Cleansing Rites of Curanderismo: Limpias Espirituales of Ancient Mesoamerican Shamans - Erika Buenaflor M.A. J.D. 2018

Historical and Cultural Background: The Mexica and Yucatec Maya
The Intersection of Experience and Research

Spirituality, politics, and culture were highly intertwined in ancient Mesoamerica. Sweeping the house, for example, could serve as a limpia rite, as an offering that invited supernatural beings into a home, or it could influence the success of a husband’s fight in the battlefield.¹ The ancient Yucatec Maya and Mexica generally understood sacred objects and spaces as having animate qualities, with their own sacred essence energy. Ceremonial tools and sacred spaces, including buildings and altars, were understood to be imbued with sacrality and were thought to contain a divine soul-like essence that made them living beings. The names given to these ceremonial tools and spaces were explicitly linked with the owner’s sacred essence energy, and naming them commemorated the renewal or activation of the object’s own sacred essence energy.²

This chapter introduces the ancient Mexica and the Yucatec Maya of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, their calendrical systems, and the various types of shamanic trades within their societies. This book focuses mainly on the limpia rites that were typically connected to their calendrical systems, because most of the information we currently have on these rites relate in some way to their calendars. Calendrical rites were likely the most commonly practiced ceremonies because of their importance: they were intricately tied to attempts to understand, divine, and influence nature, as well as human fate.³

Most ancient Mesoamerican peoples utilized the Calendar Round, which was composed of two calendars: a solar calendar of 365 days and a divinatory calendar of 260 days. When the 260-day calendar and 365day calendar were set in motion in alignment with each other, it took exactly 52 years of 365 days, a total of 18,980 days, for a given date to repeat. It should not be assumed, however, that all the indigenous peoples of ancient Mesoamerica practiced limpia rites in the same way or ascribed exactly the same meanings to them. While all cultures throughout Mesoamerica made use of the same Calendar Round system, each one chose to give its own names to individual months, reflecting local environments and distinct agricultural necessities and activities.⁴ I will discuss some of these particular names and meanings of the Calendar Round system.

THE MEXICA

Before discussing the Mexica, it is first necessary to explain the terms Aztec, Azteca, Mexica, and Nahua, as these terms have all been used in academic and popular literature to describe the same peoples, the Mexica. The terms Aztec or Azteca have been used to mean a number of different things, including the empire that encompassed the Anahuac plateau (much of modern Mexico); the people who were the masters of the magnificent lake city, Tenochtitlan; and the four Azteca houses, who left Aztlan, the people’s mythical homeland, in 1064, and finally made their way to Tenochtitlan in 1273.⁵ I use Aztec empire to describe the many different indigenous peoples living on the Anahuac plateau at the time of the Spaniards’ arrival in 1519.

The term Nahua has also been used to denote the indigenous peoples of Central Mexico, mainly because the Spanish friars used Nahuatl as a lingua franca among these peoples. Recently the term Nahua is often used to describe the many indigenous peoples of Mexico and El Salvador. The term Mexica is generally understood as an ethnic marker that designates the Nahuatl-speaking group that inhabited Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, the two island settlements that later became the center of Mexico City. By the early sixteenth century, the Mexica had subdued much of the Anahuac plateau—extending from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and as far south as Chiapas and Guatemala.⁶

When Cortés and his army arrived in 1519, the Aztec empire consisted of 200,000 to 250,000 people, who lived in Tenochtitlan; approximately over one million people lived in the Valley of Mexico, and another two to three million dwelt in the surrounding valleys of Central Mexico.⁷ Although there were cultural and linguistic similarities among the peoples of the Aztec empire, many had their own sets of religious beliefs, different rites, and corresponding deities, and many did not use blood sacrifices, particularly blood sacrifices involving death. Once the Mexica had conquered a city-state or tribe, they tolerated cultural and some socio-organizational differences, as long as the conquered peoples paid their tribute.⁸

