Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

After they departed, I went to the guest hut, where he told me that one
of the men had been involved in a serious crime in San Ignacio, where a
court hearing would be held the following week. He had asked Panti to
enchant the judge and the jury in his favor. I was shocked to know that he
could or would do such a thing, but he explained that the charm only works
if the defendant tells the absolute truth. If he has lied, the charm is broken.
The special prayer for court cases ensures that the defendant is set free after
telling the truth because the judge or the lawyers can’t find a document
crucial to the conviction. Thus the case is dismissed.
Then Panti did something else that surprised me. He brought out the
flour sack he’d carried with him from San Antonio and whispered, “This
bag has my money in it. Hide it for me until we leave.”
I carried the bag into the main house wondering where to hide it.
Peeking inside the bag, I saw stacks of neatly piled and rubber-banded bills
in every denomination. I shook my head in amazement and stashed the little
bag on a shelf over our bed.
Distractions aside, I went back to the kitchen hut and helped Claudia
stoke up the wood stove to boil the blue corn. The setting sun signaled that
the start of the Primicia was fast approaching.
Panti tested and retested the boiled corn until he was sure it was the
right tenderness. Claudia had never participated in a Primicia before this
day. Her Guatemalan village had completely converted to Protestant
fundamentalism when she was just a baby in the 1930s.
She and I put the boiled blue corn through a hand mill and reboiled it
with water and brown sugar. On the altar, we arranged nine white flowers—
one for each of the Nine Maya Spirits—and vases of flowers and bowls of
fruit. Two wooden angels I had brought from Mexico graced either end of
the altar with their delicate wings outstretched and their hands folded in
prayer. Four candles were burning under umbrellas, and beneath the altar
were clumps of the sticky, resinous Copal incense smoking on a bed of
coals. Its rich, spicy smoke swirled up and billowed in the damp winds, as a
light drizzle fell.
Panti and I went to search for Tzibche leaves for protecting the
participants. We found them just yards into the jungle on our property. He
marveled at how much medicine we had growing wild behind our huts.
Returning to the altar, we placed photos of loved ones and people with
health or spiritual problems whom we wanted to be blessed by the Maya