and her words were translated to us by her oldest son, Gregorio
Kukulcan
61
.
The tuj plays many roles in the context of Mayan society. It not only cures illnesses, it
also provides a relaxing environment. It is also customary to put a newborn baby in the tuj for
bathing; the child receives the energies of nature.
A bath in the tuj is also a symbol of good friendship. When a person offers a tuj bath to
someone, it is symbolic of an exemplary friendship.
The tuj plays a very important role in the ritual lives of women as well. They used to
bathe the woman in labor in the tuj with medicinal plants. In the tuj, the uterus of the pregnant
woman expands, making the birth process easier.
The first bath for a woman after giving birth is in the tuj. When a woman gives birth, her
uterus is swollen; therefore one must wait six hours before putting her in the tuj. It must be warm
rather than hot, so the midwife goes in first and throws water on the embers to create steam. She
brings in the woman who has just given birth and then blows air into the womans vagina. The
woman in the tuj is on her knees with her rear end up, so that the midwife can blow into her from
behind. The purpose of this procedure is to dry out the uterus and restore it to its normal size.
There are three procedures. The blowing of the air is the first one. The midwife repeats
this procedure twice. The second procedure is to massage the uterus (see Ch. 5, pp. 75-7). The
midwife then blows air into the uterus for a third time and gives the new mother a complete
massage, but focuses on the feet, pounding the bottom of the foot with her fist and al so pounding
on the bottom of the lower back. The woman is washed with a black soap made from beef tallow.
Soot and ashes are also used in the making of this medicinal soap. A red sash is sometimes
placed around the mothers waist so as to help the uterus remain in its proper place. Some people
bury the placenta behind the tuj because the tuj is a place of ritual.
There is a plant called pomche (see Ch. 4, pp. 67-8); basil is also used. The midwife
boils the plants in water, then rinses the woman off after having bathed her in the medicinal soap.
Then she slaps the woman with a branch of the lemob(alder tree) or abedul. The branch is called
wa li bal, which means a therapeutic soplador or reed fan that one would use to blow air into a

61
Personal conversations with the authors, January 2013.
87

fire. At this point the alder branch is dipped into the hot herbal water, then used to slap the
woman gently all over. This method applies to treatments involving hot water with pomche and
basil as well as the tuj steam.
The final procedure, a steam bath of hot water with medicine herbs combined with the
slapping of the body, is useful for everybody, regardless of gender.
The new mother is taken into the tuj by the midwife four days in a row for treatments.
Depending on the womans ability to tolerate the heat or steam, it may be done as many as eight
times or even twelve if the midwife feels she needs that much treatment.
Bone problems are treated in the tuj as follows. There is a Kiche expression, nimak
kaqiq, which means large winds that beat against the bones, referring to a person who feels
very strong pain in her or his bones. The healers make a medicinal hot water of eucalyptus,
rosemary, rue, basil and roses. The patient tells the healer where it hurts; inside the tuj the healer
takes an alder branch and dips it into the medicinal water and gently slaps the painful area
repeatedly. The healer also pours the hot medicine water on the afflicted area of the persons
body and massages it and also blows on it. He or she also rubs the black soap on it.
The patient is sweating profusely due to the heat of the tuj. Thus the sweating and the
treatment remove the large wind from the persons bones.
If a person has a swollen stomach it is said that there is much air in the stomach, and
the same remedies are used for treatment. For men, the stomach would be massaged along with
application of the hot medicine water; with a woman the healer would add the procedure of
blowing into the vagina.
For children with measles, the temperature in the tuj must remain moderate, lower than
for adults. The illness leaves the body through the steam of the tuj, which draws it out. The
healers also use the alder branch, but they do not slap the child; they shake it over the body to
make the steam enter the body. In the case of the child, when he/she emerges from the tuj, he/she
needs to be well smudged with frankincense. This treatment has a long history.
We were told that in older days, merchants who traveled a lot and went to the capital on
business used to return very tired. Their family would prepare a tuj for their arrival. When they
returned to Momostenango they were given a tuj treatment to relax them and help them recover
from traveling. The family made the medicine water out of relaxing herbs: roses, lemons and rue.
They would employ the same basic procedures of slapping the body with alder branches, pouring
88

medicine water over the body, etc. In this particular variety of the tuj treatment, the weary
merchant would drink a tea made up of the medicine water both before and after the tuj bath. (In
fact, the person always has to drink a cup of the medicine solution before and after the session in
almost any type of tuj treatment.)
These days, it is said that business travelers seldom access the tuj but simply go to the
local hot springs, of which there are several here in Momos.
A fractured bone can be healed in the tuj as well. The huesero takes the patient into the
lodge, washes the fracture with black soap, then moves the bones into the right place. The black
soap softens the nerves, tissues, and bones. This makes it easier for the huesero to move
everything into the right place. (Arnica is the plant used for healing fractures, but it is difficult to
find. In Kiche it is called uxikin ipoy.)
When someone has a cough or respiratory problem, the medicine water is made of pine,
eucalyptus, cypress, and bougainvillea as well as guava. Cinnamon is added too. The process is
the same massage, black soap, slapping with aliso, etc. As usual, the recipient of the tuj
treatment drinks a cup of the medicinal mixture both before and after the session. Other medicine
plants are used in this type of treatment as well: especially lemon, garlic, and anise. Some cumin
seeds are added and so is verbena. Tamarind is also a component, as are peach tree leaves. A
very small branch of ocote is sometimes added to the brew, along with rosemary. The basic
procedure is the same, but the pounding and/or massage focuses on the upper back and the
shoulders and chest. This is said to warm up the lungs.
The tuj treatment is also excellent for people suffering from arthritis. The tuj helps to
reduce the inflammation in the joints, warms up the old bones and assists arthritis sufferers by
reducing their pain and discomfort. Steam and hot medicine water infused with healing herbs is
poured over people who are then massaged, and it goes a long way to quickly warm up cold
bones and joints that are stiff and painful.

Jos Sanic Chanchavac cites some of the medical benefits of the tuj:
62

The tuj acts to purify the respiratory passages, the digestive apparatus, and to tone the
nervous system. In addition to being an important aid with problems involving the bones, joints,
and muscles, it assists in obstetrical and postpartum recovery.

62
Sanic Chanchavac, Medicina Maya, pp. 45-6.
89

Its primary effect on the skin is to act as a regulatory mechanism for the internal
temperature of the organism. Accumulated toxins can be eliminated through the skin. People that
live in contaminated environments often have relatively closed or clogged pores, and the tuj
opens and activates them. It stimulates renewal of the skin.
Its effect on the respiratory apparatus is equally salubrious. Steam baths are used in
many rural Mesoamerican communities for problems like colds, bronchitis, asthma, and sinusitis,
especially among children and the elderly. The combination of steam with the aroma of
medicinal plants opens the respiratory pathways. There is an increase of blood flow. The lungs
and the bronchial tubes expand, expelling accumulated toxins.
The tuj bath produces an increase of blood circulation, reaching to the depths of the
human organism. The blood vessels dilate in a wonderful manner, facilitating the expulsion of
toxins from the body as well as the elimination of uric acid and cholesterol. This process serves
as a treatment for illnesses related to circulatory deficiencies.
During the bath, a relaxing and stimulating effect is produced on the nervous system,
which aids the treatment of problems of stress, insomnia, tension, and bad nerves. Moreover, the
tuj acts on the psychological level, allowing one to release ones personal problems and
emotions.
In the digestive apparatus, the tuj acts by improving intestinal activity, and in the
muscular system it aids in problems with sprains, blows, dislocations, inflammations etc.
Through the elimination of liquids and fats, the tuj helps people to slim down or get thinner.






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7. HEALING WITH STONES


The healing power of gems, minerals, and other magical stones is a core belief in many
indigenous societies around the world. From the gemstones prescribed as planetary remedies
in Hindu astrology, to the jade masks of the Chinese emperors, to medieval amulets, to an
ancient shamans medicine bag filled with quartz crystals and now on display at the Mesa Verde
museum, the healing properties associated with minerals and stones are universally
acknowledged in traditional medical systems, and the Maya are no different.

The Medicinal Minerals
Stones and minerals are widely used for healing purposes among the Tzotzil and Tzeltal
peoples of Chiapas. Whether for the prevention or the cure of specific illnesses, stones are
commonly used as amulets designed to strengthen or protect the person who wears them.
Some of the minerals used therapeutically in Chiapas are: sulphur to cure scabies; ashes
to cure stomach pain; soot from hearth fires to speed up a birth or labor; clay against intestinal
inflammation; crude oil or kerosene to cure wounds, ringworm and rheumatism; water for
hydrotherapy, used mainly in the temescal; bloodstone for nasal hemorrhaging; and obsidian to
cure asthma.
Two of the most protective stones of all are amber and jade. Amber is used in Chiapas in
a rather unique way: people buy it in the form of dust and use it in an incense burner to smudge
others and to relieve them of illness. If one mixes the dust with egg white and scallions, it can be
used as a poultice for bone pains and rheumatism.

