Late in the second evening, Baltazar unexpectedly opened up to me. I was sitting on a bench near Baltazar, who was lying in his hammock. He started talking in earnest with Jorge, who in turned translated for me.
“The thirteen parts of the soul must remain whole or one will be possessed by evil. This will bring illness and death. Even if one part splits off, witches can put curses on you, causing you death. One day a thundering metallic bird flew over the village. We had never seen such bird. The sight and sound caused my people’s souls to become split off.”
Baltazar arms were animated as he talked. A wide-eyed crazed look transformed his face. One of his infant children started to cry. Baltazar’s wife quickly came over picking up the naked infant in her arms to comfort him. Baltazar continued slightly amused but unconcerned.
“Everyone was running around, crazy. Falling on the ground. Falling all over each other. The t ‘o’ ohil was busy for many weeks, healing everyone.”
Then Baltazar, taking a long drag off his cigar size cigarette, turned to look directly into my eyes. “Ki’ wenen tech. Ki’ I ba’ wilik,” he said.
“Sleep you well. Be careful what you see in your dreams,” Jorge interpreted. I pronounced Baltazar’s words phonetically to Hornsby. I had yet to fully grasp the rudiments of guttural intonations imbedded in their Lacandon tongue.
Hornsby for the first time, didn’t fidget with impatience or interrupt with a sidebar conversation with Cassarina. No, I had caught his undivided attention. I read my subjective thoughts. First, I must make a footnote about the major Maya deity, Sukunkyum. Sukunkyum determines if a person was honest or not, if they lied, or committed a heinous crime, incest or theft. If so, their soul is given to the Mayan deity, Kisin, who will punish them by alternately burning and freezing their soul. Kisin is the Mayan deity of earthquakes and death. In regard to the incident that Baltazar related, I was struck by the fact that the Lacandon are conscious of a whole self, and that the introduction of the technological world, in this case the airplane, caused them to collectively sense an immediate split to their homeostatic psyche.
They acted as if the sight of the airplane was a fatalistic event. The t ‘o’ ohil in this manner, acted as a psychoanalyst in managing to bring their sense of reality back to homeostasis, thus avoiding traumatic ill effects resulting from the experience of the unexplainable aircraft. I am left to speculate: Is it that a technological entity can have such a detrimental effect upon our consciousness? Is it for this reason their Yucatan Maya ancestors eluded the invasion of the Spanish by fleeing deep into the jungle?
“You’ve touched upon something,” Hornsby said, tapping his fingers together. His sentiment was unusual. Most of the time he was indifferent with my reports, and took little time to discuss any matters or details.
But this time he sat contemplating my last note, cross-legged on our research tent floor, rubbing his chin with his right hand, staring absentmindedly into space. Something I had said was significant enough to trigger a deep memory in him. Cassarina couldn’t bear the silence. She opened up her journal, as Hornsby collected his thoughts, flipping the pages to a large fold-out map she had made.
Continued...
Interview with Guiteras Holmes, 1961 by Linda King
That which is learnt through the mouth is forgotten
It is through the soul that we learn.
The soul repeats it in the heart, not in the mind,
and only then we do we know what to do.
