Mayan Trees Copal tree

By Liliana Usvat    
Blog 332-365
 

Copal trees, or Pom (Maya), Protium copal, Burseraceae family of torchwood trees. Maya people highly value the Copal tree resin as a sacred incense in all their mystical ceremonies and sacred rituals.  Before harvesting the Copal resin, the Maya celebrate Mayan rituals for the Aluxes (small supernatural creatures who live in and guard the Mayan forest). Mayan J-Men bless with great reverence their valuable copal resin, a highly combustible sap that hardens as it dries in golden milky amber-quartz like chunks.


Copal is a name given to tree resin that is particularly identified with the aromatic resins used by the cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica as ceremonially burned incense and other purposes.

To the pre-Columbian Maya and contemporary Maya peoples it is known in the various Mayan languages as pom (or a close variation thereof)

Copal is still used by a number of indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America as an incense, during sweat lodge ceremonies and Sacred Mushroom ceremonies ..

Copal is from the Nahuatl language and the word is derived from “copalli,” which means incense; Nahuatl was the language of the Aztecs. In Belize, copal is used as incense and can be found in most market places in the country; they are sold in one pound blocks of resin in its most natural form, with complimentary pieces of dried bark, leaves and drunken baymen, wrapped in leaf parcels.



The Maya and Latino people of Toledo, pieces of copal on coals for spiritual cleansing. Copal has been used in ancient Maya and Aztec ceremony as a ritual offering to the gods. The secondary and less well-known use of copal is as medicine.

The concept of “evil eye” and “spiritual cleansing”  so people use of copal for these purpose.

Medicinal Uses

• Copal was used in its raw, unrefined form and was used especially for skin infections (bark, leaves, dead flies and all!). 
• the resin has been used to plug tooth cavities, 
• as an expectorant and 
• in the treatment of muscular aches and pains.
• copal’s white smoke helps with headaches and relieves diseases associated with cold and humidity.  
• the resin is used in tea to treat bronchitis and applied locally for coughs and rheumatism.

 Chemically copal resin is made up of isomeric tertiary and secondary, cyclic terpene alcohols. These constituents are known to have

• antiseptic (both externally and internally) and 
• anti-rheumatic properties

No side effects or allergic reactions have been reported. 

 The gum [resin] is boiled, shaped into hard pellets, burned with live coals in incense burners, and the fumes allowed to pass over the body to cure various illnesses, to protect oneself against sorcery, sickness, and misfortune, and to cleanse the body after contact with the ritually unclean, especially sick persons and corpses. 

A tea of the bark is taken to relieve dysentery.  A type of sandal is carved from the wood, to be worn on muddy trails.  The wax [resin] is burned in the houses to drive away insects and when freshly made serves as an all-purpose solder or glue. 

This is used to mend leaks in all non-cooking containers, to plug the mouth end of flutes, to tip drum sticks, to glue wood especially in the manufacture of the TUN drum, fiddles, and guitars, and for glueing the leather straps to tool handles.  It is burned in incense burners at nearly all the religious ceremonies, and the Catholic churches of the area are said to use it exclusively.
 

History

Copal is the name given to the aromatic resin derived from the sap or “blood” of certain trees from the Torchwood family that hardens when in contact with the air. 

A process of tree selection is done by “copaleros” or experts on discriminating whether the tree is robust and healthy enough for it to flow well throughout the harvesting season. 

 Traditionally, cuts are done on the bark of the copal tree and a maguey stalk is placed underneath to receive the resin that will turn into the aromatic, sacred incense. 

The uses of copal in ancient Mexico and amongst native cultures nowadays can be divided into four functions: adivinatory, preventive, therapeutic, and divine offerings. 

The Otomi people “read” the copal’s smoke with the aid of a candle to diagnose disease; copal smudging is one of the most common preventive and therapeutic practices in traditional medicine; 

the Lacandon people craft receptacles dedicated to a particular god(des) in which copal is burned, thus “feeding” the divine abode of such deities. 

Copal’s importance was such that not only survived the arrival of the Spaniards but was adopted by them, becoming a common element in Church services.

Links

http://maya-archaeology.org/pre-Columbian_Mesoamerican_Mayan_ethnobotany_Mayan_iconography_archaeology_anthropology_research/copal_pom_Maya_incense_religious_ceremonies.php

https://www.utexas.edu/courses/stross/papers/copal.htm

http://teomatisacredcopal.com/copals-history/

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Sacred Mayan Tree - Kapok, Ceiba Tree Medicinal Uses for Stomach Pain and Headache Relief

By Liliana Usvat    
Blog 331-365

       

Kapok, Ceiba Tree: Yaaxche (Maya)  Ceiba pentandra,  is the most Sacred Tree to the Maya,  (flowers photo) belongs to the Bombacaceae family. Ceiba trees or Kapok trees produce a cotton like fiber from its fruits, called by the Maya people "pochote," a highly valuable fiber for clothing since pre-Hispanic times. 
 
Commonly referred in Yucatan as la Ceiba, the huge trees give their first crop of pochote after seven years.  

