Published On: July 26, 2026

Cosmic Journeys with Maya Artist Branly Gio López

By Agent 76 - Jeanette Groenendaal

Tags: Jupiter, ritual, saturn, temple, temple ritual

In the series Cosmic Journeys — NavaGraha: An Astrological Pilgrimage by Jeanette Groenendaal, we have been travelling through the planetary temples, ritual landscapes, and living cosmologies that shaped the film Dramayama.

 

In this issue, the journey turns towards the film’s central companion: Branly Gio López, a contemporary Maya artist, researcher, and cultural practitioner from Guatemala. Dramayama is half shot in Guatemala and tells the story of Branly’s search and motivation.

Branly has spent many years studying and reactivating Maya cosmovision from a postcolonial, decolonial, and deeply personal perspective. His work moves between art, ancestral memory, cultural resistance, ritual practice, and the living calendars of the Maya world. In Dramayama, his presence opened a mirror between two ancient cosmological systems: the Navagraha of South India and the nine-petalled flower of Maya initiation. What began as an artistic and astrological encounter in Amsterdam became a pilgrimage across continents, through which questions of origin, time, identity, spirituality, and cultural survival could meet.

For those preparing to travel with C*I*A on the Venus Journey in the Ycatan, Mexico this coming September, this long-read offers a first encounter with Branly’s work and with the opening chapters of his guide to authentic Maya cosmology and the nine-petal initiation rituals rooted in Maya culture. His reflections are not presented as exotic knowledge, but as part of a living tradition that has endured colonisation, erasure, and displacement, and that continues to speak through fire, seeds, language, ceremony, and the memory of the stars.

 

Branly masters Nine-Petal readings and Tz’ite’ / Magic Bean divinations that offer a profound blessing to your lifepath. His insights remind us that cosmology is not an abstraction. It is a way of remembering the Earth, of re-entering time, and of restoring dignity to the ancestral intelligence that still moves through living cultures.

Nab’e’ Ija’ / First Seed

The Path: The Events

A Dream Comes True

I vividly remember meeting Jeanette Groenendaal, on a balmy afternoon, in her cosy attic in Amsterdam. We greeted each other by linking arms, as if somehow our deepest beings knew that we would enter a beautiful adventure later on. I came to her looking for information on Mayan astrology and its possible connection with Western astrology, as well as the possible relationship of the Mayan culture with other cultures, especially in India. “Someday, I would like to visit India,” I shared with her. We talked and exchanged readings. She read my birth chart to me and I read the Tz'ite’ seeds, or red beans, to her. Thus, we began an artistic, astrological complicity and a beautiful friendship.

On one occasion, Jeanette took me to a library in Amsterdam where there is a section, not very large, on Mayan culture. There, we were looking at different books and one of them talked about the connection of the Mayans with the Dravidian peoples of southern India. Jeanette told me that for several years she had visited and taken people on a pilgrimage to the temples of the Navagraha — temples dedicated to the planets of the solar system — in the Tamil Nadu region of southern India. One of her dreams, she shared with me, was to be able to film those temples and their rituals, following a narrative written by her some years ago.

One day, she united our dreams. At the end of October 2017, Jeanette took me to South India to experience the Navagraha. I would be the protagonist of what would later become Dramayama. My heart was beating with joy when she invited me to be a part of this film project. I wanted to go to India with fervour, and with respect, in search of spiritual and astrological meanings. This spiritual, cosmological, and cinematic journey was also made possible thanks to Ted Baijins, who believed in Jeanette's project, and in the course of our dreams.

Since I set foot on that ancient land, I felt a deep connection with the past and the future in the present. Each person I met, each place that embraced me, and the rituals at each one of the nine temples of the nine planets (Navagraha) were like meeting my own Mayan culture. I was overwhelmed with emotions because it was also like seeing living Mayan temples. That is, as perhaps life was in the Mayan temples and cities in pre-Hispanic times. On one occasion when talking to a young woman astrologer in Tamil Nadu, South India, she told me that in this region, when referring to the Mayans, some know them as the previous people. That trip to the "past" in the present made me reaffirm my identity and spirituality, as well as the desire to continue trying to connect the different pieces of Mayan astrology.

