The Living Maya


Book Description

Author Robert Sitler’s immersion in Mayan culture began with a transformative spiritual experience more than three decades ago in the ruins of Palenque, Mexico. Led by a local to a nearby Mayan village, Sitler discovered firsthand what traditional Mayan life was like—a community of people living in peace with each other and their physical surroundings. In The Living Maya, he shares this experience and many that followed. In the process, he immerses readers in a rich indigenous culture and offers a fresh view of the 2012 phenomenon, focusing on the valuable lessons Mayan culture can teach us in this time of transition. Personal anecdotes are interwoven with factual information about the roots of traditional Mayan customs and traditions, presenting a rare multifaceted view of their simple yet profound way of life. The book showcases Mayan infant care, community building, ties to nature, attitudes toward the elderly, and orientation to spirituality. In The Living Maya, Sitler shows how following “the Mayan way” can help us ground our lives in harmony with nature, broaden our perspectives on human existence, connect us with our capacity for compassion, and use the vaunted cataclysm of 2012 as a unique chance for growth.




Living Maya


Book Description

Looks at the daily life and culture of the modern Maya people and discusses the connections with the civilization of their ancient ancestors.




Transcendent Wisdom of the Maya


Book Description

An initiate’s inside account of ancient Maya spiritual practices alive today • Includes a Foreword by José Luis Tigüilá NABÉ kaxbaltzij, spokesperson of the Maya municipality • Details the initiation process the author went through to become a Maya shaman-priestess, including rituals, prayers, and ceremonies • Explains the foundational spiritual wisdom of the Maya calendar as a living entity, its cycles of time, and the significance of “the counting of the days”, which helps keep time itself alive • Examines the power of dance and Maya ceremonies, Maya future-telling, and communication with ancestors through the sacred fire Offering an insider’s experiential account of ancient Maya spiritual wisdom and practices, initiated Maya shaman-priestess Gabriela Jurosz-Landa opens up the mysterious world of the Maya, dispelling the rampant misinformation about their beliefs and traditions, sharing the transcendent beauty of their ceremonies, and explaining the Maya understanding of time, foundational to their spiritual worldview and cosmology. The author, an anthropologist, details the initiation process she went through to become a Maya shaman-priestess in Guatemala, including rituals, prayers, the presence of numinous forces, and the transmission of sacred knowledge. She explains the spiritual wisdom of the Maya calendar as a living entity, its cycles of time, and the significance of “the counting of the days,” which helps keep time itself alive. She examines Maya spiritual and cosmological concepts such as how the universe is shaped like a triangle over a square. She reveals the profound power of dance in Maya tradition, explaining how ritual dance halts the flow of time, reactivates primordial events, and captures vital energies that keep the Maya spiritual tradition vital and alive. Exploring other Maya secret knowledge, she also details Maya ritual attire, Maya future-telling with the calendar, the reading of the Tzi’te beans, and how the Maya communicate with ancestors through the sacred fire. Illustrating how contemporary Maya life is suffused with spiritual tradition and celebration, the author shares the teachings of the Maya from her initiate and anthropologist point of view in order to help us all learn from the ancient wisdom of their beliefs and worldview. Because, to truly understand the Maya, one must think like the Maya.




Living with the Ancestors


Book Description

The first edition of this book proved to be extremely useful to students of archaeology because it provided a highly readable explanation for why people might bury valued family members under house and plaza floors in Preclassic and Classic Maya societies of the first millennium BCE and CE. By casting this ancestralizing practice within the larger framework of land, inheritance, identity, and genealogies of place, the author demonstrates the cultural logic of a practice that initially appears alien to Western eyes. This new edition contains an entirely new introduction that synthesizes new scholarship, as well as an updated bibliography.




Life Among the Maya


Book Description

Discusses the history, social life, customs, and future of the Mayan people.




Where the Sky Is Born


Book Description

The journey of Jeanine Kitchel and her husband as they traveled to the Yucatan in 1985 and a decade later, left their Silicon Valley jobs to pursue a relaxed lifestyle in Puerto Morelos, a small fishing village on the Quintana Roo Coast south of Cancun.




Reading for Our Lives


Book Description

An award-winning journalist and literacy advocate provides a clear, step-by-step guide to helping your child thrive as a reader and a learner. When her child went off to school, Maya Smart was shocked to discover that a good education in America is a long shot, in ways that few parents fully appreciate. Our current approach to literacy offers too little, too late, and attempting to play catch-up when our kids get to kindergarten can no longer be our default strategy. We have to start at the top. The brain architecture for reading develops rapidly during infancy, and early language experiences are critical to building it. That means parents’ work as children’s first teachers begins from day one too—and we need deeper knowledge to play our positions. Reading for Our Lives challenges the bath-book-bed mantra and the idea that reading aloud to our kids is enough to ensure school readiness. Instead, it gives parents easy, immediate, and accessible ways to nurture language and literacy development from the start. Through personal stories, historical accounts, scholarly research, and practical tips, this book presents the life-and-death urgency of literacy, investigates inequity in reading achievement, and illuminates a path to a true, transformative education for all.




Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World


Book Description

This comprehensive and accessible reference explores the greatest and most mysterious of civilizations, hailed for its contributions to science, mathematics, and technology. Each chapter is supplemented by an extensive bibliography as well as photos, original line drawings, and maps.




Hands of the Maya


Book Description

Photographs and simple text describe what daily life is like for Maya villagers, showing how they prepare meals, weave clothing, make roofs, and create art and music.




Breath on the Mirror


Book Description

Shares the myths of the contemporary Mayans of Guatemala, in tales of tricksters, lords of the underworld, warriers, kings, Spanish invaders and missionaries, and even anthropologists.