The smoking saint

Saint Simon of Zunil

The Maya do look after their saints. All of them, not only the ones that live in the church. Saint Simon does not live in the church. He used to but one day the priests asked for his figure to be moved out. The Maya, however, didn't want to just dump him, they moved him to one of the homes in the village. They look after him just as well as after the church saints. Actually they look after him more. For example – no church saint ever gets cigarettes to smoke. They do get pretty clothes, they do get flowers, but cigarettes? No! You can't smoke in the church! But Saint Simon has been chucked out from the church and now he can smoke as much as he likes. He likes it a lot. He is always seen smoking a cigarette. The villagers bring them in abundance.

You don't believe it? I have seen Saint Simon with my own eyes. There is one in a village called Zunil near Quetzaltenango. I went there with Catalina, my teacher in Centro Maya Xela Spanish School. It is a school whose owners are Maya Indians and this is exactly why I enrolled there. I hoped that the local Indians might show me some interesting places. The chapel of saint Simon certainly is one. An unusual saint: a full size figure with a suit and a tie, wide brimmed hat, dark glasses – he sits in an armchair and smokes. The faithful kneel in front and ask for a blessing by putting his hand on their heads – which means the figure is not a solid sculpture. The faithful pray, ask for blessings and when the cigarette in his mouth burns to the end – they light him another one. Saint Simon likes his drink, too. Now and again somebody takes the cigarette out from his mouth and pours some tequila there. A row of empty bottles stands by his armchair. They light candles for him as well, lots and lots of them.

Shaman with a cigar.

Who is this Saint Simon anyway? This was the original name of St. Peter, but we know St. Peter as Peter, not as Simon. Maybe then Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus with his cross? But in such case why would the priests want to chuck him out of the church? Perhaps some theologians decided that he is not one of the Catholic saints. If so – who could it be? Maybe somebody from the old Maya pantheon baptised when the Maya became Catholic themselves? For example (I read this suggestion somewhere) the ancestor, the first shaman in the mythical history. Considering that when the Maya shamans pray they address Saint Simon both as “brother” and “father” this suggestion is quite plausible.

The village of San Andres Xecul is famous most of all for the church whose façade is painted in bright colours. The chapel of Saint Simon in that village is less known but Catalina knows where to find it. Saint Simon lives next to the shop that sells candles which have to be lit before the figure. There is a bed in the chapel as well because Saint Simon sits in his armchair only during the day, at night he goes to bed. There is also an extra figure of him in a palanquin – on the day of st. Simon, the 18^th of November, it is taken to the streets in a procession.

Catalina leads me to the chapel of Saint Simon. There are two Indians ther performing some rituals, or rather the older one is performing them, the younger one is a passive participant. They talk not in Spanish but in a language I don't understand; I am told this is Quiche. The younger Indian tells me that they will make a burnt offering in the yard. I ask if I can be present, he says there is no problem. The older one – a shaman, I presume – arranges the offerings: candles of various colours, aromatic resin called copal, a few eggs, some big fat cigars. Then he puts light to it all reciting some formulas. He himself lights a big fat cigar as well. He puffs it saying some formulas, some of them in Spanish. I have the impression that he speaks Spanish so we could understand as well (Catalina comes from a different region and doesn't understand Quiche). At one point he exclaims:

“Why don't you take pictures? Look at this fire, it is fantastic!”

 Maya altar with crosses.

The flame is high indeed, it is a good sign, says the shaman. He puffs clouds of smoke from his cigar. Clouds of smoke raise from the fire as well.

“They are in contact” he says. “Its a good sign, Saint Simon is with us.”

At one point an egg explodes loudly.

“Very good sign. Evil forces are blown away.”The offering is a prayer for the protection of someone who recently went to the States. The way the fire behaves gives some information about the future. At the end of the ceremony the shaman takes a sip from a little bottle he has but doesn't swallow it, but sprays every person present with the liquid.

“What is the meaning of this last gesture?

“What do you mean? It is a blessing!”

Of course! Obvious, isn't it? Haw could I be so stupid!

San Francisco del Alto is a town inhabited almost exclusively by Indians. It's famous for its weekly fair, a very colourful affair. Catalina takes me there, we visit the market but afterwards she leads me outside the town to a precipice over a deep gorge. This is a special place, shamans call it “an axis” and claim that prayers there are especially effective. There is a few of them tending their fires, with families standing around. I start talking to one who has just finished his ceremony. He tells me that there are books which describe all the rituals but they are accessible for shamans only, lay persons cannot buy them. One has to study a lot before one can understand these books. I am told that a bright person can learn a bare minimum within two years, but as said – this is just a bare minimum. Of course this is not a course in some school, it is a long apprenticeship with an older shaman.

“And what do the priests say? Aren't the Maya people Catholic?”

“The priests have nothing against it. Our rituals aren't a different religion. We pray to the same God. The Catholic priests have nothing against it, only the Protestants fight us. They say if something is not written in the Bible, it must be the work of the Devil.”

Christian prayers are certainly said during the offerings. The participants cross themselves, they say “Our Father” and the ceremony itself is often celebrated at the foot of a cross.

For an outsider these two traditions may look quite similar. For a non-Catholic “a mass for somebody” is also a sequence of incomprehensible movements and spoken formulas performed by a priest, who has to study for years to be able to perform it correctly. A non-Catholic may have problems understanding what effect these movements and formulas may have on – say – somebody's health.

Laguna Chicabal

The shamans say that in some places the ceremony will have a better chance of success. The Catholics also have their holy places where a prayer has a better chance of being heard. They make pilgrimages to Lourdes, Compostela, or to Esquipulas in Guatemala, where pope John Paul went twice. The Maya accepted the Catholic faith without discarding the old tradition but for the shamans the holy places are in nature, not in churches. For example over the precipice in San Francisco del Alto. Or on the top of Volcano Chicabal.

I went to Chicabal with Catalina and her husband Pedro. The Volcano forms a perfect cone rising above the Altiplano. It is not active any more and in the middle of the crater there is a perfectly round lake – Laguna de Chicabal. It is a sacred place, there are alters for burnt offerings in several places around the lake. Some of those altars have crosses decorated with water lilies that grow on the shore. The inner slopes of the crater are covered in dense tropical cloud forest. Every so often the clouds break over the rim and descend towards the lake. They flow between the trees and sometimes completely cover the lake. The lake behaves like a living being playing hide and seek. Perhaps it has a secret to hide?

Maybe Saint Simon is also present here, invisibly?

You will find this story, and many others, in my book "ASK A GLOBETROTTER".