Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

would become seriously ill. This he accepted with faith that Chinda would
understand their new path together.
The weeks passed. The night before they were to leave, Jerónimo
prepared for Panti’s final blessing. He set out nine gourd bowls for a
Primicia ceremony to introduce Panti to the Maya Spirits. Together, Panti
and Jerónimo made corn atole, burned resin of the Copal tree, and said the
Primicia chant.
As a final instruction, Jerónimo gave Panti the ancient and secret prayer
that enabled him to stalk the night as a jaguar. But Panti didn’t use it. He
had no desire to become a cat. He was afraid that if he did, he’d be shot by
a hunter.
Not long after, Jerónimo fell from a coconut tree and broke his neck. By
the time Panti reached his side, Jerónimo was barely alive. He blessed Panti
one last time and reminded him to always be kind and patient with sick
people and to remember his maestro at future Primicias. The master then
died in his student’s arms, whispering, “I die happy because I have left it all
to you. What you know will be my living memory.”
When he returned to San Antonio, Panti began searching for the
medicines in the nearby mountains and forests. “They were all there—by
now my old friends.” He gained experience in all manner of medical care,
studying with midwives and Chinda’s uncle Manuel Tzib, who had been a
village curandero in Mexico. “I started to heal my family, then the villagers
came, then people traveled from all around to reach me.”
Only one thing was missing in his early practice in San Antonio.
Jerónimo had told him that he would need a sastun in order to communicate
with the Maya Spirits. “He who owns the sastun communes with the Maya
Spirits as if they were close friends,” Jerónimo had said. In the Maya world
only a gossamer veil separates physical from spiritual; by peering into the
sastun a Maya H’men could determine the source of an illness or divine
answers to questions.
Nine times a year for two years, Panti set up the Primicia altar in his
cornfield and asked the Maya Spirits and God to send him a sastun to
enable him to do their healing work better. One day his patience was
rewarded. “I had just finished clearing up the nine gourd bowls from the
altar, when I was overtaken by a great feeling of happiness. It made me skip
and jump like a child all the way home.”