Last week I wrote about my early quest to understand Mayan culture after the Jan. 1, 1994, Zapatista uprising. I was blessed to sit atop many pyramids from Teotihuacan and Tula to Chichen Itza, Palenque, Ek Balam, Uxmal, Yaxchilan, Edznab, and other sacred places like San Cristobal de las Casas and Huatla. Real de Catorce and Cuatrocienegas were always on my agenda.
During that time I read as many books as I could find about the Maya from Linda Schele and Micheal Coe, The Tedlocks, and the classics of E.W. Forestermann. I read many translations of the Mayan creation story, the Popol Vuh and the Chilam Balam, Jaguar Prophecy books.
When I first met Don Alejandro Oxlaj in 2007 he remarked to me and our group of pilgrims that “some of you have read mountains of books and have much more knowledge than me.” Of course, that is dwarfed by Oxlaj’s ancestral wisdom and spiritual connection. (I call him “Tata,” which means “Grandfather” — a common term of affection for Native American elders.)
Most of the serious academic books discussed the calendar system of the Maya in strict mathematical detail. To my frustration little was mentioned at all about what the glyphs really meant in a metaphysical sense. Jose Arguelles had tricked many New Age seekers with the Dreamspell calendar. I saw through that falseness on April Fool’s Day 2000.
My answer to the true meaning of the Maya calendar came a few days after after Sept. 11, 2001. I was hypnotically drawn to a spiritual bookstore in Austin, Texas, and walked straight up to a book titled Solving the Greatest Mystery of our Time: the Mayan Calendar by Dr. Carl Johann Calleman. I scanned the back cover, paid for the book and went home and read the whole 260 pages. My mind was free like never before!
I was soon driving to Sedona, Arizona, to meet Ian Lungold, a friend of Dr. Calleman, who set up the Mayanmajix.com website and was selling a Maya calendar conversion codex. He was awesome enough to let me stay a few nights at his place and hear a lecture about Calleman’s discoveries.
It was August 2004 when Dr. Calleman arrived in Austin for a two-day Maya calendar workshop at Casa de Luz arranged by yours truly! The day he left for Dallas was 13 Jaguar. Carl would return in May 2005 with a friend. We picked up Anette Carlstrom, who back then was known as the Dalai Lama of Sweden, at the Austin airport the very next 13 Jaguar day!
I made my first Sacred Journey with Don Alejandro in 2007. (I had visited Guatemala, Tikal, Quirigua, Ciebal and Cancuen with my folks in 2005, but this was different.) Arranged by Joseph Giove of Commonpassion.org, about 18 pilgrims went with Tata, his wife Elizabeth, and his friend Rufino to perform Mayan Fire ceremonies at Tikal, Lake Atitlan and other sacred Mayan sites. I had 10 days to ask the Grand Elder of the living Maya anything I could think of!
This has been a brief self-introduction. I have much more to share, please join me each Wednesday here at Planet Waves!
Aho Mitakuye Oyasin!
For private Maya tzolkin readings, contact Carlos at cosmicjaguar@yahoo.com.
Thank you Carlos
” Delicious, melancholy, lovely, full of flowers, mystery, laughter, and an extraordinary amount of suffering; if Guatemala were a woman, not a man alive wouldn’t be lovesick for her”
– from Martin Prechtel, in ‘Secrets of the Talking Jaguar’ – memoirs from the living heart of a Mayan village” (Anthropology).
hi carlos — who is “Tata?” you use the name twice, but i’m not entirely sure who it refers to. thanks!
Carlos: Thank you for the generous continuation of your journey’s origin. The insights you share are truly valuable for all of us, and deeply appreciated as well.