Rainforest Home Remedies: The Maya Way to Heal you Body and Replenish Your Soul

PART I

Introduction to Maya Medicine

Far too many people think of the Maya as a people from the past, perhaps because of all the attention focused on the fascinating cities that their ancestors left behind. I too am thrilled at the sight of the ancient temples, palaces, and mounds scattered throughout Belize and Central America. Ix Chel Farm, my home, is built on top of one.

Having lived among the Maya for thirty years, I can assure you that they are very much alive! Many of their twenty-eight languages are still spoken today throughout parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. In addition to their languages, some of their ancient traditions remain intact. Maya medicine is one of the richest traditions to have survived the destruction wrought by the Spaniards.

Maya architectural, astronomical, mathematical, and engineering feats have fascinated us for generations, but few people are aware of their sophisticated and effective medical system. When I first began working with Don Elijio in 1982, I was mainly interested in absorbing his knowledge of plants and herbal remedies so that I could incorporate it into my own healing practice. Although I had lived alongside the Maya and the Nahuatl Indians in southern Mexico for years, I knew next to nothing about their large body of medicinal knowledge.

Only gradually did it dawn on me that Don Elijio and the Maya had much more to offer than just plant knowledge. Indeed, their knowledge and use of plants is only one, albeit very important, part of their worldview.

Anthropologists consider Maya medicine a medical-religious system. In essence the Maya have a two-pronged approach to healing. They have remedies for a wide range of physical ailments that any individual or health practitioner would be pleased to add to a healing repertoire. As part of the visible world, physical ailments—like stomachaches or infected wounds—are handled with natural-empirical or naturalistic knowledge.

The Maya have equally effective remedies, however, for the ailments of the spirit that the human eye cannot see, such as sadness, grief, fright, and envy. They are part of the magical-mystical world, and have traditionally been the responsibility of the h’men. Maya healers believe that these ailments involving the soul and spirits are supernatural in origin, and that supernatural forces can both sicken and heal.

The natural and supernatural bodies of knowledge are intertwined. For example, Maya plant lore does not exist in a state of separation from the human soul. This concept is sometimes difficult for the modern mind, trained in separatist ideology from infancy, to grasp. The union of these two worlds allows Maya medicine to go beyond modern medicine.

I am especially taken with Maya spirits, the concept of spiritual illness, and spiritual healing. I love the way the Maya spirits are an intimate part of daily life—respected in so many activities, not just during a weekly appointment in a church or synagogue. Maya spiritual healing can help fill the emptiness and longing at the root of so much illness.

Over the years I have begun to find the magical side of Maya medicine extremely useful—for both my patients and myself. The Maya paradigm has opened doors that I never imagined existed. Their ideas about spiritual illness have helped me understand why some people get well and some don’t, even when their illnesses and treatments are the same.

There is plenty of room for this kind of wisdom in our modern culture. Since the 1960s Westerners have been storming the gates of Eastern healing traditions, and that intense interest has not subsided. We suggest that it would be wise to look south and add Maya wisdom to our banks of planetary knowledge.

Traditional healing is a tapestry that has been woven by humans throughout history. The patterns reverberate from culture to culture, and the themes are universal. Much of what you will read here about the Maya will resonate with what you know intuitively. Although the Maya contribution to the tapestry has been neglected, the colors and patterns remain, reflecting world wisdom for those who choose to see.

Every once in a great while the folly of one century becomes the common sense of the next. The time of the Maya has arrived. Time, you might say, has caught up with them. Or perhaps it is just that the rest of us have finally caught on.

There is a legend that the old godlike prophet-king of the Maya and Aztecs will return one day. He is known as Quetzalcoatl to the Aztecs and Kukulcan to the Maya. Both of these names refer to the plumed serpent or feathered snake. The snake has been a symbol of medicine and healing power since ancient times for many cultures around the world, including the Maya.