The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan, Templo Mayor, 60 meters or 197 feet high, dominated the landscape of the capital. The north side was dedicated to Tlaloc, the rain god, while the southern half was the principal temple of the people’s tutelary deity, Huitzilopochtli. According to various sixteenth-century sources, the southern side of the Great Temple symbolized the mythical mountain of Coatepec, the birthplace of Huitzilopochtli.⁹ Tenochtitlan contained more than seventy-two temples, as well as monasteries, nunneries, colleges, seminaries, artificial ponds, ball courts, botanical gardens, skull racks, and a special dwelling place for foreign gods.¹⁰

Their deities were organized in a hierarchy reflecting that of people. They had familial ties, affections, jealousies, and many other complexities. They had potential influence over the very existence of the world. They also had the capacity to affect the forces of nature. Patterns in nature were explained by the interaction of the forces of the supernatural world with those of the physical one.¹¹

The concepts of duality, equilibrium, and fluidity were integral components of their cosmology and religious philosophy.¹² Duality was a dynamic principle that was constantly changing and gave its impulse to everything. Duality was conceived in a fluid manner, manifesting itself on all planes of the cosmos. This included a dynamic feminine-masculine dyad that was fundamental to the creation of the cosmos and to its regeneration and sustenance. At the apex of the dyad was the creator, Ometeotl (double god or spirit of duality), who was associated with the origins of the universe.¹³ Ometeotl embodied a divine pair whose masculine and feminine poles were, respectively, Omecihuatl (lord of duality) and Ometectli (lady of duality). Ometeotl manifested itself in many other divine pairs and was an active principle that gave foundation to the universe at the beginning of each new age.¹⁴Although Ometeotl was the ultimate source of all, it was the divine pairs who performed the actual deeds of creation. Ometeotl was often portrayed as an aged being with a sagging lower jaw. The Mexica and many other Mesoamerican peoples associated old age with the accrual of more life force.¹⁵

Many of the Mexica deities also had overlapping and competing attributes. Some had a pantheon of attributes and a corresponding deity over all of them for those particular attributes. For example, there was the Teteo innan complex, which has been identified as a complex of goddesses that were variant aspects of one earth goddess.¹⁶ The goddess Toci was also known as Teteo innan (“mother of the gods”) because of her grandmother status within the complex. Toci was associated with spinning, weaving, sweeping, healing, midwifery, divination, and acting as a protector and warrior.¹⁷ The ritual instruments that shamans utilized to invoke or personify her included the shield, the broom, the weaving spindle and batten, and the temāzcaltin.¹⁸ Other goddesses, such as Cihuacoatl and Xochiquetzal, were also part of the Teteo innan earth-goddess complex.¹⁹

Typically, the supernatural was always present in the daily lives of the Mexica. Rain would come if the rain deity was properly honored and appeased. Wind would come and blow strongly or too weakly if a rite dedicated to the rain god had not been done correctly. Spirits could inhabit or embody inanimate objects, such as houses, altars, and statues, as well as natural creatures and wild animals. Auguries and oracles could predict the success or failure of any activity.

The ceremonies and rites of the Mexica were, in their worldview, fundamental to cosmic change and recurrence: they ensured both order and transformation. The most elaborate religious rites were the state rites associated with the Calendar Round. Various beliefs about eschatology and the need to keep the world in cyclical motion and equilibrium during periods of unpredictable liminality, such as seasonal transitions, were integral to these and were observed by many in the Aztec empire. The world of the Mexica was always in a state of flux, while at the same continuously reestablishing itself.²⁰ Ceremonial rites were art forms incorporating devotion and sacrality—understanding, honoring, and working with the infinite interconnectedness of all that is. They were seen as essential to the world’s regeneration.

The Mexica’s 365-day xiuhpohualli calendar was composed of eighteen twenty-day “months.” Each of the twenty days of the month was designated by its own name and symbol (see plate 1). The five days that were left over were regarded as unlucky days, nameless and profitless.²¹ The symbols representing each day of the month also functioned as letters. They were used in writing describing native history and lore, memorable events in war, victories, famines and plagues, prosperous and adverse times. They also taught the days on which to sow, reap, till the land, cultivate corn, weed, harvest, and store crops. If chili was not sown on a certain day, squash on another, and maize on another, for example, people felt there would be great damage. These activities also correlated with the observance of feasts for the gods. Each month, or a period of twenty days, they dedicated to a god, except for two of the months, in which they celebrated the feasts of two gods for each month. So although there were eighteen months, the feasts celebrated in them were twenty.²²

