National Geographic: Lost Kingdoms of the Maya Page #3
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was regularity in that movement.
They thought that if they played
the game in the right way,
and honored the gods in the right way,
agricultural cycle
and enable the sun to rise
and the rains to come on time
and for there to be
a bountiful harvest.
the Maya
the gods were the source of all life,
and only the kings had the power
to intervene with them.
The gods sustained the
physical universe with sun and rain
and expected humans to nourish them
in return.
that nourishment was blood.
When the Maya wanted to acknowledge
the sacredness of the moment or
an important event,
they would let blood.
Blood was the vehicle that carried
a quality that they called chu'lel,
It was something that not
it permeated buildings,
it permeated the trees, the sky.
It permeated all things sacred
in the world.
And when they gave blood,
what they were doing was
they were activating the chu'lel.
It's like George Lucas's the "Force."
If you can think of Obi-wan-Kenobi,
you know,
calling the "Force" out,
or Luke, as he guides the plane in
you know, in the final Death Star battle.
That's what the Maya were doing
by these rituals.
They were touching what they
considered to be
the living force
of the universe and it's still here.
On special occasions
the king himself would give blood.
This was one of the most
secret rituals in Maya life.
After days of fasting
and spiritual preparation,
the king would pierce his foreskin
with a stingray spine
and let the blood drip
onto paper strips.
With this act of sacrifice
a doorway to the gods was opened.
When the paper strips were burned,
the Maya believed they could see
their gods in the rising smoke.
Today,
the descendants of the ancient Maya
still live much like
their ancestors did.
The myths they remember
and the ceremonies they perform are
all part of a tradition
that the Maya say God gave them
at the beginning of time.
Casimiro Sagajau is a Maya priest
who blesses the fields at harvest time
We are Cakchiquels, direct descendants
of the ancient Maya.
Our religion is from a long time ago.
I learned as a child
from the Maya priests.
In dreams we learned
from the Maya gods
when to plant and when to harvest,
when to set the fires,
and when to do the corn ceremony.
The Maya passion for ritual
was one of the first things
Spanish missionaries observed
when they arrived in Yucatan
almost 500 years ago.
When the Catholic Church banned
traditional forms of worship,
the old ways went underground.
Today the religion the Maya follow
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