In this book, I share some lines that are links to the knowledge of Mayan time-keepers from Ixim Ulew/Guatemala, knowledge that has been transmitted from generation to generation. Likewise, I share information from local and foreign researchers who have supported the claim of the Mayan cultural vindication and who have also been interested in reclaiming the rights of the indigenous peoples who inhabit Guatemala. “Age of Wonderland”.
In my own search in Guatemala, I found in culture and art the possibility of continuing to get closer to Mayan culture and philosophy. I had the opportunity to study finance, land-use planning, and development with cultural relevance through scholarships in different places outside of Guatemala. Upon returning to the country, I worked in several Mayan communities in the south-west of the country. Little by little, I entered the world of cultural management, from where I also sought to promote personal and collective processes of decolonisation. This led me to be part of different cultural projects in Quetzaltenango, my homeland, as well as in Guatemala City.

In 2015, I presented a proposal to the “Age of Wonderland” programme in the Netherlands, which offers artistic residencies for social development, promoted by Hivos and Baltan Laboratories. The proposal was a personal search around Mayan astrology and how the 260-day Mayan calendar / Cholq'ij could be used as "Big Data", which was the theme of that year's edition of the programme. This resulted in collaborative work with different artists, researchers, and curators such as MashaRu, Louwrien Wijers, Tijse Boersma, Christine Wagner, Arne Hendriks, Renée Roukens, and Jeanette Groenendaal. The proposal evolved into an artistic work entitled “Mayan Big Data”, which was presented during the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven.


As a result of this work came other collaborations in the Netherlands and Guatemala. With the support of the Mondriaan Fund, MashaRu and myself carried out creative workshops using the Cholq'ij in different schools and cultural centres in Guatemala. The connection with the energy of people from the Netherlands continued for several years through different collaborative art projects that have helped my search.

With Jeanette then came a wonderful collaboration — the creative documentary Dramayama — where the nine planets of South India and the Mayan flower of nine petals are intertwined. These two cultures are seen through the mirror of space-time, and incite a personal and intimate search. Perhaps in these spiritual corners, many could find meaning for that question that sometimes arises in life: Who am I?

Dramayama invites many in different places to get to know and visit the Tamil Nadu region, as well as Guatemala and its ancient cultures and cosmological spiritualities. The history of these peoples is impregnated with paradoxes, for which a brief historical context is shared, in this case, of Guatemala. I also contribute here to different current processes of decolonisation and reindigenisation.

Ixim Ulew: Corn Land.

A Bit of Guatemalan History


Cuauhtēmallān, "place of many trees": (The Spaniards Castellanized the word Cuauhtēmallān to Guatemala. Cuauhtēmallān is in the Nahuatl language, mainly spoken in Mexico).

"The Good News to All”

Since the “discovery” and invasion of America in the 15th century, the Christian mission was impelled with the aim of colonial expansion. A world-system with two faces was built: the modern and the colonial one. With this clash of cultures in Mesoamerica, the Spaniards imposed ethnic subjugation with the sword and the Christian Cross, from which the homogenisation of the culture in Guatemala began.

Under the slogan of bringing "the good news of Christianity to all", it is elucidated who is faithful and who is pagan. Of course, the cultures of pre-colonial America, like the Maya, were seen as pagan — and therefore had to be converted.

Nonetheless, the Mayan cosmo-vision, culture, and spirituality were kept in secret by women and men ajq’ijab’ (timekeepers). This happened in a hidden way, within the architecture of Catholic churches, and was shared in the kitchen fires. As if it were the food itself.

After the invasion and colonisation, 24 socio-cultural groups with their respective languages remained in Guatemala; however, Spanish was officialised and used as a lingua franca. Therefore, the local Mayan languages were omitted. Many did not want to teach the new generations their mother tongues, especially in the big towns and cities, so that they would not be discriminated against and oppressed.

The Mission to Civilise

From the 17th century, besides the conversion to Christianity, the mission to “civilise” the “barbarians” in Mesoamerica also took place. After the triumph of the French Revolution, the concept of civilisation, from Europe, was consolidated. In Central America, along with the independence movements from Spain, the focus was on seeking to make Guatemala a “civilised” country, on European terms.

