What interests me these days is the number of people in San Pedro I run into who were told at birth that they have a gift - a “don” – and will become a curandero/a or shaman to serve their communities. Shamans are discouraged by tradition from accepting pay for their work, and thus were perhaps the first “volunteers,” though community service is an old tradition among the Tz’utujil.
Photo from www.artemaya.com, with permission
Shamanism is still very much a part of the Tz’utujil culture in this area; I have visited three ceremonial sites in the mountains close to San Pedro. But I understand that the Catholic church only minimally accepts it, and the evangelical churches not at all. Although from what I can tell, the local bone-healers are still universally used (this is a great article about the bone curanderos in San Pedro). Nevertheless, for these young people, it is something akin to “coming out of the closet” to admit their gift and their desire to develop it.
I am very interested in this process: how a shaman is identified at birth, how their gift expresses itself during childhood or later, and how they develop it. And what they experience if they don’t. It has been described in many places that a person who ignores their gift becomes very ill. One of my friends who only recently has chosen to develop his gift – he says he’s healed his niece of epileptic seizures – believes this is the reason why he has had trouble sleeping not to mention headaches in the past.
I still have more to learn. But perhaps, like my friend and these young Tz’utujil, each of us needs to look within to discover the “gift” we have to give to the communities in which we live, for giving it freely allows us to flourish as well.
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