The Cult of the Holy Cross: An Analysis of Cosmology and Catholicism in Quintana Roo

Author(s): Charlotte Zimmerman

Source: History of Religions, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Summer, 1963), pp. 50-71
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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 Charlotte Zimmerman THE CULT OF THE
HOLY CROSS: AN
ANALYSIS OF COS-
MOLOGY AND
CATHOLICISM IN
QUINTANA ROO

The subject about which the following discussion will revolve is the
militant cult of the Maya Indians of East Central Quintana Roo. The
purpose, however, of this discussion is not solely an analysis of this
cult in itself, but an attempt to develop a theoretical clarification of
this religious phenomenon in order to illuminate other like situations
in which indigenous non-Western religions have met, clashed, and
apparently blended with Christianity.
We intend first to analyze the cult to determine whether under its
Catholic forms it can be considered Catholicism, as Redfield held,' or
even Christianity; and second to determine, if it is neither, what its
real meaning may be as a religious phenomenon. In the course of this
discussion a different theoretical approach entailing the introduction
of different critical categories will be used. This different approach is
partially caused by a disagreement with Robert Redfield's interpreta-
tion of the nature of the religious phenomenon he studied in Tusik, a
village belonging to the cult. Our own work and empirical observations
1 Robert Redfield, The Folk Culture of Yucatan (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1941).
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of this phenomenon have led us to conclude that Redfield's interpreta-
tion, which we shall discuss later, is not entirely adequate to clarify the
complex nature of the religious phenomenon of the cult. Using Red-
field's studies, our own later field work, and the excellent ethnography
by Villa Rojas,2 we were lead to conclude that, rather than Catholi-
cism, which it appears to be, the cult must be interpreted in a different
manner if its religious and anthropological significance is to be under-
stood.
We offer here, therefore, an analysis of this cult, entirely different
from Redfield's, following closely the data given by Villa in his study
(in which he made no attempt to interpret what he found in religious
or theological terms), based on an approach first introduced by Henri
Bergson and developed in different ways by both Eric Voegelin and
Mircea Eliade.3 This approach will become clear in the course of the
article, but its basic premise is the difference between immanent
cosmological religions and the transcendent soteriological religion of
Christianity, a difference so radical that no essential blend of the two
is possible.

HISTORY OF THE CULT

The Cult of the Holy Cross began in Chan Santa Cruz (Carrillo
Puerto, Quintana Roo) in 1850 with the appearance of a small cross
which spoke with the authority of the Trinity which it claimed to be.
It appeared to a group of Maya sublevados (rebellious Indians), de-
jected and almost beaten by the government troops who had quelled
the revolt of the internal proletariat,4 called the War of the Castes, on
the rest of the Yucatan Peninsula. The war was a revolt of the Maya
Indians, led by chiefs from Tihosuco and Tepich, against all the Dzules
(Spanish and creole race) of which the aim was to re-establish the
absolute power of the Maya caciques over the peninsula5 of Yucatan as
2 Alfonso Villa Rojas, The Maya
of East CentralQuintana Roo (Washington,
D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1945).
3Henri Bergson, The Two Sourcesof
Moralityand Religion (GardenCity, N.Y.:
Doubleday & Co., 1954); Eric Voegelin, Orderand History,Vol. I: Israeland Reve-
lation; Vol. II: The Worldof the Polis; Vol. III: Plato and Aristotle(Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1956-57); and Mircea Eliade, Cosmosand His-
tory; The Myth of the EternalReturn (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959).
Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford
University Press, 1940), V, 88-95, 158-66.
6Eligio Ancona, Historia de Yucatdndesde la
epoca mds remota hasta nuestros
dias (Merida, Yucatan: M. Heredia Arguelles, 1879), VI, 19; Gustavo Molina
Font, La de
Tragedia Yucatan (Mexico, D.F.: Revista de Derecho y Ciencias
Sociales, 1941), pp. 47-60.
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The Cult of the Holy Cross

their ancestors had done before them in the first revolt against
Francisco Montejo, the conquistador, in 1540.6
It was at this moment of defeat that the Talking Cross appeared,
and its general effect was the formation of a new military and religious
cult which gave the Indians a new religious drive to continue the
fighting. The success of this drive can only be measured by the fact
that the war lasted fifty years longer and the Indians were not finally
brought to peace terms until 1915.7
That the cult was both a religious and military institution becomes
clear from the first revelation of the Cross and from the subsequent
political organization of the Maya Indians. A Triumvirate acted as
interpreters and agents of the Cross and transmitted its commands to
the people.8 The regulating sociopolitical organization may be called a
theocracy. The Supreme Chief (cacique) who had almost complete
power was called "the Patron of the Cross." Second to him in rank and
command was the Interpreter of the Cross, and finally the Organ of
the Divine Word. The Cross from the very first, through its inter-
preters, regulated the religious, social, political, and military affairs of
the Indians by its commands. Indeed all the business conducted was
conducted in the name of the Holy Cross. Directly below the Trium-
virate in rank and power came the military leaders, called "com-
manders," headed by a Commander of the Plaza. These were in
charge of the entire military organization which, as we shall see, was
coterminous with the religious and political organization. This meant
that, as in the case of the theocracy9 of Israel, all wars were holy
wars conducted in this instance in the name of the Cross. More inter-
esting, however, is that the Cross on its first appearance reportedly
told the Indians that it was "sent to earth by God the Father to help
the Indians in their struggle against the whites [Spanish and creole
upper classes] and protect them from the bullets of their enemies."10
The Cross in its letters titled itself as the "True Christ" and made it
6 Robert S. Chamberlain, The Conquest and Colonization of Yucatan, 1517-1550
(Washington,D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1948), pp. 237-52.
7The rebellious Indians were, in fact, never conquered.The peace settlement
itself was a recognitionof this, since it gave the Indian leaders complete control
over the East CentralTerritoryof QuintanaRoo. In additionthey receivedneither
aid nor arms from the British of Belize, British Honduras, after 1887. From this
can be judged the strength of the rebellionand the new religiouscult which gave
it its motivation (see Villa, op. cit., pp. 28-30).
8
Voegelin, op. cit., I, 242-48, esp. p. 243, n. 12.
9 The term "theocracy"is used here for lack of a better term, despite the fact
that there is major disagreementabout the correctnessof its usage in referenceto
Israel.
10Villa, op. cit., p. 20, quoted from Baqueiro 1878, 2:207; my italics.
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clear that those who received its letters were enjoying the "benefits of
speaking with the true Christ." Furthermore, other letters trans-
mitted under the name of Juan de la Cruz Puc, one of its earliest
priests, contained the phrases "Son of God," "Creator of the Chris-
tians," and "Our Lord Jesus Christ.""

PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION OF THE SERMON

In a sermon preserved by the Indians of the subtribe of X-cacal, a
later division of the Cacicazgo of Chan Santa Cruz, and treated by
them as a sacred document, the Cross, speaking, recounts its history
and commandments, and indicates rather clearly the militaristic na-
ture of its revelations. The problem of what the Cross represents, who
is speaking through it, and the meaning of these revelations will be
analyzed in the second part of this discussion. In summary, the Cross
says (1) he was born into the world in 1850, (2) that he is suffering for
his sons the Christians, whom he created and redeemed with his pre-
cious blood, (3) that he is sending commandments to all the people he
created which must be obeyed, (4) if they are obeyed, they will always
have his Holy Grace with them; if not, they will suffer eternal punish-
ment; (5) that the first of these commandments and warnings is that
the whites have risen up against the Indians (here it becomes clear to
whom the terms "my people" and "my Christians" refers ultimately)
and defeated them because the Cross "had no sons or people at my
command to carry out my orders"; (6) h that the Indians must rise up
again against the whites as of old and when they do, the bullets of the
whites will not hurt them, (7) because "I will be with you at all times;
I shall be he that goeth before you in the vanguard, confronting the
enemy, so that no harm may befall you."12
THEOCRATIC ORGANIZATION
The Speaking Cross which appeared in 1850, destroyed by government
troops in 1851, reappeared again miraculously under the form of three
daughter Crosses. The daughter Crosses claimed the exact same au-
thority of the first Cross and formed a theocracy, which, although
dominated by the Triumvirate, was organized on a military basis with
n Ibid., pp. 22-23, and Thomas Gann, The Gloriesof the Maya (London:Duck-
worth Co., 1938), pp. 19-20. Gann includes a translation of a letter from the talk-
ing Cross to the authorities of Belize, British Honduras.
2 Villa, op. cit., pp. 161-62. Villa includes in Appendix B a translation of a
"Sermonof the Talking Cross," a document he copied from a notebook which his
friend, the scribe Yum Pol of the subtribe of X-cacal lent him. Judgingfrom a pre-
liminary translation of another Maya document received from the scribe of the
subtribe of Chumpon, there exist several of these "sermons"guarded as sacred
documents by the Indians of the three subtribes of the cult.
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The Cult of the Holy Cross

its military and religious center in Chan Santa Cruz. By 1860 the
entire territory from Tulum in the northeast to Bacalar in the south
was organized into a cacicazgo in which the entire body of men who
were married or over sixteen years old were organized into a series of
military companies, each of which had soldiers and officers ranging
from corporal to major or higher. Above all of these was the Com-
mander of the Plaza. Each company had 150 members. The duties of
each company were both religious and military, the most important of
which was the "Guard of the Saint." This was a fifteen-day vigil of
each company in rotation in the sacred capital, Chan Santa Cruz. It
included military and police duties as ordered from military head-
quarters, the maintenance of law and order within the Cacicazgo,
sometimes spying on other companies, and most important, the actual
guarding of the Santo (saint or god, holy one) within the church. This
guard of the church was a perpetual day-and-night watch broken up
into turns in which some members of the company stood outside the
two-room church with rifles and two members guarded the inside cur-
tained door which led to the inner room called "La Gloria" (heaven,
sanctuary where the Santo was kept).
THE GUARD OF THE SANTO
The ostensible purpose of the perpetual guard of the Santo was to see
that nobody entered the sanctuary unauthorized. Since nobody but
the highest chiefs and interpreters or secretaries were allowed into the
inner room, and all soldiers and subordinate chiefs knelt in the outer
room during all religious services, and the door usually remained cur-
tained, the real religious services which were held within the inner
room were esoteric. The mysteries and secrets of the Talking Cross
were kept closely guarded, including its various means of giving orders
and revelations.13
The political and social organization of the entire Cacicazgo was
arranged, therefore, by a division into military companies and a hier-
archy of command from the private to his company head to the higher
ranking commanders up to the Commander of the Plaza who, in turn,
took his orders from the Triumvirate and the Talking Cross. We can
say thus that the Cacicazgo was a theocracy organized hierarchically
with its basis in a military formation of the body of men.
13Ibid., pp. 21-23, and Thomas Gann, The Maya Indians of Southern Yucatan
and Northern British Honduras (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1918), pp. 40-43, esp. p. 41, n. 1, where he quotes Henry Fowler. All of this is
confirmed by my major informant, Juan B. Vega, scribe of the subtribe of Chum-
pon, who has informed me of the past practices i the cult which he observed when
he was a boy.
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 MEANING OF THE THEOCRATIC ORGANIZATION
Political societies are always, in one aspect, power organizations, and
their representatives, whether elected or inherited or brought in by
social or religious revolutions, always have power; hence the important
element here is why the political power took the form of a theocracy
and why the Cross which justified this theocratic organization de-
manded a continuation of the war rather than its peaceful termina-
tion. The society articulated itself during the War of the Castes, and
therefore its military organization would be a matter of survival; in-
deed, the Indians were already organized into military units for the
fighting of the war. With the appearance of the Cross, the older mili-
tary organization with its commanders was superseded by a theocracy
dominated by the Triumvirate. It is true that "saviors with a sword"
are more plentiful historically than saviors who transfigure them-
selves;14but the Cross itself, and the symbolism by which it expresses
its message, is clearly taken from Christianity, whose originator was
quite explicit about the matter when he said "all they that take the
sword shall perish by the sword."'5
The Christian Crusades, later wars against heretics such as the Al-
bigensians, and the internecine wars between Christians from 1500 to
1600 were bloody wars both for the extermination of pagans and the
extermination of heretics."6However, the possibility of conversion was
always open to the enemy, a fact nowhere to be noted in word or deed
on the part of the rebellious Indians in the War of the Castes.7

