Priestess Initiation at Chichenโitza Mayan Ruins
“Sister, that’s very beautiful that you want to sing, but no instruments or ritual are allowed at the temple ruins in Chinchen‘itza.”
My breath stopped for a moment after Adrian spoke these words.
“I can’t bring my singing bowl to the temple?”
“No sister, they won’t permit you to enter the ruins with an instrument,” he said again, matter of fact.
I stood there trying to digest what I just heard, with my towel wrapped around my body, my skin moist with coconut oil after just receiving a massage from this Mexican healer.
My mind recalled all the recent moments I had brought my golden chalice singing bowl to sacred sites in nature while back home in Kauai, where I sat down and prayed with it, made offerings and sang to the waters. Then my mind flashed to last week when I recently traveled to a Cenote, an underwater turquoise cave about an hour from Tulum, and there was security down in the cave who had originally told me I could not sing when I arrived. When I showed them my chalice bowl, they changed their minds and permitted me to sing and pray at the banks of the water before swimming, which allowed me to complete the water rituals I had been instructed to do by Spirit. Tourists and travelers were jumping into the cave water from all angles, but once I began singing with my Priestess friend, an actual line organized and everyone waited in patience while we took turns entering the sacred waters.
This memory connected me to my clear mission from Spirit.
“Adrian, if Spirit desires us to sing and do ritual, we will be able to, regardless of the rules.”
Adrian’s face softened “I hope so, sister. That is a good plan.”
This interaction was the opening of a deeper initiation into the Priestess Path I am walking. To serve as a Rainbow Bridge between indigenous and modern society. To break spells of “rules” installed to keep the magic hidden and perpetuate native trauma. It was no coincidence that Adrian and I were brought together- I found him in a healers group as a recommend massage therapist on an app for Tulum travelers. He held this very same mission and together, we embarked on a divinely-planned journey to the ruins, two souls from different countries uniting in service.
What I came to find out later, was the local community was excavated from these ruins in Chichen’itza in the 1970’s and capitalism became the focus, using the ruins as a spectacle museum for visitors and tourists to explore and learn the history.
The culture that was once lived out on these ruins was now only lived in the stories the tour guides were hired to tell and in the imaginations of travelers.
We arrived at Chinchen’itza at mid-afternoon, the hottest part of the day. The sun was blazing in the sky, with very little cloud cover for shade. Sweat droplets covered my friend Oriel’s and my skin. She had not gone to the ruins yet since arriving in Mexico and desired to be part of the day’s experience after I told her about Adrian’s and my interaction. We had hired Adrian as our guide, to share the history of Chinchen’itza with us, and after, he would be taking us to his Mayan village to meet his Abuela, and the women and children of the community. We were a bit late in the day to arrive to the ruins, as we spent the morning shopping for coloring books, crayons, and kickballs for the children as a gift for when we arrived at the village.
This was a rare opportunity for me. I desired to connect to the indigenous and learn Mayan healing rituals involving the womb. The three weeks of my time in Tulum were filled with networking, dancing, and gatherings in a sub community of entrepreneurial westerners: digital nomads, ritual space-holders, and retreat leaders. I was referred to Adrian through the wellness group and he gave me a traditional Mayan massage which supports digestion and fertility with increased blood flow circulation to the womb. After receiving the abdominal work and hearing that he had learned these techniques from his Abuela, I was inspired to ask him to take me to meet her.
He told me that no one had ever asked him to be taken to his village until just last week, when another woman from Hawaii that he massaged asked him the same thing. He then told me the vision of their community: to build a school teach Mayan Abdominal Massage.
This is what opened up the conversation to agreeing for him to be my tour guide at the ruins, and the conversation about prayer and song. He had planned to lead a sweat lodge that day but it got cancelled, so he happened to have that day open and he said he felt our connection and invitation was being guided for a bigger reason.
“Thank you again for your trust,” Adrian said and smiled as our eyes met when I arrived at the entrance.
I looked at this man. I did not know him, but I absolutely trusted him. It’s a trust that is felt beyond skin color, communication challenges, being a woman and him being a man and just having first met, having no cell phone reception in a foreign country. It’s a trust of souls uniting on a clear path of the energy of Spirit. The kind of trust I let lead my life.
“So, here’s the plan,” I shared with Adrian and Oriel. “We are putting an invisibility cloak over my singing chalice, and I am bringing it in. Ok?”
They agreed with a smirk and then we went through security with no questions asked.
Once inside the grounds where the ruins were, it was clear that we needed to go to the main temple pyramid.