Quartz Crystals
Don Rigoberto studied deeply with the late Gabriel Xiloj, generally believed to have been
the most gifted Momostecan quartz crystal healer and diviner of modern times. Don Rigoberto
says:
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Quartz is a medium that reflects the interior of the human body; therefore it may reflect
an illness inside the body as well. In that way, quartz crystals are a system of divination. It is

63
Personal conversation with the authors, January 19, 2013, Momostenango.
91

important for people to know the power and the sacred value of such stones. Quartz comes from
the Earth Mother. It reflects the power of nature. In that way it is like a camera. The day sign of
midwives is Kawoq (Cauac). Look at the hieroglyph which represents Kawoq. Can you see that
it looks like a human embryo in the process of growing? In ancient times the midwives could
gaze through a quartz crystal into the body of a pregnant woman, and they could see the embryo
within her womb. That was a way of monitoring pregnancy.
So the quartz crystal can be a means of diagnosis, for it can reveal what medicine to use
for an illness; the medicine is reflected in the quartz. But not all people have the power to read
the crystals. Gabriel Xiloj could look through the quartz and see the illness within a persons
body, and know the remedy. But he was the last who kept that ancient tradition. These days there
are many people who can see visions in the crystal and divine the future,
64
but no one in
Momostenango today can truly diagnose illnesses through the power of the quartz. The quartz
calls to the person and the ability to divine with it is a power that some people have. It cannot be
taught.
Quartz plays a very important role in life. It can predict natural phenomena such as
earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other disasters. It is like an observatory and it has an
important role for individual and collective life, for past, present and future. If a person can read
the crystal, it is a great gift and a great marvel to read and interpret the messages in the crystal.
It is like a book. You are reading the events that will occur as if you were reading the pages in a
book. It is an aid to the life of humans. It is an advisor that one may consult.
Quartz has both feminine and masculine types. When there is one slant or facet it is
feminine, but if you have several, it is masculine; if the top ends in a double facet, it is
masculine.
The crystal is passed over the entire body to remove chronic illness by drawing it out.
This is the best discovery that the ancestors made. The masculine quartz is what cures women
and the feminine type cures men; we pass a male quartz over the body of a woman and a female
quartz over the body of a man. The quartz is part of our Mayan ceremonies, because you can ask
for a blessing on the quartz so that it will heal an illness. It is used for saturacin,
65
for the

64
Don Rigobertos wife, Maria Hernandez Ajanel de Itzep, is one of them.

65
A saturacin (literally the English word saturation) refers in this context to a cleansing or limpia in which the
patients body is saturated with healing energies.
92

crystal is passed all over the body. If it is not such a serious illness, the patient may be clothed. If
the illness is chronic, one must perform this cleansing while the patient is unclothed; like an egg,
it draws out negative energy.


Male Quartz Crystal Female Quartz Crystal

Gold and silver are said to have healing powers as well. Obsidian is a healer too. It
sends bad spirits far away. Obsidian symbolizes the bones or the skeleton of Mother Earth. The
same technique is used with obsidian as with quartz as a healing stone.


Lacandon Healing with Jade
Of all the precious stones known to the Maya, jade was perhaps the most deeply
revrenced. Its use is attested to as far back as Olmec times (c. 1000 BCE), and during the Classic
Period (200-800 CE) of the Maya, some of the most precious objects of art were fashioned from
jade. The source of Mayan jade was in the Motagua River Valley near Copan, though it was
traded as a commodity of extraordinary value and magical power throughout Mesoamerica.
93

Today, items of both blue and green are placed upon the altar at the center point where
the cardinal directions meet most Daykeepers or Maya priests say the blue is for the sky and
that the green is for the earth. But in ancient times, the center of the four directions was a mixture
of blue and green precisely the color of jade, which was symbolic of the energy at the center of
all things.
Javier Navarro, whom we met in San Cristobal de las Casas,
66
learned a technique of
healing with jadestones from the Lacandon Maya of Chiapas. Until the mid-20th century the
Lacandon had little contact with the outside world. Unlike other indigenous peoples in
Mesoamerica, they were not strongly affected by outside forces until the 19th century. While
other native groups were living under the regimen of Spanish colonialism, the Lacandon lived
independently deep in the tropical forest. Various lowland Mayan refugee groups had come
together in these remote jungle regions shortly after the Spanish conquest and formulated for
themselves a new identity. They lived in small, remote farming communities, avoiding contact
with outsiders. They relied upon sustainable slash and burn agriculture to ensure the continued
richness of the soil.
As recently as the late 19th century some bound the heads of babies with cradle boards,
resulting in the distinctive foreheads that are typically seen in the art of the Classic Maya. Well
into the 20th century, they continued using bows and arrows and making arrowheads from flint;
the Lacandon acquired the popular nickname of the Stone Age Maya. Today they survive by
way of tourism.
Among the Lacandon, sacred places included caves (where the sun went to the
underworld each night), Maya ruins where the gods had once resided, and power spots next to
rivers, rock outcroppings or particular places in the jungle. These places were and still are
remote, secluded, and not to be seen by outsiders. They also practiced sacred astronomy and
dream interpretation.
The Lacandon are an egalitarian society in terms of spiritual leadership. They may
identify a particular man in the village who has shown a talent for ritual knowledge or an ability
to heal, and who then performs religious ceremonies for others. However, basic offerings and the
burning of incense are performed by all the male heads of households.

66
Personal conversation with the authors, January 2, 2013, San Cristobal de las Casas.
94

Most Lacandon villages have what is called a god house, a lodge where ceremonies
and rituals take place. Some villages hide the god house in the jungle so that outsiders will be
unable to find it. Often these sites are also shielded by thick tropical vegetation so that the rituals
performed inside cannot be seen. A god house is oriented to the four directions with the entrance
on the east side where it faces toward the sunrise and, often, Maya ruins.
Inside the god house are the implements used in various ceremonies. There are drums
suspended in the ceiling that are used for ritual song and dance; a fire starter traditionally
consisting of a fire drill (and more recently a lighter, matches or flint); benches to sit around;
ceramic bowls for preparing and eating ritual meals or offerings; a conch shell trumpet to
announce the beginning of a ceremony; incense nodules made of copal, and ceramic god pots
used to burn the offerings for the rituals.
Javier Navarros teacher asserted that he was from the Palenque tradition. He lived to
be 104 years old and was perfectly illiterate. The art of jade healing had only been available to
indigenous people until the 1960s; he passed it on to Don Javier and a friend because he feared
that the tradition would die out unless it was given to other people.
After he received his training, the teacher blessed Don Javiers hands for healing,
performing a ritual in which he placed an isote flower in his hands and recited a blessing, also
asking for a blessing upon the large jade necklace that Don Javier uses for protection from any
negative energies that may be released during the healing. Then he did a purification ritual upon
Don Javier and smudged him, then handed him two staffs, one called a baston de mando, a staff
of command or power, and also a baston de sabidura, a staff of wisdom.


Don Javiers Healing
Don Javier is a prosperous restaurateur in San Cristobal, and has an office in back of the
restaurant which he uses for healing treatments.
Placing the patient in a state of deep relaxation before applying the healing jade stones is
an important part of the process. Javiers teacher used to give a patient tea to quiet him at the
beginning of a session; Don Javier originally used chamomile for the same purpose. Now he
starts the relaxation process by placing the patient on a massage table, where she or he is
cleansed with sprigs of fresh basil and given a brief, calming dose of huesero massage.
95

Don Javier uses ten stones in his treatments. Four are used to heal and the other six are
geared to placing the patient in a state of deep relaxation where healing may take place on all
levels.
To Don Javier, the stones represent the universe. Quartz holds earth energy but jade holds
cosmic, universal, or even extra-terrestrial energy.
You can wake jade stones up and give them life by beating upon them gently with a
Mayan hammer in harmony with the music used in the session. The hammer is made of the stem
of a bougainvillea plant. Thus the energy in the stones is activated. The jade is charged and the
energy passes into the person body, spirit, and mind. Don Javier said that it was customary to
hit the stones at least thirteen times in harmony with music for full awakening.
The stones balance a persons energy. They are placed over the spine. The largest stone is
placed in the center of the spine and, according to Don Javier, represents Saturn. (Don Rigoberto
also asserted that the planet Saturn was of great symbolic importance in Mayan cosmovision, and
that it had a special connection with the day sign Kej, for Kej represents the four pillars that link
heaven and earth. Saturn and Kej may therefore function as portals to other dimensions.)
In Don Javiers system, one does not focus on a particular organ. He activates and works
on all the energy centers of the body, and the energy from the stones will enter the body and go
wherever it is needed. It is only necessary to stimulate the physical body from the head to the
coccyx. The awakening of the legs and feet are automatically included within this basic system.
To stimulate the body and link the energies of the awakened stones with the human
being, Don Javier imitates some of the sounds and sensations that might have been experienced
in a Lacandon god house in the jungle. Mayan music is essential to the healing process and is
used as an active element in this system. It places the patient in another state of consciousness.
During treatment, music and movement and massage are blended so that the healing session is a
fully synchronized ritual. Don Javier himself, again like his teachers from the Lacandon god
houses, plays drums, rattles, and flutes during sessions in harmony with the music on the tapes.
Don Javier says: Love is an essential part of the healing process. Music plus large jade
stones plus love are the basic components to this system of healing. The healer must be centered
in the heart and imbued with compassion.