A HOLY WAR

Therefore, the effect of Christian symbolism on the Indians did not

logically necessitate a holy war for the extermination of the Yucateco
society, especially since this idea nowhere appears in the gospels with
which they must have been acquainted. The Cross's order to his sons,
the Indians, to rise up and exterminate the whites, which de facto
excludes the Dzules from being sons and rather indicates that the
Indians alone are his chosen sons, can be more easily paralleled and
likened to the pre-Christian "Holy Wars" of the Jews against the non-
4
Toynbee, op. cit., VI, 175-278.
16Matt. 26:51-53.
16 Henri
Pirenne, A History of Europe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co.,
1958), I, 172-80; Toynbee, op. cit., IV, 221-29.
17 Villa, op. cit., p. 25. The Indian practice of the murder of most of their
pris-
oners is attested to by my informant, who was sometimes persuasive enough to
convince his chief, Florintino Cituk, leader of Chumpon, to let some of the prison-
ers go.
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The Cult of the Holy Cross

Jews such as Joshua's merciless extermination of Jericho, and of the

entire people-men, women, and children-of Canaan.L8
This becomes peculiarly clear not only in the parallel statements
made by the Cross that the war should be conducted against the
Dzules because the Cross orders it, and the order to Joshua: "Do not
be afraid or dismayed. Take all the army with you and prepare to at-
tack Hai," but also in the dual assurances that the enemy can do the
chosen people no harm because "I have delivered them into your
power"'9 and "I will be with you at all times; I shall be he that goeth
before you in the vanguard, confronting the enemy, so that no harm
may befall you."20
The god here is a god who has come only to the Indians and to no
one else, and this god, among his major commandments, has told the
Indians that they must rise up and exterminate the Dzules, and finally,
that his protection of the Indians will be of such a nature that no
Indian will be hurt by the bullets of the enemies. Thus, the human race
appears to be divided into my people, the Indians, and enemieswho are
to be exterminated. Since the enemies are not my people, it is easy to
draw the conclusion, and one does this on the basis of other non-
Christian religions and societies, that they are non-people or at least
non-chosen people, which makes their status as humans rather pre-
carious.2'
THE PROBLEM OF A CIVIL THEOLOGY
The point under discussion here, however, is not their non-human
status, but their non-Christian status as enemies of the chosen Maya
who are called "My Christians," because it raises the difficult problem
of Christianity functioning as a civil theology which would be the case
18 Joshua 11:10-11. The holy wars of Christians, Jews, and the Cult of the
Holy Cross may appear to be the same, but the theological justifications are dif-
ferent in that the religious extermination of pagans who refuse to be converted and
heretics who have lapsed from the truth is totally different in motive from the non-
recognition of other people as participating in human considerations because they
have not been "chosen" as was the case of the Jews and, we think, the case of the
Indians. In the two latter cases, the god ordered the war directly and personally
conducted it.
19 Joshua
8:1; 10:8. Numerous other examples of the same type of statements
can also be selected from the Old Testament.
20
Villa, op. cit., pp. 161-62.
21 See
Voegelin, The New Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952),
pp. 55-61, and Toynbee, op. cit., IV, 351, esp. n. 2, and IV, 1-18, in which Toynbee
discusses tribalism and Oecumenicalism and their relationship to Christianity. He
bases his discussion almost entirely on the brilliant analysis made by Henri Berg-
son of the "closed society," (op. cit., pp. 53-101). This difficult problem of tribal
humanity has not yet been really analyzed or studied so that here we only indicate
in passing that it is a part of the Maya cult mentality or Weltanschauung.
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if the Maya of the Cult of the Holy Cross are Catholics, as Redfield
has claimed. The fact that they have pre-empted the status of "Chris-
tians" and pre-empted the Christian God as their personal war-god
testifies to their use of Christianity, if this is Christianity, as their per-
sonal civil theology. The question which we raise here is: Is it a proper
function of the Triune and Transcendent God who came to all people
alike to function as a personal war-god of one people as against another
people like any other cosmological god? Does this not in itself indicate
the cosmologicalization of Christianity to a certain extent and there-
fore indicate that among other reasons the Maya cult is cosmological
rather than Christian?22
Finally, as for the possibility of this epiphany of Christ being the
"second coming of Christ" in Christian theology, the sermon never
makes this claim, nor is it possible since Christ's Parousia in Christian
eschatological expectations has been clarified for Christians since the
time of Augustine's The City of God.23If, therefore, this cult is Catholic
or even Christian, and we shall demonstrate on other grounds that it
is not, it is of a very special variety.

HISTORICAL ISOLATION
At this point it may be well to introduce some background pertinent
to an understanding of this peculiar phenomenon. The Territory of
Quintana Roo is the most isolated territory on the peninsula of Yuca-
tan as it has been historically-partly because it is the tropical rain-
forest section24and partly because historically it was always the center
of the rebellions against the dominant class, from the first rebellion
against Francisco Montejo which forced him to make a second con-
quest of Yucatan25to the subsequent rebellions up to and including the
War of the Castes.26Historically, therefore, the territory, especially
the east-central part, remained on the periphery of the Spanish-Chris-
tian influence. For our purposes, in brief summary, this simply means
that (1) Maya religious practices persisted more widely, (2) that little
missionary activity was brought to bear here, so that the Indians were
22 We cannot take up this point at length in this article. For further insight into
this question of the functioning of Christianity as a civil theology and the prob-
lems of interpretation it involves see Voegelin, The New Science, pp. 106-9, and
Eliade, op. cit., p. 108, where he discusses the refusal of Christians to live the
genuine life of Christianity.
23
Voegelin, The New Science, pp. 106-9, and The City of God, chap. xx, pp. 7, 8,
and 9.
24
Redfield, op. cit., p. 7.
26 Chamberlain, op. cit., pp. 237-52.
26
Villa, op. cit., pp. 3-35.
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The Cult of the Holy Cross

