Medicinal Mayan Trees Fiddlewood Trees Treats Asthma, Chest Cold Rheumatism

By Liliana Usvat    
Blog 334-365 

Fiddle wood is a graceful deciduous or evergreen tree with fragrant blooms

Fiddlewood Trees (English),Citharexylum spinosum ,  Barrabas (Spanish), Ya'ax Niik or Yaxnik (Maya), Vitex gaumeri, Verbenaceae Family. Native to Yucatan, Mexico. "Ya'ax niik Che" (fiddlewood trees) grow wild in Mayan dry forests. Blooms clusters of small blue flowers in April and May; its fruit has green skin when ripe with one large seed. Palmately elliptic leaflets; thick grayish trunk over cut for its valuable lumber, now endangered. Since ancient times Maya J-Men Healers use its leafs in traditional healings.

 
Family - Taxodiaceae (Redwood family)

The botanical name is Citharexylum fruticosum (sith-ar-RECKS-sil-lum  froo-tick-OH-sum) a name that can take us on quite a linguistic journey because “cithera” means guitar. So why is it “fiddlewood?”  Almost directly translated the botanical name means “lyre wood shrubby”  Put in better terms it could mean “guitar wood tree” or more directly  “shubby kythera.” (KITH-ah-rah)  Kythera (a lyre is kythara, kith-THA-rah) is also the Greek word from which we get “guitar” … kith-THA-rah… get-TAR…see it? Hear it? The Fiddlewood tree is also called the Guitar Tree.

How To Grow It

The Fiddlewood can be planted in full sun to light shade in a wide range of soil types and once established is extremely drought tolerant. For best results, full sun is preferred as the canopy of the Fiddlewood will become dense and flower and fruit prolifically. 
 
Propagation is by seed. The tree is remarkably hearty and not normally subject to diseases as it matures. However, be on the lookout for moth caterpillars that have been known to make a meal on the leaves. Thankfully they rarely do any lasting damage to the tree.

METHOD OF PREPARATION: Ripe fruit edible raw, but not great.  Do not eat the seeds.

Medicinal Uses

• Citharexylum spinosum treats asthma.  Five or six leaves are pounded and the juice extracted and mixed with a spoon of Barbados oil.  
• For a bad chest cold with phlegm, juvenile leaves are pounded in a little water to extract the juice and a teaspoon each of olive oil and castor oil or coconut oil added, swizzled well, and given to drink.  
• For rheumatism, remove the thick bark of the tree, dry it, and put it in a pint of wine.  Drink a small wine glass full every morning. This is to purify the blood.

Good for Bees

The nectar-rich flowers are very attractive to bee

 

 

Mayan Trees Balche

By Liliana Usvat    
Blog 333-365

Baalche' (Maya), Lonchocarpus longistylus, Pitter,  Fabaceae family. An evergreen semi-deciduous tropical hardwood tree, Baalche' is native the Yucatan and Guatemala. Its trunk is straight with long thin branches spreading with dense foliage.  In Yucatan, the Maya ferment Baalche' bark, and add honey to create a sacred  beverage since Pre-Hispanic times. Baalche' leafs are composite, impair-pinnate, with 15 oblong leaflets. Blooms in Sept as a papilionaceous, in clusters of small orchid purple-violet flowers.
 
Balché is a mildly intoxicating beverage common among ancient and indigenous cultures in areas of what are now Mexico and upper Central America. Today, the drink is still common among the Yucatec Maya, and is made from the bark of a leguminous tree (Lonchocarpus violaceus), which is soaked in honey and water, and fermented. A closely related beverage, made from honey produced from the nectar of a species of morning glory (Turbina corymbosa), was called xtabentún.

History
 
The peoples of Mesoamerica have long held the balché tree and their mysterious beverage sacred. Because the drink had strong religious significance to the Maya, the Spaniards banned the beverage in an attempt to convert them to Christianity. The ban was observed until a Maya named Chi convinced the Spaniards that balché had important health benefits and that many Maya were dying as a result of the prohibition. 
 
The Spaniards then lifted their ban, and balché rituals resumed. . . .
The Lacandon. . . believe that the gods gave balché rituals to them, and that because the gods themselves first became inebriated by the beverage, the people from then on had a duty to imitate the inebriation of the gods and to experience that same exhilaration. 
 
The Lacandon chant incantations while preparing the balché. . . First, the brewer offers his drink to the gods; then, later, the people partake of it, usually just before dawn. 
 
The Lacandon call the balché brewer "Lord of the Balché" and they identify him with Bohr or Bol, the god of inebriation.
 
links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38jaV0i86UQ

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/