Riders to The Sea - Odin, written by Linda Munson Peth

The Mam

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The Mam

"San Martin Chile Verde - Mam
These people join with their neighboring villages in secret worship on the edge of the deep crater lake on Mount Chicabal. No one knows what goes on there" (Petterson, 216).
 
A secret ceremony in a sacred grove was not limited to the Druids or the old Norse ceremonies. The indigenous people of Central America also worshipped their heathen gods in such places. No doubt a similar type of activity went on in the Central America groves as happened in the Northern European groves.

Laguna Chicabal

The Mam Mayas have archetypical ceremonial similarities to European customs:

"In the traditional Tz'utujil-Maya town of Santiago Atitlán, in the highlands of Guatemala, ancient rituals are conducted throughout the year, especially in the cofradía or confraternity houses, where images of both Christian saints and old Maya gods are kept. But they reach a climax of intense activity during Easter Week. For the Maya this is a five day festival — all over by Saturday morning — and a period which is also the five 'dangerous days' of the ancient Maya calendar."  
 
The dangerous days for the Maya are much like the dangerous nights of Samhain. The Irish in Riders to The Sea are like these Mayans in that they are nominally Christian yet retain the memory and practices of the old  religion with its gods.

It was believed that during the time of the Irish Samhain, the invisible curtain that separated the world of the dead and the world of the living became somehow permeable and allowed the spirits of the dead to revisit places where they once lived. Some spirits were benign, but some were believed to play tricks or try to exact vengeance upon the living. It was much the same for the Mayans during the extra five days of their calendar year called Wayeb:

"Foster (2002) writes, 'During Wayeb, portals between the mortal realm and the Underworld dissolved. No boundaries prevented the ill-intending deities from causing disasters.'"


The modern day Mayans in Guatemala venerate an ancestor called Maximon, a descendant of a god called the Mam whose main focus is believed to be vengeance.


Symmetry, Balancing the Cosmos during Semana Santa

In England, during festivals celebrating ancient customs, people parade such figures as the Jack-In-the-Green through their village, held high for all to see, much as the Mayans parade the old god, called The Mam or Rilag Mam, a.k.a. Maximon during Holy Week.

The Catholic priest celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, while the shaman of the village brings the old god down from the rafters or loft and "brings him back to life" again.(http://www.mesoweb.com/features/balancing/11.html)

During Wednesday, Odin's day in English, of the Mam's holy week, the Mam hangs from a tree, although the significance of this is obscure. There may be an archetypical sameness for all men who hang in and from trees, from Jesus, the Mam, and Odin to the Hanging Man in the Tarot deck.
 
One of the Mam's jobs is to bring fertility. Just before the ceremony, the villagers gather all the fruit in the village and put it in the same room as the Mam. He symbolically fertilizes it.

Similar customs exist in the civilizations of Europe such as the motifs of rabbits and eggs to symbolize fertility during Easter week.

Like Odin and like Jesus, the Mam is raised on a tree:
 
"This evening many of the townspeople will come to see the Mam raised up on the tree in his chapel. They scrutinise his reborn appearance and apparel while marimba bands serenade him"

The Hanged Man shows a man suspended, upside-down, from the living World Tree, rooted in the underworld and supporting the heavens.

The Mayas have a bundle, just as Maurya's daughters in Riders to The Sea have one in the loft:
 
" the Martín bundle — is taken from the chest where it is kept and danced to the four directions by its servant and keeper, the nab'eysil — a celibate shaman priest who in his trance state becomes a conduit for a deity: the Lord of maize, harvest and mountains. It is then placed reverently on the altar of the shrine where it will be reverenced and nourished until Saturday.

(http://www.mesoweb.com/features/balancing/19.html).

These lines from Riders to The Sea describe the bundle of clothes the two daughters have and how they move it to the loft:

NORA: Middling bad, God help us. There's a great roaring in the west, and it's worse it'll be getting when the tide's turned to the wind. [She goes over to the table with the bundle.] Shall I open it now?

