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Contemporary Maya Spirituality

Author: Jean Molesky-Poz

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2009-06-23

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0292778627

An authoritative study of the indigenous religion still practiced in Guatemala based on extensive original research and participant observation. Jean Molesky-Poz draws on in-depth dialogues with Maya Ajq’ijab’ (keepers of the ritual calendar), her own participant observation, and inter-disciplinary resources to offer a comprehensive, innovative, and well-grounded understanding of contemporary Maya spirituality and its theological underpinnings. She reveals significant continuities between contemporary and ancient Maya worldviews and spiritual practices. Molesky-Poz opens with a discussion of how the public emergence of Maya spirituality is situated within the religious political history of the Guatemalan highlands, particularly the pan-Maya movement. She investigates Maya cosmovision and its foundational principles, as expressed by Ajq’ijab’. At the heart of this work, Ajq’ijab’ interpret their obligation, lives, and spiritual work. Molesky-Poz then explores aspects of Maya spirituality, including sacred geography, sacred time, and ritual practice. She confirms contemporary Maya spirituality as a faith tradition with elaborate historical roots that has significance for individual, collective, and historical lives, reaffirming its own public space and legal right to be practiced.

The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya

Author: Thomas Hart

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0826343503

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The myth and ceremony of Maya beliefs have been sustained for over five hundred years in spite of massacres, persecution, and discrimination.

Transcendent Wisdom of the Maya

Author: Gabriela Jurosz-Landa

Publisher: Bear

Published: 2019-03-26

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781591433347

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An initiate’s inside account of ancient Maya spiritual practices alive today • Includes a Foreword by José Luis Tigüilá NABÉ kaxbaltzij, spokesperson of the Maya municipality • Details the initiation process the author went through to become a Maya shaman-priestess, including rituals, prayers, and ceremonies • Explains the foundational spiritual wisdom of the Maya calendar as a living entity, its cycles of time, and the significance of “the counting of the days”, which helps keep time itself alive • Examines the power of dance and Maya ceremonies, Maya future-telling, and communication with ancestors through the sacred fire Offering an insider’s experiential account of ancient Maya spiritual wisdom and practices, initiated Maya shaman-priestess Gabriela Jurosz-Landa opens up the mysterious world of the Maya, dispelling the rampant misinformation about their beliefs and traditions, sharing the transcendent beauty of their ceremonies, and explaining the Maya understanding of time, foundational to their spiritual worldview and cosmology. The author, an anthropologist, details the initiation process she went through to become a Maya shaman-priestess in Guatemala, including rituals, prayers, the presence of numinous forces, and the transmission of sacred knowledge. She explains the spiritual wisdom of the Maya calendar as a living entity, its cycles of time, and the significance of “the counting of the days,” which helps keep time itself alive. She examines Maya spiritual and cosmological concepts such as how the universe is shaped like a triangle over a square. She reveals the profound power of dance in Maya tradition, explaining how ritual dance halts the flow of time, reactivates primordial events, and captures vital energies that keep the Maya spiritual tradition vital and alive. Exploring other Maya secret knowledge, she also details Maya ritual attire, Maya future-telling with the calendar, the reading of the Tzi’te beans, and how the Maya communicate with ancestors through the sacred fire. Illustrating how contemporary Maya life is suffused with spiritual tradition and celebration, the author shares the teachings of the Maya from her initiate and anthropologist point of view in order to help us all learn from the ancient wisdom of their beliefs and worldview. Because, to truly understand the Maya, one must think like the Maya.

Voices from Exile

Author: Victor Montejo

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780806131719

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Elilal, exile, is the condition of thousands of Mayas who have fled their homelands in Guatemala to escape repression and even death at the hands of their government. In this book, Victor Montejo, who is both a Maya expatriate and an anthropologist, gives voice to those who until now have struggled in silence--but who nevertheless have found ways to reaffirm and celebrate their Mayaness. Voices from Exile is the authentic story of one group of Mayas from the Kuchumatan highlands who fled into Mexico and sought refuge there. Montejo's combination of autobiography, history, political analysis, and testimonial narrative offers a profound exploration of state terror and its inescapable human cost.

