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Published: January 31st 2017
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Jade Corn King
Guatemalan jade, purchased in Antigua JADE:
THE STONE OF METAMORPHOSIS
by Dennis Cunningham
Antigua, Guatemala
Little birds flutter within the Cathedral de Santiago.
Craning my neck, I can see them silhouetted against an electric blue sky. They descend through open domes that once soared, intact, above apse and transept. The birds land on the dusty tiles and hop about nervously, as if they are never comfortable, and would be quick to ascend again into the open sky at the first tiny tremble beneath their pennyweight feet. And they may have reason to be jumpy.
Guatemala has the unenviable distinction of sitting above, not only a fault line, but also a fault
zone, known as the Motagua and Chixoy-Polochic fault complex. The earth has history of shivering here. The birds seem to posses a Darwinian memory, and the Cathedral de Santaigo, with its fractured bones caught in mid-tumble, is a frozen reminder of the impermanence of all things.
The Spanish conscripted the Maya to build their cathedrals through dark enactments of laws and labor taxes. It is ironic that that many of their cathedrals are in ruins, their original missionaries have fled, but
Impermanence
Maya urn at the MFA, Boston the Maya, with their cyclical concept of time, have survived, as has their concept of universality, and perhaps even timelessness.
Nonetheless, beneath the feet of these featherweight birds ticks a clock. Beneath the crazed tiles and dark crypts there is the relentless tectonic shift, grinding, heaving, creating pressure to the tune of 45 million pounds per square inch.
I step outside and see three Maya women, with bright red fabric draped over their arms, making perambulations around the gurgling fountain in the Parque Central, or the Main Plaza. Beyond, perfectly coned black volcanoes loom over Antiqua like sentinels. History seems extant.
The single word Maya exists apart from the ancient civilizations in Central America. In Hinduism and Buddhism the concept of maya translates as "that which exists, but is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal.” In terms of Guatemalan geology, and the accompanying Maya cosmology, there could not exist a more perfect parallel between these worlds, Asian and American. But it is not until I visit a small Jade factory and museum in Antigua, and afterwards see the pre-Columbian art displayed in the crypts of the Hotel Casa Santo Domingo, that I
Maya face
Detail, burial urn, MFA, Boston begin to see how nature itself can teach us these lessons of impermanence and transformation.
When archeologists unearthed Maya kings in the twentieth century, these exhumed elites were wearing masks fashioned of the most elaborate jade, and wearing jade jewelry so gorgeous, that it confounded the gravediggers. The reason being that these very same archeologists could not decipher from whence this gorgeous jade, in such quantity and quality, had been quarried. Trade with China? Burma? Certainly not Mesoamerica. As far as they knew no such jade was quarried here.
For the Maya, it may be said that nothing is simply present or absent. There exits something in between these two opposite moments in their cosmology. “You are my other me,” writes poet Luis Valdez, capturing the crux of Maya philosophy.
It seems that archeologists Mary Lou Ridinger along with her husband, Jay, may have understood, intuitively, this fluid concept when it came to the discovery of jade in Guatemala. Jade is a metamorphic stone, created by millennia of relentless pressure and heat; tectonic plates engaging, sliding one under the other, to heat minerals that will eventually form into jade. The shattering destruction of
Maya vessel
MFA, Boston earthquakes, the molten flow of lava, the drifts of ash, to them signaled the opposite, the possibility of creation beneath their feet. In 1974, they discovered jade in Guatemala, the quality and quantity in which Maya kings would be proud to be buried.Ridinger is widely regarded among scholars as the first archaeologist to discover the in-situ locations of the pre-Columbian Maya jade/jadeite quarry areas. Science should value her intuition.
In current day Antigua artisans carve and polish jade much like their ancestors did, albeit with wheels and tools powered electrically. The factory also houses a small museum in which Mayan history cosmology is portrayed, and the Maya calendar is explained. The men and women who work here must study for at least a month before hitting the floor.
Flor, from whom I bought a gorgeous sculpture of the Maya Corn King, tells me about this preparation, and her studies.
“I got very tired.,” she says laughing, “We have to read so much. I prefer videos,”
She tells me about Popol Vuh, which is a collection of mytho-historical accounts of the early Maya dynasties in the western highlands. Some refer to it as the Maya “Bible” as
it contains creation myths, and the modern Maya consider it to be a priceless resource. Somehow it survived the widespread destruction of Maya books by the Christian missionaries.
“You have to read it more than just one,” she says seriously, “You have to read it often. It’s not that easy to understand.”
Flor now shows me translucent jade, the most valuable form of the stone, the quality of which was found on the ancient kings. She places the white pendant in front of a bright light and suddenly this mere monochrome piece of earth explodes into a rainbow of color, the purples and reds and blues released into the room.
I recite Luis Valdez’s little poem for her.
Tu eres mi otro you
You are my other me
Si me hago dano a ti
If I do harm to you
Me hago dano a mi mismo
I do harm to myself
Si te amo y respeto
If I love and respect you
Me amo y repeto yo
I love and respect myself
With
Volcano
Early morning street in Antigua that we hug, and I step out onto the cobbles carrying the Corn King.
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