the least Christianized, and (3) that a tradition of rebellion against the
dominant society and subsequent rejection of any part of it was a real
living tradition for these Indians.27
This historical fact of the territory's existence on the periphery of
Christian influence is borne out by an analysis of the cult's sermons
which were produced roughly between the years 1850-80,28 but are
still central as mentioned above to the cult at present.
RITUAL OF THE CULT AS COSMOLOGICAL
It may be well before we move into analysis of the "Sermon of the
Holy Cross" to discuss briefly the cult ritual and ceremonies in order
merely to document both use of Christian symbolism and parallel
ritual practices which Villa documented in 1936 and still persist to the
present day. The cult ceremonies can be divided into two complexes:
one completely Maya, and the other apparently Christian or Catholic.
The priests who are the official functionaries lead both groups and
neither they nor the people make any distinction between the Maya
and Catholic practices, but see them all as one religion.29
The Catholic ceremonies which the priests are empowered to per-
form are parallel to many of the functions of the Catholic church.
Thus, one can say for descriptive purposes that they perform what
appears to be the sacraments of marriage, baptism, and "say the
Mass." In addition, they lead their own version of rosaries and nove-
nas. The prayers and formula which they use are a mixture of Catholic
prayers translated into Spanish from Church Latin, Latin formula
itself, Catholic prayers in Maya, and Maya prayers which are not
Catholic. For example, the formula for baptism is the Latin formula
translated into Maya to which are added numerous other irrelevant
practices and prayers, but includes pouring of water over the child's
head.30
27 This last
point is substantiated by a reading of the documents and letters
which Eligio Ancona includes in his work on the War of the Castes in which the
Indians' hatred against the Yucateco society (the Dzules) can be seen. Redfield
documents this attitude of the Indians in 1930 and Villa in 1940. The feeling of
hatred or at least rejection and dislike still persists today, although it has become
much less than it was. Informants who have traveled and taught in the territory
over a period of thirty years say that ten and twenty years ago it was almost im-
possible to visit or live in certain of the villages of the Maya of the cult because of
their complete hostility.
28 The Cross
stopped speaking (we are treating the three daughter Crosses as
one unit) about 1885, we were told by informants.
29 See V
illa, op. cit., p. 97, for the years 1930-36, and Redfield for 1940. Empirical
observations confirm this state of affairs for the present time.
30 The
question of how much the catechists, sent in by the Maryknoll mission-
aries, have influenced this has not yet been determined because the best source,
Villa, for the time prior to their influence, nowhere documents precisely what the
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 The sacrament of marriage and the ceremony of the mass are much
less Catholic in form or content than baptism since both demand cer-
tain essential theological formulas of which the Maya priest is neither
aware nor attempts at any time in any language. The masses are ex-
tremely interesting, but in no case is there any consecration of bread
or wine, hence they can be described as a long series of sung prayers.3l
The other essential sacraments which are missing entirely, both in ap-
pearance and in reality, are those of penance, ordination, and extreme
unction. The village indeed chooses its own priests; their idea of sin
and its expiation appears to be cosmological, and their ceremonies for
death and burial are not limited to the cult, but are practiced among
the Maya elsewhere in Yucatan, and do not involve any parallel to the
giving of extreme unction by the priest.
Alongside these essential ceremonies the Maya Indians of the cult
and the Maya Indians in Yucatan in general have invented a series of
practices patterned after pious practices of the Catholic church but
which again are Christian only in name. They differ from the practices
of the Catholic church in Yucatan for the identical thing and are
cosmological in form and content. To cite a few examples, these are
some of their novenas and their burial ceremonies and their practices
during the week of the feast of dead souls. The point here, in conclu-
sion, is that there are a great many practices in the cult which have
Christian names and appear to be Christian or Catholic and have been
called "Catholicism" and are not.

A CRITIQUE OF ROBERT REDFIELD

That our disagreement with Robert Redfield's use of the term "Ca-
tholicism" when referring to the Cult of the Holy Cross is not a mere
quibbling over terminology, but something far more important, must
be emphasized here because in pointing to some of the causes of his
error we hope to clarify a few problems in the use of hermeneutics by
sociologists and anthropologists in general.32
The significance of the cult as a cosmological outbreak in the face of

baptism formulawas, because between 1930 and 1936 it was extremely difficultto
gain entrance into the inner room where the "priest" baptizes; hence Villa never
witnessed a baptism. Informationwas obtained in the course of private conversa-
tion. Since anyone who is himself a baptized Catholic is allowed to baptize if he
does so with the proper formula and the mind of the church, there exists now an
interesting problem of whether the present baptisms by the "priests" of the cult
are valid or not, since they are now using the properformula.
'3 There is much more to these "masses"than merely this, if one analyzes them
from the point of view of their cosmologicalcontent, but from the point of view of
their Christian content this is all that they are.
32Redfield, op. cit., pp. 86-109.
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The Cult of the Holy Cross