With the political “independence” of Central America in 1821 and the establishment of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Central America, slavery was abolished, but all the colonial prejudices against indigenous people persisted. The Constitution of Guatemala collected these prejudices and promoted assimilationism as the new ethnic ideology of the nation, within the framework of a modern, colonial, and capitalistic world-system.


The conflict between “civilisation” and “barbarism” is clearly marked. The independence of the colonies from Spain marked the rearticulation of colonialism internally. Therefore, everyone forcefully had to accept that there was only one model to be civilised, under the ideal of progress: cultural homogenisation, insisting on the abandonment, nullification, and/or degradation of Mayan culture in the case of Guatemala.

The Mayan world and its cosmo-vision, culture, and spirituality have been seen as uncivilised and inferior. Even today, many argue that the Mayans who built a great ancient civilisation disappeared and the actual Mayan population does not have a direct link with them. The Guatemalan state adopted the colonial logic of imposing policies of cultural uniformisation over a multicultural nation. It has been fomenting a culture based on European-US standards, promoting relations of oppression, racism, discrimination, and ethnic cleansing.

No Past for the Actual Mayas

For centuries, the Mayan people have been resisting different types of violence, including the fact of not being able to live their spirituality openly. Paradoxically, the Mayan cosmo-vision has been the common ground for resistance. At the end of the 19th century, the Mayan people went from being considered savages to being considered primitive, to being seen as exotic. At this stage of history, the discussion was no longer centred on whether the primitives, the Maya, were humans, but on how far they were from civilisation and thus if they could be productive for the construction of a civilised future.

For the system, the Indians, as the colonisers called the Maya in the 15th century, believing that they were reaching India, had no past. For them, the Maya have only a present and a future for the sake of modern civilisation. In the 20th century, it was no longer England, nor France, nor the ideals of the French Revolution that dictated the norm. The mission to be civilised was reconverted under a new world leader: the United States, whose economic and political interests influenced a new colonisation in Guatemala. The process of assimilation took on a new nuance: Integrationism. Since then, in the logic of incorporating the indigenous peoples of Guatemala into the capitalist system of consumption, the Guatemalan state has promoted the concept that the cause of the backwardness and marginality in which the indigenous peoples of Guatemala live is their culture.

With the development of agrarian capitalism (1898–1920), the mono-ethnic and mono-cultural state consolidated in the country. This implied that the Mayan people would have a place in Guatemalan society under the same historical condition: to abandon their identity (knowledge, traditions, art, forms of social relationship, spirituality, etc.). Eradicating indigenous identity was considered a necessary and healthy measure for the country's progress.

The Mayas: Objects of Study

In the 1970s, the power of nation-states began to be eroded by transnational economic alliances and the strengthening of repressed, silenced, and suppressed cultures like the Maya. This resulted in an internal war that lasted 36 years. Even today, the Guatemalan state does not recognise that there was genocide against the Mayans. In the country, the strategy has been the same as in colonial times: to omit, deny, and suppress ancient and actual Mayan knowledge, practices, and languages by the colonial and imperial mechanisms of sub-alternisation. The Mayan past, therefore, has been seen as an object of study, not as the continuous subject of a culture. Civilisations, like the Maya, were converted into objects of study by the civilisations that possessed the mind and culture to dictate the norm in a colonial, imperial, patriarchal, and capitalistic world-system.

In the twentieth century, the word civilisation was no longer used and the word culture became popular; however, academic knowledge was privileged over the knowledge of ancient cultures in order to keep satisfying the needs of hegemonic contexts. In the 21st century in Latin America, the indigenous movements that seek the vindication of their rights have strengthened. What some called a "new ethnicity" is no more than the result of a long tradition (more than 500 years) of rebellions, resistances, and adaptations suppressed by the system.
Guatemala is a country that is torn between a great cultural and natural heritage, and a deep spirituality that contrasts with high rates of inequality, corruption, violence, and the violation of human rights. So many years of colonisation and imperial modernisation have meant that many Mayans doubt and deny their own culture.

The Right to Be

The European invaders in the 15th century believed that they had reached India. But it was Mesoamerica. They called us, the Maya, Indians. The word “Indian” has been used to discriminate against the Mayas. Those who discriminate against us, using this word in a pejorative way, do not understand that it roots us more in our Mayan culture. They ignore that we share common grounds with our sisters and brothers of India.

