The Maya world of communicating objects: quadripartite crosses, trees, and stones

Abstract

Although anthropologists have been observing and analyzing the religious practices of Mayan people for about a hundred years, this perceptive study suggests that anthropological interpretation of those practices and of Maya cosmology has never escaped the epistemological influence of Christianity. Whereas the objects used in Christian rituals are treated with reverence, such ritual objects as Mayan crosses can be used, reused, enshrined, communicated with or manipulated, disregarded, or destroyed - the apparent equivalent of defacing the image of Christ or the Virgin Mary. Astor-Aguilera holds that we cannot understand these practices by trying to fit them into a European Cartesian mindset but must instead recognize and try to understand indigenous Mayan epistemology. The western concept of religion, he suggests, is not the framework for understanding Mayan cosmology or practice. Using ethnographic, archaeological, and glyphic evidence, he traces modern Mayan attitudes toward sacrality and sacred objects back to Classic Maya beliefs. No scholar of Maya religion, archaeology, or history can afford to overlook this long overdue approach to a widely misunderstood subject.

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