The Shaman’s World

18th Apr 2021

Mexicolore contributor George Fery

We are most grateful to George Fery, a freelance writer-photographer of pre-Columbian history and archaeological sites of Mexico and the Americas, for writing and beautifully illustrating this introduction to the hidden world of Maya shamanic practices and perception of the world...

The word shaman for most people, carries an aura of mystery and perplexity. Yet, it is a spiritual practice that began with early human societies, and pre-dates conventional religions. For people unfamiliar with, at times, perplexing practices shamanism is often veiled in an obscure and foreign domain. So, together with the respected priest-shamans Tat Rigoberto, Tat Antolin and Tat Nicolasa from Momostenango in the highlands of Guatemala, let us explore the significant aspects of this domain and briefly look under its veil of “mystery.” The qualifier Tat is affectionately granted to highly respected lifetime priest-shamans in Maya-K’iche’ and Tzutu’jil communities, for they are bearers of social mandates and ritual practices that may affect their people’s well-being and economic security. The study of ancient religious practices reveals common attributes in terms of beliefs and other fundamentals across cultures.

Most rituals, age-old and historic, affirm the mythical existence of “another side” of life at the end of our days, as mythical as that “other side” may be. The fundamentals of shamanism rest on the nature-culture dichotomy, a duality correlated with the “field of opposites” in literature, that means interdependent, not in opposition. Shamanic rituals are found in traditional communities throughout the world, but we will focus here on those of the Mayans in Guatemala’s highlands and rituals in the Yucatán of Mexico. So, let us first briefly look back in time when humankind, over 100,000 years before present (BP), had to compete for survival with the claws, teeth, speed and power of the animal world. Human defenses were limited to a powerful brain and a nascent kinship with peers.

For the sake of survival cooperation was crucial, especially for the protection of mothers and infants for, during the last months of pregnancy and after delivery, females could not fend for themselves. Millions of generations ago, the ring of fire was the first awakening of hunter-gatherers to a world beyond their awareness. In the dark of night, the fire lit a circle beyond which everything was threatening. Overcoming the fear of a different world, paid for dearly through trial and error, was the task of select people that mastered the nature-culture duality. The awakening to a spiritual world was grounded in the unshakable conviction that a group’s spatial location is what stood it apart and affirmed its uniqueness to the exclusion of others. At first, the binary spiritual world was identified through daily repetition of natural events such as day-night. Over untold generations, humans slowly came to recognize that their lives reflected that of the natural world of death and rebirths in its endless repetition. Humans, however, realized that they possessed something drastically different from the animal world.

This budding awareness, alien to sensory perception, was the realization of a binary world, that of the animals in nature and the human world of culture. The gateway between the light of day or upper world and the darkness of the night or lower world, was gradually and at a painstakingly slow pace, identifed as two distinct worlds. Individuals that mastered this awakening to the duality of the worlds of nature and culture shall later be called shamans. Over the years, learning, mastery of a mythic world and esoteric exercises were trusted to those individuals to dominate the field of opposites, for their ability to associate with these two worlds. Through time, this perception took hold and became integral to the beliefs of traditional cultures up to our days. Inherited from a long-lost past, it is perceived that all life forms, including the vegetal and mineral worlds, are indivisible from the natural universe, that the Maya-Tz’utujil call rawajal, the “heart of things.”

Neanderthals were aware of an afterlife, as revealed by the remains of rituals found in their burials at the Shanidar cave in the Zagros mountains of Iraq (35,000BP). In the cave is a necropolis with more than thirty-five burials, including that of a baby. Some remains were found lying in a flexed position on a bed of shaped stone points, encased in coffin-like stones with stone slab covers. In Shanidar.IV, the deceased was provided with bunches of seven types of flowers, identified by their pollens, placed in tightly packed clusters at the head and feet of the individual. The “pollens were later identified by palynologists from several medicinal flowers, still used today by poor Iraqi peasants as remedies for minor ills” (Solecki, 1971:245-250). What Sanidar.IV irrefutably shows, is that Neanderthals preceded modern humans in beliefs and rituals that transcend earthly existence. Faith was already there.

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), the greatest religious historian of the twentieth century, defines shamanism as a “coherent system of esoteric beliefs and practices that attempt to organize and explain the interrelationship between the cosmos, nature and man” (1964: 66). The practices of shamanism are language specific, with rituals and deified archetypes grounded in a group’s immediate environment for its subsistence and survival. As my mentor Tat Rigoberto underlines “today the shaman functions are as critical to the lives of traditional communities as they were to their forefathers, because they are indispensable caretakers of the spiritual health of their society.” I ask Tat Rigoberto what do upper and lower worlds in traditional beliefs mean? He explains that the belief in a three-level world is associated with the observation of nature’s cycles, such as the alternances day-night, life-death and the paths of the sun and the moon, among other natural events.

