Contemporary Maya Spirituality: The Ancient Ways Are Not Lost

by Jean Molesky-Poz

Overview

Since the mid-1980s, when Guatemala returned to civilian rule and achieved relative peace and stability, the Maya have begun openly expressing their spiritual beliefs and practices. Jean Molesky-Poz draws on in-depth dialogues with Maya Ajq'ijab' (keepers of the ritual calendar), her own participant observation, and inter-disciplinary resources to offer a comprehensive, innovative, and well-grounded understanding of contemporary Maya spirituality and its theological underpinnings. She reveals significant continuities between contemporary and ancient Maya worldviews and spiritual practices.

Molesky-Poz opens with a discussion of how the public emergence of Maya spirituality is situated within the religious political history of the Guatemalan highlands, particularly the recent pan-Maya movement. She investigates Maya cosmovision and its foundational principles, as expressed by Ajq'ijab'. At the heart of this work, Ajq'ijab' interpret their obligation, lives, and spiritual work. In subsequent chapters, Molesky-Poz explores aspects of Maya spirituality—sacred geography (the reciprocal relationship between the earth and humans, sacred places, and the significance of the cross or quatrefoil map), sacred time (how the 260-day sacred calendar is "the heart of the wisdom of the Maya," the matrix of Maya culture), and ritual practice (the distinct way and method of ancestral study, with special attention to fire ceremonialism). She confirms contemporary Maya spirituality as a faith tradition with elaborate historical roots that has significance for individual, collective, and historical lives, reaffirming its own public space and legal right to be practiced.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292713154
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	05/16/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	223
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Jean Molesky-Poz was formerly a Lecturer in Ethnic Studies and Native American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. She is currently a Lecturer in Religious Studies at Santa Clara University in California. She holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.

Table of Contents

• Foreword by Daniel Matul Morales
• Preface. Portal: At the Dawn
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1. The Florescence of Maya Spirituality
• Chapter 1. A New Cycle of Light: The Public Emergence of Maya Spirituality
• Chapter 2. Maya Cosmovision and Spirituality: Selecting, Examining, and Stretching Out Filaments of Light
• Part 2: A Cultural Inheritance
• Chapter 3. Ajq'ijab': "To Enter the Mystery Is Our Reality"
• Part 3: The Aesthetics of Space, Time, and Movement
• Chapter 4. Sacred Geography: Reciprocity, Ritual Sites, and Quatrefoil Mapping
• Chapter 5. The Calendar: Unbundling, Interpreting, and Appropriating the Chol Q'ij
• Chapter 6. Ceremony: The Fire Speaks
• Part 4: Thinking, Contemplating, and Acting into the Future
• Chapter 7. The Ancient Things Received from Our Parents Are Not Lost
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index