Reading Popol Vuh while exploring the world of the Mayas

Visiting the ruins of once great cities and sacred sites of ancient civilizations was one of the main reasons why I visited Mexico. For the first few weeks I was traveling through places where the Mayas built their sites in Yucatan, Guatemala, Tabasco, and Chiapas, and because of that I decided to buy a book that will help immerse me more deeply in this ancient world of the Mayas, that will perhaps help perceive me something more when I’m there, looking at the ruins. That it may stimulate my higher senses so to feel the remnants of ancient energy built up at those sites. What better book would that be than the text which is actually written by the Mayas themselves. The book is called Popol Vuh, also known as the Mayan Bible.

The story behind this text is that when the conquistadors came to Central America they were conquering inhabited areas, and in some the descendants of the Mayan race still lived. This text was written in Quinche, Guatemala, during those times of hardships (in 16th or 17th century), when invaders were suppressing the indigenous culture and religion, burning their ancient texts. Under these conditions, when descendants of the Mayas saw how their ancient way of life is about to be permanently lost and forgotten, they decided to write down the sacred narration that is today known as Popol Vuh. The story includes the creation of living beings, the adventure of twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the creation of humans, and the journey of races to attain to the First Dawn. What I find really neat is that the text is written in latin letters, because by then the descendants already learned that language (the main language of Europe at that time).

It’s a profound text recounting mythological stories, but with the basis in real esoteric teachings of the past, which reflects the eternal principles of enlightenment, also present in ancient stories of many other cultures and religions throughout the world. Reading this book while visiting the sacred Mayan sites indeed helped me with immersion into the once great culture, and as a result it strengthen the connection with some of the sites I’ve been to. Getting the insights on how those people lived, their mentality, knowledge, and the way of life, you feel the place much more, and then what some would consider “just a stone structure” suddenly has a whole new meaning to you. This can be even more increased when trying to deepen your extrasensory perceptions through practices such as meditation.

If you are interested in mythology and ancient ways of living, I would definitely recommend this book, even more so if you plan on visiting the sacred places of the Mayas. Here is a small excerpt from the opening of the book:

This is the beginning of the Ancient Word, here in this place called Quinché. Here we shall inscribe, we shall implant the ancient word, the potential and source for everything done in the citadel of Quiché, in the nation of Quiché people.

And here we shall take up the demonstration, revelation, and account of how things were put in shadow and brought to light by the Maker, Modeler, named Bearer, Begetter. Hunahpu Possum, Hunahpu Coyote, Great White Peccary, Coati, Sovereign Plumed Serpent, Heart of Lake, Heart of Sea […] They accounted for everything – and did it, too – as enlightened beings, in enlightened words. We shall write about this now amid the preaching of God, in Christendom now. We shall bring it out because there is no longer a place to see it, a Council Book, a place to see “The Light That Came from Across the Sea,” the account of “Our Place in the Shadows,” a place to see “The Dawn of Life”, as it is called.

There is the original book and ancient writing, but he who reads and ponders it hides his face. It takes a long performance and account to complete the emergence of all the sky-earth: the fourfold siding, fourfold cornering, measuring, fourfold staking, halving the cord, stretching the cord in the sky, on the earth, the four sides, the four corners, as it is said, by the Maker, Modeler, mother-father of life, of humankind, giver of breath, giver of heart, bearer, upbringer in the light that lasts of those born in the light, begotten in the light; worrier, knower of everything, whatever there is: sky-earth, lake-sea.

Dario Papic, November 2015.