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The Sastn, Stone of Light
Though using crystals for diagnosis may now be uncommon in Momostenango, it is still
a vitally important part of the repertoire of Yucatec healers. One of the most important tools for
Yucatec curanderos is the sastn or seeing stone, which is often but by no means always a
quartz crystal. Some are polished obsidian, while others are simple glass balls. In fact, a sastn
can be anythingfor the shaman and healer Don Eligio Panti, it was a simple child's marble,
while for his principal American student, Rosita Arvigo, it was a "New Age type" crystal. Its
not the nature of the substance itself which matters it is the power within the stone.
Some healers are guided to their sastns by dream teachers the stone is always found
just where the dream teacher indicates it will be, even if it were embedded in the fork of a tree.
Those who do not receive such dreams may go forth on a kind of vision quest in search of their
sastn. If they fail to find it, this may even be an indicator that they are not ready to take the path
of the h-men or shaman.
67

Three Mexican physicians working in the Yucatec state of Campeche have recorded how
some of the healers they met made use of their sastns for diagnosis.
68
The sastn was placed in
a cup along with some rum. Then it was held up to the flame of a candle while the shaman
recited a prayer. The interplay of light within the stone and light from the candle was carefully
studied in order to make a diagnosis.
If you possess a stone or crystal so special to you that you suspect it may be your seeing
stone or sastn, you can use this ritual, as taught by Don Eligio, to test it.
69
Even if your stone
doesn't turn out to be a true sastn, the first half of the ritual will power up or charge any
crystal or stone. Another way to charge a stone is to keep it overnight in a glass of brandy after
praying over it, as is done in Yucatn. According to Don Eligio, one should choose a Friday for
this ritual. Hold your stone in one hand, and dip the fingers of your other hand into a glass of
some kind of liquorDon Eligio used rum, while in Yucatn they often use brandy. After dipping
your fingers, make the sign of the cross on both sides of your stone.

67
Garcia et. al., Wind in the Blood, op. cit., p. 143.

68
Ibid., p. 69.

69
Arvigo, Rosita, with Nadine Epstein and Marilyn Yaquinto. Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer. (San
Francisco: Harper and Row, 1994), pp. 117-21.

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A prayer or invocation to the spirit of the stone is often spoken or chanted. Don Eligio used
to say: Sastn sastn, I ask that you tell me all I want to know. Teach me to understand
signs. Visit me in all my dreams. Give me the answers I seek. I have faith that this
sastn will answer all my prayers. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
(Note: If such a ritual were being performed in Momostenango, one might well say In the name
of Ajaw, in the name of the Mundo [Earth Father], and in the name of the Ancestors.) Don
Eligio repeated the prayer and the dipping no less than nine times.
Go to sleep with your stone or crystal nearbyin your hand, under your pillow, or
wherever it feels right. If your stone is actually a sastn, the spirits will come to you in a dream
and instruct you in its proper use. They will give you very specific instructions as to how your
stone should be used. Every person and every stone is unique; hence every set of magical
instructions will be different from any other. It is always asserted that one must follow the
instructions to the letter.
If you do have a dream, and if the stone in your possession is in fact your sastn, continue
to honor it by signing the cross with alcohol and saying the prayer nine times every Friday night.

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8. HEALING WITH DREAMS

Dreams are an important topic of discussion in traditional Mayan communities. Dreams
are meant to be shared with others. Unlike some traditional societies, the Maya have no fear of
dreams, even though they do regard dreams as omens. One ought to give thanks even for ones
worst nightmares, for these constitute warning signals, alerting us to the fact that we need to take
action and change something in our lives which is not serving our purpose. The importance of
dreams is demonstrated by the way in which the Maya discuss them. They use a special
terminology and syntax which is also used when telling stories or reciting ancient myths, but
which is not characteristic of daily speech. In other words, even ordinary dreams are myths,
and they are described with mythic speech.
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Among the Maya, while ordinary dreams have importance, they are not as significant
as shamanic or archetypal dreams. These constitute an entirely different category of dreaming,
and one which is not necessarily experienced by everyone.
If the koyopa is awake, the gods themselves may contact us directly through our dreams,
using the koyopa energy as a communicative medium between their world and ours. The gods
may give us messages or at least, they try to. The Maya believe that dreams are tricky things,
always trying to outwit us by making such messages difficult to remember or decipher. Many
people, in our own Western society, have reported dreams wherein a wise old man or wise
old woman appears to us and gives us a powerful message. In most cases, the actual words of
that message are lost to us, unremembered. The Maya believe that this is part and parcel of the
Art of Dreaming. We must learn to dream with clarity and lucidity, so that the messages
imparted to us by the gods will remain in our memory and be accessible to our conscious minds
after we awake. To take action against the dreams inherent longing for forgetfulness is a
struggle. An archetypal dreamer is a spiritual warrior.
In order to learn how to remember our archetypal dreams and therefore make use of
them, the guidance of a shamanic teacher is often necessary. Anyone who undertakes the path of
becoming a Mayan priestess or priest will of course have such a teacher, a road guide. Part of
the training for such a sacred office consists of the awakening of the koyopa or lightning soul.

70
Tedlock, Barbara, Zuni and Quiche Dream Sharing and Interpreting, op. cit.

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Therefore the shamanic teacher or road guide is also an expert dream interpreter, one who can
guide the student in learning how to access the archetypal dreams in which the gods speak to us
through the awakened body lightning. The road guide uses dreams as an important tool in the
training of Calendar diviners and Mayan priests.
It is interesting to note that Mayan dream interpretation is highly individuated. Mayan
shamans do not interpret according to a set list of symbols of the type which might be found in
any gypsy witch dream book here in the United States. Dream symbolism is, by and large,
unique to the individual dreamer and her or his outlook on life. There are a few commonly
accepted symbols, however. For example, a Mayan priests vara or sacred bundle which
contains her or his divining seeds, crystals, and other ritual objects is regarded as the initiates
spiritual spouse. Therefore, if a mysterious man appears in a womans dream, or a mysterious
woman in a mans dream, it is usually said that the shaman-in-training has been visited by her or
his spiritual spouse, the spirit of the sacred bundle which will someday become the shamans
true and eternal partner. Those familiar with Jungian dream analysis will not fail to note the
similarities between this Mayan concept and the Jungian doctrine of anima and animus.
If a dream remains incomplete, in the sense that the words of the god are not
remembered by the dreamer, or the recollection of the dream seems tentative and without a clear
message, the road guide may ask the apprentice shaman to re-create the dream by entering back
into it and finishing it. This is, of course, a technique closely related to what we might call lucid
dreaming, in the sense that the dreamer is an active participant rather than a passive one. Here
again, the Sacred Calendar is of great importance. Let us say that such an incomplete
archetypal dream or divine communication took place on 4 Batz (Chuen). The next recurrence
of a Batz day will take place twenty days later; this will be 11 Batz. During those twenty
days, the novice shaman may meditate upon the dream and its meaning in preparation to
attempting to re-enter the dream and bring it to a conclusion. The attempt to re-enter the dream
will take place on 11 Batz.
It is clear, from the above, that archetypal dreams may be sought out. To use the Western
term, they may be incubated. While Mayan dream incubation is not as complex or ritualistic as
the classical dream incubation once practiced in the Greek temples of Asklepios, there are
techniques for inducing archetypal dreams. For example: Drink a glass of warm water mixed
with a tablespoon of lemon juice. Do this about an hour after dinner in order to give yourself time
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to digest first, as well as make a few trips to the bathroom before retiring. While falling asleep,
practice deep and regular breathing. Clear your mind of all thoughts and worries relating to the
day just past, the day ahead, or mundane life in general. Instead, imagine the wings of a bird,
moving slowly and rhythmically, the wings of your free soul or nawal carrying you into the
dream world.
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Let the serene motion of the nawals flight guide you to the magic of an
archetypal dream.
In the case of dreams as diagnosis, both the dreams of the guide and the dreams of the
patient are taken into account. The guide interprets the patients problem through dreams.
Dreams are directly linked with days of the Calendar. How do we distinguish the day
upon which a dream occurs? Let us say that it is 5 Ajpu (Ahau). At sundown of that day, the
shamans will light candles at their shrines to welcome the energy of 6 Imox (Imix), which is just
beginning. Throughout the night its energy will increase as 5 Ajpu vanishes farther into the
underworld. When dawn comes, the energy of 6 Imox will rule alone and 5 Ajpu will have
vanished completely. Therefore the day upon which the dream occurs is 6 Imox.
Examine the dream for any symbols which correlate with the day-sign Imox. Many
times, of course, you will not find any match between the symbolism of your dream and the
symbolism of the day sign. But if a match occurs, it means you have had an important
dream.
Don Rigoberto supplied us with examples of the type of dream interpretation which is
linked to the ancient Mayan Calendar. It should be understood that the interpretation of dreams is
a highly intuitive art. Though it makes use of the symbols inherent in the nawales or day signs of
the Mayan Calendar, there are always many different ways of approaching a symbol. By
definition, a symbol is made up of a group of associated or related meanings (if it were a single
meaning, we would be discussing an allegory rather than a symbol). Clearly, it is necessary to
know the symbolism of the day signs in great detail in order to perform this practice. The
following is a verbatim record of Don Rigobertos teachings;
72
it is understood that this may be
one of the more difficult portions of this book for those who are unfamiliar with the symbolic and
archetypal meanings attached to the various day signs of the ancient Mayan Calendar. Those who

71
For Mayan concepts about the dreaming soul, see Chapter 2, pp. 19-20.

72
Personal conversation with the authors, Momostenango, January 18, 2013.
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wish to understand how his interpretations correlate with the days of the Calendar may consult the
Appendix, which gives some of the most common meanings of the day signs.