four centuries of Christian missionizing is lost if one subsumes it under

the category of Catholicism. Why Redfield chose this term in the face
of the fact that his own description of the cult shows that it is not
Catholicism in any theological or "formal" sense bears serious analyz-
ing. Redfield did distinguish very nicely in his analysis of "sacredness"
in the four communities which he compared, between Maya "pagan"
rites which are very old, such as the Hetzmek and the Chachaac cere-
monies, and the new rites which he calls "Catholic." If this distinction
is important then one would think that the corresponding distinction
between, at least, formally Catholic and apparently Catholic concern-
ing a cult which he himself pointed out had no priests or sacraments
recognized by the Catholic church would have been in order. The root
of this type of theoretical blindness to religious phenomena lies in the
type of thinking and the theoretical categories developed by anthro-
pologists and sociologists who by training as positivistic scientists do
not recognize either metaphysics or theology as instruments for inter-
pretation, even when the subject is religion, since neither metaphysics
nor theology fits into "the verifiable domain of scientific inquiry."33
The philosophical basis to this sociological and anthropological ap-
proach to religion and its defects will be discussed later. The precise
effect that this approach had on Redfield was to predetermine the
analysis of religion under the univocal category of "sacredness" de-
fined in terms of anything the community "esteemed, shunned or
valued" which he took directly from imile Durkheim.34
When religions or religious phenomena become defined homogene-
ously as what the community recognizes as sacred, then the radical
differences among religions are lost and both Catholicism and cosmol-
ogy are eventually reduced to the same homogeneous character of
sacredness.35
33Purnell Handy Benson, Religion in ContemporaryCulture (New York:
Harper & Bros., 1960), p. 32. For further discussion of this position see Benson,
pp. 31-43, and Thomas Ford Hoult, TheSociologyof Religion (New York: Dryden
Press, 1960), pp. 8-36.
34 Redfield, op. cit., p. 354.
35Dr. Thomas O'Dea has raised this issue of the loss of meaningof religious
phenomenonwhen treated only from the point of view of its psychological and
social functions (see "The Sociology of Religion," AmericanCatholicSociological
Review,June, 1954). Michael Polanyi raises the same question in a differentway
when he discusses the problem of "moral inversion" in "Scientific Outlook: Its
Sickness and Cure," Science,CXXV, No. 3246 (March, 1957).
An analysis of cult ceremoniesand practicesand their cosmologicalcontent will
be dealt with at more length in another article. Here we are merely supplying a
certain amount of backgroundin which to context for our analysis of the central
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 ANALYSIS OF THE SERMON
Let us now turn to the Sermon itself and attempt to introduce certain
distinctions and categories within the discussion to begin to define
tentatively what the cult does represent and how it can be explained.
From the above analysis the Sermon can be tentatively described as
either a pre- or post-Christian document using Christian symbolism.
Whether it is pre-Christian, as we will attempt to maintain, or post-
Christian will be determined not by chronology, but by the nature of
its content.
In analyzing its content, the first thing to note is that the '"I" who
is speaking is Juan de La Cruz, who Villa correctly identifies as Juan
de La Cruz Puc, a native Maya priest with the same first name as
John of the Cross, a famous Christian mystic (1542-91). The eman-
uensis is Anastacio Camaal, whose signature appears at the end, who
was the scribe at the Chan Santa Cruz of that date.36This Juan de La
Cruz identifies himself in the course of the Sermon, under various
titles, as Jesus Christ. He directly identifies himself as "I, Our Lord
Jesus Christ of The Holy Cross" but signs himself as "I, your Lord
Father in Three Persons." In the course of the Sermon he distinguishes
himself from "My Lord" and "My Lady" and "My Master." "My
Lady" is always identified as the "Sweet Virgin Mary," but "My
Lord" is not identified at all. He also uses twice the expression, "I, by
the blessed crown of my most Holy Lord Jesus Christ" and finally he
speaks of God twice, both times in the context of the possibility of
gaining eternal life with God or losing it. It is clear, however, that he
who commands is not called "God," but "My Lord" for whom the
speaker is acting as an intermediary. "My Lord" gives both permis-
sion for the speaker to speak and the orders which he is to give to the
people. "My Lord" is thus the one in command and the context of the
Sermon suggests that he is the high god, whereas the speaker places
himself literally as his servant and intermediary.
The speaker begins by saying that he is Juan de La Cruz and his
village is Xocen, but he came to "live in the village of X-Balam-Nah,"
which is translated "house of the chiefs or clergy of the village," and is
the name given to the first temple built for the Holy Cross.37Immedi-
ately after he tells us this, he tells us "I began to talk and was born in
36
Villa, op. cit., pp. 166, 21-22.
37What the speaker means here is hard to determine. If the literal
meaning is
taken, he came to live in the village of Chan Santa Cruz, if symbolically it can
mean that he came to live or dwell in the temple itself. The temple is referred to as
"X-Balam-Nah" and at present Chan Santa Cruz always carries the appended
words "Chan Santa Cruz-X-Balam-Nah" when used by our informants (see ibid.,
p. 161, n. 3).
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The Cult of the Holy Cross

this world in the year 1850," which is the exact date of the birth of the
Talking Cross. In the next paragraph, the speaker, Juan de La Cruz,
identifies himself with Christ not by title but by repeating or imitating
or uniting himself with the traditional sufferings of Jesus Christ and
his traditional mission. Thus the speaker tells us that I "redeemed
you," and that "I shed my precious blood for you Christians, ever
since I created you and placed you on earth." Further he tells us that
"those who do not believe in my commandments will eternally be
punished, without end, and everyone will obey my orders, will receive
my affection, and I will lavish on him my Holy Grace."
The commandments that he then proceeds to give, which are to be
believed in and obeyed, fall into roughly two categories, neither of
which can be identified as the commandments historically given by
Christ nor possess any real resemblance to them. The first category
is the war commandments-to rise up against the Dzules without fear,
because the speaker will lead the battle and protect the Indians and
has, furthermore, received permission from "My Lord" to give this
order. The second category consists of more or less moral command-
ments, including the commandment of complete obedience to the
speaker's words (which is Christian in form) and others such as not
killing a neighbor or an enemy if he is kneeling in surrender, pay for
soldiers and others who serve, and bearing up under poverty, hunger,
and thirst without sorrow. Thus the orders or commandments inserted
under the over-all commandment of obedience to the speaker's words
have no relation to Christianity and are orders having to do with the
local war situation and the local government.
Correspondingly, the speaker, who at the beginning of the Sermon
describes himself by Christ's sufferings and mission and therefore ap-
parently identifies himself with the historical Christ born anew, in
continuing the record of his sufferings for his people, the Indians, cata-
logues a series of realistic sufferings which are those of a local war-
leader and hero fighting jungle warfare on foot in the hot tropical cli-
mate of Quintana Roo. Thus he tells us that "I, my children, am not
standing still, I am walking at all hours, my throat and my whole
stomach are dry with an unquenchable thirst, which I have from walk-
ing in Yucatan to defend you, my beloved Christians of the villages"
and later that he has made many trips to Yucatan and that he needs
money to buy water to drink during these trips.
To complete this description of the speaker, two more statements
need be added here. In further describing his sufferings, he says "Be-
hold how I am, with my feet fastened with two nails, you see how the
rope with which I am tied is coiled ..." and continues "you do not see
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how I am nailed on the Most Holy Cross, supported by innumerable
angels and Seraphim, I am only two squares away from the house of the
Patron."38 Finally, in describing his intermediary activity, he says
"Seven times I have entered in the daytime and seven times I have
entered at night into the house of my most beautiful Lord ... to re-
ceive permission to raise arms against the Whites" [Dzules].39
PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF THE SERMON
Now clearly this is not the Christ speaking; if not, is it a Christ born
anew? If it is, it is not a Christian Christ as we have said, since the his-
torical Christ is clearly declared to have come once, this epiphany of a
Christ in Quintana Roo does not fit the eschatological category of "the
second coming." If not born anew, is it a new god in the form of a
man, that is, the speaker, Juan de La Cruz Puc, if so, why does he
claim to be the Christ, if he is a new god-man claiming to be the Christ,
why does he violate all the universal and transcendental notes of the
Christ by announcing his major commandment to be the rousing and
leading of a successful "holy" war against the Dzules in Old Testament
style?
Finally, is the speaker, Juan de La Cruz Puc, continuing to per-
petrate a hoax started before him by the human originators of the
original Talking Cross and the Triumvirate which carried it on
through its priests and scribes, in order to attain and maintain great
power over the Indians of the Cacicazgo of Chan Santa Cruz? Let us
make it very clear that if the Talking Cross, the sermons, and letters
were all a hoax, they were an extremely successful hoax around which
grew a religious cult still in existence to this day which has formed the
religious beliefs and attitudes of a large tribe of Indians for 112 years.
This particular Sermon we are discussing was read on special holy
days by its scribe, Yum Pol, in X-Cacal as if it were a Bible, a com-
munication of God to the Indians.40 The newly discovered document
from Chumpon in translation appears to be another such Sermon of
the Talking Cross. This newly discovered document is called in the
current Maya-Spanish mixture of the villages Santo Almahthan, which
translated means "Divine Law." This is and was always read on spe-
cial holy days to the Maya of Chumpon by the scribe Juan Bautista
Vega. Therefore, hoax or no, the Indians believed and still believe it to
be a religious communication from what they call the "Santo," a term
they apply to what, on preliminary investigation, appears to be any
38 Reference here seems to be to the
temple or church in which the Cross with
its figureof Christ is hidden in the innerroom or gloria (ibid., p. 163); italics added.
39Ibid., p. 162. 40
Ibid., p. 162.
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The Cult of the Holy Cross

