Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

Panti wanted to consult his sastun to verify that the Spirits had indeed
sent me this gift. He lifted the little clay jar out of the rusty Oval-tine can
where he stored his sastun.
He removed the washcloth that he kept stuffed into the neck of the jar to
prevent the sastun from rolling out. Then he blew into the jar before spilling
out his round, translucent marble into his hand. It sparkled, having just
received its weekly bath, in rum, to cleanse it of the many questions he had
asked it during the week.
He blew on it three more times, then placed it back into the jar. My
crystal sat on the tabletop, while he twirled the jar around it, uttering a
Mayan chant. I heard the word sastun and my name repeated several times.
He motioned for me to open my right palm to receive his sastun, just as
I had seen him do with hundreds of patients. I took it in a loose fist and
shook it like a pair of hot dice at a Las Vegas casino.
As I shook, I began to get nervous. Could Panti be wrong about this? If
it is a sastun, why was it sent to me through such an ambiguous path? If it is
a magical instrument, what am I to do with it?
Would the sastun draw patients to me? Did I want people seeking me
out as they did him? How would I handle the types of cases that required a
sastun?
I felt like turning and running away.
“Come to the doorway, where I can see,” said Panti, so excited he didn’t
notice my confusion. “My eyes are terrible this week,” he continued. “I
think I’ll be blind before long, then who will there be to pull me around?”
he asked, not really waiting for a response.
I opened my trembling palm and he moved it back and forth until his
sastun danced about on my clammy skin.
“It is done, my child. This is a sastun,” he said firmly. “The Maya
Spirits have sent it to you. They have accepted you.”
I slumped onto a wooden stool and blankly watched him chant over my
crystal in Mayan, moving his clay jarrito about it in some sort of merry,
consecrating dance.
My thoughts tumbled over each other in an unruly frenzy. I was thrilled.
I was frightened. I believed. I didn’t believe. Was this foolishness or
guidance?
Closing my eyes for a moment, I leaned against the hot cement wall,
drawing in a slow, deep breath and praying quietly, muttering holy words as