On Batz, if you dream of birth it is a symbol of ones creativity. If you dream of many
colors it represents opportunity. If you dream of pieces of cut thread it is a sign of failure. If you
dream of rags and pieces of clothing torn off or bits of firewood lying around, it means the same.
On E, if you dream of a skeleton or of the construction of houses or the incomplete
frame of a house (i.e. the skeleton of a house), it means that someone will make a proposal or an
offer to you. It can also mean that someone will be offered a candidacy or public position. If you
dream of books, reading or writing one, it means that you will create a story.
If you dream on an Aj day that your hair or a tooth falls out, this is an indication of a
chronic illness. If you were to dream that you were in a forest it would mean that you have many
plans for the future. Aj represents vigor and health, hence recovery from illness; if one dreams of
bathing in clean or pure water it is a very positive sign. On an Aj day, if you have had an illness
for a while and you dream of flowers or green plants it will mean that you will soon recover.
On the day Ix, if you dream of a bus trip or traveling it will be a sign of indecision.
Generally, dreaming on an Ix day is not auspicious. It is an indication of failure. If you dream of
eating, it is not a good omen because it means that your plans are dissolving (like your food).
On a Tzikin day, dreaming of entering or leaving a house can be a sign of economic
gain. If you dream that you are in the dark, it is a sign that you are about to suffer financial loss or
that there will be problems in business.
On an Ajmaq day, domestic animals are a sign that reconciliation is on the way. You will
be reconciled with those with whom you are at odds. If you dream that you are changing or
putting on clothes, you will meet new people and make new friends. If you dream that you are
naked it will point to some vice, bad habit or addiction that is sticking to you and cannot be
released.
On a Noj day, dreaming of speaking with other people, or singing, dancing or shouting,
is a good omen because you will either learn or teach something new with others.
On Tijax, if you dream of being in bed it is an indication of illness. If you dream of a
knife or machete, it is a sign of an accident about to happen. On a Tijax day, dreaming of cables,
ropes, threads, wires, etc., means you will receive a (positive) message from far away.
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On Kawoq, dreaming of a fiesta or a dance signifies conflict in the family or with friends
or some other social dimension; dreaming of a market or square means evolution both individual
and collective.
On Ajpu, if you dream of a cemetery or someone dead, someone you know will die or
soon you will go to a funeral. Or it can mean that you are in conflict with some part of your past.
If you dream that you are running or in a race, it can represent individual struggle or also
collective social struggle. It can also represent a challenge. If you dream of Mt. Everest or a
volcano or any other high mountain it could signify future travel, esp. in the form of a pilgrimage.
On Imox, if you dream of trees or water it signifies a major change coming into your life.
If you dream that you are surrounded by people it represents cooperation. If you dream that you
are standing alone and there is a group of people together apart from you it shows that you need to
learn to cooperate with others, through intervention, donation, contribution.
On Iq it is very important. If one dreams of being in the middle of the desert or on an
empty plain without houses or buildings, it means that your desires will be realized. Or in a flat
place filled with snow dreams are realized because there are no obstacles. If you dream on an
Iq day that you see kites or birds flying, it is an indication that your desires will fail blown
away by the wind.
On Aqabal, if you dream of a group of children it is very important. It means you will
meet many people in your life and get to them, including people in positions of power and
authority who will open doors for you. It also means that you will learn many things and gain
much knowledge. If you dream that you are lying down it is a bad omen signifying divorce.
On Kat, to dream of fire means a real and dangerous fire. It means prison or jail for a
crime committed or a psychological prison, meaning that your problems will become more
complicated. If you dream of a well or a pool (swimming pool etc.) or fountain it means recovery,
whether of property, health or whatever.
On Kan, if you dream that you have a book or a hammer or a kitchen utensil in your
hand, it is an absence sign, meaning absence from home or of family member etc. If you dream
that you are bathing in dirty water it means limitless problems. To dream of eating any kind of
meat (inc. poultry) or even seeing meat, as for example hanging on a hook, it indicates that you
will experience many problems, including possible illness but also other kinds of problems. To
dream of a serpent is a warning, but it might be either positive or negative. If it attacks you it is
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negative and is an omen of either problems or an illness; if it is merely seen but there is attack it is
positive.
On Kame, dreaming of an old man or woman means you will have a long life. It can also
mean you will receive pardon or forgiveness for some mistake you have made; you will be given
consideration. If you dream of a game, whether sports or cards or anything, you are risking your
life with a bad bet, i.e. gambling with your life.
On the day Kej, if a person dreams of taking responsibility or giving a gift, it means they
are going to receive some sort of public responsibility or position or perhaps an increase of
responsibility in their work or a higher position.
If a person dreams that they are going to die on a Qanil day it means regeneration.
On Toj, if you dream of changing your clothes it indicates some kind of struggle or
challenge. If you dream that you are receiving a prize, you really will do so some sort of reward.
If you dream of brooms and sweeping, it is a sign of liberty, meaning you will regain your
freedom, whether in a concrete or psychological sense. If you dream of needles, knives, or sharp
objects it is a symbol of betrayal.
On a Tzi day, if you dream of a hat or umbrella it is a symbol of security. If you dream
that you have soap in your hands or are washing your hands, it means insecurity and temptation.




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9. HEALING THE SOUL


Beyond the realm of the merely physical, there exist cosmic or energetic causes for
illness. And it is these illnesses of the soul that are most often treated through ritual and
ceremony.
Don Jos told us: Ritual has various components social, moral, and spiritual ones. We
believe that there is a special kind of energy that is developed in ritual.
Based on this concept, when we apply it in some concrete cases and when we develop
and apply it, we can see that it has an impact. It generates an effect in which a whole and
complete system is shaped. There is a physical, material, moral and spiritual component to the
system. The effect involves both the healer and the patient. Rites and ceremonies clearly have a
healing effect.
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While ritual plays a powerful role in healings for physical illness along with other
components like herbs and massage it plays an even greater part in the treatment of
psychological or spiritual illnesses, where it is the most important healing technology of all. In
its use of ritual, we could say that Mayan medicine recognizes the value of what would be called
bio-energetic treatment. When illness or failure has its cause in the energies of the cosmos,
herbs other common medicines may not be effective. When a person has not cultivated a
balanced relationship with the cosmic energies that surround him, or has fallen out of harmony
with the spiritual and psychological environment around him, it has negative effects on both his
physical and psychological state. To balance and normalize the function of mental, psychic, and
physical functioning again, it is necessary to do a special treatment through ceremonial offerings
called toj, a word which literally means payment. The ritual materials used in such ceremonies
of offering saturate the person with positive energies.
One may think of these materials as the food and drink offered to those cosmic
energies which the Maya call spirits. Some of the most common materials are:


73
Sanic Chanchavac, personal conversation with the authors, January 14, 2013.

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Pom Cuilco
74

Sugar
Honey
Incense
Cebo candles
75

Beeswax candles
Eggs
76

Rue
Pericone (St. Johns Wort)
Rosemary
Cigars
Lemon
Chocolate
Liqueur
Anise liqueur
Agua Florida

To work with inharmonious psychological (or psychic) energies is an intense business. In
the Mayan world, the presence of magic is taken for granted if you are out of harmony, perhaps
someone has in fact cast a spell on you, and whoever sets out to heal you will have to be capable
of confronting such dark magical energies.
Such specialists go by many names; in Momostenango, they are sometimes referred to as
aj nawal mesa. This literally means a master of the spirit table. As we have seen (in Chapter
3), the word mesa can have many meanings, but here it typically means an actual table, a home
shrine or altar upon which the shaman does her or his work. An aj nawal mesa has specialized
knowledge about cosmic energies and is capable of healing illnesses that come from
metaphysical causes. The aj nawal mesa is a person who, in addition to knowing the standard
repertoire of the healing profession, such as the medicine of plants, can also call upon the forces
of the cosmos, making special offerings at the communitys major altars. Such healers cultivate

74
Unlike the natural crystals of copal resin, pom cuilco is copal which has been dried and treated until it is black,
almost of the consistency of charcoal. Sometimes it is in the form of large balls and sometimes in small chips that
are wrapped in corn husks.

