2 comments about The Journey Continues: The Ma'yan Passover Haggadah.

1. As a Jew and a committed feminist, I thought I knew everything there was to know about feminist seders. Boy (Girl!), was I wrong! This hagadah is brilliant. It is beautiful to look at, it is filled with creative innovations that build on Jewish tradition while at the same time transforming it, and it takes social action seriously -- throughout the book there are boxes inviting the reader to do something and get involved. My family is used to a more traditional seder, so I wouldn't use this book as our only hagadah -- I absolutely will cut and paste from it to make our seder a richer experience. I am so excited for my daughters to grow up in a world where this kind of stuff is commonplace.



2. This engaging hagadah is in Right to Left format. It includes instructions for the additional use of Miriams Cup, tambourines, and an orange. It open with an invocation. It includes voweled Hebrew, English translations, english transliterations, readings, remembrances, commentaries, and explanations, which makes for a great symposium around the table. Shifra and Puah are recalled and given voices. Blessings that traditionally start "baruch ata" are also rendered in the feminine "Birucha at yah", using the innovative god language of "yah" as in "Hallelu-yah". You have the option of using "ruach ha-Olam" instead of "melech ha-olam." Photos from past seders are interspersed in the text. Also includes bios on famous women for the four cups (bella abzug, emma lazarus, szold, leibowitz, etc.). At the back are a couple of pages of addresses for interesting organizations and resources. Only drawback.. Dayenu has just three verses, and not the traditional billions.

1 comments about Mayan Vision Quest: Mystical Initiation in Mesoamerica.

1. Photographer Cynthia MacAdams presents a book of dazzling photographs based on her own"shaman's journey into the Mayan heart." In this book of black and white photographs, complimented by a text written by Hunbatz Men, author of "Secrets of Mayan Science /Religion," you are literally and visually thrown into a spiritual journey as you set your sights on the ancient cities , temples and stellae in the jungles of meso -America. Her closeups are to the point where you think an ancient God is trying to communicate with you from another time zone. The thick vegetation is thinned by her use of light to capture the dominance of the temples of the Maya. As she says she used a "red filter to energize white trees and inky black skies." She would meditate daily before her visit to capture and connect with the Mayan soul. The result is a book that strikes a balance between a lost culture and a contemporary vision of the Mayan ceremonial sites. This is the type of book that demands inspection, closer inspection of the details in stone and a reflective introspection into the subtlities of the cosmos. It is a book to be viewed over and over, detailing the temples lost in the tropical jungles that are renowned now for their beauty and mystery. All of the famous temples are included including the temples located in Bonampak, Palenque, Tikal and Copan. The Temple of the Giant Jaguar and the Temple of the Masks are eerie, mysterious vestiges of a world where priests, priestesses and noble personages sat high above the assembleage invoking higher powers and imparting their knowledge in the fields of science, art and the energies of nature. These were the buildings made to coincide with the viewing of the solstice and equinox cycles. The sun or the moon would rise directly behind the center of the temples. The alignment is pure science and if you are ever able to see it in person I would highly recomend it. The precise calibration of these astronimical events are sights to behold. There is somethinfg very compelling about his book that draws the viewer closer to a world very far from ours, centuries removed yet preserved with a celestial connection that reaches to Sirius and the Milky Way. In Tulum and Chichen Itza the temples are resplendent and Chac Mool seems to be beckoning you to look beyond everyday life to find the answers lost in stone. A superb collection of photographs and text awaits the seeker of knowledge from the old ones who came before us. Our own planetary evolution may be part of a cycle; much like the Mayans who dissapeared so long ago we may be destined to leave only the remnants of our own metropolis for future generations to decipher. This book is a magnificent addition to any collection of books on the mysterious Maya and is highly recommended.

No comments about The rattlesnake school for geometry, architecture, chronology, religion and arts.

No comments about Shadows: A Mayan Way of Knowing.

No comments about The Civilization Loop (Loopingthrutime).

No comments about Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts.