object, cross, crucifix, saint, chalice, monstrance, or ciborium which is

in some sort of possession of divine power, which in short is hiero-
phantic.41
A COMMENTON HERMENEUTICS
The problem of the genuineness of the cult phenomenon cannot be
avoided not only because of the apparent difficulties we have had with
interpreting the Sermon and because there exists an unauthenticated
story about the human origins of the Talking Cross, but also and
mainly because there exists a vast amount of literature both in the
history of religions and in the sociology of religion which on a pos-
itivistic basis denies the genuineness and authenticity of all religion in
terms of its origins as a "supernatural" phenomenon.42
The philosophy of this school in general can be characterized as
positivism, that is, the apparent refusal to accept metaphysics and
much less theology as instruments for the interpretation of religious
phenomena. The refusal, however, is only apparent since positivism is
itself a philosophy based on a metaphysics which excludes all realms
of reality from its recognition except that realm which is measurable.
As applied to religion what is measurable and/or "knowable" and/or
"real" are the psychodynamic, social, or economic needs or interests of
the group or its leaders. Hence the genuineness of religion as a super-
natural phenomenon, originating from other than man's psychic, so-
cial, and economic needs is always placed in question, when not overtly
attacked, since such possible supernatural origins or causes are "un-
knowable" in the sense that these are scientifically unverifiable.Self-
interpretations of the society or the group being studied as to the
"otherness" of the origins of its religion are replaced by scientifically
verifiable origins which always turn out to be needs-however sophis-
ticatedly or sensitively these needs are construed. That there has been
some recognition of the problems that this procedure involves and a
move toward what we call neutrality in the matter is testified to by
Goode, when he points out: "We are no closer to the 'real' factors of
religion when we seek psychodynamic interpretations than when we
41
Eliade, op. cit., p. 4.
42We cannot here do justice to, or discuss, the differences among Muller,
Frazer, Freud, Marx, Tylor, Robertson, Smith, Malinowski, and Durkheim, to
name some of the more outstanding of this school. We can say that, despite
Joachim Wach, Mircea Eliade, Eric Voegelin, Henri Bergson, and others, one or
more varieties of this school's interpretations of religious phenomena is still very
much present in the anthropological and sociological literature on religions at the
present and therefore we felt impelled to raise the problem (see n. 35).
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look for econoimicinterests," commenting on the switch from Marx to
Freud in religious interpretations.43
However, it makes a great deal of difference to the intelligibility of
any religion if it is interpreted "as the fulfillment which imaginative or
crafty individuals have supplied for a subjective, that is, illusory,
need," to quote Wach, or "if this experience has come as a bolt from
the blue, with a spontaneity which contradicts the theory of need."44
Apart from this really important question of the loss of intelligibil-
ity of religion when treated under such categories, the lesser problem
arises from the very dubiousness of an approach which denies the valid-
ity of one kind of metaphysics in the name of another opposing meta-
physics, that is, positivism, while maintaining that both philosophy
and metaphysics have been outdated and destroyed as ways of know-
ing by a scientific method which "scientifically" verifies its truths.
Furthermore, it is even more dubious to maintain that, since the "ulti-
mate reality" of religion is unanswerable, because we cannot know it
"scientifically," that its origins, source, and real meaning can be no
other than man's psychic, social or economic needs in concordance
with a Marxian, Freudian, or Durkheimian approach. Since neither
the metaphysics upon which positivism is based nor the metaphysics
upon which Freud's, Marx's, or Durkheim's various positions are
based, if they be different, are "scientifically" provable within posi-
tivistic methodology, it appears that such approaches to religion are
self-contradictory, to say the least. If the genuineness of the origins of
religion as supernatural are to be denied, they must be denied on en-
tirely different grounds-a scholarly investigation of the phenomenon
at hand that demonstrates some sort of hoax.
Thus the dismissal of religion as a hoax and the equally damaging
affair of "explaining away" religion from the assumptions of an episte-
mology of positivism is not very scholarly and rather pointless, since
we do not "save the phenomenon." This, of course, brings us into an
area of hermeneutics upon which we are quite unprepared to comment
within the limits of this paper, but it would seem that, when the intel-
ligibility of such a persistent and important area of man's experience
of reality is lost by reducing it to needs or fears, an entire re-examina-
tion of such categories and the theory behind them is in order.
43 William Goode, "Contemporary Thinking about Primitive Religion," in
Readingsin Anthropology,ed. Morton Fried (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.,
1959), II, 459.
44 Joachim
Wach, Types of Religious Experience (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1957), p. 35.
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The Cult of the Holy Cross