75
Cebo candles are candles made of tallow; they are sticky to the touch and of a beige color.

76
While eggs are used for limpias or cleansings all over Latin America, Victoria Kej relegated them to a more
specific purpose and remarked that when it comes to psychological imbalances, eggs are good for treating babies
with mal ojo, but rue is generally better for adults.

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qualities of balance and to emanate a sense of security. They act not only on their store of
knowledge but upon acquired life experience and the logic of common sense.

Illnesses of the Soul
While some illnesses of the soul may be difficult to explain or define, there are a number
of psychological problems or imbalances that are commonly recognized by curanderos
everywhere. They were known equally well in the Los Angeles area where Ken grew up as in
Momostenango. Perhaps the most common are:

Mal Ojo or the evil eye. This is a physical/psychological imbalance caused by the
contact between two energies, one relatively strong and the other weak. The individual who has
weak energy, for example a baby or small child, suffers from contact with the person who has
the more intense vital force. Sometimes the intentions of the strong person are not malicious but
may even be quite benign. An example often given is when one is admiring a baby, and does so
with such strong emotion that the more powerful persons emotions perhaps including
unacknowledged feelings of envy that the child is not her own imprint themselves on the
weaker, more receptive individual. (This is one reason why mal ojo is so often said to afflict
babies, though Doa Victoria insisted that mal ojo could pass between adults as well.)
For the cure, the healer concentrates his or her energies; then, with an egg, she or he
makes a cosmic cross on the forehead of the patient. Another cross is made behind the head, on
the chest, on the shoulders, and on the palms of the hands. Later the healer passes the egg around
the patients body, cleaning the person from head to toe. Afterwards, the patient is covered up in
a way that allows him or her to remain peacefully at rest. Sometimes it is customary to break the
egg in a basin or glass of water as a symbolic way of breaking the strong energy and observing,
through the shape of the egg in water, the negative energy that was eliminated. Then the egg is
thrown out, far from the house.

Susto, (xibixik in Kiche) literally means fright but may be defined as a loss of vital
energy. This happens when a person has a powerful experience which scares them badly,
whether in the mountains, on the roads, by a river or the sea. The persons vital essence or nawal
remains in the place where the fright or susto occurred. When the person comes home, he or
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she falls into bed, perhaps with fever and vomiting, and is rendered listless, unresponsive, bereft
of energy. While in principle we would not define this as an illness, the Maya assert that if one
does not recover the persons nawal as soon as possible, the condition may develop into a
physical imbalance as well as a psychic one, a condition that will make the person sick and
resistant to any good medications. If they are not given adequate treatment, it is believed that it
can even lead to death.
In the case of a person who is frightened (asustada), healing is approached in various
different ways. The shaman takes the patient to the very spot where he or she received the fright,
and seeks for the persons lost nawal through ceremony and invocation. A candle is lit and, with
whips or switches of branches from the chilca tree, or with a sash or leather whip, the healer
beats the ground of the place, asking it to free the person and allow him to recover his lost vital
energy, his soul or spirit. Before leaving the place where the soul got lost, the candle is passed
over the place and is lit in the house of the sick person.
Let it be noted that the concept of susto bears a strong resemblance to what we would
describe as panic attacks or anxiety disorder.

Envidia literally means envy, and that is what it is, pure and simple. If people have bad
feelings toward you and envy is commonly aimed at anyone who has what you do not these
bad feelings can be translated into an illness, one caused by envy or intense jealousy. The Maya
very strongly believe that we are affected on all levels by other peoples thoughts about us,
which is one of the reasons we should always seek to remain in harmony with our community.
Like mal ojo, the bad intentions must be neutralized with cleansings or limpias.

There always exist variations upon the above, according to the various regions of the
Maya country, but the essence of these ideas are maintained throughout large portions of the
Latin American world.

The Power of Sacred Space
The ceremonies which the most skilled healers use to deal with illnesses of the soul are
performed at shrines and altars; some of these places are very sacred to the Maya. The earth itself
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is alive with spirits, with energies, with powers. Sacred sites are where the earth and the cosmos
at large have found a kind of meeting place the cosmos brought down to solid ground.
Many of the most sacred places are land forms there are trees, rock formations, caves
and running springs that fairly pulsate with magical power including the power of healing.
Seeking out such venues for ritual or ceremony may be a form of healing in itself.
Don Rigoberto says:
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There are two kinds of sacred places: There are the ancient sites such as Tikal or
Iximche; they have a spirit about them. It is the power of a people, and the energies of the
ancestors there are still alive. Each ancient city had its function. Some of them were places where
they kept knowledge of medicine and science. We call them sacred places because there are
many things which these places give to humanity; they give the breath of life.
These ancient places can heal us because they contain the spirits of ancient healers and
sages, doctors and scientists. There are energies there now that come from the power of the
ancient healers and spiritual leaders who lived and taught there long ago. These powers and
forces are recorded there, etched into the energetic grid.
These ancient cities are sacred places that contain the power of medicine, and when one
does ceremony at the altars there, it has the power to reveal the truth. One can do ceremony at
these ancient sites to ask for the wisdom of medicine.
At such places one does ceremony and gives thanks because such places give life to the
Maya people. This we prove through our own evidence. The sacred ceremonies we do there
have power. The spirit of the ceremony attracts one to these places.
The importance of this is that the powers of these ancient places are still alive.
The other type of sacred place contains the power of the spiritual authorities.
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There is a process whereby people dream of a place and then go to the place they found
in a dream. A person dreams of the place; they are feeling an attraction to the place, and they are
drawn to that place. They go there to do ceremony. When the person arrives at such a place, they
are confirming with firmness and resolution that there is power and wisdom there. All our
current sacred sites were discovered in this way.

77
Personal conversation with authors, January 19, 2013, Momostenango.

78
By this, we believe that Don Rigoberto is referring to the spirits that watch over sacred places on the landscape
such as rocks, trees, streams and so on. These natural spirits are sometimes called encantos. Every sacred place has
its encantos.
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Sacred places are gardens of natural medicine because there are almost always many
medicinal plants to be found in such a place.
One thing shamans do is to bring people to the natural altars and do a saturacin over
them and make offerings. The ancestors discovered that the altars healed people. So it is
common practice to bring people to an altar and in the course of a ceremony to make offerings
and do saturacines. The healers bless the medicine, the plants, in the ceremony. Depending on
the illness that the patient has, the medicine plants and offerings correspond. The patient must
have faith in the medicine and in the ceremony.
This technology has been known since ancient times. The people have lost much
knowledge, but in the present era they are trying to rescue and preserve it. They lost the
techniques of blessing people as well as the knowledge of many plants.
All the altars have the same amount of power; what is important is the distance. The
sacred places that are closest to you are the most important; what is near to your home is more
powerfully imprinted upon you than that which is far away and harder to get to.
The importance of a local shrine may also be linked with particular days in the Mayan
Calendar. Tijax is the day of medicine, so you have to ask for a healing upon that day. Ix is the
same. So is Aj. These three days are good days to do a healing ceremony at any altar. The altars
are therefore also healing places and places of medicine.
The altars here in Momostenango are important; the people have not abandoned their
tradition. These ancient altars have curative powers; what is important about the ones here in
Momos is that they have never been abandoned and have never lost their power.
These altars give heart to our culture and they can cure health problems.

For some Maya, more Christianized than some of the Momostecans, the local church is
also a sacred space for healing in which indigenous doctors practice prayers, cleansings, burning
candles and copal. Traditions from Chiapas even record the type of candles to be used against
certain illnesses in these church ceremonies. For a deep sense of alienation and dismay called the
Illness of the Great Soul (mel mucta chulelal), a healer may use one white candle for God that is
in heaven as well as two gold colored candles, two yellow candles, and two red candles against
envy and curses or evil spells. To ask for more prosperity and a better life, or to beseech the
spirits that illness may not arrive, or that a person should be happy with his family and other
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members of his community, use thirteen white candles to communicate with God, Mother Earth
and all the saints and angels. One uses more candles of greater size when the illness is very
strong.

The Healing Ceremony
One day, Victoria unexpectedly told us: Tomorrow is 6 Qanil. That is an important day
for healing ceremonies. Tomorrow I will teach you a ceremony.
Victoria acknowledged that the Kiche had their own problems with psychological
distress and unhappiness, but like many other Momostecans she felt that sadness and dismay of
this sort arose from very practical causes too much hard labor, sick children, not enough
money. She had heard that people in Western culture were deeply afflicted with anxiety and
worry; but, considering the fact that we have more money than the Maya and that our children
ordinarily survive to become adults, she was not clear as to the source of our unhappiness.
All the same, she wanted to help. She said, This is a healing ritual for all purposes, but
it is especially helpful for all kinds of emotional and psychological distress, so you will take it
home with you and perform it for other people who have these kinds of problems.
She then made out a shopping list of items necessary for the ceremony and told us to
meet her shortly before dawn on top of Cerro Paklom, the sacred hill in the center of
Momostenango.
Here is the list she gave us, as copied from Anitas notes:

5 lbs. of pom cuilco
lb of white wax candles
lb. of yellow wax candles
1 lb. of cebo candles
1 lb. of sugar
5 quetzales worth of ocote
79

4 ceremonial cigars
4 eggs
1 bottle of agua florida water
80

1 bottle of Quetzalteca (anise liqueur)

79
Ocote, mentioned in our chapter on herbalism, is pine wood treated with resin. It serves as a way to light a fire
quickly as well as being an offering in and of itself.