After the year 2012, a new time cycle started; a time-space cycle that no longer masks where civilisation ends and barbarism begins, but rather points out the place where consciousness emerges.

In this context, the vindication of Mayan culture should not be an archaeological reconstruction of the "authentic", nor a museification and glorification of the culture; but a spiritual, epistemic, and political intervention based on respect towards life. Each life in time-space is a point of realisation and perfection of the universe in its multiple expressions, and that is the highest artistic and spiritual fabric of the cosmos.

The ancient cities and most of the ancient temples are now archaeological and touristic sites; the ancient manuscripts were burned. However, we keep talking to the stars, to the planets, to Mother Earth in our homes, and embracing them in the fire ceremonies, in the mountains, in the woods… The Mayan culture and spirituality keep fighting against persecution, oblivion, and ignorance. We keep fighting for our right to be, our right to life.

Ukab Ija’ / Second Seed

The Different Connections

My Story, the Story of Many

I grew up in the house of my maternal grandmother Demesia, a Maya K'iche' woman with a strong character, but very loving. Every time she could, she said in an energetic voice that if it had not been for the Mayan women and the heart of the kitchens, the Mayan culture would not have survived until now. She and my father would raise their voices and their thoughts in big talks in her kitchen. He found in my grandmother the mother that he lost when he was seven years old; and she embraced in him the father who died when she was still very young.
When I saw that they were talking, I would stand next to her, grabbing her “corte” (Mayan skirt), trying to understand the dialogues they wove, which were incomprehensible to me. At night, I kept repeating words said by them, that made no sense in my mind, but in my being. Years later, being far from Guatemala, I remembered that one spring afternoon, when I was ten years old, I asked them: “Why do my sisters, my brother, and I not speak in the language that you speak?” Both saw me, anguished and sad. My dad told me that they did not teach us to speak K'iche' so that we would not suffer.

My Thread of Life

My grandfather Mateo used to say the same thing to me every time I read the newspaper to him in the afternoons, after I got home from school. He told me that his brother went to London, but he forgot about him. He used to tell me that he would send me to Europe to learn other languages, and that way people would not hurt me. But I had to promise him that I would come back and that I would not forget my family.
My grandfather’s words were prophetic: I lived in different places outside of Guatemala and learned a couple of languages. However, far from Guatemala, I began the search for my umbilical cord. I realised that I knew little, or rather nothing, about my own culture that was in front of and in every part of me. In the labyrinth of questions, I understood that what my grandparents and my father did not want was for me to be discriminated against for coming from a Mayan family and for speaking my mother tongue. Many in Guatemala have been and continue to be discriminated against. Colonisation and extermination have been such that many of us renounce what we undeniably are: Mayans, in this place of many trees.

A Long Silence

Due to the different stages of colonisation and extermination, Mayan knowledge has been diminishing. The interpretation of the glyphs and the rooting to the calendars and astrological knowledge were lost, leaving only the 260-day calendar (or Cholq'ij) in greater use. Most of the documents were destroyed and those that were saved from the stake ended up in other countries. The documents transcribed from the 16th century by Mayan scribes in Mesoamerica were hidden and their consultation was restricted for fear of being destroyed.

However, as of 2012, there was much more access to resources. This was especially due to the rise of the internet and because 21 December 2012 attracted the attention of the world to the Maya. This was a turning point at which many of us became more aware of the fact that the Mayan culture is like a broken vessel that has remained in time, but we have to look for and glue the pieces together to understand it and to understand ourselves — the Mayans.

The Mayan languages, the stelae, the Mayan costumes, the pyramids… Although they have much to tell us, they have remained silent for a long time.

We watched our grandmothers wear the Mayan attire, we heard the Mayan languages in our own homes, we visited ancient Mayan cities, but we did not know much about our own culture. Faced with the incongruity of being part of the Mayan culture and at the same time denying it, many of us began a search on the arduous path of memory. An exciting, but at the same time tortuous, road appeared in front of us, as we realised how colonised we are. Then, the time comes to meet around the Mayan fire in order to sustain us in the process of decolonisation that seems never to end.

The Mayan “Rediscovery”

The "rediscovery" of the Mayan culture began in the 18th century, when the Spanish Crown promoted an expedition as news spread that there were ancient cities buried in the Mesoamerican jungle. There was then a boom in expeditions to Mesoamerica by US people and Europeans, who documented their travel journeys, writing stories and drawing different Mayan cities such as Copan (Honduras) and Palenque (Mexico).

