More Reflections on Indigenous Cultures
What most worries daykeepers about people from Europe, and specifically about missionaries, is that they confuse the Earth, whose divinity is equal to that of the celestial God, with the devil. As daykeepers put it, "He who makes an enemy of the Earth makes an enemy of his own body."...
At one end of the Popol Vuh the gods are preoccupied with the difficult task of making humans, and at the other human are preoccupied with the equally difficult task of finding the traces of divine movements in their own deeds...
In theory, if we who presently claim to be human were to forget our efforts to find traces of divine movements in our own actions, our fate should be something like that of the wooden people in the Popol Vuh. For them, the forgotten force of divinity reasserted itself by inhabiting their own tools and utensils, which rose up against them and drove them from their homes. Today they are swinging through the trees.
-Dennis Tedlock, from his introduction to the Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life
1. It's a pity that the Maya sage mentioned above does not realize that the Christian God is both Lord of Heaven and Earth, but perhaps that is the Christians' fault. Christianity was imposed on them as the religion of the conqueror and the religion of the Other. As I mentioned in this post, however, our ties to the Earth may be more than we care to acknowledge. We may be living (and thinking) unnaturally and therefore, un-humanly. Of course, please don't ask me to elaborate, since it's just a question.
2. The Popol Vuh was originally transmitted as a book of hieroglyphs that were "performed"/interpreted by "daykeepers": older sages who knew the meanings of the signs. Only with the Spanish conquest was it finally written down phonetically. Sacred texts in the ancient world always passed through someone who was older and wiser; reading was always communal. One can reason then that this is the nature of all sacred texts according to how we human beings act. To argue the text against the community is thus a very new and strange phenomenon.
3. The Quiche Maya in Guatemala are described as still practicing their pre-Columbian devotions to their gods. However, they often begin even these rites with a Pater Noster or Ave Maria. This type of syncretism should of course be discouraged, but what type of syncretism do we moderns take part in that is imperceptible to our eyes? How many times do we pray before the altar of secularism, pluralism, and universal skepticism? Maybe the Maya do not perceive the contradictions in their religious practices. Then again, maybe we do far worse. We tend to not, in many cases, see the hand of God in all creation. Maybe in that sense, our society is de-evolving.