80
An aromatic liquid used for shamanic purposes.

111

1 bottle of Tres Amores Verde
81

lb. of storax
82

1 lb. of candy
1 marquete de panela
83

1 bunch of rue
4 small bunches of rosemary

As it was already getting late in the afternoon, we hurried to the center of town. In
Momostenango, as in other communities where traditional Mayan spirituality is common, there
are tiendas or small shops that specialize in the sale of ofrendas, the offerings and materials used
in indigenous ceremonies. Fortunately, we were able to acquire almost everything we needed at
a single shop in the center of town; but we were still missing the rue and rosemary. We hastened
even more quickly to reach the traditional mercado, and were more than a little bit discouraged
to discover that most of the stalls were already closed and that the few merchants still remaining
were already packing up to leave. By luck, we found a booth that sold a fair number of herbs and
was still open. There, we were able to find the rue and rosemary and complete our quest.
It was still dark the next morning when we ascended Cerro Paklom, laden with our bags
of offerings. We waited at the top near the many altars which cover the top of the hill. Soon, just
before the sky began to lighten, Victoria appeared.
The summit of Cerro Paklom is covered with numerous altars; because 6 Qanil is an
important day in the ancient calendar, there were many people who intended to perform
ceremonies, and traditional Momostecans were already arriving and beginning to light their
fires at the various altars, beginning to conduct their rituals. Off to one side, we could see that
Don Rigoberto had arrived as well, and was performing his ceremonial observances.
Victoria selected an altar and we began by kneeling while Victoria prayed to El Ajaw
and to the altar itself, regarded as a manifestation of El Mundo, the Spirit of the Earth. She also
invoked the Nantat (the ancestors or, more literally, the mothers and fathers). The ground was
kissed.

81
Another liquid in a bottle. It is green in color. We are not sure what it is made of. The Maya appear to have
borrowed it from the Santeria faith.

82
A type of wood. See the chapter on herbalism.

83
This is a big block of molasses.
112

Next came the recitation of the prayer which opens almost all traditional Maya
ceremonies. It comes from the Mayan Creation Epic, the Popol Vuh, or, in contemporary
Kiche, Pop Wuj, and is the prayer that the original people spoke as they wandered in the
darkness before the dawning of the Fourth World:
Former, Fashioner,
Look at us.
Listen to us.
Do not abandon us.
Do not cease to shelter us.
O, you who are in Heaven and upon Earth,
Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth,
Give us our descendants, our continuity,
As the sun moves and there is light and clarity.
Let the dawn come.
Let the day break.
Give us many good paths,
Smooth roads.
May the people have much peace, much peace,
And be happy.
Give us life, a useful existence.
O you, Hun Rakan,
Newborn Thunderbolt, Raw Thunderbolt,
Newborn Nanahuac, Raw Nanahuac,
Falcon, Jun Ajpu,
Sovereign Plumed Serpent,
Bearer, Begetter,
Xpiyacoc, Xmucane,
Grandmother of the Sun, Grandmother of the Light,
Let the day break, let the dawn come.
84


Victoria began to build the altar. In most Mayan ceremony, the altar is laid out in the
shape of the ancient hieroglyph for the day-sign Qanil (Yucatec: Lamat). Sugar is most often
used to draw the altar symbol, and it was sugar that Victoria used that morning.





84
The translation here is primarily that of Anita Garr, though with an acknowledgment to the version of Dennis
Tedlock in Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life (New York: Touchstone, 1985), pp. 169-70.

113



Though day-sign glyphs from ancient codices and inscriptions are usually square, the
Qanil glyph is presently drawn in a circular form, for it represents the eternal circle of life, of
existence. Within the circle of life is a cross. The cross was not introduced to the Maya by
Christianity; it is an ancient symbol which, to the Classic Maya, represented the four directions,
the four pillars of the universe, the four stations of the sun during the day and the year.
We live in a fourfold universe. The center of the cross is the center of the world itself, the
axis mundi or Tree of Life. To the ancient Maya, the cross was a symbol of the central World
Tree from which the four directions emanated.
In addition to the four directions, the four arms of the cross are also said to represent the
four colors of corn, the four colors of humanity, and the four elements.
In each quadrant of the circle is yet another circle. The symbolism here is similar to that
embodied in the well-known yin-yang symbol of Taoism, which represents the yin within yang
and the yang within yin. The Qanil hieroglyph tells us that each arm of the Medicine Wheel,
each direction which emanates from the World Tree, is a wholeness unto itself, as well as a part
of the fourfold pattern of life. Time and Space, the Four Cardinal Points, the Four Elements, and
the Four Colors (Red, Yellow, Black and White) are divine powers and are invoked as if they
were divinities.
After the altar is built, it is often piled high with many different types of offerings, though
on that 6 Qanil Victoria decorated it very simply with pom, ocote, and a bit of frankincense,
plus a number of white candles. Each offering has its purpose in Mayan ritual; Don Rigoberto
had taught us that pom is food for the encantos or spirits of the place, while ocote and
frankincense both serve to disperse negative energies and white candles are offerings to the
nawales or spirits of the day signs of the ancient calendar.
When the altar had been built, Victoria opened the four directions, another prelude
common to almost all Mayan ceremony. Going to her knees as we all bowed our foreheads to the
ground and kissed the earth for each direction, she invoked the four jaguar fathers who were
the leaders of the original people and the guardians of the four directions: East = Balam
Quitze and Fire, West = Balam Akab and Earth, North = Balam Ikim and Air, South = Balam
Majakutaj and Water.
114

Then Victoria lit the fire.

Victoria performed a saturacin on me, using yellow wax candles, cebo candles,
ceremonial cigars, eggs, and marquete de panela. She took a swig of the Quetzalteca liqueur,
swished it around in her mouth, and then blew it out in a fine spray or mist right into my face
(some shamans have the talent for projecting liquids in the form of a mist; others never master
it). She massaged my head, neck and temples and splashed me with the agua florida. The sprigs
of rue which it had taken Anita and I so much trouble to find were passed over me in yet another
cleansing, with the rue held close to my head because rue is deemed especially effective against
bad spirits, envidia, and mal ojo. For the more physical aspects of health, she held a handful of
chamomile close to my stomach and chanted prayers against all illnesses in that part of the
body. Then she performed the same sequence of saturacines on Anita.
The prayers for protection against specific diseases were repeated often during the
ceremony, as were requests for the nawales and ancestors to give us wisdom and understanding
about healing, and to make us successful and good healers (of various kinds). Victoria blessed
both of us with cala lilies, rubbing them all over us both for purification and for the removal of
any negative energy or bad spirits that might be attached to us.
Quite suddenly, Victoria grabbed both of my wrists and proceeded to drag me close to
the fire. She forced me to my knees impressive, as she is probably less than five feet tall. Then
she held my hands so close to the blaze that I actually thought I might get burned. I had to close
my eyes because of the smoke. Then she chanted something over me as if consecrating my hands,
chanting over and over again that I should take this ritual home with me and teach it to others.
She then pulled Anita forward, close to the fire, and blessed her to receive the path,
which was seemingly a reference to becoming trained as an aj qij and receiving the vara
sagrada.
At this point, Victoria was stirring the fire. A glob of candle wax mixed with herbs began
to bubble up from the blaze. It took the shape of a circle, a ring or hoop.
Victoria said, The circle of life rises from the flames. The sacred fire has spoken. It is
good.
There are many shamans who have the gift for reading the fire they see omens in the
path of the flames and in the colors and patterns of the smoke. But this particular phenomenon
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a ring of flaming wax and herbs rising of its own volition from the fire was so bizarre that
other people actually paused in their own ceremonies to stare at it.
Victoria began to recite the days of the chol qij or 260-day calendar, beginning with the
day upon which the ceremony took place , which was 6 Qanil. Special attention was given to
Tzikin for the sake of our prosperity, as Tzikin is the day symbolizing material abundance
and to the day Kame, usually translated as Death. This is a day which is sacred to the
ancestors, and Anita and I were both asked to place ocote and cebo candles in the fire while
calling upon the spirits of all four of our grandparents. Occasionally, more cleansings were
performed at intervals during the recitation of the days. We were sometimes asked to sprinkle
Tres Amores or agua florida four times into the fire.
After the recitation of the days, a few more offerings were made, including the sprigs of
rosemary. There were more sprinklings of liquids into the fire. Once again Victoria drew me
close to the fire, then took my right hand and arm and rotated them four times over the fire. Then
she did the same thing with my left hand. Then I approached the fire, smudging myself by
passing the smoke over my head, stomach, and legs. These three parts of the body represented
psychological, intestinal, and structural (bones and joints) health respectively. The same
procedure was done for Anita.
Just as the Four Directions are opened at the beginning of each ceremony, so they
must be ritually closed at the end. Once again, Victoria invoked the four Jaguar Fathers as we
turned to each direction east, then west, then north, then south, kneeling and kissing the
ground in each direction to say farewell to the Mundo (altar).
Then we went home.
I became horrendously sick the next day. There are pretty good reasons to believe it was
caused by a piece of tainted meat, but I have an iron constitution and dont usually get that sick
no matter what happens. I still have to wonder if the ritual had set in motion some kind of release
of whatever toxicity or negative energies may have been vested in my body.
Kenneth Johnson
Momostenango
January 18, 2013
116