Following the discovery in the 18th and 19th centuries of the Dresden and Madrid Mayan codices (named after the places where they were taken), a great interest in Mayan culture arose in Western intellectual circles. These circles promoted different investigations and interpretations, encouraging an interest in decoding the Mayan hieroglyphic writing. It was not until the middle of the 20th century that the first decipherments of the Mayan hieroglyphs were achieved by intellectuals from the former Soviet Union.

This discovery undoubtedly drew attention to the Mayan culture, helping to some extent to support the long-awaited emancipation of the Mayans and their culture, especially in Guatemala. However, in the context of the Cold War between the Western bloc led by the United States and the Eastern one led by the Soviet Union, Guatemala was considered a communist threat, given the reforms made in the country in favour of the rights of the majority. These reforms affected the interests of the country's oligarchy and US companies in Guatemala.

The CIA promoted a coup in Guatemala in the 1950s, with the support of local power groups. The authoritarianism and inequalities in which the different peoples of Guatemala were submerged resulted, years later, in an internal war and in a genocide against the Mayan people. It was not until the signing of a peace treaty in 1996, after 36 years of internal war and more than 500 years of resistance, that we Mayans began to see a possible dawn.

The contributions of the intellectual circles and spiritual interest around the Mayan culture have been important. Unfortunately, the exoticisation of the Mayan past, culture, and spirituality has attracted more interest than the marginalisation, discrimination, and racism suffered by the Mayans for centuries.

History Repeats Itself

With the arrival of the 13th B'akt'un on 21 December 2012 — or the celebration of the end of a cycle of 26,000 years of 360 days and the beginning of a new one according to the Mayan Long Count system — and with the different stories promoted around the world related to this date, we, the Mayans, were able to gather strength to investigate, recognise, and embrace our culture and spirituality. We began to search in our own homeland, in our families, in other ancient cultures, and in anthropological and archaeological studies. It has been a whole process that is not simple given the stigmas and traumas of the past, as well as the new waves of colonisation in the 21st century.


Several books have been written and various exhibitions have been held in different parts of the world around Mayan culture; however, little information is shared and/or co-created with the current Maya in Mesoamerica. Many study, write, and create systems based on the Mayan worldview in an intellectual or spiritual frenzy, which unfortunately and generally has a background of egomania and mercantilism that ends up ignoring the Mayans themselves and their culture.

The Hidden Things in Books

It is not known with certainty when the compendium of documents written in the 17th century in Mesoamerica became titled “Chilam Balam”. What is known is that before the arrival of the Spanish, those who prophesied and also interpreted the codices were known as Chilam. Balam was the name of a Mayan priest from the Chilam or Chilamesque group. Chilam Balam was a spiritual guide who lived in Maní, Yucatán, Mexico, prior to the Spanish invasion and who predicted the arrival of foreigners from the East in the 16th century. Balam is the name of a lineage and means “jaguar”, that is, the one who can see at night and day, the diviner.

Many of the texts of the Chilam Balam were copied or passed on to other towns, where the spiritual guides of each place included local events. The place name was added to the original name to determine its provenance. The influence of the climate and the passage of time on the books, along with the different interpretations, meant that many of the copies did not accurately represent the originals. However, they contain important information on the different Mayan peoples and their culture.

The following are currently known:

    • Chilam Balam of Chumayel
    • Chilam Balam of Tizimin
    • Chilam Balam of Kaua
    • Chilam Balam Ixil
    • Chilam Balam of Tekax
    • Chilam Balam of Nah
    • Chilam Balam of Tusik
    • Chilam Balam of Maní (disappeared)

It is known that there were others, but their whereabouts are unknown. Some of them were hidden because their stories were considered harmful to colonial society. The cosmology, myths, and healing immersed in these books were considered sorcery. For this reason, they were known as the books of hidden things.