Adrian began sharing the history: the temple was built in alignment with the positioning of the sun and in the power days of the years: the equinoxes. During the time marking the equinox, the light will cast shadows on the side of the pyramid, illuminating what looks like a large serpent body. The head of the serpent is carved out at the bottom and the tail sits at the top.
“The feathered serpent god is named Quetzalcoatl and he is known to move on its belly on earth in service and also have feathered wings where he could fly into the sky and commune with the cosmic astral realms,” he pointed his finger to show us the north part of the temple where we could see the serpent head stone carving.
We followed him to north side of the temple. As soon as we made it to the front of the north temple, my heart began fluttering and I felt a little dizzy.
“What is the significance of the north side of the temple for prayer?” I asked.
“Quetzalcoatl came from the north. He was a great healer, like Christ. He arrived 1000 years after Christ and had been passing through villages in Mexico until he arrived in Chichen’itza. The land was lacking rains and the people were offerings human sacrificing to appease the gods. He supported the building of the pyramids and served as a priest, which brought fertility and harmony to the land and people.
With his words, my body started activating in shivers with little goddess bumps, as it does when I am about to go into a past life memory or prophetic transmission.
I felt my heart beat faster and tears formed at my eyelids. As a modern-day Priestess, it is common to have lucid recollections of past life experiences of being in temples and priestessing in other lifetimes- sometimes traumatic memories like being outcaste and abused during the fall of the temples in Egypt and Avalon, and some activating memories like pure devotion of love and worship in divine union with Yeshua as Mary Magdalen archetype. These are known as transmissions and can be remembered at sacred sites around the world and these memories are part of the collective Akashic records, which are available to all, where all memories of time exist in a higher dimensional plane.
In this transmission, I felt an energy of pure devotion and love as Mary Magdalen did for Yeshua, and then it morphed into the love of a devoted Priestess with Quetzalcoatl, and in service to divine union to support overflow for the whole community.
With this wave of love, I asked Adrian and Oriel if they would like to give offerings with me at the base of the north temple gate and they agreed. I pulled out a bag of cacao, a traditional offering used in ceremonies representing the Divine Feminine, as the branches create shady darkness where the cacao fruit grows, representing the womb and ovulation.
We took our shoes off, knelt down on the hot brown grass and made our offerings and I thanked the ancestors of the land. Then, I felt Spirit move through me, urging me to play my chalice instrument. I unzipped my instrument bag and pulled out the golden chalice, and walked right up to the temple.
My head was buzzing, my heart still pounding, tears of love and devotion streaming down from the corners of my eyes. The Temple was large and gray, but lit with golden glow from the blazing sun that also penetrated my body and made my eyes squint. I began strumming the bowl, toning with my voice in melody with the note E that the bowl is attuned to. I sang the “Maria…..Maria,” calling forth Divine Mother compassion, unconditional love, and healing of suffering through the unending expansion of the heart. Maria, or Virgin of Guadalupe, in the Mexican culture was adopted during the spread of Christianity. Endless altars of Mother Mary are found on street corners, in homes, and businesses, and later I learned from Adrian’s Abuela that Maria is the same energy of Ix Chel, the Mayan Yucatan peninsula fertility goddess of transforming grief through compassion and the cycles of life and death.
As I sang, I felt the energy magnify creating more shivers down my body. Oriel joined by my side, and also offered beautiful song with the chalice, as she is trained musician and vocal alchemist. Part Pilipino and also raised Catholic, she felt a connection with Maria as well.
When the prayer felt complete, I put away my crystal chalice in its bag.
Then I turned to Adrian. His eyes were wide open. It seemed as though he was feeling the magnitude of the energy rise in the ceremonial ritual we had co-created.
“How did you learn to connect to Spirit in this way?”
I looked deeply into his eyes, “I just listen, trust the messages that come through and do what I hear with love in my heart.”
I witnessed a look come over his face, and I sensed an opening in him, a deeper initiation on his path as a healer in service to preserving and anchoring the opening of divine feminine wisdom.
“Thank you,” I said. “For holding the space for us to do our prayer. I trust you so much.”
Upon speaking these words, I noticed a fluttering movement in my peripherals. A stout female security guard arrived with a distraught expression on her face.
She started speaking rapidly and anxiously in Spanish. She was much shorter than me and powerful in her stance.
“She said you are not allowed to play instruments here. She wants to confiscate your bowl,” Adrian translated for me.
They continued conversing back and forth, with Adrian translating her words to me. I listened and looked directly at her. I was overcome with this soothing peace in my heart as I met her eyes.
