How did you become a Mayan priest?
I was given a ritual to invoke the Mayan spirits; and after a while they began talking to me. Apparently it had to do with past lives I’ve had as a Mayan priest here in Guatemala in ancient times. It’s not a job you can interview for, or anything like that; it just was my destiny, luckily.
When you give a consultation now, do you combine Western and Mayan astrological systems?
No, I use pretty much pure Western astrology in my personal practice. I’ve been studying that for almost 40 years, and I only began studying Mayan astrology about ten years ago. Also the astrology I do is very much prediction-oriented – transits, progressions, and directions – and there is no equivalent in Mayan astrology. They do prediction but can’t pin it down in time as well as Western astrology does. My interest in Mayan astrology is mostly related to ceremonial magic, the ritual invocation of Mayan spirits.
What is Mayan astrology? (for the absolute beginner)
Mayan astrology is basically a 260-day almanac known as the Chol Qij, or count of days. It consists of twenty naguals which can be thought of as archetypes roughly analogous in significance to our twelve zodiacal signs, except they are considered to be alive and petitionable. The twenty naguals carry a numerical coefficient from 1 to 13 which modifies the underlying meaning of the nagual. Thus 20 naguals x 13 coefficients = 260 days. My free Mayan Horoscope software explains the entire system in detail and does all the calculations.
Are there similarities between the zodiac and the naguals? How does it differ from Western Astrology?
There are lots of similarities. The Chol Qij is used in natal, horary, and electional astrology. As in our natal astrology, a person’s character and destiny are determined by which of the twenty naguals, as modified by its numerical coefficient, rules the day that the person is born. As in our horary astrology, the Chol Qij is used to divine for answers to specific questions, such as: Does my husband have another lover? Should I do this business deal? How shall I cure this illness? What will be the outcome of this journey? Should I marry this person? Where is this lost object? Divination is carried out by manipulating 260 red tzinté bean seeds to obtain a nagual and coefficient which give the answer to the question being asked. And as in our electional astrology, there are propitious and unpropitious days for pursuing every human activity imaginable: planting, hunting, journeying, marrying, healing, etc. The Chol Qij is more a system of numerology than astrology per se since it isn’t based upon planetary positions.
Since it is not based on the planetary positions, where do the heavens come in with Mayan astrology?
Judging from the few existing manuscripts which escaped the Spanish book burnings of the 1500’s, and also from inscriptions on monuments, the Mayans did calculate positions and phases of Venus and the moon, including eclipses; and presumably they knew about the other planets as well. However the manner in which this information was applied has been lost.
The rituals seem complex — what can people new to Mayan astrology draw for use in their everyday lives?
I don’t really know because Mayan astrology is closely connected with the Mayan spirit world. Any use of the Chol Qij is tantamount to an invocation of the Mayan spirits, and is preceded by lengthy, formulaic prayers and rituals. We western astrologers rely upon our own judgment and intuition, which is why we so often go wrong. The Mayans, on the other hand, use their astrology as a way of making contact with the spirit world, of channeling spirit messages.
What is the significance of the Dec. 21, 2012 date in the Mayan calendar, or your intuitive sense of it as a Mayan priest. There was a program about it on the History channel, referring to the Doomsday in several cultures coinciding on this date. Is this a passage into a new way of life, rather than an end? What can you tell people about this fast-approaching date?
Nothing is going to happen in 2012. There is no Mayan prophecy about 2012. In addition to the Chol Qij the Mayans have various other calendar counts of lesser mantic importance. One of these is the Long Count, which is a continuous count in days since August 9th, 3114 BCE. The Long Count will reset to zero-zero-zero-zero-zero on December 21, 2012. But this is just a major calendar change – their equivalent of Y2K – with no more spiritual significance than the change of millenium had for us. This 2012 thing is being touted by some non-Mayans as a kind of New Age version of the Rapture: a miraculous transformation of human consciousness which sweeps humanity up into the clouds to escape the coming tribulation. But things don’t happen that way in real life. If there is a fundamental transformation in human consciousness, the way it will probably occur is that the environment and civilization will deteriorate over the next few decades. And then people will draw together and open their hearts to one another, as they do in the face of any natural catastrophe such as an earthquake or flood. When people lose their faith in the system and start listening to their own hearts is when the system will change.
Do the Mayans have something to share that is crucial to our evolution? Why do you think it is surfacing as a topic of interest now?
Collective soul loss is the malignancy of our times. Americans have a lot more wealth and personal freedom than Mayans do, but for what? To buy this instead of that? Americans have lost their sense of who they are and where they belong; but Mayans haven’t. The Mayans had the highest civilization in the Americas at the time of the Spanish conquest, and they have largely maintained it in the face of five centuries of persecution. Mayans have the dignity of a people who know their rightful place in the universe. They have a sense of rootedness, belonging, and purpose compared to the empty materialism of American life. Mayans know that the world and nature are sacred; they feel awe; they are humble. Viewed through Mayan eyes, American behavior is crass, boorish, and profane; completely lacking in manners and culture. We Americans can learn from the Mayans not by aping their traditions (such as the so-called Mayan Prophecy for 2012), but rather by taking a good, hard look at our own personal behavior, assumptions, and choices.
You write about how astrology can be a “vehicle of intent.” Can you tell people how this works in everyday life?
Astrology wasn’t invented by human beings; rather it was channeled to human beings as a way of making a connection to the rhythms underlying everyday life. In particular, astrology is a way of understanding our true life’s purpose – the reason we incarnated at this time. Our karma from past lives – and the lessons to be learned in this one – can be read from our horoscopes (particularly from the moon’s paraphernalia – the nodes, critical degrees, Part of Fortune, and especially W.B. Yeats’ lunar phases). This is important knowledge which we don’t receive from our education by society. Astrology is one way of getting past our social conditioning to discover what our true feelings are and what our true purpose in this life is – the reason we were born.
You said astrology once was, and will again be the world religion. That is a bold statement. Can you share with readers what you mean by that?
To make a long story short, at the time agriculture was invented the human race switched from operating on intuition / intent to operating on thinking. Instead of thinking every second they were awake, as we moderns do, ancient humans’ everyday cognition entailed what we would call “channeling”; attending to the messages of spirits, the voices of their ancestors, and feelings from their own past and future lives. The new-found ability to think necessitated repressing feeling/intuition to focus total moment-to-moment attention on doing things like playing chess and building computers. This worked quite well for 10,000 years or so, but is now destroying the planet we live on. If the human race is going to survive it’s going to have to operate on a different set of cognitive assumptions than the ones which got us into the mess we now find ourselves in. In particular, people are going to have to relearn how to listen to the spirits who have always guided us but whom we have been ignoring lately; and also to use techniques such as astrology which help us to develop our intuition and build our faith that everything is unfolding as it should. This is a more viable path for human salvation than silly, irresponsible “prophecies” or the short-sighted greed and contempt fostered by materialism in all its forms.
Are you optimistic about the future?
To be honest, I’m scared. I just finished reading Jared Diamond’s Collapse; but all of us hippies sort of knew that all along – that’s why we left the cities and went back to the land. I think there’s a shakeout coming, and one thing astrology teaches us is that it’s the tough times, and how we behave when things are going badly, that really move us ahead spiritually. Astrology also teaches us that periods of great expansion are always preceded by periods of contraction and pain. So I guess the human race has to go through that one in order to release its grip on materialism and move up to a new level.
More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at: www.dearbrutus.com
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