Cosmology and the Institutionalization of Hierarchy in the Maya Region

Abstract

Shamanism, some would argue, is the key to understanding classic Maya rulers (Freidel 1992; Freidel et al. 1993). But what does kingship have to do with priests, healers, witches, and seers who stand with one foot in society and the other in an ethereal liminality? Animal spirits, ancestors, and supernaturals would seem strange bedfellows for the worldly king who wielded power, organized military forays, and extracted labor services from his populace. Years ago, Eliade (1970:333-336) wrote of shamanism as the ecstasy of religious expression, hinting at the deep, Asian roots of shamanism in the Americas. Likewise, ethnographers, have enjoyed a long tradition of anthropological investigation of shamanism among Native Americans (see Furst 1974, among others). But in neither case was shamanism linked with power of an earthly kind or viewed as a pathway to rulership. More recently, however, scholars have proposed a wedding of shamanic power with political authority to produce “shaman kings,” or as Chang 0983:112) has written in reference to state formation in China, “shamanistic politics.” This approach, which models societal cosmology as having been deftly shaped into political ideology, suggests that the transition from leaders to rulers is as much about how we think as it is about what valuables we possess, with whom we ally, or who we can best militarily.