Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

man’s hand back and forth, causing the marble to dance about on the
flattened palm. Panti moved his face closer to the object, pushing up the
glasses the doctors had given him and looking directly into it before
pointing and exclaiming, “Yes. There it is. Do you see that black dot? That
is your bad luck. That is your illness. Envy. Pure envy.”
Panti smiled like a doting father at the man and continued his diagnosis.
“Maybe you eat well, have a good job, have handsome cattle or beautiful,
obedient children. Your neighbor begins to feel jealousy toward you. That
makes you get sick in the head. You lose all your courage and drive. Don’t
worry, my friend, we can cure that easy. I understand all of this.”
I had no idea what Panti was doing, but I had the feeling I was getting a
glimpse of the heart of his work. It was clear that he was more than a man
of plants. In some way, the cement house was as much a Maya temple as
the ancient pyramids where shamans had healed mind, body, and soul with
physical and spiritual means.
I thought, perhaps, that he was what I had heard called a H’men (Hehmén).
H’men translates as “one who knows.” It was an honored title given
to doctor-priests or priestesses of the ancient Maya civilization long before
Cortéz and Bishop de Landa carved out the soul of the culture they found in
the New World.
Juanita awoke me from my thoughts, saying, “The old man is very
funny, isn’t he? He laughs and jokes all the time—nothing is serious to him.
I can see his loneliness and grief as a widower. Were I not a married
woman, I would be tempted to stay with him. He is not poor and a very
loving man. He would care for a woman well.”
A short time later, the family filed out of the house and took seats on a
roadside bench. Each person carried a bag of medicine. They looked
cheerful and relieved, handing each other cookies and sodas. As they waited
for a lift back to town, they seemed more like carefree tourists than the
fretful patients they had been an hour before.
Panti came back to the hut and took his customary seat at the chopping
block on the floor. His cheeks glowed.
I wanted to ask so many questions, but I didn’t know how to start. I
didn’t want to pry or seem rude. Finally I said, “A lot of laughter in there,
huh?”
He grinned and shrugged. “Oh, yes. Most people think too much, but
get them to laugh and half of their trouble and sickness will go away.”