"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.
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
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