OUR SOURCES







Victoria Qiej Guix de Itzep, Momostenango, Guatemala
Midwife, Herbalist, Massage Therapist, Bone Setter, Daykeeper, Ceremonialist











117






Crecencia Pu, Momostenango, Guatemala
Herbalist and Administrator of Belejeb E, a Momostecan cooperative of women healers
118







Rigoberto Itzep Chanchavac, Momostenango, Guatemala
Daykeeper, Sweat Lodge Leader, and Spiritual Guide






119









Maria Hernandez Ajanel de Itzep, Momostenango, Guatemala
Herbalist, Massage Therapist, Daykeeper, and Sweat Lodge Leader








120







Don Rigoberto with his son, Gregorio Kukulcan Itzep Hernandez,
who generously assisted us in translating his mother Doa Marias Kiche teachings into
Spanish



121





Jose Sanic Chanchavac, Guatemala City
Professor of Mayan Languages
122



Don Lauro de la Cruz, San Cristobal de las Casas
Energy Healer








123



Don Javier Navarro, San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico
Healer with jade stones in the Lacandon tradition

















124


Hector Jimenez, Monterrey, Mexico
who generously gave of his time to act as one of our liaisons with healers in San Cristobal de las
Casas, Mexico

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Luly Valdes, Monterrey, Mexico
who also gave us her generous assistance as one of our liaisons with the healers of San Cristobal
de las Casas


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APPENDIX
THE DAY SIGNS OF THE CALENDAR

Healers in Momostenango still use the ancient 260-day Mayan Calendar or chol qij as
one of their principal frames of reference. Here we have gathered some of the meanings that are
commonly associated with each of the day signs of the calendar. Our primary source was
Rigoberto Itzep Chanchavac, though the day sign meanings given here are common throughout
Guatemala. These are the symbolic attributes which immediately pop into the mind of a shaman
or healer when working within the context of sacred time, the cycle of days which constitute
the archetypal background of Mayan spiritual thinking.


BATZ
(CHUEN)
MASTER OF ALL THE ARTS
Signifies weaving the thread of life, time, development, and movement. It is the nawal of all the
arts, of weaving, of the artists. Upon this most auspicious day, we may voice our intent that all
we have requested from the universe may be freely given to us. This day is sometimes called
Monkey, and monkeys were the mythic patrons of the arts in ancient Mayan lore. This is an
auspicious day for all artistic projects. In fact, it is an auspicious day to begin projects of any
sort, for this day-sign also represents the thread of life, the weaving of the loom of existence.
This is the best day upon which to be married. Special ceremonies honoring women and
especially midwives are performed upon 9 Batz.

E
(EB)
THE ROAD OF LIFE
Signifies destiny, the road, thanks and benediction. It is the nawal of all the roads and road
guides. Upon this day we give thanks for the Road of Life upon which we continually walk, for it
represents the Road itself. It is the patron of travelers and the best possible day upon which to
begin a journey. It is also a most favorable day for the initiation of any business matter or for the
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signing of contracts. E is yet another day which is sacred to women. 9 E is day to ask for favor
on behalf of women.

AJ
(BEN)
THE RESURRECTION OF THE CORN
Home, family, stalk of sugar cane and corn plants, vocation, sprout, offspring, cane or walking
stick, seed; staff of authority, power and Maya Daykeepers; crop; stability, solidity, strength,
resoluteness of character; tenderness. It is the nawal of the home and of the children. This is the
day to give thanks for the home in which we live, for this day is connected with the nourishment
and flourishing of all things related to the home, whether human, animal or plant.

IX
(IX)
THE JAGUAR
Signifies the jaguar, the spirit, force, energy, and vitality. It is the nawal of nature and Mayan
altars. It is the nawal of the seven human shames: pride, ambition, envy, lying, crime,
ingratitude, ignorance through laziness. Those who keep the Days always set aside a special
place or household altar for prayer, meditation, incense, candles, and so on. This is the day to
give thanks that we have created such a sacred place in our lives. It is a day which may fruitfully
be devoted to introspection and meditation, if the opportunity is there. It is also regarded as a
favorable day upon which to practice any kind of divination. As regards the element of Water,
Ix symbolizes the sacred energy inherent in fresh streams, running water.

TZIKIN
(MEN)
THE VISION OF THE BIRD
Signifies a bird, wealth, business negotiation and fear. It is the nawal of economic well-being,
good fortune. It is an auspicious day to give thanks and ask for economic well -being, using red,
yellow, green and white candles and cebo or tallow candles too. It is the communication and
mediation between Ukux Kaj and Ukux Ulew (Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth). Consecration,
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good fortune, good business, abundance, prosperity, art, pessimism, joy, cold. Unlike those of
some spiritual traditions, the Maya do not feel that material prosperity is undesirable or non-
spiritual. Upon this day, we may thank the universe for whatever prosperity we currently enjoy
while honestly expressing intention that more prosperity may attend our lives. This day is as
fortunate for love as it is for money; pay attention to relationship issues. Pay attention to dreams
as well, for this is a day upon which one may experience powerful and important revelations
through dreams. Tzikin is one of the secretaries to the Year Lords.


AJMAQ
(CIB)
FORGIVENESS
Signifies sin, pardon, atheism and pleasure. It is the nawal of all the faults. It is also a day to ask
forgiveness from the dead and ones ancestors. It also represents gifts and Mother Earth and is
the nawal of the Earth itself. This is in part a day of the Otherworld. It is good to remember
friends and family members who have passed away from us, and to light a candle or two in their
memory. If there is anything for which you seek forgiveness, today is the day t o ask for it; the
ancestors are listening, and incline themselves favorably to our affairs.


NOJ
(CABAN)
THE VISION OF THE COSMOS
Signifies ideas, wisdom, memory and patience. It is the nawal of the intelligence. A day
dedicated to asking for wisdom, talent, and good thoughts. Upon this day, we may ask the
universe to grant us creativity in all our endeavors, and the intelligence to find solutions to all our
challenges. It is a day for students and for asking for help in ones studies. This day enlivens the
intellect and enhances the eternal quest for wisdom. It is the nawal of the earthquake and seismic
disturbance. According to the Maya, this is one of the best days to consult a diviner and seek for
spiritual guidance.

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TIJAX
(ETZNAB)
OBSIDIAN KNIFE
Signifies flint, obsidian, communication, gossip and education. It is an auspicious day for healers
(curanderos) and authorities, for cutting away evils and illnesses. Tijax is a day of men in
general, but especially of male healers. It is fire and strength. It is communication, publicity,
eloquence, teaching, medicine and healing; fights, quarrels, vengeance, falsehood, espionage.
The world is full of potential road blocks and accidents. Upon this day, we pray for safety from
all harm, and for the resolution of all conflict. This day has a special connection with healing and
is favorable for health matters and the curing of disease.


KAWOQ
(CAUAC)
THE UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY
The sign of the Divine Feminine, signifying wives, female healers, and especially midwives;
thunder, lightning, cyclone; spiritual unrest and mental conflicts; spiritual contacts and
communication; blood lightning/signs, signals and messages in the blood. Sometimes said to
signify the celestial home of the gods. Upon this day, we pray that there may always be harmony
in our home lives and among our friends. Like the previous day, it is auspicious for all matters
regarding health and healing. It has a special connection with women and with feminine energy.


AJPU
(AHAU)
THE HUNTER
Signifies a blowgun hunter, the chief man, struggle, heroism, death and hunting. It is the nawal
of the sun, the day to ask for wisdom, talent, and physical fortitude. It is the nawal/guardian and
patron of flowers. It is the day of mental and psychological tests and challenges, winner of such
tests and challenges (heroic like the mythic hero Junajpu); prophet, fortune-teller, psychic,
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diviner, accuracy in divination and prophecy; may also signify an eclipse. The day of the
grandparents who have departed.


IMOX
(IMIX)
THE LEFT HAND
Signifies the left side of reality, hence receptivity, receiving messages from other dimensions, the
ability to see into other worlds and dimensions; but also madness, disorder, nervousness,
uncertainty and doubt. A sign of cooperation, for the left arm must cooperate and work well with
the right. It is nawal of the ocean, rivers and lakes, a day for healing illnesses of the mind, for
giving thanks and asking for the rain. The world is filled with psychological perils and stresses.
Upon this day we pray for good mental health, both for ourselves and for all those around us. We
pray that our dreams and visions may bring us beauty and wisdom rather than delusion and
craziness. Imox can be a good day for healing ceremonies, especially for psychological
imbalances or illnesses that have resisted other kinds of treatment. Since this day has a strong
connection with water, to be close to a flowing river or stream or the ocean is beneficial upon
this day.


