Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

that was the perfect day to meet the Nine Benevolent Spirits.
“It is the holiest day of the year,” he explained. “It’s the day the Maya
Spirits go out visiting their people all over these Maya lands.”
I was a little confused. “Why is Good Friday a holy day to the Maya?” I
asked. “It’s a Christian holiday. What does it have to do with the Maya
people?”
“You mustn’t believe everything you hear, child!” he answered. “Jesus,
Mary, and Saints like Michael, Joseph, Gabriel, Margaret, and Magdalene
came to this land of my people many centuries ago. When they came, the
nine Maya Spirits called a heavenly council with them. They’re not like you
and me, you know. They’re not jealous or full of envy. No, they all got
together at this big meeting and decided to work together for the salvation
of the peoples’ souls. Together they answer our prayers, heal the sick, and
hold our hands when we die.”
Don Elijio also prayed to the Four Virgins. “Didn’t they tell you of the
Four Virgins in Catholic school?” he asked me, exasperated. Patiently, as if
speaking to a child, he explained about the Virgin of Carmen, the Virgin of
Guadalupe, the Virgin of Fatima, and the Virgin of Lourdes. “We pray to
them and they answer with miracles, Rosita. Faith is what moves them to
work for us.”
As he told me about the Virgins, I realized that the four aspects of Ix
Chel, queen of the Maya Goddesses and the mother of all people, had
simply been transferred to the Virgins. Ix Chel was the overseer of four
domains: as a young maiden spirit, she was in charge of childbirth and
weaving; as an elderly crone, she looked after medicine and the moon. The
indigenous people of Central America had conveniently cloaked their
Goddess by making her four in one and one in four. Four was also a holy
number to the Maya. It was like the mystery of the trinity: three in one and
one in three.
Don Elijio’s religion was clearly a mix of the old Maya and Spanish
Catholicism. I asked him if he had heard about the Christian Saints when he
was a boy, and he admitted he had not. It was not until the Catholic priests
told the villagers they should honor them too that he had added them to his
cosmology. I thought to myself, it had been wise of the Maya elders to
allow their religion to absorb certain aspects of Catholicism rather than
have their own completely obliterated as pagan competition.