Indigenous Cosmolectics

Author: Gloria Elizabeth Chacón

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2018-09-28

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1469636824

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Latin America's Indigenous writers have long labored under the limits of colonialism, but in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, they have constructed a literary corpus that moves them beyond those parameters. Gloria E. Chacon considers the growing number of contemporary Indigenous writers who turn to Maya and Zapotec languages alongside Spanish translations of their work to challenge the tyranny of monolingualism and cultural homogeneity. Chacon argues that these Maya and Zapotec authors reconstruct an Indigenous literary tradition rooted in an Indigenous cosmolectics, a philosophy originally grounded in pre-Columbian sacred conceptions of the cosmos, time, and place, and now expressed in creative writings. More specifically, she attends to Maya and Zapotec literary and cultural forms by theorizing kab'awil as an Indigenous philosophy. Tackling the political and literary implications of this work, Chacon argues that Indigenous writers' use of familiar genres alongside Indigenous language, use of oral traditions, and new representations of selfhood and nation all create space for expressions of cultural and political autonomy. Chacon recognizes that Indigenous writers draw from universal literary strategies but nevertheless argues that this literature is a vital center for reflecting on Indigenous ways of knowing and is a key artistic expression of decolonization.

Religious Transformation in Maya Guatemala

Author: John P. Hawkins

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 0826362257

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Drawing on over fifty years of research and data collected by field-school students, Hawkins argues that two factors--cultural collapse and systematic social and economic exclusion--explain the recent religious transformation of Maya Guatemala and the style and emotional intensity through which that transformation is expressed.

Popol Vuh

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780888999214

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Mayan civilization once flourished in what is today Guatemala and the Yucatan. The Mayan sacred book the Popol Vuh tells of the creation of the universe, the world of gods and demi-gods and the creation of mankind.

Return of the Children of Light

Author: Judith Bluestone Polich

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2001-08-01

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1591439264

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A personal exploration of the conjunction between ancient Mesoamerican prophesy and New Age higher consciousness. • Selected by the Independent Publisher's Book Awards as one of the top two New Age books of the year. • Explores ancient prophesies and their relevance in the contemporary world. The Incan and Mayan cultures saw themselves as “children of light”--descended from celestial realms--and their prophecies foretell a time of great spiritual awakening. They prophesied a time when the gateways to higher consciousness would open once again. That time is now. Award-winning author Judith Bluestone Polich draws on her extensive research in quantum physics, archeoastronomy, holography, cosmology, and pioneering studies of human consciousness to show how science and contemporary thought are consistent with this ancient knowledge. As the ancients predicted, the human god-seed is beginning to awaken, and modern civilization is finally beginning to perceive human potential in ways that the ancient cultures accepted as truth. Polich introduces techniques for awakening our own human potential through dreaming, meditations, and the power of sacred sites.

The Book of Destiny

Author: Carlos Barrios

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0061574147

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Discover What the Prophecy of 2012 Means for Your Life According to the Mayan Elders, at the moment of birth every human being is given a destiny. Our life challenge is to develop ourselves and our skills in order to fulfill this destiny, thus fueling our individual contribution to the planet. At the heart of The Book of Destiny is the sacred Mayan calendar, an extraordinary tool that allows the reader to discover this destiny, along with one’s special Mayan symbol, origin, as well as the protection spirits that accompany them through life. Poetically narrated, the book describes how the calendar contains the scientific legacy of the Mayan people, preserved and transmitted over the centuries through oral tradition and written texts. Written at the request of the Mayan Elders, by member of the Guatemalan Elders Council and Mayan Priest Carlos Barrios, The Book of Destiny is a tool to help people understand their life purpose and to use this profound knowledge to make the best of their time on earth.