Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

Did having a sastun mean that I was to become a H’men? I wondered. It
was too much to grasp as I slipped off into a gentle sleep.
As the night approached dawn, I felt a powerful tugging on my
hammock, jerking me violently from side to side. It was much stronger than
I had expected.
Suddenly I was turned upside down, suspended in midair and looking
down at the cement floor. I expected to drop out of my hammock at any
moment. My heart was racing and pounding as if it too wanted to get up
and run away. At the moment of greatest fear and panic, I remembered to
say the Our Father, as Panti had told me to do. The hammock swung back
down one last time, leaving me right side up, and the dream vision began.
I stood in the doorway of a compact but tidy room. My friend Thomm
Noble was sitting at a desk in one corner, motioning for me to come in and
sit down. “Come in, Rosita. It’s about your crystal.”
Across the desk sat a young Caucasian woman with a most pleasant and
gentle countenance. She was looking intently into my eyes, offering her
quiet support.
I took a seat in front of a small table, which had a glowing kerosene
lamp on it.
“Look for a cross of light as you pray into the crystal, Rosita,” Thomm
told me. “Repeat the Our Father nine times as you make your request. Wash
the crystal on Fridays with rum, and keep it near you when you work with
sick people. It will strengthen your work.”
He told me to look into the flame of the lamp before me on the table. In
the light of the lamp, he said, I would see the same shimmering cross of
rainbow-colored light that I was to search for in my sastun.
He turned down the flame so that I could look without getting burned. I
bent over the lamp and peered into the brightness. I saw the cross take form.
When I regained consciousness in the morning, I jumped out of the
hammock. Panti was at his table, waiting for me, and I immediately started
telling him the details of my dream.
“The dream was teaching you how to reach the Spirits,” he explained as
we talked.
For the remainder of the day, we were like two playful children with a
secret, delightfully sharing our knowledge of the Spirits who preach in the
night.