THE CULT AS A HOAX

This having been said, what is the concrete evidence for thinking that
the cult originated as a hoax? There is an unauthenticated story
quoted by Villa that would make the invention of the cult appear to be
due to a Jos6 Maria Barrera, a mixed-blood from a Yucateco village,
and an Indian named Manuel Nahuat, who was supposed to possess
some talent as a ventriloquist. The invention of the Talking Cross is
attributed to these two, with Nahuat using his ability as ventriloquist
to give the counsels. Nahaut, however, was killed in 1852 and the
Cross, always hidden in the darkness of an inner room, continued to
sound.
The only other testimony we have is a description of the inner room
by an officer who entered Chan Santa Cruz in 1852 in the attack who
said that behind the altar on which sat the three daughter Crosses,
there was a pit in which a cask was placed, which, serving as a sound-
ing board for a voice, would give it a hollow and cavernous sound.
Thus the mechanisms for voice projection of a cross which talked were
human enough. The officer, of course, concludes that it was a hoax on
the part of Barrera in order to receive gifts and maintain power over
his people.45 The evidence does not lead us to any such conclusion
either then or at present. That human beings have always been the
carriers of these charismatic experiences, and that religion manifests
itself in a society in terms of that society's usual understandings, its
traditions, are well-known ideas, which ideas do not, in the least, prove
the assumption that either these individuals or these experiences are
hoaxes. The problem of differentiating between authentic prophets
and non-authentic ones, between tongue speakers authentically in-
spired and those not, began with the Old Testament and reached its
fullest expression in Jeremiah, and without attempting to take a posi-
tion ourselves in this learned discussion, we can say without fear of
contradiction that it is not entirely resolved today.
That Barrera and Nahuat were human originators of the Talking
Cross does not, therefore, mean that they invented it, or that the
source for the sermons, the talking of the Cross, and the cult prac-
tices was necessarily human. The Maya had several famous talking
idols in pre-conquest times. Furthermore, in 1597, after the conquest,
there was another outbreak of this same phenomenon-a talking
"Holy Ghost" centralized in the room of a house. When the newly
founded cult was discovered, the author was put to death by the au-
45 Villa, op. cit., p. 21, quoted from the Memoirs of Don Felipe de La Camara
Zavala.

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thorities. It is said that there was a hidden boy who was the source of
the voice. In other words, talking idols or other sacred objects which
spoke with the voice of a god or gods were apparently a tradition
within the Maya civilizational religion. This Talking Cross looks like
it is another outbreak of an old religious tradition, the more so because
it exhibits every note of typical hierophany of a cosmological religion.46
THE CULT AS PRE-CHRISTIAN
If this cult in its rites and its Sermon exhibits every note of a
hierophancy of a cosmological religious mentality, it is in no sense
Christian. The Christian forms have been absorbed rather into the
cosmological Weltanschauung of the Maya Indians. Hence, in reality,
we are dealing with a pre-Christian religious outpouring which is re-
lated to Christianity only by this absorption of forms that, when they
appear within the cult, are in no sense Christian. The process and
duration of this absorption by the Maya culture of Christian forms
has been going on probably for four centuries, and elsewhere we will
demonstrate that it occurs in different ways for almost the entire
Maya culture in the Yucatan Peninsula. Therefore, let us see if this
new theoretical approach to the problem presented by the cult and the
Sermon will not aid us very much in understanding it.

HIEROPHANY IN THE TALKING CROSS

"If we observe the general behavior of archaic man, we are struck
by the following fact: neither the objects of the external world nor
human acts, properly speaking, have any autonomous intrinsic value.
Objects or acts acquire a value, and in so doing become real, because
they participate, after one fashion or another, in a reality that tran-
scends them. Among countless stones, one stone becomes sacred-and
hence instantly becomes saturated with being-because it constitutes
a hierophany, or possesses mana, or again because it commemorates
a mythical act, and so on."47
The Christian symbol of crucifixion, the cross, becomes a cosmologi-
cal hierophany, it possesses the power or sacredness of the god or gods;
this sacredness dwells within it and hence it becomes a "santo," a holy
being no longer an object, for it is a hierophany, and as a hierophany
it is no longer itself. Its meaning and value lie in its revelation of power
46
Eliade, op. cit., p. 4. For a discussion of the meaning of cosmological religions,
their characteristics, see Voegelin, Vols. I, II, III, and Eliade, op. cit. For a dis-
cussion of the Maya civilization and its cosmological social order and religion see
Charlotte Zimmerman, "The Meaning of the Role of Women in a Transition from
a Civilization to a Fellaheen Social Order: A Study of Continuity and Change in
the Maya Culture" (unpublished Doctor's dissertation, Graduate Faculty, St.
Louis University, 1960). (Microfilmed.)
47Eliade, op. cit.,
p. 4.
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The Cult of the Holy Cross

or sacredness of that which transcends it. It speaks, perhaps by the

instrumentality of the voice of a man, but this voice in turn is hiero-
phanic of the power of the god. Around this Cross grows a cult, a
series of ritual acts which honor it. Included in the cult is a Trium-
virate who alone can interpret the meaning of the words of the Cross
which are written and sent as letters and sermons. The power of the
Cross is not destroyed with its physical destruction in 1852, but re-
appears in a second hierophany of the three daughter Crosses, the
three Santos, which born of the first are merely three receptacles of
the same cosmological force or forces, which in turn go on speaking.
Since the "reality which transcended" these crosses was always im-
manent within them, wherever the Cross went so did the power; it
was, hence, always localized power. Thus the presence of the Santo,
the presence of the Cross made the place sacred, protected the Indians
by its power. The Cross, like the ark of the ancient Hebrews, was car-
ried into battle. The hierophanic localization of the sacred within an
object as its receptacle is the most important note of cosmology; this
phenomenon is found everywhere today in Yucatan in the various
Santos which the Indians possess, pictures, crucifixes, crosses, statues:
of them all only some are hierophanic, only some possess the power.