This great god-king prophesied that white men would come to these lands on the wings of a dove, and that men would lead them with two different feet. One foot would be that of a dove and the other that of an eagle. The white people would claim to be doves but would act like eagles. They would eventually steal the red man’s land, religion, women, and dignity, and the ensuing period of slavery and suffering would last for hundreds of years.

Then one day other white men would appear with both feet like those of the doves, proclaiming love and brotherhood. These are the ones who would join the red man in an era of renewal, respect, and reverence for the nearly lost ancient ways. Gradually, says the prophecy, the red man will regain his former position and join the white men with the feet of doves in building a better world.

Síx Príncíples of Maya Medícíne

Here are the basic principles of Maya medicine as still practiced throughout Central America today.

1. Ch’ulel, or Life Energy

Like other indigenous cultures from Alaska to Brazil, the Maya recognize and honor the sacred within all forms of life. Plants, trees, stones, animals, and humans are all sacred.

Everything in creation is permeated with what the Maya call ch’ulel—a vibrant energy force that the Maya believe emanates from a divine spiritual source. The Maya see the entire cosmos as imbued with ch’ulel—houses, mountains, springs, sacred places, the sky, the earth.

The word ch’ulel has the same root as ch’ul, or k’ul, a word used by the ancient Maya to describe holiness and divinity.¹ The ancient Maya kings were called ch’ul ahaw, lords of the life force. Ch’ul is also one of the Maya words for soul.

Ch’ulel is akin to Qi or chi—the energy force described in Chinese medicine, the Indians’ prahna, the Huna’s mana, and the Voodoo mojo. Although missing from modern medicine, the concept of life force is found in healing and spiritual beliefs around the world and has been around as long as humans have been around. Look for it in cabalistic writings and traditions, the works of pre-Socratic Greeks such as Heraclitus, the teachings of the Ojibwa, and pantheism. In contemporary popular culture it is no less than the force in Star Wars. Whatever the culture, ch’ulel is a universal truth that allows us to weave our disparate selves into the fabric of the world.

Sharing Ch’ulel with

Wild Animals

In Yucatec Maya communities a chanul is a supernatural guardian or protector. A chanul shares ch’ulel with a person from birth and usually takes the form of a wild animal. In shamanic terminology a chanul is sometimes called a power animal.

Belief has it that when a person is born, a corresponding chanul is born in the spirit world. This chanul remains corralled there until called forth to assist and protect. Some shamans call upon chanuls for help. Others, like Don Elijio’s teacher Jeronimo Requena, have the ability to transform themselves into their chanuls. They can transfer their ch’ulel to their chanul.

If all of nature is imbued with ch’ulel, it makes sense that Maya healers can use plants, stones, animals, minerals, water, and especially prayers to heal. At the very heart of Maya medicine is the concept that medicine is all around us. We pass it daily right on our very doorstep; we also find it at roadsides and in trees, plants, stones, animals, dreams, and prayers. The Earth Mother is the great wellspring of medicinal power.

Prayer also resides in the heart of the Maya system. Prayer sends the ch’ulel where it is needed, focusing it like a laser beam or energy conduit and thus leading to transformation. It is like a magnet: prayer attracts ch’ulel.

In an interview in Omni magazine, the late Maya scholar Linda Schele explained: The important interactions in life are not between human and human, human and place, human and animal but between the ch’ulel and those things. Humans can lose some of their ch’ulel, then need to go through ceremonies to get it back.

The concept of soul, or ch’ulel, loss is a common shamanic theme. The Zinacanteco Maya believe that the ch’ulel has thirteen parts.² Illness occurs if one or more of these parts leave. Soul loss is a very important concept: many of the Maya healing traditions—including the most practical, hands-on ones—call or lure the soul back into the body. One of the main goals of Maya healing is to balance the flow of ch’ulel that moves in and out of the body.

2. No Separatíon of the Spírítual and Physícal Realms

It follows then that if energy is everywhere, there can be no separation of mind and body and soul. Ch’ulel is present in each, and each is equally important to human health, well-being, stability, and the achievement of that elusive state of balance—human happiness.