Of note is that worldviews of most ancient cultures are based on a seven-point observation of their spatial universe and its endless repetition. Those are: the four cardinal points, the zenith (benevolent forces), the nadir (malevolent forces) and the center (the living world located at the intersection of the first six points), that is, the seventh point where the observer stands. Of note is the fact that the nadir was believed to be an actual place, abode of malevolent deities below the flat world of humankind. This ancient world view is supported by the observation of the sun and moon as they appear to travel through both the upper and under worlds. The celestial bodies were seen crossing the visible world on an east-to-west path, and continue their course from west-to-east in the underworld at night, to rise again the following dawn.

After all, sensory perception of a flat world could not be denied, since the sun indeed disapeared at dusk to reappear again at dawn at the same place as yesterday, undeniable witness of the eternal return. Shamans, in the context of this worldview, were recognized masters of their community’s sacred landscape, especially for springs and caves - abode of water and their deities.The interface between the upper and lower worlds is the actual world, where the observer stands. The link, between the living and spiritual worlds, is the tree of life or “axis mundi” (axis of the world) that, for Maya communities past and present, is the ceiba tree or “yaaxé” (ceiba pentendra), believed to be used by gods and deities to descend and ascend cosmic levels. In traditional societies, the supernatural powers from gods and deities of other “worlds” is accessed by spiritual leaders in their sacred landscape at locations such as caves, mountain tops and springs.

Shamanic practices are grounded in traditions that span untold generations, in an unbroken chain of ascendants of the same linguistic group. Tat Nicolasa clarifies language as the sole identity qualifier, since it is believed that “malevolent forces may take the shape of a person of the family or clan but cannot speak the language.” Of note is that for most creeds, ancient or contemporary, language is the sole vector that carries the hallowed word of “gods.” That is why shamanic rituals are language specific and conform to the spiritual maturity of the group. For each human society, there is only one tree of life in the world, theirs! This mythical tree is believed to exist for that group alone, for its people are convinced of their uniqueness at the center of the universe.

In the absence of trees in their environment, natural features such as a mountain or a cave will be accorded the same mythical value. In all agrarian cultures, the tree of life is the indisputable expression of immortality or “life undying.” This perception is rooted in the fact that, with few exceptions, the world of plants for all cultures, is the undeniable proof of the persistence and permanence of life through its never-ending cycles of birth and re-birth. Tat Antolin and Tat Nicolasa, both Maya-Tz’utujil’, were very helpful in furthering my understanding of the shaman’s spatial multi-layered organization of their universe. They stress that in traditional societies, the upper and under worlds are perceived as being made of a number of layers that vary from culture-to-culture.

For ancestral societies therefore, “what is learned is more important than what is seen” a remark, by Eliade, that underscores the fact that all myths and beliefs are products of the human mind. In most cultures past and present, “the upper world is regarded as the home of ancestors, benevolent deities, light and life, while the underworld is identified with malevolent deities, spirits, darkness, danger, and death” (Eliade, 1964). Tat Nicolasa underlined the importance of the repetitive seasonal course of celestial bodies in rites, observed through manmade or landscape features to ascertain their regularity. Priest-shamans had to confirm the unwavering regularity of a sun that will never fail to reappear at the exact same place, day after day, solstice after solstice, equinox after equinox. The first sanctuaries were built for deities, mediators between the super-natural world and humankind. For most of early human history, daily sustenance was a persistent concern; the storage of food will be mastered much later in time. Even then, however, dependence on the vagaries of seasons and climate kept communities in constant dread.

Natural events such as unpredictable weather, flood, drought, or insect plague among other factors, brought constant fear, anxiety, conflict and hunger. Archaeological data reported in Science (2018), shows in sediments from Lake Chixancanab, Yucatán, repeated severe droughts during the Maya Classic period (600-900AD) Metcalf and Davis 2007 report in Science & Public Policy Institute (SPPI, 2012) – in “Droughts in Mexico” that in what is perhaps the key finding of their analysis - “dry conditions, probably the driest of the Holocene, are recorded over the period” (700-1200AD). The sole reason for this need to belie entities beyond human condition was food and maize in particular. The Mayans have a deep reverence for maize, for the gods created them out of maize dough. It therefore is not only their main staple and daily sustenance, but is associated mythologically with their very existence, their soul.

