Shamanism and the ancient Maya
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Shamanism has been recognized amongst many different cultures and many different time periods as a way to communicate with the supernatural world in order to understand what is going on in the past, present, and future. It has been seen as a means to an end to ask the question of why things are happening the way they happen.
Shamanism and the ancient Maya Was a time in the ancient Maya, this source was crucial for answering questions pertaining to harvests, lost relatives, warfare, and so much more. The shaman of a particular group was seen as a leader, both spiritual and political, and was held in high regard amongst the cosmological system of Mayan society and hierarchy. Political events, social relationships, economic relations, and village and family life were all seen to be controlled by the supernatural in the eyes of the Maya.
There was a constant threat in the Mayan subconscious of supernatural retaliation, and this is what kept society in order and placed the shaman as a leader both politically and spiritually. He was the high priest of society and was the center of rituals in which all people gathered. The people all had to know what omens were shown and what communications were spoken between the shaman and the Mayan deities. Most important, the shaman acted as an intermediary between humans and the supernatural for the purpose of intervention in order to gain favor from the deities and discover the meaning of events and what the future would hold.
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[edit] Roles of the Shaman in Mayan culture
[edit] Life and Death
When a man or woman became ill in Mayan society, they would summon a shaman. The shaman typically used a combination of prayers, ceremonies, and herbal remedies to cure his patients. The Maya area is relished with copious amounts of medicinal herbs and plants that were at the disposal of the shaman to concoct a remedy for the particular illness.
Several seventeenth century Maya manuscripts listing many ills and the corresponding cures, have been passed down to anthropological academics and some of the remedies are seen to have some merit and are still used today. Many of them (particularly the so-called Chilam Balam books) have a combination of medieval European superstition mixed with Maya magic.
It is well known that the Maya had a serious fear of death and when a friend or family member had passed, their grief was very profound and long endured. It was during these periods that the shamans were at high demand. They were typically being used in burial ceremonies in which the shaman would help conduct in order to send the deceased to the other side with good favor. Typically, the common people of Mayan society were buried under or behind their house while the ruling classes had more elaborate burials and ritual ceremonies. The bodies of the people in high esteem were usually cremated and their ashes placed in great urns and stored in temples. This practice has been confirmed by excavations in the pyramid supporting High Priest's Tomb at Chichen Itza, in the substructures of Temples A-1 and A-XVIII at Uaxactun, and in the pyramids of the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque.
[edit] Communications for Understanding in Rituals and Ceremonies
As stated earlier, the shaman was the main individual that one turned to in Mayan civilization when questions arose concerning the future of events inconceivable to regular people. The shaman was the intermediary in which one would go through to communicate with the gods. This communication was crucially important for the Maya to find out if they were going to war or if they were going to have a plentiful harvest. If the future looked bad, whether that be for harvesting time or for the beginnings of war, there would typically be a ritual sacrifice held to honor the gods. To the ancient Maya, the main purpose of this ritual was the procuring of life, health, and sustenance and this was gained in respect and honor of their deities. Sacrifice was one of the main rituals performed in honor of the gods in which the shaman oversaw. The ceremony could range anywhere from offerings of food to the presentation of valuables to the practice of human sacrifice. These offerings typically varied in terms of the importance of the urgency of the occasion.
Another common form of offering amongst the Maya was blood letting. Often an obsidian blade was used to pierce the male penis and a rope was dragged through the hole while the blood poured about in offering to the gods of fertility. Other common forms of blood letting were typically performed on tongues, lips, and ears. Most forms were typically performed on males but, a few examples have been shown with the piercing of the tongue in the archaeological record on females. Structure 23 at Yaxchilan shows a prime example of the ritual of blood letting.
[edit] Altered Consciousness in Ritual
[edit] Use of Alcohol
The use of alcohol in Mayan rituals was particularly used for divination purposes in which the shaman was to foretell future events, misfortune, reasons for illness, and many more issues otherwise not understood. The shaman used alcohol as a vehicle in which to alter his consciousness and take him to another plane of reasoning in which he could physically see the spirits and communicate with them. The typical form of alcohol drank by the shaman was a substance called pulque that was abundant in the surrounding region of Mayan settlement. This substance was made from the combination of maize and agave. Very important to note however is that the use of alcohol was only permitted for shamans in the act of attaining a higher consciousness and also for ritual feasting which was an essential component of social life for the ancient Maya. Intoxication was justified by its higher purposes and it was highly discouraged when used anywhere outside of these realms.
[edit] Use of Hallucinogens
The Maya also used substances other than alcohol to raise the shamans state of awareness as a part of their divinatory ritual. The use of hallucinogens and other psychotropic substances were seen as a way to escape the material world to communicate with the unseen powers. These experiences were then used to answer specific questions and predict future events.
The Maya used leaves from their wild tobacco plants, which were much stronger than ours today, and smoked them in order to induce a trance like state. The Maya highlands are a natural habitat for the production of many different species of wild mushrooms containing hallucinogens. There has been evidence for these mushrooms in stone figures found in the southern Maya area of Kaminaljuyu. Also, writings from the Spanish conquest mention several mushroom varieties including: xibalbaj okox, "underworld mushroom," in respect to the Mayan belief of being transported to a supernatural realm. There have also been mention as to other types of hallucinogenic ingestion for ritual purposes including peyote, morning glory, and the poisonous gland of the tropical toad Bufo marinus.
