Mesoamerican Traditions
Movement · Mesoamerican Traditions○
Rigoberta Menchú and the Maya Spirituality Movement
A Guatemalan Indigenous rights movement, led by a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, that won formal legal recognition for Maya spiritual practice.
What it meansFor the movement, spirituality is the root of Maya identity: keeping the sacred calendar, honouring its daykeepers and offering fire ceremonies to Mother Earth and the ancestors are lived as acts of cultural survival and dignity.
The FindingA 1995 accord gave Maya religious practice formal legal standing in Guatemala for the first time, following decades of suppression. Parts of the account that first brought international attention to the movement were later disputed by another researcher, a dispute reported here without adjudicating it.
Thread · Mesoamerican Traditions○
The 2012 Phenomenon
The belief that the Maya Long Count calendar predicted transformation or catastrophe on 21 December 2012.
SignificanceFor its believers the date marked the close of one great world age and the dawn of another: not destruction but a collective shift in consciousness, in which humanity would awaken into harmony with the earth, the galaxy and the cycles of cosmic time.
The FindingThe date itself is real Maya arithmetic, recorded on a seventh-century monument that predicts no catastrophe.
Book · the 1550s
The Popol Vuh
Saved in a Friar's Hand
It survives only through the mission sent to replace it: one friar's copy, the original long gone.
SignificanceThe gods make humans three times and fail — mud dissolves, wood has no memory, and only maize holds a mind that can speak and remember its makers. Human beings are read as the material that turned out to be capable of gratitude.
The FindingThe oldest surviving Popol Vuh is a Dominican friar's copy made between 1701 and 1704; what became of the K'iche' manuscript of 1554–1558 is unknown, and Christenson allows that it may still be at Chichicastenango, with village elders or in the town archive.
- Ceremonial CacaoMaya / Modern Esotericism
- Curanderismo, Teresa Urrea and Niño FidencioMexican / Mexican-American folk healing
- Mexicayotl and Danza AztecaMexica revival
- Rigoberta Menchú and the Maya Spirituality MovementMaya (Guatemala)
- The 2012 PhenomenonModern Esotericism / Maya
- The Aj Q'ij (Day-Keeper)The Count Kept by PeopleMaya (K'iche')
- The Crystal SkullsModern Esotericism / claimed Mesoamerican
- The Dreamspell CalendarModern Esotericism
- The Equinox Serpent at Chichén ItzáMaya / Modern Esotericism
- The Huei Tzompantli and the Sacrifice QuestionAztec/Mexica
- The Popol VuhSaved in a Friar's HandMaya
- The Sarcophagus Lid of K'inich Janaab' PakalMaya
- Tortuguero Monument 6Maya
- XibalbaDown the Black RoadMaya