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!