No comments about The Apotheosis of Janaab' Pakal: Science, History, and Religion at Classic Maya Palenque (Mesoamerican Worlds).

No comments about Sacred Sites 2008 Mayan Calendar.

5 comments about The Toe Bone and the Tooth: An Ancient Mayan Story Relived in Modern Times: Leaving Home to Come Home.

1. "In much wisdom is much grief" says the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, "and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow." There is much wisdom, grief, knowledge, sorrow, and finally joy in Martin Prechtel's new book. You don't have to read his previous three, *Secrets of the Talking Jaguar,* *Long Life, Honey in the Heart,* and *The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun* to understand and appreciate the message of *The Toe Bone and the Tooth* - but it helps.

   This is a story about keeping the Great Story alive - "An Ancient Mayan Story Relived in Modern Times: Leaving Home to Come Home."

   It starts out with Martin's return to Guatamala in 1992 after many years in exile from his adopted country, where his village of Santiago Atitlan had been destroyed and 1800 of his friends and villagers slaughtered by American-backed death squads in the 1980s. He was picked up at the airport by three teenage boys (who had been small children when the devastation took place) and smuggled back to the village under a truckload of Mayan squashes. Along the way, the boys were eager to hear the story of the Toe Bone and Tooth that had been outlawed (as well as their language) by the various and many invaders of their country. Landmarks of the Story were everywhere (much as Australian Dreamtime stories are dependent on the land for the telling).

   Martin was welcomed in Santiago Atitlan as the Shaman and healer that he was for many years. He had had a Mayan wife and three sons there (one son died) and his little family had barely escaped with their lives.

   The ancient story of the Toe Bone and Tooth is inserted here - the Story of a mortal, Raggedy Boy, who fell in love with the Water Goddess, the story of her death after bearing him two corn children and being forgotten when her husband returned to the mortal world. When he did remember her through dreams, he had to re-member her, gathering her bones with the help of Coyote (who had the toe bone and tooth) and descending into the underworld to retrieve her heart. He was helped by an old magical couple. Re-membered, she became an ordinary woman and he became an ordinary man, and from them, all humans are descended.

   The next few chapters chronicle the story of Martin's first arrival in Santiago Atitlan - how he'd been lost in a blizzard in his American homeland of Northern New Mexico in his youth, and how he was saved by a mare named Morningstar and an old Spanish lady who cured him of an almost fatal fever with bear grease and herbs. During his convalescence, he had 11 dreams of Santiago Atitlan and Nicolas Chiviliu Tacaxoy, who was to become his teacher, friend and mentor and who had called him through dreams for three years before he finally arrived in the village. Says Prechtel, "Though I was blond and born far away, we were the old and young generation of throwbacks from other times and layers of existence in which a humble dynasty of people in service to the remembrance of the Dismembered Goddess was continued from century to century."

   Another chapter tells of Martin's defense of a young Mayan seminary student, Gaspar Culan, who was accused of worshipping idols because he had participated in an ancient Mayan sacred ceremony involving Holy Boy, whom the Catholic Church had branded as a devil but is actually a Christ figure. Martin (who speaks English, Spanish, and Mayan fluently) was to be Gaspar's advocate. Holy Boy had been called a Jew by the Church. Martin pointed out that they had dubbed the deity a Jew (and a devil) because Jews were at least considered to be human and therefore were subject to the 16th Century Inquisition. Mayans hadn't been considered people before that, so if their God was a Jew, the Inquisition could persecute and prosecute them. Martin won his case, and Culan was ordained as the first Mayan Catholic priest.

   Several chapters are devoted to the Prechtel family's nothing-short-of-miraculous escape from Guatamala. Martin's teacher had ordered Martin to stay alive at all costs so that he might carry the seed of the story to the U.S. and preserve it for the Mayans whose history and culture had been outlawed.