IQ
(IK)
THE BREATH OF LIFE
Signifies wind, moon, crisis. It is the nawal of the element of air and the moon, of the spirit of
human existence. A day for the removal of negative energy and illnesses. It is the wind which
sweeps clean our house and our body. Also signifies hurricane, cleansing, purification, breath;
sexual obsession. Iq is the heart of stones and of whirlwinds, and it is the heart of trees. Upon
this day we ask for the strength, the vitality, and the commitment to carry on in our chosen work.
This is a day for the removal of negative energy and illnesses; in terms of healing, it favors the
resolution of psychological problems, especially those which arise from angry emotional states.

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AQABAL
(AKBAL)
DAWN
Signifies awakening, dawn, marriage, light and enchantment. It is the nawal of clarity or light,
the day to ask for the dawning of light and awareness in all things. It is especially a day of
marriage, love and romance between men and women. This day symbolizes both darkness and
dawn; hence it is a day of new beginnings. Aqabal is for a new dawn, a new life. Upon this day,
we express our intention always to think and act with perfect clarity. It is one of the most
favorable days for love and marriage (though Batz is also very good, especially for the actual
marriage ceremony). An Aqabal day can also be quite favorable for finding a job.


KAT
(KAN)
THE NET
Signifies a net, new offspring, the growth and increase of future generations, new crops, also the
fire of the hearth. It is the nawal of prisons both visible and invisible. Upon this day, we express
our intention always to have understanding. It is a favorable day upon which to pray for
abundance. It is also a day upon which healing ceremonies and practices are sometimes
performed, especially if the necessary healing is psychological in nature. A day to ask for the
tangling and untangling of things. Kat is one of the secretaries to the Year Lords.


KAN
(CHICCHAN)
FEATHERED SERPENT
Signifies the Feathered Serpent, fornication, work, power, law and justice. It is the nawal of the
creation of man and woman, also of education and training. It is the regent of the sky and ruler of
time; transcendence, the transformation of time, predestined to divine power (spiritual
vocations). Kan is the snake; it is for justice, for mountains. Upon this day we assert that vitality,
clarity and understanding shall be made manifest right now. Because this day-sign has a
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connection with the inner fire (koyopa in Mayan, or kundalini in Eastern traditions), it is also a
day upon which one may build both physical and spiritual strength. As the nawal of the creation
of man and woman, it is a most favorable day for sexual matters as well.

KAME
(CIMI)
DEATH AND REBIRTH
Signifies death, the lord of the darkness, fortitude, humility and obedience. Death is not evil.
Grammatically, kame signifies the eternal now. Upon this day we pray that we and those dear
to us have long life. There is a special connection to the world of the ancestors on this day;
communication with other worlds is possible. This day is also favorable for healing and for the
protection of travelers. This day has much feminine energy and is a good day upon which to
resolve marital conflict.

KEJ
(MANIK)
THE PILLARS OF THE UNIVERSE
Signifies the deer, and is the nawal of all kinds of four-footed animals. It is also the nawal of the
Mayan religion and of the rainforest. The day of the ajqijab or Maya priests; if a person born
upon a Kej day frequently becomes ill, it means that they are intended to become such a priest.
Power, authority, hierarchy, force, the four cardinal points. Nawal of the four corners of the
earth. Sometimes said to have an association with the planet Saturn. Upon this day, we pray for
harmony among one and all. This extends to the natural world around us as well as to other
human beings; one gains great power and energy if one is able to spend this day in nature or in
the wilderness.

QANIL
(LAMAT)
THE REGENERATION OF THE EARTH
Signifies seed, corn, pride, harvest, and food. It is the nawal of all kinds of animal and vegetable
seeds. It is the day of fertility and harvests, abundance, prosperity; auspicious for initiating any
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planting or business negotiation. Signifies the four colors of corn red, black, white and yellow.
Qanil is the nawal of healing with herbs. This is a wonderful day for farmers or simple planter
box gardeners, for upon this day we ask that the world may be made to blossom and be made
fertile. We may plant ideas and projects as well as flowers; any relationship or business venture
which begins on a Qanil day will usually turn out favorably. Associated with the planet Venus.

TOJ
(MULUC)
OFFERING
Signifies offering, liberty, equilibrium, payment, fine, debt. This day is related to two elements,
being nawal of Water in its manifestation of rain, also of the Sacred Fire as in the Mayan Fire
Ceremony. Toj suffers much and must pay off many debts. People born on Toj can help to
relieve others of illnesses and make excellent marriage counselors. Upon this day we humbly
acknowledge our karmic debts and assert our intention to pay it all back by placing our lives in
harmony. Make atonement for all disequilibrium and be thankful for all that is in balance.

TZI
(OC)
LAW AND SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY
Signifies the dog, the police, vengeance, a magistrate; accuracy and precision; justice, legality.
This day is the nawal of sexuality. It is very strong; like the dog, it barks and bites. People born
on Tzi are good at removing negative influences from others. On this day we pray that justice
made be done to all people. It is a good day to address any legal issues of our own, as well as
correcting the difficulties which may have arisen in our lives due to an excess of the passions.
Tzi is one of the secretaries to the Year Lords.



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BIBLIOGRAPHY


It will be clear, from the text as well as from the footnotes to our book, that most of our
information was obtained through personal interviews (and interactions!) with contemporary
Maya healers from Momostenango, Guatemala, as well as other interviews with healers in San
Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico. Nevertheless, there were some published sources which proved
to be of great importance to our research. The principal ones are listed here.

Arvigo, Rosita, and Michael Balick. Rainforest Remedies: One Hundred Healing Herbs of Belize
(Twin Lakes, WI, Lotus Press, 1993)

____________, with Nadine Epstein and Marilyn Yaquinto. Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a
Maya Healer. (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1994)

Bricker, Victoria R. and Helga-Maria Miram (trans.) An Encounter of Two Worlds: The Book of
Chilam Balam of Kaua (New Orleans, Middle American Research Institute, 2002).

Freidel, David, Linda Schele and Joy Parker. Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the
Shaman's Path (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1993)

Garcia, Hernn, Antonio Sierra and Gilberto Balm (trans. Jeff Conant) Wind in the Blood:
Mayan Healing and Chinese Medicine (Berkeley, CA, North Atlantic Books, 1999)

Hart, Thomas. The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya (Albuquerque, University of New
Mexico Press, 2008)

Kettunen, Harri, and Christopher Helmke, Introduction to Mayan Hieroglyphs (Leiden, Wayeb
& Leiden University, 2005)

Kunow, Marianna Appel. Maya Medicine: Traditional Healing in Yucatn (Albuquerque,
University of New Mexico Press, 2003)

Molesky-Poz, Jean. Contemporary Maya Spirituality: The Ancient Ways Are Not Lost (Austin,
University of Texas Press, 2006)

Museo de la Medicina Maya. La Medicina Maya (San Cristobal de las Casas, Museo de la
Medicina Maya 2007)

Organizacin de Mdicos Indgenas del Estado de Chiapas. Plantas Medicinales Mayas:
Recetario (San Cristobal de las Casas, Orginazacin de Mdicos Indgenas del Estado de
Chiapas, 2012)

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Redfield, Robert, and Alfonso Villa Rojas. Chan Kom: A Maya Village (Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1962)

Sanic Chanchavac, Jos, Medicina Maya (Guatemala City, Consejo Maya Junajpu Ixb'alamke,
2012)

Tedlock, Barbara. Time and the Highland Maya. (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico
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______________ Zuni and Quiche Dream Sharing and Interpreting, in Dreaming:
Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations, ed. Barbara Tedlock (Santa Fe, NM School
of American Research Press, 1992), pp. 105-131

136

Kenneth Johnson holds a B.A. in
Comparative Religions from California
State University, Fullerton. He obtained
his Master of Arts in Eastern Studies
(with an emphasis in Classical Sanskrit)
from St. Johns College, Santa Fe. He is
the author of numerous books and
magazine articles, of which Jaguar
Wisdom: An Introduction to the Mayan
Calendar is the best known. His other
titles include the Mythic Astrology series
(with Arielle Guttman) and Mansions of
the Moon: The Lost Zodiac of the
Goddess. A student of Mayan
spirituality and languages, he divides his
time between the United States and
Guatemala. Ken can be visited at
www.jaguarwisdom.org.


Anita Garr has been a student and
explorer of Mayan spirituality since
1990, the time of her first pilgrimage
to the ancient Mayan ceremonial
sites. She has traveled extensively in
southern Mexico and Guatemala,
studying with numerous Maya elders
and priests. She has cofounded or
participated in cultural preservation
and humanitarian projects involving
the traditional Kich of Guatemala.
Anita has spent much of the past ten
years in Momostenango, Guatemala,
living with the traditional Kiche
Maya, acting as an international
liaison for them, translating their
messages and getting them out to the
world. She has received extensive
training in ceremonial traditions and
the intricate workings of the Kiche
Mayan ritual (tzolkin) and solar
calendars as well as their healing
arts, folklore and ancient artistic
traditions. She is a university trained
translator, interpreter and secondary
school teacher of foreign languages.