The Ancient Maya: Savage Sacrificers or Great Wisdom Teachers?

The movie “Apocalypto” portrays the ancient Mayas as savage and violent worshippers of Gods that demanded bloody human sacrifice and torture. According to contemporary Mayan elders, this is a sadly distorted and false picture of the essence of Mayan culture. In fact, one of the most well known and respected independent researchers of the Mayan cosmology, John Major Jenkins, writes: “What emerges from study of Mayan time-philosophy is nothing less than a grand galactic cosmovision unparalleled in world traditions.” *

Leonide Martin, author of the visionary novel “Dreaming the Maya Fifth Sun,” writes: “The true legacy of the ancient Maya is a vision that connects humans intimately with the galaxy. They were master astronomers who understood the cycles that tie earth life to the movements of the stars. All the forces of nature were alive to the Maya, they were consummate observers and based their conclusions on meticulous observance of nature’s laws. They also knew how to communicate with these forces through mystical techniques of spiritual development… They used techniques similar to the meditations, postures and self-disciplines found in yoga. These practices are enhanced by the powerful resonances created through the geometric energies of the pyramids, which have strong effects on human energy fields and our thought patterns.” **

Doesn’t sound very primitive, does it? It brings up the entire question of “progress” and our assumption that we, in our western techno culture, are definitely superior to less “developed” cultures of the past. How could the ancient Maya, who had no telescopes, no metal, not even the wheel (except as a child’s toy) have built such complex and awe inspiring temples and cities and have known so much about the cosmos?

In fact, the sacred Mayan Calendar may have the key to our own future. According to the Mayan Calendar, we are in the last days of a great cosmic cycle, which began in 3114 BC, and will end, according to Jenkins and others, December 21, 2012. Don’t you have a sense that time has been speeding up? The Calendar says that’s true. Its just 500 years since the printing press was invented; 50 years since the computer was invented--and now our children grow up in a culture of instant, worldwide communication due to the internet and cell phones. We’re global villagers on a lovely blue planet in space, whizzing about, fast consuming our precious resources, going whither?

The Mayan Calendar has proved to be uncannily accurate in predicting just about all of the movements of recorded history, according to Swedish Biologist and Mayan Calendar expert Carl Johan Calleman*** Astronomers tell us that on December 21, 2012 our sun and the solar system will align with the center of our Milky Way Galaxy – an event that only occurs once every 26,000 years. That’s bound to have a profound effect on earth. Will there be a human evolutionary leap leading to a golden age of peace and bliss? Or will there will be global catastrophe, apocalypse? It isn’t just the Maya who predicted some kind of “end time” in 2012. The Hopis and other Native American peoples, the Vedic astrologers of ancient Indian, the Egyptians, Qero elders of Peru, the Dogon Tribe in Africa and the Aborigines in Australia have similar predictions.

There is much mystery about the ancient Maya. Here are just a few intriguing questions:

What did the Maya mean exactly by “the end of the Great Cosmic Cycle?”

According to Hunbatz Men, Mayan Shaman and authority on Mayan culture, the Maya were the first to recognize and use the value of zero in their mathematics.****

There are an estimated 3,000 archeological sites related to the Mayans in the Yucatan peninsula alone, only about half of them excavated. Yet, most of these Mayan sites were abandoned between 800 and 900 AD and large numbers of Mayans disappeared. Granted there is new evidence of a great drought at that time, where are the bones, the burial sites? Few exist.

How did the Maya come to their understanding of a system of temporal and spiritual time, intermeshed like gears, including the movements of the sun, moon and Venus?

Why did the Mayan value crossed eyes and flatten their foreheads by strapping boards to the heads of their babies?

Why did the Mayas and Aztecs so readily accept the Christian cross?

Women were just as important in ancient Mayan society as men, but represented in a more hidden way. Priestesses and important queens are documented. What was it really like to be a woman in an ancient Mayan city, and how were the feminine deities represented?

Contemporary Mayan shamans have answers for these questions. While archeologists are making new discoveries every day in the Mayalands and there are ever more books on both spiritual and archeological aspects of the culture, if you really want to understand the Mayan cosmology, and experience first hand some of the secrets of the ancient temples, you must be lucky enough to meet and study with an authentic Mayan shaman. Every Mayan site has a unique personality and focus. Without an initiated guide to show you where to look and how to discover the secrets locked in the stones, you will stand in front of the pyramids and complex carvings of the stelae and be amazed, perhaps—but it is not likely you will penetrate their mystery.

When I first visited the Mayan sites of Palenque and Tikal, I was impressed but I didn’t know what to make of it all. The magnificent architecture seemed inaccessible, the complex and convoluted carvings difficult to take in visually and quite incomprehensible. It wasn’t until I was taken to Uxmal near Merida in the Yucatan (one of the best restored and most beautiful sites) that I had my first mind-expanding experience of the sacred energies encoded in the stones. I was told to stand in particular places on either side of the ruler’s throne, and there I felt, without being told, powerful opposing forces that strongly affected my body. How is it possible that these effects were built into the stone form in such a way as to still be entirely active today? As I read and study more about the Mayans, the mystery deepens and my awe grows

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Notes:

*“The Mystery of 2012” compiled by Sounds True, pg. 41. See also the works of John Major Jenkins, eg. “Galactic Alignment: The transformation of Consciousness According to Mayan, Egyptian and Vedic Traditions”, published by Inner Traditions, 2002 and other works

**Leonide Martin, Introduction to “Dreaming the Maya Fifth Sun: A Novel of Maya Wisdom and the 2012 Shift in Consciousness,” Infinity Publishing, 2006, website, www.mayafithsun.com.

*** “The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness,” Inner Traditions, 2004

## Wikepedia

**** Hunbatz Men, “Secrets of Mayan Science/Region” Bear and Company 1990, www.themayas.com.mx for Hunbatz Men

Article Source: http://www.spiritarticles.com

Caite Mathis is a Life Coach and Founder of Turtle Island Coaching in San Diego. Part of her mission as a coach helping people to discover and follow the path of their heart is to educate them about the Mayan cosmovision. She offers tours where people can study with shamanic teachers in Mexico, including an 8-day tour to visit Chichen Itza and other Mayan sites with internationally known Mayan Shaman Hunbatz Men, Jan 21-28. Contact Caite at 619.565.5264. www.turtleislandcoaching.com

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