The 260-day calendar, the tonalpohualli, was the fundamental tool of ritual prognostication and divination (see plate 2). The secrets of the divinatory calendar were shown and explained only to a few.²³ There were twenty day signs, and it was said that they reigned over thirteen days each, making 260 (13 × 20) days altogether. The good or bad fortune of a day sign could be tempered by their coefficient number of repeating cycles of 1 to 13, which would cycle numerically and pair with a day sign: 1 Cipactli, 2 Ehecatl, 3 Calli, 4 Cuetzpalin, 5 Coatl, 6 Miquiztli, 7 Mazātl, 8 Tōchtli, 9 Ātl, 10 Itzcuintli, 11 Ozomahtli, 12 Malīnalli, 13 Ācatl; and then return back to 1, 1 Ocēlōtl, 2 Cuāuhtli, 3 Cōzcacuāuhtli, 4 Ōlīn, 5 Tecpatl, 6 Quiyahuitl, 7 Xōchitl, 8 Cipactli, 9 Ehecatl, and so forth.²⁴

Divinatory specialists, tonalpouhque, would construct auguries for individual days using their multiple associations in one or more almanacs, interpret the meaning of their multiple auguries, and render a prognostication for the timing of both daily and ritual activities, such as the fortune and life events of those born under them. This calendar was believed to express the relationship between time and space on the one hand and the world of the divine and the gods on the other. Each day sign was dedicated to a god or elemental force, the provider of tonalli (sacred essence energy, solar heat) for the day.²⁵ The tonalpohualli was consulted for various types of matters, including marriages, deaths, and when to initiate battles and feasts.²⁶ The 260-day calendar is still used among some Oaxacan peoples.²⁷

There were many different types of shamanic trades, with particular specialties. There were some shamans, who resembled priests in that they did not marry and often served a particular deity:^*8 the cihuatlamacazque (female shaman), tlamacazque (male shaman), and tlenamacac (higherranked shaman who was responsible for performing human sacrifices and the New Fire Ceremonies).²⁸ Some other shamans and their trade specialties include: temacpalitotique (who could possess people to do things); tlacatecolotl (sorcerer); temixiutiani, tietl, or tlamatqui (midwife); mecatlapouhque (who used strings to divine the origins of illnesses); nahualli (shape-shifting shaman); tetonalmacani (a diviner and shaman who restored tonalli); and telacuicuilani (who sucked out illnesses).²⁹

Sahagún describes many others. He tells of some who could breathe evil on people, cast the evil eye, and perform sorcery.³⁰ Other shamans were skilled at opening pathways to good fortune for people and conducting platicas.³¹ Some shamans were highly skilled at healing with herbs, trees, stones, and roots. Others could set bones, give emetics, and create healing potions.³² Still others could press places in the body, totlatlaccaia, to heal the mind, body, and spirit.³³ There were shamans whose specialty it was to conduct dream interpretation.³⁴ It is likely, in fact, that there were hundreds more different types of shamans, possibly each with their own different specialty. Because sacred objects and places were often seen as having a soul essence, and were consequently treated in some ritualistic way, shamanic rites were a common part of life for most people.

Being incredibly skilled warriors, the Mexica rose to power very quickly after their arrival in 1273. By the fifteenth century, they had formed a triple alliance with two other very powerful city-states, Texcoco and Tlacopan. But first Tlacopan and then Texcoco found their privileges and power diminishing under the unyielding pressure of the Mexica. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, their alliance with the Mexica was more honorary than actual.³⁵

When the Spaniards arrived in February 1519, the Mexica were undergoing a social transformation because of extraordinary prosperity procured by military conquest and great expeditions.³⁶ Tenochtitlan was headed toward becoming a single-headed state. Many of the indigenous peoples of the Aztec empire and the surrounding areas were resentful of the Mexica, tired of paying taxes to this young and ambitious city-state, which had aggressively risen to power so quickly, and as a result many peoples joined forces with the Spaniards to finally defeat the Mexica on August 13, 1521.³⁷