CATHLEEN: Maybe she'd wake up on us, and come in before we'd done. [Coming to the table] It's a long time we'll be, and the two of us crying.

NORA: (goes to the inner door and listens) She's moving about on the bed. She'll be coming in a minute.

CATHLEEN: Give me the ladder, and I'll put them up in the turf-loft, the way she won't know of them at all, and maybe when the tide turns she'll be going down to see would he be floating from the east.

[They put the ladder against the gable of the chimney; CATHLEEN goes up a few steps and hides the bundle in the turf-loft. MAURYA comes from the inner room.]

(http://www.one-act-plays.com/dramas/riders_to_the_sea.html)

As is true with many Christian rites that are makeovers of pagan rituals, St. John, a made-over Mayan saint, holds a lamb in his arms that is the opposite of the Christian lamb. The Mayan lamb has been painted to look like a jaguar, symbol of the old Mayan religion. This has been interpreted by some to be a symbol of resistance and rebellion against the Spanish invaders and the Roman Catholic religion.
 
Similarly, people in Europe and the British Isles clung to their old religions and gods in defiance of Christianity.

"...the Mayan saint who cradles a white lamb in his arms that has been painted with black spots, whiskers, and fangs."

Many of the themes found in the cult of Odin are found the world over.

 

The descendants of the Tz'utujil-Mayas, during Easter Week, conduct an elaborate celebration, theoretically to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, but the main character of this several day pageant is a mythical personage from pre-Columbian times called Mam. Much in the same manner as the English custom of parading the Jack-in-the-Green, the Mayan descendants dress this scarecrow-like figure in finery and carry him and then raise him on the same type of rood that they will also, later, carry the Christ and the Virgin images.

The Mam is seen in many ways, sometimes as the Judas figure from the Christian pageant, sometimes as the santo San Juan Carajo, but he is clearly a much older cult figure from a past so distant that the present day participants do not remember its origins.

The Mam is tied together with rope and, according to one source, Nathaniel Tarn, his old name means something to the effect of "The Old Lord Who Is Bound." He is clearly pagan, as he "confronts" the crucified Christ later in the drama as if he were a Mayan god who survives through the ages and continues to be venerated even after the Mayan's conversion.

There is an element of superiority and even disdain in his "attitude". He is thought of as an incomprehensible duality, both the grandfather and the grandchild. He is also considered very powerful and remains alive during the entire pageant, in contrast to the Christ.

His attributes include many different names, each name signifying a different feature of his shamanistic personality. At one point in the festival, he is taken to the main square of the village and hung from a tree where he awaits to oversee the death of Jesus.

Also associated with the entire celebration are shamans who enter trance states to conduit the spirit of the deity, a Martin bundle-cult, and a great many symbols of harvest and fertility. Though he is brought out only once a year, he is thought of as always alive and renewed during the festival.

Semana Santa

"San Martín is considered more ancient than any other god, including Christ, and father to them all.

For the most part, village priests today tend to wink at irregularities in Christian ceremonies as practiced by the Tzutujils, so long as they maintain their central emphasis on Christ and the other Christian saints."

Precolumbian Antecedents for Modern Highland Mayan Ceremonialism

"In fact the three stars that form part of the grouping around the sword of Orion were actually thought of as three hearth stones, the hearth stones at the time of creation. And in fact that constellation in turn was linked to the configuration of the sky at the time that the Maya thought the Universe got started. So they had an astro-calendrical myth to tell about the origin of the Universe that was linked to these stars.

On the other hand we could go to ancient pagan myth in the Viking territory and there Orion's belt and the sword are called Frigga's Distaff. Now Frigga was a goddess of fertility, the wife of the high god, Odin - and she also was a spinner. Well the spinning is linked to the turning of the sky and the seasonal signal that they used Pulse of the Planet is presented by the National Science Foundation..."

Balancing the Cosmos, Semana Santa

Riders to The Sea, Biblical Implications

Wordshed