Cool-Kulkan

The Mayan tour guide at Chichenitza told us that it was true that the Mayans sacrificed humans by chopping off their heads or tearing out their hearts.  Many Mayan people I met or people who praised their culture told me that the Mayans never, or rarely, performed human sacrifices and that human sacrifice was as Aztec thing.  The tour guide explained the religious reasons for the sacrifices to the god, Kulkulkan (the plumed serpent).  He said that there was a strong drought and famine and the ruling class became even more obsessed with sacrifices that the common people got fed up and revolted against the entire ruling class:  the royal families, their friends and allies, and priests, mathematicians and astronomers who calculated the propitious times to commit these atrocities in the name of Kulkulkan.  They got a taste of their own obsidian guillotine and were thrown into the sacred spring, or cenote, where they had been dumping the sacrificed victims for centuries, thereby putrefying the pure waters of their most sacred natural world.  Nature abhors atrocity and eventually creates terror for the terrible.  Power to the people.  The corrupt state had no idea who or what Kulkulkan really was.  Its essence was lost in dogma and violent rituals manipulated by priests and kings.  The guide told us that his people, the present Mayan population, were descendants not of the priests and kings but of the common people.  I immediately thought of how this is probably a historical precedent for the Zapatista revolution of 1994, which was for the most part undertaken by modern, indigenous Mayan warriors.

It is interesting history.  I have not really studied it personally, but rather have had many friends who did.  

After a society passes through the violence of conquests or imperial expansion and eventually tyranny against its own population by despotic rulers there is a collapse. Perhaps the collective conscience of the people goes through a grinding process of reflection and awareness and they become a little more peaceful and more truly human. The Romans were terrible but now the Italians have quite a nice culture. The Vikings were beasts but now the Scandanavian countries have the most humane governments and social systems on the planet. In recent history we can look at the Germans. Although there is currently a rise of fascism with far-right (nazi saluted by Elon Musk), there is a lot more resistance as most people remember what happened in the last century. The Mayans now seem to be very friendly people with an innate spirituality. What would happen if they remembered their true heritage, and perhaps what Kulkulkan really is?

The first time that I have ever knew anything of Kulkulkan was when I was 21 year old university student, although it was not in some history or anthropology class.  It was a strange spiritual vision that I had after waking up in the middle of the night.  I wrote about it in A Name To The Nameless: "I was initiated into a Tantra Yoga tradition when I was a student in Austin in 1993. I adopted a very healthy vegetarian lifestyle without drugs and alcohol. Within a few months the kundalini began with what would be a very long and intense awakening. As a student of psychology and world literature, I had heard of kundalini and other mystical energies but I had never thought they were real, live forces. I thought it was just interesting archaic symbolism, and not an actual force within the human body that rises up through the spinal column to awaken higher states of awareness. The universal symbol for this force is the serpent. It is said to be a covert, spiritual force beneath the surface of conscious awareness, like a coiled snake. Kundalini is the fundamental intelligence behind life and evolution, waiting to be awakened when the mind finally desires liberation from finite mental bondages. As this divine “serpent power” rises through the spinal column, one experiences states of deep spiritual realization. For the yogi, kundalini is the force that unites the human with the divine.
One day after classes and a short meditation, at which I was merely a beginner, I laid down on my back due to exhaustion. I felt a soothing force begin to rise up my spine. As this point of white, soft energy rose up into the thoracic region of the spine, I began to hear the sacred Om sound. It became frightening because there was only Om and nothing else. I opened my eyes but could not see anything. My faculties of sight and hearing were unified and there only existed Om. I knew I was being dissolved in a force that was vibrating within every particle of the universe. It was ecstatic and exhilarating but terrifying. I felt my whole identity would disappear and never return. The kundalini was entering the medulla. I began to repeat my mantra for meditation but it only made the experience more intense. Instead, I began to repeat my name, William, over and over and trying to remember that I was a student in Austin, Texas on the physical plane of reality. The kundalini began to go back down as Om diminished. I couldn’t take any more.
After that experience I became very confident but experienced a lot of mental turmoil. It was very productive turmoil in that all negative memories from my past were being quickly purged and purified. I began to feel completely whole and that I had already lived a very complete life.
The second time the kundalini (serpent power) rose was a few months later. I saw the same light in my spine although this time it was an infinitesimally small point. Physical reality disappeared and I began to “see” from Om and nothing else. I opened my eyes but could not see anything. My faculties of sight and hearing were unified and there only existed Om. Physical reality disappeared and I began to “see” from the crown of my head a turquoise bird flying closer and closer as the point rose higher and higher. The bird landed on the crown of my head at the same time the point rose to the same place. Heaven (the turquoise bird) and earth (the serpent) had met and I was lost in an infinite web of sound vibration where I could no longer see even this beautiful vision.
I was dissolving in a force that was vibrating within every particle of the universe. It was ecstatic and exhilarating but terrifying. I felt my whole identity would disappear and never return. The kundalini was entering the medulla. I began to repeat my mantra for meditation but it only made the experience more intense. Instead, I began to repeat my name, William, over and over and trying to remember that I was a student in Austin, Texas on the physical plane of reality. The kundalini began to go back down as Om diminished. I couldn’t take any more.
My last thought before losing awareness of not just the outer world, but also the inner world of vision, was that the forms looked Meso-American. Only years later would I learn of the Mesoamerican concept of kundalini, what they call Quetzalcoatl, the “Plumed Serpent.” The quetzal is a colorful bird of Chiapas and the mayan symbol for the kundalini, the spiritual energy of evolution and enlightenment that resides dormant within the mind.
(The kundalini was named Quetzalcoatl by the Toltecs and Kukulkan by the Mayas. A version of the image of Quetzalcoatl is on the Mexican national flag to this day. )
After this experience I lost all interest in a career and marriage and a “normal” life. I barely graduated the university and went to India seeking more understanding."

an extract from A Name To The Nameless