YUCATEC MAYA

Before talking about the Yucatec Maya, I will discuss the terms Maya and Mayan, as these terms have been used differently by academic and popular scholars, and they have not necessarily been adopted by all indigenous peoples. The meaning of the term Maya has changed notably over the years. From the time of the Spanish conquest up to the twentieth century, the term Maya only applied to the natives of the northern part of the Yucatán, people who spoke the language, Yucatec Mayan. This area was known as Mayab before the arrival of the Spaniards. At this time no indigenous groups outside of the Yucatán ever used the words Maya or Mayan to refer to themselves; rather, they came to be applied by anthropologists and historians to the many different peoples and languages of the area, including those who never even made use of the terms in referring to themselves.³⁸

Currently, relatively few K’iché’ or Tzotzil people, for example, identify themselves as Maya: the term has little ethnic meaning or frame of reference for them.³⁹ Some indigenous peoples from regions identified as being part of the Maya civilization have for many reasons appropriated the term Maya. Individuals may even identify themselves as “Maya elders,” even though they may not be from the Yucatán or speak Yucatec Mayan.⁴⁰

What has been identified as the Maya civilization rose and developed over the course of many centuries and encompassed most of the course of Mesoamerican history.^*9 The Maya were neither politically nor culturally a single, unified people. There were approximately thirty distinct Mayan languages in the sixteenth century, and most are still spoken today. The Maya civilization consists of three principal periods, each reflecting its own particular art styles and architecture: Preclassic (400 BCE—250 CE), Classic (250—909 CE), and Postclassic (909—1697 CE).

The core characteristics of the Preclassic period of the Maya was the use of the Long Count calendar and stelae (slabs of stone) that were placed in front of their ceremonial centers and political buildings. These stelae were generally carved with hieroglyphic inscriptions accompanying historical portraits, reflecting the rise of a new political ideology and dynastic kingship. The Classic period is typically identified with the height of the Maya, who expanded into more than sixty kingdoms in central Mexico.⁴¹ There were relatively few Maya languages spoken during the Classic period. The number of languages increased as the culture fragmented over time.⁴² The Postclassic had the bulk of the populations largely concentrated in the northern Yucatán and southern areas of Guatemala and Belize. During this period, the Maya no longer used the Long Count calendar or stelae to express the institution of divine kingship.⁴³ Despite the diversity, Maya culture remained remarkably homogenous throughout the lowlands, from the Petén to the Yucatán Peninsula.⁴⁴

Ancient Maya religion was largely polytheistic, having several divinities, often with overlapping and competing attributes, as well as deity complexes that had multiple manifestations of a single unity of being, where a single deity could be part of more than one complex. Despite their diversity, the religions of the various Postclassic Maya peoples, the peoples I principally focus on in this book, shared many traits in common. Some of these include introductions from Postclassic Mexico, which had close political and economic ties to the Maya region. An example would be the central Mexican deity, Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent, who was called Kukulcan by the peoples of the Yucatán and Gucumatz by the highland peoples.

Most shared religious elements derive from a deeper level of Maya culture and appear in the texts and art of the Maya lowlands in the Classic period. Their images of deities likely represented forces of nature, as well as supernatural beings.⁴⁵ The Classic Maya term ku or ch’u, which can refer both to specific gods and to the general quality of sacredness, reflects this understanding.⁴⁶

Itzamna was one of the principal creator deities and appeared throughout Classic and Postclassic art.⁴⁷ His consort was Ix Chel, who had an array of attributes and a corresponding deity for each of them. The moon deities, and sometimes the moon-earth deities, reflect this complex.⁴⁸ Friar Diego de Landa, a Spanish missionary and sixteenth-century ethnographer, identified this complex and the variant names of Ix Chel, goddess of the moon, childbirth, and medicine, as being Aixchel, Ixchebeliax, Ixhunié, and Ixhunieta.⁴⁹ Currently this complex of deities is often grouped together into two gods: Deity I and Deity O.^*10 Deity I is identified as having both youthful and aged aspects, whereas Deity O is the aged deity who is associated primarily with the term chel (“rainbow” in Yucatec Mayan).⁵⁰ The younger Deity I has been identified as Ixik Kab (“lady earth,” in Yucatec Mayan) and is associated with earth, fertility, weaving, and lunar aspects. Deity O is associated with weaving, aspects of the moon and agriculture, fertility, midwifery, divination, medicine, and sweat baths.⁵¹

