2012: Under the Witz Mountain
2012: Under the Witz Mountain
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I went to Ixil shortly after the war, and visited a village where the army had put everyone into their huts, nailed the doors closed and burned them to the ground. The few survivors who had not been in the village that day went through the ashes, and finding a few black, charred timbers still structurally sound, built a building to tell their story in. I remember them, standing on the dirt floor piled high with a carpet of fresh pine boughs, pointing up at the charred wood over their heads and telling me about those they had lost.
Storytelling among the Maya is not just a cultural tradition; it is a survival strategy. Through conquest, genocide and civil war, stories have held the culture together. My story is fiction, but I have tried to remain true to that tradition. Some truths cannot be found in glyph-reading, code-breaking and star-gazing; they require metaphor and allegory. My little story takes much from the Quiché creation story Popol Vuh, its handful of characters in small towns and forests sharing the final unfolding of our time. I hope you enjoy it.
I encourage you to use the dream interpretation pages on this website, the work of group of Ajq'ij, Mayan spiritual guides from Guatemala and Honduras, who met to produce these pages. There is a link to provide a donation for healthcare work in Guatemala, and this would be a fair exchange for their work.
The Maya have not only a birthday, but hold special the day of their conception and a day of their destiny. Since writing the book I have learned that my Nahual guides that carry these days were both in the story. The Nahual spirit of the day of my conception is the same hero Ahpú whom I had made a protagonist in the book. In November 2008 I slept in a Mayan dream house while in Guatemala, and was visited in my sleep by a blazing sun on a black night sky. In the Mayan cosmic vision, Ahpú is the Sun. The Nahual from my 'destiny day' is Ajmaq, the Bee. Among my earliest memories is running with a Bee at my side, and this companion became the character Kasper.
I don’t pretend to understand it all, but it was these characters, the heroic Ahpú and the loyal Kasper, beautiful Filomena, and others, who were clamoring to get out like Jinns in a bottle until the book was completed.
They are all my friends, and together we thank you for visiting and making this site a success.
Mike Weddle