The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun A Mayan Tale of Ecstasy, Time, and Finding One's True Form

by Prechtel, Martín; Prechtel, Martín

• ISBN13: 9781556436000
• ISBN10: 1556436009
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-22
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Summary

Dedicated to keeping alive the splendor of Indigenous thinking, Prechtel enchants the English language into carrying many of the original nuances of this nearly extinct Guatemalan Mayan tale. To make his beautiful retelling into a healing story for the modern reader, Prechtel revives a Tzutujil Mayan village style of learning, which calls for uncovering five additional layers of the story and diving with the reader deep into its aboriginal richness, to bring to the surface all that is poignantly relevant to the reader's life and the present situation of the world.

Author Biography

A master of eloquence and innovative language, Martín Prechtel is a leading thinker, writer, and teacher whose work, both written and oral, brings to life the pre-modern subtleties of any living language. His life, well documented in his books, has taken him from the Pueblo Indian reservation in New Mexico, where he grew up, to the Guatemalan village of Santiago Atitlan, where he was the student and eventual successor of a powerful shaman. Eventually Prechtel became a principal member of the village body of spiritual leaders, responsible for introducing the young people to the meanings of their ancient stories and guiding them through their long rituals of initiation. Today Martín Prechtel lives once again in his native New Mexico and is active as a writer, teacher, speaker, musician, and healer. Using ceremony, language, story, and healing he helps people in many lands reconnect with a sense of place, a sense of the daily sacred, and their search for the Indigenous Soul.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Urgency of Water	p. 1
The Old Village Friend: Some Suggestions on How to Read this Book	p. 7
The Story	p. 11
Five Layers of Understandings of the Story	p. 73
First Layer: Iridescent Tail Feathers: The Outer Wrappings of the Story	p. 75
Second Layer: In a Net of Stars: The Indigenous Understanding	p. 89
Third Layer: Ecstasy and Time	p. 117
Fourth Layer: Never-Before-Seen Bird	p. 135
Fifth Layer: The Ecstatic Voice: A Revolution of the Watery Soul	p. 139
Author's Note	p. 143
Glossary of Mayan Words	p. 145
Acknowledgments	p. 153
About the Author	p. 161
About the Illustrations	p. 163
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