In the lowlands of Mesoamerica, the Mayan life books are known as Chilam Balam, and in the highlands they took the name of Memorials, Titles, or other names such as:
    • Memorial of Chichicastenango or Chilam Balam of Chichicastenango
    • Memorial of Sololá
    • Title of the Yax or Title of Totonicapán
    • Titles of the Ixkin Nejaib' house, Lady of the Territory of Otzoya'
    • Title of the Coyoy
    • Title of the Nimak Achí
    • Xajooj Tun or Rabinal Achí

In Guatemala and Mexico, there are different Chilam Balams, Titles, and Memorials, as well as other texts, which are kept by brotherhoods, by indigenous or community mayors, and by museums. Many of the Chilam Balams, as well as other Memorials, were in the hands of bishops and Catholic friars, and some originals were sold to private collectors abroad.

The Chilam Balams – The Books on the Life of the Mayans
The Chilam Balams were written from the 17th century to the 18th century, after the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica.

These books were written with the aim that Mayan knowledge would not be lost since Bishop Diego de Landa burned, in an act of Christian faith, the different Mayan codices and documents so that the Mayans would not remember their spirituality and knowledge. Paradoxically, in some cases, the Chilam Balam books were written by instruction of the Spanish friars to Mayan priests, which is why a Christian and European influence is denoted. The Chilam Balams and other books in Mesoamerica were written in Latin script and format, after Spanish friars taught the Latin script and the Castilian language to Mayan priests. It is important to emphasise that writing was of the utmost importance to the Mayans.

These books contain different parts that relate various themes of the life of the Mayans such as cosmology, rituals, history, herbalism, calendrical tables, predictions, literature, and traditions, among other topics — some clearly Mayan and others with a European influence. In many of the Chilam Balams, the story is told based on the count of the Katun or 20-day cycles, such as the cycle of the creation of the universe. A large part of these stories come from what is remembered from ancient books and codices, and from oral tradition, since in Mayan culture the chroniclers played an important role at a social, political, religious, and cultural level.

These books were written by different authors, who added pages over time; the Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Yucatán, Mexico) as well as the Sololá Memorial (Sololá, Guatemala), for example, were written from 1600 to the end of 1700. Chilam Balams ceased to be written in the 18th century. Mayan cosmology and cosmogony are described in many of the Chilam Balams, but especially in the Book of Time or Popol Wuj.

Popol Wuj – The People’s Book / The Book of Time

The Popol Wuj is considered the book of the people, the one that tells of Mayan cosmology and cosmogony. The last transcription of the Popol Wuj made by masters of the Mayan K'iche' word in the 16th century is missing. To date, there is only the transcription of the Mayan K'iche' text made by the Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez, as well as his translation into Spanish, at the beginning of the 18th century. This version is in the Newberry Library in Chicago, USA. Several scholars have made different interpretations with important contributions. In 2008, however, one significant interpretation made by Luis Enrique Sam Colop was published.

Sam Colop was a Mayan K'iche' linguist who analysed and transcribed the Popol Wuj into the Mayan K'iche' language, using the contemporary alphabet, with the aim that Mayan K’iche’-speaking people would have access to the document. He also made a translation into Spanish, trying to correct mistakes in linguistic interpretation made by other non-Maya K'iche'-speaking scholars and returning to the peculiar poetic language in which it was written. The Popol Wuj contains the mythology of the K'iche' people until the arrival of the Spanish. The People’s Book, the Advice Book, or the Time Weaving Book, as it is also known, mentions that there is a much older book, and begins by stating how difficult it was to transcribe it in the midst of Christian persecution.

 

Mythological Time

This Mayan sacred book, the Popol Wuj, speaks of silence and how the universe and the Earth arose, as well as the concern of the Formers and Creators about the beings that would invoke them. The animals that would inhabit the mountains were created. Then they created beings made of clay, which crumbled in the water. Then came the third creation — the wooden beings — who spoke, but had no spirit or thought. The Popol Wuj tells us how the hero twins defeat the occult and how the sky is filled with light, it is filled with stars.

The parents of the twins were the first to make a trip to the underworld, to Xib'alb'a. On this journey, they are defeated by the lords of death. The head of one of them is placed in the calabash tree, whose saliva would later fertilise the young Ixk'ik, and whose fruit would be the hero twins — Junajpu and Xbalamke, brothers of the first twins, Jun Batz' and Jun Chowen. The latter are turned into monkeys for despising their new brothers. The twin heroes Junajpu and Xbalamke go to the underworld and manage to defeat the Lords of Death. Ixmukane, their grandmother, burns incense in front of the milpa that the hero twins had planted in the middle of the house, and from which they would sprout. The hero twins ascend to the celestial vault, where one becomes the Sun and the other the Moon.