Even today, Maya people honor the Ya'axche or Ceiba Tree as an energy connection with the Cosmos, Earth, and the Underworld; ever present in ceremonies and as a medicine plant, this beautiful tree is were the Maya Gods abide, and so do may forest supernatural creatures and energies. Young Ceiba trees have exotic looking thorny green trunks,

The unmistakable thick conical thorns in clusters on the trunk were reproduced by the southern lowland Maya of the Classical Period on cylindrical ceramic burial urns or incense holders.

Ceiba Around the World
 
The Maya civilization believed, Yaaxché, a concept of the central world tree is often depicted as a Ceiba trunk, which connects the planes of the Underworld (Xibalba), the terrestrial realm and the skies.

The tree figures an important part in the mythologies of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. For example several Amazonian tribes of eastern Peru believe deities live in Ceiba tree species throughout the jungle. 

Ceiba is also the national tree of Guatemala. The most important Ceiba in Guatemala is known as La Ceiba de Palín Escuintla which is over 400 years old. 
 
In Caracas, Venezuela there is a 100 year old ceiba tree in front of the San Francisco Church knownas La Ceiba de San Francisco and is an important element in the history of the city.

The Ceiba tree seed is used to extract oils used to make soap and fertilizers. The Ceiba is continued to be commercialized in Asia especially in Java, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines.
 

Habitat: 

The kapok tree is found throughout the Neotropics, from southern Mexico to the southern Amazon and even to parts of West Africa. Because the unopened fruit won't sink when submerged in water, many believe the fruit of the kapok tree floated its way from Latin America to Africa.

Flowers

Ceiba flowers open in the evening and are pollinated by pollen- and nectar-feeding bats. Their kapok-surrounded seeds are adapted for dispersal by wind.  Ceiba trees may flower as little as once every 5 years, especially in wetter forests. 

Flowering is more frequent on forest edges or in drier sites.   The trees lose their leaves in the dry season, a conditioned termed "drought-deciduousness".   

 Flowering and fruiting takes place when the tree is leafless and this is believed to be an adaptation that facilitates both mammal-pollination and wind-dispersal. Dispersal by water may also occur; the fruits float indefinitely owing to the water-repellant kapok fibers.  
 
This may explain how Ceiba reached Africa from South America where the genus is believed to have originated.

Reforestation with Ceiba Tree

Ceiba trees grow fast in high light conditions and thus acts as a "pioneers", colonizing cleared areas if a seed source is nearby.  Many are adapted to dry conditions and are able to store water in the cortical cells of their trunk.  At times this gives the trunk a swollen or bulging appearance. 

A Ceiba tree is the focal point for a complex ecological community living out its existence high in the forest canopy!

Holistic Uses

Since the Spaniards burned almost all Mayan books and codices, J-Men and Mayan healers have little written records of their medicinal methods; today, few books by western writers have recorded some of the important Mayan ethno-medicine healing traditions, medicine plants, remedies, cures, and holistic practices. Mayan healers use Mayan holistic rituals and healing ceremonies with prayer, divination, ethno-medicine traditions, and guidance from their spiritual guardians that communicate through dreams and their holy Sas'tun (quartz) holistic messages to cure, purify, or cleanse a person.   

Mithology

The value of the Ceiba goes far beyond Mayan mysticism: Few know about its diverse uses
– Iris Ceballos Alvarado.
It’s said that the yaxché or ceiba holds the three levels of Mayan cosmology together: Cab, Kaán, and Xibalbá.
And it’s thought that there is a connection between humans and the ceiba, like a mother gives life, in that if the tree dies, the human also perishes.

According to Mayan mythology, 122 deities live in the yaxché, divided into two groups: 13 Oxlahunti
kú and nine Bolontikú.

Itzamná was the white, bearded god, son of Hunab Ku, who preached monotheism and was named as the chief of the Mayan pantheon in the group Oxlahuntikú, who inhabited the branches of the ceiba.

The nine gods of the underworld, the Bolontikú, lived in the depths of its roots.

Thus the branches of the sacred tree cross the 13 celestial planes and its roots sink into the underworld, where there are nine levels. 

The ceiba also represents the four cardinal points, called bacabes. In representations made of the ceiba it is not unusual that the lower part is swollen, like the belly of a pregnant woman. In the yaxché, or ceiba, the predecessors of the ancestral mayan culture reside, the gods and, it is said, some supernatural beings.

But there is much more than magic, mystery and religious meaning in the ceiba, since its bark and fruit can be used to construct packing boxes, to relieve headaches, stuff pillows, and make life jackets.
However, in Yucatán, there is little or no exploitation of the plant, which is viewed in its magic-religious character, not in a functional sense, in the point of the view of the technician Filogonia May Pat, a member of the ecology and systematic team of the natural resources unit of CICY (Centro de Investigación Cientifica de Yucatán).

He explains that in Yucatán the predominant species of ceiba is C. pentandra, of the bombacaceae family. This species can reach 40 meters in height, with a trunk diameter of three meters.


Medicinal Uses

• A tea to relief stomach pain can be made from the flower. 
• It also is used for female fertility, and 
• to stimulate maternal milk. 
• Among the other medicinal uses of the bark is relief of headache.