Mayan Cosmo vision of the Gods
In the Mayan Cosmo vision there are three levels in which their Gods/ Goddesses are viewed upon the Tree of life. The Maya envision these as three vertical layers of this Cosmo vision.
1. The starry arch of what we call heaven. (Upper world)
2. The stony middle world (Earth)
3. The dark waters of the underworld (Underworld)
All three levels of these domains are alive, inter related and infused with sacred power. For the Maya and many of the Worlds indigenous population "What is above so is below"
These three Worlds can be described in our terms as the Physical, the Spiritual and the Cosmic realms.
The Gods and Goddesses are representatives of the Supreme being "Kili'ich HUNAB KU" Or that which contains everything.
These deities are regents of the various levels and configurations of the Universe, and they in turn have representatives in the three vertical layers of the Underworld, the World and the Upper world.
In the Mayan Cosmo vision everything that exists contains Spirit.
Story telling plays a huge part in the Mayan culture and one which keeps alive the essence of the Gods and Goddesses for future generations.
It is also a unique way of keeping their deeper meaning hidden from those who are not Spiritually evolved enough to understand their esoteric meaning and in the process protect their ancient wisdom.
This is why the Maya and many of the Worlds ancient cultures would disguise their true meaning in a seamless myth, a metaphor story about human relationships or a natural phenomenon that occurs annually.
In this way everything that is holy to indigenous people can be kept alive in story telling, hiding it in a coded language known only by each tribe or culture and passed down from one generation to another verbally without any loss of it's true purpose and so to the casual listener nothing is ever revealed.
The ancient Maya and those who still follow the sacred traditions speak in their stories about everyday life in the village, these include the village gossip, families struggles and failures and the romance of love affairs of the people. This is a mirror to what we in the West use in our everyday soap operas on television, except the Maya use their daily struggles of life to portray the hidden story of Spirit. And whose everyday life we see in our Western culture as the Trees, animals, plants, rocks, weather patterns and the Heart of the Sky and the Heart of the Earth.
The annual cycles of the environment are the family records of time and what the Maya perceive as being Divine. These metaphors are how the Maya are taught through story telling to accomplish the day to day activities from the Gods. They literally read the signs given in nature as a kind of hidden instruction from the Cosmos which allows them to live a harmonious and balanced life guided by the Divine.
The Maya in their villages do not see celestial bodies as mere objects in the Sky, where in the West we refer to them with no real meaning or reverence as in the Sun or the Moon. To Maya and indigenous cultures they are sacred beings, part of their Spiritual family.
They speak to them in terms of our Father/ Father Sun and Grandmother Moon when used for Praying or when communicating to other people in their community.
If they use a direct term this would depend on location and type of tribe or culture because each has a different name for them. For example the word for Sun in Yucatec Mayan is K'in but in the K'iche Mayan it is Q'ij, similarly the Yucatec Mayan for Moon is Uc and in Tz'utujil Mayan it is Iq. All depends on the particular dialect of Maya you speak and of which there are 23 types of languages in present use.
What is a common theme for all tribes of the Maya is that the Sun and Moon are used sparingly and only when these celestial bodies are absent from the sky. They use these terms to talk about them as objective phenomena, instead of speaking about them as Spiritual family.
The Mayan stories, then show us not only what the Gods did in the beginning of time, during creation as told in the Mayan codices, but also what they continue to do today. In this way, what we do in our daily lives is also a reflection of what the Gods are continuing to do right now for indigenous cultures.
In the indigenous concept of how the Gods do things in normal village life it looks, to the less evolved as being just a natural phenomena.
Western thinking is that of the Sun only being a hot orb in the sky which comes up each day traveling through the sky and goes down at the end of the day. For uninitiated people there are no stories, no meaning therefore no connection, all of which leads to a Spiritual sickness of the Soul.
The Mayan understanding of the Sun differs because it is part of a story that has life and adds true meaning to the Sun God as a living being. Father Sun has a job which sees him rise each day by using his energy to feed the people with his warmth and giving life to the World and throughout the Cosmos. Tirelessly he works getting exhausted by the end of the day, hungry, he ends the day and feeds and sleeps before rising the next day. All indigenous cultures know this, they know by giving life to their stories they are helping to feed the Sun which feeds the very essence of what it means to be an initiated being.
They know that Father Sun works hard and has periods when he struggles like all humans do, therefore they assist Father Sun as they do Grandmother Moon and all their Gods and Goddesses with their stories, Prayers, Blessings to feed their deities.
Like a good Father, the Sun provides us with all we need to grow with warmth, light and food and the indigenous cultures are well aware that they are the children of the Sun.
Their stories keep alive the Gods and Goddesses and in the process their culture is kept alive.
They understand that sacred beings do not live in a distant World but one that is intimately connected to our own. All the stories of the ancients, all those cultures knew this which is why it is echoed throughout so called history.
Nothing is separate from us, nothing is apart from us, it cannot be because the Universe is part of everything, the everything that is the ONE.
In the Mayan Cosmo vision their Gods like us work, they sing, play, have children, suffer, get upset and are filled with love and Joy. And when they die they transform themselves, as do we.
In the environment the rocks work, as does the wind, the rivers work, all the animals work.
It is only in our preconceptions that we in the Western culture do not see stone as working, in their World, life is slow they live in another dimension which is parallel to our own.
The Gods and Goddesses of all indigenous cultures are not the Gods of the rivers, of the Sea, the Moon, the Sun or the Trees, they are the rivers, the Sea, the Moon, the Sun and the Trees.
They are entwined in folklore for a reason, for a purpose because the Ancients and the indigenous people of today still firmly believe. They have not had the veil of forgetfulness placed over them or been lost in the World of materialism. Because of this they have kept alive their traditions through their prayers and thoughts, they stand as an example to follow.
Their deities live in the Underworld and Upper World but their representatives we see all around us in this World as our natural phenomena, the Earth we walk upon, the rocks we build upon and the food we eat are all sacred manifestations of the Gods shown in our world.
They fully comprehend what it is to be part of something rather than claiming to own something. Indigenous cultures know that the land they live on does not belong to them rather they are part of that land.
We do not own the Earth we inhabit, we are merely guests here. Mother Earth carries us in the same way a tree carries fruit.
To claim to own something is destructive, to be part of something is a whole different idea altogether and something only the initiated person can fully conceive of.
Divine Love and Blessings to all
In Weet Laak'ech
M.Yaxk'in
Mayan Yuum Balum (Jaguar Priest) and Shamanic Energy Healer
Teacher of Ancient Wisdom and Channeler
No comments:
Post a Comment