THE "MYTHICIZATION OF JUAN DE LA CRUZ PUC

The paradox of the historical Juan de La Cruz Puc who is in turn
identified in the Sermon only as Juan de La Cruz and "is believed to
be Jesus Christ himself, whose Life, Passion and Death took place in
Quintana Roo proper," and who "is still keeping in touch with 'his
children' [the Indians] through Yum Pol, to whom he dictates letters,
orders, and requests," cannot be solved by an erroneous interpretation
of the archaic (cosmological) mentality of the Maya Indians.48
The interpretation of the cult as a hoax perpetrated and accepted
by a desperate group of Indians wishing to take refuge from the reality
of a losing war by consoling themselves by make-believe religious
revelations is unacceptable for many reasons already discussed, but
especially for the reason that Eliade points out: that this interpreta-
tion, however neat it appears to the hypercritical modern, "makes no
allowance for the structure of the archaic mentality." The problem of
the outbreak of this cult concurrently at the point in which all seemed
lost is, of course, an extremely important one, but its solution will not
48 Villa, op. cit., p. 161. This is his interpretation of the role of Juan de La Cruz,
and it is correct as far as it goes.
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illuminate the problem of archaic mentality but will only throw light,
perhaps on the functions and meaning of religion in general.49
Juan de La Cruz Puc was an attested historical personage, one-time
priest of the Talking Cross. But as historical personage he does not
appear in the sermon at all, he appears only as "mythified";50he is
absorbed and understood by the Maya popular memory and the indi-
vidual, perhaps the amanuensis, who wrote down this Sermon or com-
posed it, by the archaic and cosmological memory only insofar as he
participates in its understandingof a god named Jesus Christ, who had
been absorbed by them from the teaching of the Christian mission-
aries.
This absorption of Christianity into the Maya mentality is attested
in all the Maya practices, but becomes most evident from the very
text of the Sermon itself. That Christianity and the Transcendent and
Triune god, whose notes we have already outlined, had not "broken
open" the closed structure of the cosmological mentality is totally
clear;51 rather, Jesus Christ had become absorbed as a cosmological
god, into a mythical form, therefore is not the God of Christianity.
For the Indians of Quintana Roo whose Maya cosmological religion
had been breaking down, and has been slowly absorbing more and
more Christian elements every year, the Christ and the saints had
been identified, mixed, and interrelated with the cosmological gods
and practices over four centuries.52Hence, for the Maya Indians of the
cult and for those who began it, Christ's life and Passion and death
became the archetypal reality in which all other priests or religious
individuals would acquire meaning. Christ, as an immanent god, was
always present hierophanically in things, in the cosmos, but at the
same time no religious personality is or has meaning except as he
participates in this model.
Hence, all priests who are religious heroes must be Christ because
he is the paradigm by which popular memory understood and trans-
mitted the actions and life of Juan de La Cruz Puc, outside of this
paradigm, this archetype, his life has no meaning. This is, as Eliade
demonstrates, the structure of the archaic mentality. Juan de La Cruz
49 Eliade, op. cit., p. 38. See my forthcomingarticle on the problem of the mean-
ing and functions of the Cult of the Holy Cross as a religiosocialphenomenon in
which the problem of its outbreak in 1850 will be discussed at length.
60 Ibid., pp. 34-48.
61See Bergson on this problem.
52 Besides sources
already cited see AlfonsoVilla Rojas' excellent article, "Dioses
y Espiritus Paganos de los Mayas de Quintana Roo" in Los Mayas Antiguos
(Mexico, D.F.: El Colegio de Mexico, 1941), pp. 113-24.
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The Cult of the Holy Cross

Puc is only real, only remembered, as he is mythified as Christ, as he

too participates in the life, death, and the Passion: hence the separate-
ness of the "I" who speaks and yet identifies himself with the Christ as
understood in Christianity, but also the Christ as come to the Indians
of Quintana Roo, not born anew in the Christian historical sense, but
reappearing again in the cosmological sense which is ahistorical.
Hence, we lose the historical personality of Juan, in the Christ of
the Sermon, not because Juan was perpetrating a hoax or playing
magician, but because this is the only way the Maya Indians could
understand him.53Hence, the paradox of the personality of Juan who
could be a Christ and not a Christ, who died for his Indians, but who
walked in Yucatan and who was ready to lead his Indians into battle,
to go in the vanguard so that the bullets of the enemy would not harm
them.
THE MYTHIFICATION OF THE SERMON(S)

Yum Pol (Apolinario Itza) is dead now, but the cult continues on in
X-Cacal. When Yum Pol was scribe, according to Villa, they believed
that "Juan de La Cruz Puc is still keeping in touch with 'his children'
[the Indians] through Yum Pol, to whom he dictates letters, orders,
and requests."54The present subtribe cult has two priests and appar-
ently no scribe. They claim that they have no sermon, but other re-
liable sources and many rumors deny this. What the present situation
is in X-Cacal must be uncovered and verified by future field work.
Therefore, we can only surmise the present situation, and assume that
it is very much like the one in Chumpon about which we have much
better information.
The most famous man in the cult because he is the oldest scribe
(perhaps the only one), who lived in the times of the war under great
war-chiefs, is Juan B. Vega, whose life among the Indians of Chumpon
dates back to fifty-five or sixty years ago when he was then about ten
years old. In great secrecy he told us about the "Santo Almahthan"
which is read on the annual feast days to the Indians of the subtribe of
Chumpon (Chumpon and the villages which consider themselves be-
longing to its cult). Juan Vega as scribe has had the office of reading it;
having read it so much, he knows it by heart. From his memory, we
tape-recorded its contents. On the basis of a partial, superficial,and pre-
liminary translation, it sounds like the sermon published by Villa, but
53 For an explanation of the ahistorical character, indeed, the terror of history,
i.e., the causes for the cosmological refusal to face historical reality in any other
way but by archetypal refusal to do so, see Eliade, op. cit.
54 Villa, The Maya of East Central Quintana Roo, p. 161.

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it is not identical. As to its "real" versus mythical historical origin,
who really wrote it, that is, Juan Vega by orders of his then chief, or
whether it was another one of the actual sermons of Juan de La Cruz
Puc sent to Chumpon or a third alternative, we do not know, and
perhaps never will know because its origins have been transformed by
the mythical mentality of the Indians and it has the status of a revela-
tion from God. Thus we suspect that the sermon of X-Cacal also has
the same status and the same function of central importance to its
cult.
The meaning of the Santo Almahthan of Chumpon is summed up in
the story of its origins. "The sacred scripture (Santo Almahthan) was
sent by God to the people a long time ago. It was found sitting on two
sides of the village with lighted candles on each side and from this they
learned their prayers."55
From the hostility shown to any outsiders who try to inquire about
it, the perpetual watch that is kept by an armed guard around the
temple where it supposedly resides, and the difficulty we had in con-
vincing Juan Vega, even in what might be called the decadent state of
the cult now, to relate it from his memory, it appears to be understood
by them as some sort of sacred appearance.
Thus the Sermon has been mythified, for it participates in the gen-
eral formula for all beginnings "a long time ago," and in the formula
for mythical revelations, "it was sent by god to the people" and from
it, not the cult which arose in 1850 in Carrillo Puerto, "they learned
their prayers"-their cult practices. Hence, how the Sermon came to
be with them has been lost by the refusal of popular memory to give it
historical value, and thus it has been mythified into a sacred docu-
ment, the Santo Almahthan.
So it is with the Cross, the Sermons, and the cult, that we have
encountered again the outbreak of the pre-Christian archaic or cosmo-
logical mentality under Christian forms, neither Christian nor hoax,
but a new cosmological religion born in 1850 which still gives meaning
and continuity to the Maya Indians who participate in its cult.
55 Informationfrom Juan Vega.

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