water
"We recognize water as a living being, meaning life. In ceremony, water is an everpresent power to harmonize human consciousness with the Creature-Universe. We speak to water, we have conversations with it, we transmit our joy and our sadness to it. Water thinks, feels, reflects, cries, and can be saddened.”
Atte: Dr. Daniel Matul, president of the Guatemala Maya League
The blood of Mother Earth is the sacred Water.
Her blood flows giving life to the animals, plants, mountains, and humanity.
To us, the Maya, we honour the sacred water for one full day every twenty days, calling on the energy of Imox, the primordial waters, to help give us life and to cleanse and nurture us. Before we plant our sacred crops, we hold ceremonies to thanks the rain for nourishing all the seeds and to ask for permission for this planting.
At the end of our harvest, we again give thanks to the sacred waters for nourishing our sacred corn and all plant life and thank the water for giving us food and sustenance.
Our bodies as humans are made largely of water, and since the time we are in our mother's womb, we are connected with the water and the rhythm of grandmother moon. These are teachings that are passed down from our elders, the spiritual leaders, our medicine people, and the midwives.
The idea of a watery underworld is supported by observing the natural environment. The Maya area is a giant karstic plateau characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves created by the dissolution of the limestone bedrock.
Another Maya symbol that represents the unity of living beings with water is the Tzolkin calendar of 260 days. This calendar is used for spiritual ceremonies. Moon, water, and human; we are the same.
We live in the entrance hall of birth for nine months, almost 260 days, in the water of our mother's womb. And so birth is related to the phases of the moon, which is also the grandmother of water.
Sinkholes and bodies of water, such as lakes were considered passageways to underworld. They were "liminal" (i.e. "transitional") places occupying a position on both sides of a boundary between the two worlds: the world of the living (i.e. earth) and the world of the dead, ancestors and deities (i.e. the underworld). As such, they were, and are important for religious ceremonies.