"Emerging from the Heart of the Flowering Earth" by Liora Leah 7-16-2008
Water Color 10" X 14"
Martin Prechtel is a half-European, half-Huron (Canadian First Nation) man who grew up on a Pueblo reservation in New Mexico. In the 1970's, at age 20, he wandered for a year in Mexico, having many adventures and misadventures before finding his way to Santiago Atitlan, a large village of Tzutujil Mayans in the highlands of Guatemala. Newly arrived, he was met by an elder who berated him for being late! So began Martin's apprenticeship to Nicolas Chiviliu Taxaxoy, renowned Tzutujil shaman. Martin eventually served the Tzutujil Mayan population as a shaman and a full village member, marrying a Tzutujil woman and having three sons. Martin also rose to the spiritual office of "Nabey Mam, first chief, where he was responsible for instructing young people in living out the meanings of the ancient stories through the rituals of adult rites of passage." After 13 years of village life, Martin was forced to make an arduous return to the United States with his young family because of the extreme violence of Guatemala's civil war.
Martin currently resides in New Mexico, where he teaches "at his international school, 'Bolad's Kitchen.' Through story, music, ritual, and writing, Martin helps people of many lands to retain their diversity while remembering their own sense of place in the daily sacred through the search for the Indigenous Soul."
I highly recommend reading all of Martin Prechtel's books! I've been stewing in them for the past month; I've never read anything like them. Martin uses language in a way I've never read before. Martin chronicles his life in Santiago Atitlan in his three books "Secrets of the Talking Jaguar", "Long Life, Honey in the Heart," and "Stealing Benefacio's Roses". These books are more than mere memoirs, however...they are full of magical language that takes you to a place in your heart and soul that the mind can not always fathom. I shed tears throughout, for the beauty of Martin's words and the images those words invoked, and for the stirring of a deep yearning to connect with some part of myself that I've lost and forgotten. Martin refers to this yearning as the desire of our Indigenous Souls to emerge from under the oppressive boot of our own rationalistic minds.
Martin's fourth book, "The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun, A Mayan Tale of Ecstasy, Time, and Finding One's True Form," is a retelling of a centuries old Tzutujil Mayan teaching story. Martin presents the story, then in the style of learning of the village in which he lived, encourages the reader to delve into the hidden five layers of meaning.
For more information about Martin Prechtel, his school Bolad's Kitchen, and his books, go to:
http://www.floweringmountain.com
Related Blog: Spiritual Wasteland
http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1217477