The Maya observed calendrical rites associated with both the Long Count calendar and the Calendar Round. The Long Count is a remarkably sophisticated and complex calendric system that incorporated massive periods of time and had the 360-day period called tun as its basic building block, with five units of time.⁵² Typically, the highest unit was the bak’tun (roughly 400 years), the next was the k’atun (roughly twenty years), then the tun (360 days), then the winal (20 days), and finally the k’in (a single day).⁵³ Long Count dates are typically presented with the bak’tun first and the k’in position at the end, followed by the Calendar Round (e.g., 9.15.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 13 Yax, which corresponds to August 20 in the Gregorian year 731 CE).⁵⁴ Various limpia rites were performed for particular Long Count unit endings. The books of Chilam Balam, a Maya prophet credited for auguring the coming of the Spaniards, encompasses the most important corpus of colonial Yucatec information concerning the auguries of the K’atun.⁵⁵

The Maya’s 365-day calendar, the ha’b, is composed of 20 days and 18 periods, with 5 unlucky days at the end of the year. These 5 days were referred to as the wayeb’ or xmak’aba’k’in (the unnamed days).⁵⁶ The day signs may refer to food, plants, seasons or other telling characteristics of a particular period. For example, yaxk’in is “dry season” or “winter;” mol means “harvest.” Periods were also probably understood as animate beings in their own right.⁵⁷ Each period had its own limpia rites of cleansing and renewal and particular tools to facilitate these processes. The 365-day calendar is still observed by many modern-day Maya communities as a type of civil calendar. Currently, the K’iché’ Maya of Momostenango, Guatemala, refer to the calendar as the masewalq’ij, “the common days.”⁵⁸

The 260-day divinatory calendar of the Yucatec Maya was the tzolk’in (a term invented by archaeologists).⁵⁹ There were 20 day signs, each of which reigned over 13 days. The 13 days ran in sequence and then started again. The Yucatec Maya used this calendar largely for divinatory and shamanic purposes.⁶⁰ Each of the 20 day names had a specific association and supernatural patron, and many had associations with natural phenomena.⁶¹ The tzolk’in calendar is still used throughout highland Guatemala and parts of Mexico, such as communities in Oaxaca, among speakers of the Mixtec language.⁶²

The Yucatec Maya typically had a high shaman whom they called ah-kin may or ahuacan may. He was held in great reverence by all the chiefs and by many shamans, who routinely gave him offerings and contributions. The ah-kin counseled chiefs on many matters and answered their inquiries.⁶³ Other Yucatec Maya shamans and their trade specialties included the chilán (diviner within the town), ah cunal can (animal charmer), ah cunal than or pul yaah (spell caster), ah dzac-yah (doctor and surgeon), ah pul cimil (who was able to cause illnesses in others), ah uaay or ch’a-uay-tah (shapeshifter), and nacoms (war officer, who was imbued with the spirit of the gods).⁶⁴

Figure 2.1. Eighteen months of the Maya ha’b.

SD-4101. Drawing. Maya. Glyphs and names of the [eighteen] months of the [ha’b] or 365-day solar calendar. Drawing by Linda Schele. Copyright © David Schele.

Figure 2.2. Twenty days of the tzolk’in.

SD-4100. Drawing. Maya. Glyphs and names of the twenty days of the tzolk’in or 260-day sacred calendar. Drawing by Linda Schele. Copyright © David Schele.

Other shamans healed by the use of herbs, ceremonies, and rites. There were shamans who specialized in the calendrical systems and the many related ceremonies, the administration of their sacraments, the omens of the days, different forms of divinatory work, and remedies for different types of sicknesses.⁶⁵ The Yucatec Maya soothsayer shamans were excellent statisticians, diligently assessing and documenting historical patterns, looking to the past to see what might happen again, and assessing related variables. They often used limpia rites to influence healing, purification, birth, rebirth, and revitalization.