 

Historical Time

The mythological part of the Popol Wuj continues, but it is diluted with the historical part. It appears in the book as the animals discover the corn that becomes the essential part of the creation of humanity. From there arise the four generations, from the four colours of corn. Each generation takes its way. Fire is created and dawn arises with the morning star — Venus — as witness. The first fathers and mothers disappear and leave behind a memory of their presence: the sacred wrapping that contains the red seeds/beans. Each generation takes a course; the generation that goes to the east receives a copy of the book of origins, whose content was also reflected in vessels, temples, and murals. The Popol Wuj ends by narrating how the K'iche' people and their lineages settled until the arrival of the Spaniards. At the end of the book, the origin and lineage to which the three Mayan transcribers belonged is revealed. They were the masters of the Word of the ancient book that was surely written in hieroglyphs and pictographically long ago.

To be continued. Next Issue in our series Cosmic journeys order the full pdf by Branly Gio Lopez at www.we-are-stardust.nl

**References and Notes full book**

  1. Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala, *K’iche’ Choltzij Vocabulario K’iche’ / K’iche’ Choltzij K’iche’ Vocabulary*, 3rd ed., 2010. See [https://www.almg.org.gt/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/VOCABULARIO-2.pdf](https://www.almg.org.gt/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/VOCABULARIO-2.pdf) (accessed June 14, 2026).
  1. Ajq’ijab’, *Conocimientos y experiencias sobre la cosmovisión maya trasladados oralmente por contadores del tiempo maya en Ixim Ulew/Guatemala / Knowledge and Experiences about the Maya Cosmovision Transmitted Orally by Maya Timekeepers in Ixim Ulew/Guatemala*, oral sources, 2012–2022.
  1. Asociación de Centros Educativos Mayas — ACEM; Fundación Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín — PLFM; and Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala, *Calendario sagrado maya Cholq’ij: Los 20 nawales y su significado / Sacred Maya Cholq’ij Calendar: The 20 Nawales and Their Meaning*, 2010. See [https://es.scribd.com/doc/253320925/El-Calendario-Maya-Cholq-Ij-y-Los-20-Nawales](https://es.scribd.com/doc/253320925/El-Calendario-Maya-Cholq-Ij-y-Los-20-Nawales) (accessed June 14, 2026).
  1. Asociación Médicos Descalzos de Chinique, *El uso del Tuj/Temazcal / The Use of the Tuj/Temazcal*, Fondo local de Reforma de Políticas Públicas (SODEF) de Agencia Canadiense para el Desarrollo Internacional del Gobierno de Canadá; Québec sin Fronteras; Solidarité Nord-Sud des Bois Francs, 2007.
  1. Barrera V. and Rendón S., *El libro de los libros de Chilam Balam / Chilam Balam’s Book of Books*, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1948–1969.
  1. Colop S., *Popol Wuj: Traducción al Español / Popol Wuj: Spanish Translation*, Cholsamaj, 2008.
  1. Dirección General de Desarrollo Cultural y Fortalecimiento de las Culturas, Dirección Técnica de Diversidad Cultural, Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes de Guatemala, *Armonización de los calendarios mayas / Harmonization of the Maya Calendars*, Garay A. and Xoyon I., 2016.
  1. Escalante C., *Cosmovisión y espiritualidad: Meditaciones y reflexiones del pensamiento maya / Cosmovision and Spirituality: Meditations and Reflections on Maya Thought*, Asociación Vida Digna, Colección Xelajuj N’oj, 2016.
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Agent 76 – Jeanette Groenendaal

Jeanette Groenendaal born on the 1st of January, 1964 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Born a Capricorn with Capricorn Ascendent and a Moon in Leo. Jeanette has been a practicing astrologer since 1988. Originally a dancer, artist, performer and producer of interactive installations. Jeanette holds an International Masters Degree in Theatre Production and became a scenario writer and filmmaker. Three of Jeanette’s films currently tour internationally in the independent film festival circuit. One of which is about an astrological pilgrimage in India; Dramayama.

Website: www.we-are-stardust.nl

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