Transcendent Wisdom of the Maya

An initiate’s inside account of ancient Mayan spiritual practices alive today

Offering an insider’s experiential account of ancient Maya spiritual wisdom and practices, initiated Mayan 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 Mayan 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 Mayan 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 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 Mayan secret knowledge, she also details Maya ritual attire, Mayan 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 Mayan 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.