To the Maya the spiritual and physical realms are a continuum separated only by what I imagine as a translucent gossamer veil through which the h’men has the power to penetrate. Woven throughout the veil are human emotions, which are expressed in both physical and spiritual ways.

The veil is translucent because the two realms need to be visible to each other. They need regular contact to stay in balance. There are a number of ways in which humans can peek through the veil and communicate with the spiritual realm. Among the most important are prayer, dream visions, ritual, and ceremony.

What is on the other side of the veil? The Maya cosmology is complex and based on confusing sources, so I am going to explain it as Don Elijio explained it to me. He said that the other side of the veil is where the Maya spirits live. Don Elijio loved to talk about the Maya spirits, which he called his muy buenos amigos, or very good friends. Indeed, he addressed these spirits as if they were his friends. He believed that they would be lonely if they were not actively involved in human affairs, and that they especially loved healing and healers.

Who are these spirits?

The spirits are manifestations of ch’ulel, and the purveyors of ch’ulel. They work alongside human beings and respond to their prayers. This is why the Maya healer believes that when a person’s ch’ulel becomes depleted, prayer helps to fill it up again.

Don Elijio had special relationships with certain spirits whom I came to know through him as the Nine Benevolent Spirits. In Spanish these are known as Los Nueve Espiritos Beneficos de los Maya or, in Mayan, Bolon Tiku. Don Elijio called them Bolon Ik.

They are not God, but they are the right hands of God, he used to say. They do God’s work. They are the Lords of Thunder, Lightning, Rain, Corn, and the Forest.

The Maya have a lovely image to describe the spiritual world behind the veil. In its center is a giant ceiba tree—also known as the kapok tree—the denizen of the rainforest. In Mayan the tree is called yax che. Yax has three meanings: green, first, and sacred. Che is tree.

The Story of the Popul Vuh

The Popul Vuh is the great religious and mythological epic of the Maya. Similar to the Bible and Greek mythology, it tells the story of the creation of human beings, and in it you are sure to notice universal themes.

The Popul Vuh recounts the journeys of mythological heroes and describes the world of the Maya gods. The myth is thought to be a compilation of many myths, and as such has a much deeper meaning than the story itself implies; it tells of the ancient Maya’s ideals and beliefs and broadens our insight to ancient Mayan culture, explains James A. Fox, a Popul Vuh scholar at Stanford University.³

The story starts with the gods who create the earth and cover it with animals and plants. They long to create beings who will walk, work, and talk in an articulate and measured way, visiting shrines, giving offerings, calling upon their makers by name.⁴

This is easier said than done. The divine progenitors first fashion beings from mud. When the mud beings fail to live up to expectations, the gods create a race of wooden beings. These are replaced by beings made from flesh. These first flesh beings, however, turn to wickedness. A great flood sweeps the earth and destroys them.

The gods decide to seek the counsel of an elderly god-couple named Xpiyacoc and Xmucane. According to Dennis Tedlock, Xpiyacoc is the divine matchmaker and Xmucane the divine midwife. They are daykeepers or diviners who are older than other gods.

The trunk and branches of the tree are above the earth. The roots are below. The root level represents the underworld, and the upper world is the trunk and branches.

The branch world and root world of the tree of life mirror each other: one is dark, one is light; one is seen, one is not; one is yin, one is yang. One gathers nourishment, one is nourished. The underworld and the upper world couch our physical world. The realm in which we reside separates the two worlds and at the same time serves as the portal between them.

The ancient Maya cosmos is a trinity. One tree, three worlds. Within this trinity the Maya, like other cultures, have a dualistic view—they see the world as an eternal struggle between above and below, between good and evil.

At this point the authors of the Popul Vuh turn their attention to the adventures of the heroic gods who make the sky and earth safer places for human habitation. They focus mostly on the twin sons of Xpiyacoc and Xmucane—Hunaphu (no relation to the god Hunabku) and Xbalanque, who are known as the Hero Twins.

