Shamans are specialists in the state of ecstasy, a state of vision that allows them to move freely beyond the ordinary world, beyond death, beyond the real world to deal directly with gods, ancestors, or anything within the spirit world. Shamans will perform ceremonies as a plea for assistance from that supernatural world. To the Mayan, the shamans call for rain for relief from drought that could threaten life itself. They were the do-ers or h-men could communicate the needs of the people. They were blessed with their ability to perform the rituals effectively and bring rain. The ancient Mayan, shamans were not only those individuals who could enter a portal into the other world; they were the kings of cities. We know these Maya kings described themselves as the k'ul ahaw or "divine lord" of their kingdoms. The Mayans believed their "divine lords" of the forests of central America could regenerate the order of the cosmos and unify the human world with that other, mystical world of the supernatural. They could make it rain and they could provide the substance of life - plentiful maize (corn) for the Mayan people. 

To the Mayan, the shaman is able to bridge into the other world and bring forth the magic power of that world. A person who opens the portal to that world can reach into it for the itz - the blessed substance of the sky. In the real world, the Mayan saw this itz as the mild of an animal or a human, the sap of a tree, the resin used in incense, the sweat of the human body, tears from a human eye, the melted wax of a burning candle, or the rust on metal. The shaman was the great itz-er who can send the itz through the portal to nourish and sustain humanity. In reality, the shaman could produce the power necessary from that other world to control this world. To the Maya, the most important substance was rain necessary to grow crops, the most important of which was maize or corn. To the Mayan, corn was life itself. The Maize God was the First Father of the Popul Vuh and was the turtle in the sky of creation.

The Mayan world was a reflection of creation, of the two worlds (this world and the other world.) We can see how clearly the world of the ancient Mayan was alive and mystical by looking at the following section from the Mayan Cosmos (pages 128-131):

For the Zinacanteco Maya, the central point where the horizontal and vertical axes intersect, the mixik' balamil, is the navel of the world, the belly button whose very name evokes the image of a life-sustaining cord traversing the layers of the cosmos, connecting humanity to the gods, the source of life, and the gods to the human sustenance they require processions, prayers, and offerings that flow to them when the Otherworldly portals are opened. The Precolumbian Maya represented this conduit between the supernatural and human worlds as a snake- headed cord that emerged from the belly of the Maize God and the sacred place they called Na-Ho-Chan. Classic Kings carried it in their arms in the form of the Double-headed Serpent Bar. The descendants of the Maya who fought the Caste War of Yukatan call it the kuxan sum, and they believe that it was cut by the Spanish invaders. Old men who spoke of this umbilicus with our friend Nikolai Grube said that it lies dormant under the Ballcourt of Chich'en Itza. One day, they believe, a Maya king will reign again, and when that happens, the cord will emerge from the great cenote and join the Maya once again to the original source of sustenance.

Just as the gods marked the periphery by placing the four sides and corners around the center, the Maya shaman creates a five-part image to sanctify space and open a portal to the Otherworld. Mayanists have adopted the Latin word quincunx for this five-point-plan concept, although the Maya have many ways of expressing it in their own languages." The discerning of the four sides or the four corners and the establishing of their position relative to the center point is what we mean by "centering." The Yukatek farmers today "center" their fields ritually even before they begin to cut them out of the fallow brushland. They mark off their fields and the units within them with small piles of stones, just as villages mark off their lands from those of neighboring communities with large piles of stones.

The very act of preparing a plot of land for growing food the clearing and measuring out of rectilinear spaces echoes Creation mythology thousands of years old. Before cutting down the trees and brush, a devout Yukatek farmer will make offerings at the center of his field. His field has four corners and four sides like the original order established at Creation. The farmer centers the field by piling up the stones to mark the center properly a layer of three followed by a fourth and then a fifth one stacked on top. This centering transforms the land from wild forest to cultivated land. Like his wife who starts the day by lighting a fire in the three-stone hearth of the house, the farmer repeats the acts of Creation first enacted by First Father when he set up the first three stones of Creation to establish the cosmic center. He marks the corners and sides of his field, just as First Father lifted up the sky and created a house with four sides and four corners.

The Maya field and house are analogs of these cosmic structures. William Hanks (1990:349) says, "Altars, yards, cornfields, the earth, the sky, and the highest atmospheres are described in terms of the five-point cardinal frame." According to him, these concepts are built into the very language itself. Thus, the basic work of making the world livable building houses, planting fields is the everyday experience of all Maya; and it is the same work that the gods undertook at the beginning of everything. These ideas are woven together in the quincunx pattern so prevalent in Maya imagery and symbolism. The Classic-period glyph that included this quincunx pattern in its center reads be, the word for "road" or "path." Hanks's shaman informant says that he "opens the path" when he lays out the cardinal locations on his altar.

In present-day Yukatan, Maya divinities and spirits regularly conform to this five-point pattern of the cosmos. The balamob or jaguar- protectors,'4 the babatunob or sky- bearers, and the chakob or rain gods are all fourfold beings associated with the four directions. The jaguar- protectors are the most intimately involved because they operate at the level v, the In the Classic system, the Chakob, the K'awilob, the Pawahtunob, and many others were also fourfold gods.

This quincunx view also has a part in healing a Maya house of afflictions. Hanks describes how Yukatek shamans use their crystals, their "stones of light," to discern where evil is located in the domestic space. Called a "solar," this space includes all the buildings and grounds inside the family's stone-walled enclosure. First, the shaman "fixes earth," hetz luum, because it is the earth that is in need of treatment, irrespective of the location of the afflicting spirit within the yard. He causes his crystals to "dawn" or become illuminated so that he can see something he calls butz' or "smoke" inside them. This "smoke" identifies the afflicting spirit and "corners" it in one of the four corners of the house-lot space. To contain this evil, and then force it out of the family space, he raises guardian spirits in the four cardinal directions by pointing out the boundary stones to each guardian, except for the one who resides in the place where the evil spirit is "cornered." When the shaman is ready, he gets the guardians to "drop" the evil spirit and to cast it out into the wilderness where it can be locked into an abandoned underground place called a chultun As we shall see, the conjuring of spirits is a very ancient Maya practice indeed.

Centering the world is thus a way of re-creating a spatial order that focuses the spiritual forces of the supernatural within the material forms of the human world, rendering these forces accessible to human need. Because centering the world requires movement to, from, and around the designated center point, the processional route humans use to define the center is as important as the center itself. The traditional label "ceremonial center," whether it refers to modern places like the town of Zinacantan or to the pyramids and plazas of the ancient cities, accurately reflects the function of these places. These locations are not so much centers for ceremony as they are centers because of ceremonies performed in them by ritualists who center the world each time they create sacred space and open the portals to the Otherworld.

This work of creating centers, of marking off their corners, of encircling them in order to "bind" them up, of moving in and out of them, has an effect on the shape of time as well as space. The ancient Maya were experts in discerning complex and intricate patterns of repetition and symmetry in both human time and cosmological time the movements of the planets across the house of heaven. They codified these patterns into dozens of calendrical cycles. The days when these cycles overlapped formed a matrix of complex ritual in which the rhythms of village life, elite politics, intercommunity warfare, trade, and interactions with Otherworld beings played themselves out. The famous Maya fascination with time is no more than a preoccupation with discerning and codifying the patterns that give time and space meaning.