Catastrophic droughts were ascribed to malevolent deities’ actions to punish the priesthood and the nobility for their lack of devotion, and who were at times overthrown as failed agents of the deities. It is no wonder then that humans sought solace and help from their shamans, needed go-betweens, to commune with the “Otherworld” and help carry people’s unpredictable burdens. The name shaman is gender neutral, and applies to men and women alike, recognized in traditional communities as religious specialists and masters of the sacred landscape. Initiation rituals, however, are gender specific by reason of the candidates’ physical and emotional particulars. Shamans of both gender may act in concert for specific situations when called to ward off malevolent male and female deities, as well as during ceremonies when under stress by hostile forces from both gender. In the Americas, it is relatively common for husband and wife to be shamans; Tat Antolin and his wife Tat Nicolasa are an example.

Both agree with Eliade that “the role of shaman is performed by intelligent individuals who fulfill a number of important functions in their communities. They are healers, say prayers, direct puberty rituals and major ceremonies such as at the time of crop planting and harvesting among others, and for individuals’ life cycles. They are keepers of the genealogies of the community, recite myths, do ritual dances and chants during traditional events. They are very knowledgeable about nature and influence decisions for hunting and conservation of resources. Their function as mediators in situations of social conflict within the community or with another group, is very important” (1964). They may not, however, for any reason including sickness, use their abilities for themselves. They then need to call on another shaman or a medicine man or woman, to help them in their predicament.

Priest-shamans repeatedly confirm Eliade’s pertinent remark that “shamans are first and foremost mediators between this world and the supernatural world.” Furthermore, Tat Rigoberto adds, “together with the village headman or council of elders, shamans manage the community’s conflicts and priorities that emerge with changes and events from beyond the village.” For “they need to constantly reshape the perception and ideas of the “kaxlan” world (Maya-K’iche’ for “world of foreigners”), while they still must answer to their own fundamental beliefs shaped by thousands of generations” (Tedlock, 1982). Eliade explains how a shaman is selected by his community. “The position of shaman may be inherited or revealed in a vision or a dream. Someone may also become a shaman “simply by following the vocation, but in this case, the shaman is considered less powerful” (Eliade, 1954:47).

Tat Antolin concurs with Eliade that “as a general rule the shaman is not accepted in his community unless he or she has received two essential kinds of teachings: the mastery of ecstasy (dreams, trances, etc.), and traditional shamanic techniques, that will include learning the names and functions of spirits, the mythology and genealogy of the tribe, develop a secret language, and other ritual aspects” (Eliade, 1965). In most traditional societies, initiation requires years of arduous studies under the guidance of an elder shaman. In Colombia, the Kogi Indians require two nine-year cycles before ultimate initiation. Gender relationship within a group, Tat Nicolasa explains, is governed by “ancestral family and community-tested rules that aim to keep antagonism and latent violence at bay.”

For example, the nature-culture duality is underscored at the time of menstrual cycles perceived in ancient and traditional cultures as a dreaded return to nature. As such, the event “is recognized as a recurring antagonism to culture, given its uncontrolable nature.” At that time, in most traditional societies, a woman is confined to a separate hut, that is, she is temporarily excluded from culture. In the case of young males, the initiation to adulthood aims at bridging the duality to forcefully incorporate the individual into the group. Prior to initiation, the young boy is still assimilated to nature, as is a girl before coming of age. Tat Antolin points out that rituals “aim at testing the young man through lengthy isolation from family and the social group with often painful rites such as circumcision, for pain leaves a powerful imprint on a young mind.”

In most ancient cultures initiation for both genders, natural for females and ritual for males, took place at puberty to confirm the ultimate break with nature while asserting the cultural character of the individuals and their new status in society. Tat Rigoberto stresses a key aspect of rituals governing relationships between descendants and ancestors (the nan’tats), saying that, “in traditional societies, ancestor worship is the intangible constituent of individual and family spiritual lives.” He underlines that “shamans may assist in interceding with ancestors, but it is the descendant alone that shall address the forefathers to intercede in the resolution of family or individual conflict.” Ancestors, as Eliade remark, are “believed to influence the lives of individuals of the same patrilineage, trusted to help settle disputes with ancestors of other patrilineage for grievances that may have taken place a few generations before, unsettled at the time of the demise of the interested parties, the antagonism still lingering beyond the grave” (Eliade,1964).

Ancestor worship brings us to the core of shamanic practices and rites, associated with the remains of selected ancestors through second burial. The continued postmortem presence of select ancestors in the past, took place in the family’s residential complex. Second-burial rituals observed in the Yucatán today, are also witnessed in other traditional communities of the Americas, albeit with local variations. In the Yucatán, after two years or more to account for the decomposition of soft tissues, the process calls for the ancestor’s body to be removed from the grave. The bones are then cleaned by women who have long passed the age of reproduction. They are then placed in a small wooden crate (3x3x2 feet), lined with a flowered hand embroidered cloth. The crate is then set in a permanent setting in a different dedicated cemetery. This ceremony is attended by members of the family who, at that time, share with the departed their lives, hopes and concerns, while thanking the ancestor for their own lives.