Curanderismo Soul Retrieval: Ancient Shamanic Wisdom to Restore the Sacred Energy of the Soul - Erika Buenaflor M.A. J.D. 2019
The North of The Ancient Maya
The North: The Space of Ancestral Medicine and Guidance
The Space of Ancestors and Ascension
The ancient Maya associated the North with the color white. Although they also connected it with death, death was not simply a matter of decay. Rather it was a space of complex processes where ancestors could not only be accessed but resurrected, where deceased rulers could be deified and ascend.20 In this context, the North was the direction of up, the celestial realm or Upperworld. As such, it was connected to the zenith of the sun, which intersected with the idealized Upperworld realms of the North, where supernatural beings and ancestors resided.21 The exquisite art and temples of the Maya provide awesome testimony to these qualities of the North. Although the North could be a spatially fixed direction, it was many other things, including a state of consciousness.
North was also the space that intersected with Upperworld realms, which likely included the floral paradise realm, Flower Mountain (see plate 8). The path of the sun was typically portrayed as the route of Flower Mountain, at least until the sun reached its zenith at the North. It was the home of ancestors and other supernatural beings; a paradisal solar afterlife that housed those who had been brave, virtuous, and ethical and served as a mythical place of emergence for gods.22 In art this paradisal flower realm was often linked with mountains; mountain deities known as witz; volutes of music, breath, and wind; polished stones; stairways flanked with serpents; the plumed serpent; spirits appearing as disembodied heads; butterflies; and precious birds (see plate 9).23
In architecture, Flower Mountain was portrayed as a pyramid with stairways flanked with plumed serpents, which served as a symbolic entrance into this paradisal solar realm. Flower World will be discussed in the next chapter, on the East, because it was typically depicted as the place of the dawning or resurrecting sun.24 Flower World nonetheless intersected with the North as the space of the sun’s zenith, where ancestors went, resided, and could be contacted.
Particularly in the Classic period, the northern acropolis was the place where rulers and other members of the elite were buried. The civic centers of Quiriguá, Tikal, Xunantunich, Piedras Negras, Palenque, and Copán had strongly marked north-south axes: the north housed royal tombs, funerary shrines, and sculpted monuments of deceased members of the elite, serving as allusions to royal transition, perpetuation, rebirth, and resurrection.25 The long axes of royal graves were typically perpendicular to the solar path, usually with the head of the deceased pointing in a northerly direction.26
The north of the Twin Pyramid Complexes of Tikal houses an unroofed enclosure with a stela portraying a ruler. Mesoamerican scholar Wendy Ashmore points out that by placing the stela in the north, the Maya intended to signify that this ruler had ascended to the sky with the ancestors.27 The burial chamber of Tikal ruler Jasaw Chan K’awiil was an alternative funerary space used by the living and the dead. The rarified and ritually charged design of the shrine and carved lintels were spaces where descendants could commune with their ancestors by recreating and enacting conjuring scenes. The dynamic design and artwork in these chambers created sacred spaces where ancestors could be conjured and interact with the living.28
The temple of Kukulkan or El Castillo at Late Classic period Chichén Itzá has four sides, mimicking the fourfold partitioning of the world. The axes that run through the northwest and southwest corners of the temple are oriented toward the rising point of the sun at the summer solstice and its setting point at the winter solstice. The northern stairway acts as the principal sacred path, where on the evenings of the spring and autumn equinoxes the stepped terraces of the temple cast triangular shadows across the northwest balustrade wall, giving the impression of a serpent gliding up into the celestial realms.29 According to scholar Linda Schele, “The Maya thought of the entire north direction as a house erected at Creation with the World Tree, Wakah-Chan, penetrating its central axis First Father raised the World Tree, so that its crown stood in the north sky.” 30
The Year Bearer of the North for the Postclassic Maya was muluc. These were fortunate, auspicious years, if people performed their religious duties and offerings.31 The North also presided over the five following tzolk’in day signs from their divinatory calendar: ik (wind), cimi (death), oc (dog), ix (jaguar), and etz’nab (flint knife). Ik referred not only to wind but also to breath, germination, coming to life, and life itself.32 Oc is typically a glyph of the head of an animal, probably a dog, who guided the sun each evening to the Underworld; by extension it was linked with the resurrection of the sun.33 Ix can correspond to the night sun deity who has transformed into a jaguar and is associated with the Underworld. Etz’nab is the day connected to the flint or obsidian knife and sacrifice.34 For the North day signs, we see life-giving properties as well as associations with death and the Underworld.