   When Martin got back to the U.S. and his old homeland in New Mexico, he and his family lived in poverty and difficulties for several years, but in Santa Fe he met a homeless couple who were like the old couple in the Story. Here, the narrative goes into the third person as the old couple tell Martin's story and do for him what he had done for countless people in his life - re-membered him for the holy amnesiacs (all of us). Martin's story mirrors the Great Story - "the story of ordinary people, extraordinarily in love and the story of the struggle of what it takes to be graced with such love is the story from which all humans are descended."

   The author dedicates this book to the "deer-eyed daughter of the mountain, the mother of the great diversity" and to "all those peoples, plants and animals who have been and continue to be forcibly uprooted, rerouted, relocated, corralled, cut, branded, burnt out, burned down, burnt up, crushed, eradicated or driven from their homes in infinite diasporas of all types, to live where they may be unwelcome, while still trying to keep alive their seed capsules of cultural memory in hopes to regrow a home again. May their descendants be carved by the inherited grief of their ancestral loss to become feeders of what is holy in the ground, dedicated to something bigger than their need for justice and the pursuit of revenge."

   This is a fantastic, exciting but true story, and in my opinion, this is a life-changing book. Read it!




2. It might help readers to know that this book and "The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun" are written to be read aloud. When you do this the prose has a rhythm that is part of the meaning of the book.



3. TV, more than any other medium, has become America's storyteller. Sometimes that's not so bad; other times it presents shallow and false values to impressionable minds. When I'm hungry for ultimate truths, I've often found it best to go to other cultures and borrow their stories. One of the very, very best is "Stealing Benefacio's Roses." Within this story you will find your heart and be surprised at how strong and lovely it is. You will find your soul and come to know your true self. It's a story that works on the surface level of "Once upon a time . . ." yet also touches the deeper realms of mythology, spirituality, psychology, history and the many varieties of love. The writing is superb. Here's a quote: "Onto the floor I dropped to sleep, drifting on the tossing sea of my aching heart in a little canoe of Gustavo's friendship, into dreams filled with the unkillable perfume of Benefacio's roses." To understand and savor the last five words, buy the book and enjoy the revelations. This is the one you will keep to reread over time.



4. You wouldn't think it possible to say "this is Martin Prechtel's best book yet" because they are all so exceptional. If you are interested in current Mayan culture, indigenous peoples, love, life, Central American politics... this book is a tour de force. Martin Prechtel is one of the most truly amazing, talented, gifted, wise, insightful people you might ever hope to meet. On top of this, he is an extraordinarily gifted writer. Buy the book. Buy them all.



5. Martin Prechtel is perhaps the most capable of sacred story telling of today's authors. His respect for the power of language is immense and this book where he is retelling an ancient Mayan myth as it parallels his own experience is stunning in its capacity to illuminate todays world in all its contrasts. It is the third in an autobiographical trilogy. However, if you have not yet read the first two, don't worry, it stands completely on its own. This book was previously released under the title "The Toe Bone and the Tooth".

1 comments about Heart of Heaven, Heart of Earth and Other Mayan Folktales.

1. I selected this book as one to be used in a high school class where we were studying Guatemala and the Mayan Indians. The thirty-three folktales included in the book are a compilation of folklore from the Lake Atitlan area in the highlands of Guatemala. Each student retold a folktale in their own words and reported what they learned about the Mayan culture as a result of that folktale. This book enabled them to get a clearer picture of the Mayan culture than more factual texts. The folktales comprise stories told around Lake Atitlan, some of which are ancient Mayan tales, some more recent and some that reveal the mix of Mayan and ladino culture. Some of the tales reveal beliefs of the people, some the meaning of life, and some present a world view picture. There are tales of creation,of good and evil, of people turning into animals. Sexton presents a helpful introduction to the folktales, the majority of which were written by a local Mayan or told to him by the indigenous people in the area. The notes at the end of the book are a great addition to increasing understanding of the tale and of the person who told it. The notes also explain various aspects of the culture that might be unclear through only reading the folktales. Finally, the glossary at the end is helpful in capturing a clearer sense of the Spanish words peppered throughout.