Abstract

HIROSE LOPEZ, Javier. Tziktbalo’ob Yetel le K’aax (‘Dialogue with Nature’). Estud. cult. maya [online]. 2024, vol.64, pp.191-215.  Epub Mar 11, 2025. ISSN 0185-2574.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.ecm.64.2024/0011wx00s896.

Yucatec Mayan people’s everyday life sustains an intimate relationship with their immediate natural, tangible, and intangible surroundings: plants, animals, Earth, water, stones, rain, the Sun, and numerous spiritual beings that also inhabit their world. Various dialogue forms mediate this connection: sounds, signals, movements and spiritual essences, among other manifestations. All possess different communication media, derived from languages transmitted from generation to generation. These diverse tongues play an essential survival role within what at times can be a hostile contiguous environment. Key to this bond is the rapport between h’men, or shaman, with their close natural or social ambiences, in order to create a deep and intimate dialogue with certain plants and animals, rocks, soil, rain, and spiritual essences either to invoke their healing powers or to receive messages from them. This discourse not only creates a standard for the how and why to address the Universe, how people, plants, and animals are co-equals in this world, but also how and when to plant crops and carry out daily life. Specific data illustrate some means by which Yucatec Mayan h’men engage in routine parlance with domestic and wild plants and animals for medicinal or every-day purposes. Formal ethnographic research and daily contact with Mayan people who reside in the Yucatan peninsula, comprise the information recovered over the past two decades for this paper. It is hoped that this essay will help contemplate our role as human beings within the Universe to find a better way to connect with our planet’s needs.

Keywords : Ethnobiology; Cosmology; Mayan Medicine; Maya.

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