To make a long story short, Hunaphu and Xbalanque tame the Lords of Death—the gods of the Maya underworld, which is called Xibalba.

Each time the Xibalbans try to kill them, the twins cleverly evade death. Eventually they make the Lords of Death so angry that they know they will be killed, so they arrange their own deaths in a way that allows them to be reborn. When the twins come back to life, they defeat the Lords of Death, banishing them forever from the world of humans.

Once the Hero Twins force the dark and wild forces of the universe underground, the stage is set for the fourth creation, the one in which we live today. The authors of the Popul Vuh return again to their original question—the creation of humans.

The Gods get news of a mountain filled with yellow white corn and Xmucane—the divine midwife—grinds the corn from this mountain very finely, and the flour, mixed with the water she rinses her hands with, provides the substance for human flesh, explains Tedlock.⁵

Four men are created out of this dough. They are everything the gods want. In fact, they can see the world with as much clarity as the gods can. Feeling threatened, the gods put a fog on human vision and then fashion four wives for the new men. From here on the Popul Vuh tracks the history of the Quiche Maya.

In the upper world the trunk of the tree has thirteen levels. These are the levels of heaven where there is light and grace and goodness and forgiveness. This is a place of sunlight, growth, and regeneration. Altogether there are thirteen spirits who live above-ground. Together they are called Oxlahuntiku in Maya. Don Elijio called them Oxlahunik.

Don Elijio’s beloved Nine Benevolent Spirits reside on the first nine levels. In general it is they who make daily life possible. They are the oversouls, like the archangels in the Christian tradition. They bring the rain, the thunder, and the seasons and cause all life to thrive and grow. They are the caretakers of the world who look after the people, the animals, the plants, the harvests, the seasons, the day and the night, the crossroads, women in childbirth, and all aspects of daily life. Each spirit is entrusted with certain aspects of life, and their roles often overlap in a confusing way.

The names of these spirits possess a powerful charge of ch’ulel. As a result, Don Elijio believed that their names cannot be revealed to those who do not possess a sastun. This is a real Maya secret—one of the few things I can’t tell you. According to the Popul Vuh—the great spiritual text of the Maya—knowing the names of the spirits weakens their powers.

However, the names of several Maya spirits are household words among the Maya. Ix Chel, for instance, is the goddess of medicine, childbirth, weaving, and the moon, and the queen of all the goddesses. She watches over the sick, women in childbirth, newborns, the healers, and the plants. Ix Chel is the guardian of the forest, and queen of the forest spirits—what Don Elijio called the duenos (in Spanish, overseers or lords) or lords of the forest.

Itzamna, the male god of healing, is thought to be the consort of Ix Chel. Both he and Ix Chel wear snakes on their heads, the symbol of medicine. According to David Freidel, Linda Schele, and Joy Parker, itz is another Maya word for soul. Itzam literally means one who does itz or an itzer, another term for a shaman. They interpreted this to mean that the shaman is the person who opens the portal to bring itz—or soul—into the physical world.⁶

Numbers Are Sacred

Numbers are another powerful manifestation of ch’ulel. The Maya consider all the numbers between zero—which some believe the Maya invented—and thirteen to be sacred. Because there are Nine Benevolent Spirits and Nine Malevolent Spirits, nine is an especially sacred and ubiquitous number in Maya culture. Four, nine, and thirteen have the highest concentrations of ch’ulel. As you will see, these sacred numbers show up again and again in treatments in their healing system. For example, it is common to say nine prayers at one time, combine four different plants in a formula, and make a treatment out of nine different plants.

Maya scholars have uncovered the names of other Maya spirits. For example, Yax Tum Bak is the lord of plantings, and Chac is the Maya god of rain. According to Sylvanus G. Morley, the corn god is Yum Kaax.⁷

Residing above the Nine Benevolent Spirits are the spirits who live on each of the four higher levels of heaven. At the leafy crown of the tree resides Hunabku, the ruling Spirit and the