A STRANGE RELIGION AND THE ANCIENT MAYA

Courtyard at Altun Ha, Belize

Before there was man, there came light into the universe. Explosive, bright, unending light. It triggered the earth to bubble over and in many cases collapse, expand and recreate itself. We live in one of those recreated space and time of the  existence of the very universe today.

Time, that mystical, untouchable thing seems to lead all our human lives and it pulls, pushes and prods us into doing. Most of us obey. Some refuse to be led by the unseen.

Temple 1 at Tikal, Guatemala

In early Europe, Asia, Africa, India, and the Mediterranean area, there were gods. There were gods everywhere. There were gods for many things we can imagine or tangibly see in our daily lives. A god for rain, sunlight, moon, agriculture, wind, love and all the great blessings and terrors man has witnessed. Then something happened in early Europe. Thought.

There was a time when in early Europe gods were everywhere. Then thought came into “style”. Not that men were not thinking everywhere in the world, or in Europe, but Europe affected the America’s dramatically and tragically throughout history after 1492.

There was a time in Europe when the thinkers and the science weavers were burnt at the stakes for daring to go against the all-knowing church. You see, the people of Medieval Europe had to live with a church that was vindictive and cruel especially unto people who thought independently of their dogma. At the time the church had the scribes and the technologists and philosophers and ethicist and they prearranged, arranged and rearranged the law. Many independent thinking scientists, ethicists and philosophers suffered under the severe rule of the ancient church. Looking back now, the church can be seen as diabolical.

Eventually  the philosopher Descartes drew a line between church and science: the church managed the unseen and science manages the seen. Since then there has been much head butting on both sides of that line.

Between 2500BC and 300AD a culture began its days of flourishing in Central America. The Maya. This culture became was the only fully literate people of the America’s (even if just the elite); a culture of kings; a culture of mathematics, astronomy, agricultural science, political management, traders, and of course, a culture of religion. The height of this culture was in their classic period – 300AD to 850AD. At this time Europeans had no idea that there were people on this side of the world who were walking on this planet as kings. It was pure ethnocentrism in Europe – and it can be argued that it was the same on this side of “the pond”, too.

Since the advent of European seafarers coming over to the America’s, lost, taking it for India, two worlds collided and, on the one hand the “invaders” were not here for religious purposes and the locals were for the most part, shocked and knocked-off-their-centres thinking that the Europeans were gods. Imagine that for a while and one can start visualising the end game of this meeting – curious at the beginning, catastrophic in the end.

While spirituality and religion can be linked, they can also survive separate from one another. The ancient Maya were perhaps on their way to this very development by 700AD of a separation from the seen and the unseen, and two hundred years later their civilisation collapsed. We will never know what the outcome could have been. But we do know that the European invaders brought alongside their religion, perhaps as the softener, the negotiating chip, the conversion wine…

Many spiritualist know that all the power they need is within them. Science currently is also negotiating its way to this belief and knowledge. There is a thin line that truly separates religion from science, and in most cases, it finds itself in the spiritual context of all the studies. What we know for sure is that the Europeans arrived in America in truly catastrophic times in Europe – environmentally, economically and socially hard times. In America is where these people found their ‘second wind’. They could not believe that these people were so ‘backward’ and were so blasphemous with having all the gods they reached out to for guidance and saving. They forgot from where they came from. The Europeans one true God made them dominate and  castrate the cultures of an entire continent, because it was not greed at all that made them do it. Religious people abhor greed.

Caverns at Actun Chapat, Belize – the underworld.