“Como te llama?” I asked.
“Me llamo Ligia,” she said.
“Espiritu,” I said to her. “Espiritu con cantar,” This was the extent of what I knew in Spanish to communicate to her that I was singing with Spirit.
A second security guard came over. He was male and younger than Ligia, who was middle aged. Again, my instrument was mentioned to be confiscated.
I continued to breathe, listen and fill my presence with love and trust for Adrian for the words he spoke with the guards.
Suddenly, the male security turned and left and then Ligia pointed to my crystal chalice.
“She said you can hold on to your instrument, just don’t play it again,” translated Adrian.
“Ok, gracias,” I said to her.
We turned and noticed Oriel sitting on the dusty earth, overheated, her long black hair up in a bun on her head. We agreed to head to the shade under some trees, and we found a bench to sit.
After replenishing with some water, I thanked Adrian again, for both holding space for us to complete our prayer and for the translation.
“I don’t feel like it could have happened this way without you. While you were speaking to the security, I kept letting myself fully trust that you had my back and that all would be ok because this is a temple, and it’s meant to hold ceremony and prayer.”
“I agree with you, sister,” said Adrian. “It’s very sad that the people here cannot pray in these temples. These ways have been lost.”
Though aware of the unfair absence of indigenous prayer, we all felt some joy that our prayer actually was created and the instrument was not confiscated.
There was just 15 minutes left before the ruins closed for the day and Oriel requested we go back to main pyramid so we could take some photos in front of it.
When we started taking photos, Ligia made her way back over with a powerful expression on her face.
“I wonder what it is now?” Oriel and I asked each other and shrugged.
Ligia and Adrian began talking and he turned to me.
“She wants to know if you are a Priestess?”
“Si,” I said and looked into her eyes, a little startled by the question.
She began chatting very fast with Adrian and tears formed in her eyes.
“When I came over first, I was filled with pain in my body and grief inside. When I looked into your eyes, I became empty of it,” Adrian translated for her. “Looking into your eyes took away my pain and I now I am filled with peace.”
My heart expanded with great love in that moment of deep shared gratitude, a feeling that a force that was more than us, humans, was leading. I put my arms out and we embraced in a close hug and I again said “Espiritu.”
I said to Ligia as Adrian translated: “You used to be able to pray and sing here too. I wish Mayan indigenous could continue to pray at these temples.”
Her crying turned into smiles and she pulled out her phone.
“We used to live in these temples. I had my son here. Look, here is a photo of him up in the temple. He is now a dancer.”
I looked into her phone at a black and white photo of the most precious boy about the age of 4, sitting inside the stone structure.
“I’m so sorry that you cannot pray here anymore I said, when did this change?”
“In the 1970’s.”
“My wish is that the land and these temples become a place of prayer, ceremony, dance and song again.”
Ligia, Adrian and Oriel all agreed.
We embraced one more time and it was time to go as the temples were closing.
We walked out and paused in the lobby.
“It’s so wild to experience this,” I said. “She used to live here and had to move out and now she is regulating others from being able pray.”
“Exactly,” said Adrian. “She remained here because this is where her ancestors are, but now she works under laws that are preventing ceremony just in the way it happened to her.”
“I feel like a spell has been broken,” I said. “The pain and grief that she said she no longer feels- I sense there is a shift in her being, now.”
“I feel that too,” said Adrian.
Then we agreed that it was an initiation for both of us. For him as a guide in service to preserving and protecting the divine feminine sacred ritual and for me as a deeper embodiment on the Priestess Path to witness the grief from indigenous culture losing their places of prayer, so that his trauma can be healed through being seen from the heart with compassion.
This interaction with Ligia is just one small step on my journey in my path unfolding in supporting indigenous communities, an experience to propel my awareness for taking more action.
And I vowed with Adrian and Oriel as my witness, to more deeply embody the role of a “bridge” and ally with using my communication tools and platforms to spread awareness. My quest is to see prayer be restored in freedom for all beings. I would love to see the temples become places for native rituals again if it’s in highest divine alignment, or for other places to emerge where indigenous can freely pray in the sacredness of their ancient ways.
And lastly, to love deeply in the spaces of human pain and disconnect, to understand and listen with presence, and encourage the magic of Spirit inside us all to be revealed in its fullest expression.
“I agree, sister, I am here to help with this mission too,” said Adrian as he handed me his water bottle.
As I took his bottle for sip, a sticker on it caught my eye. The sticker read Kauai loves you, Java Kai Coffee Bar.
I stopped for a moment, in awe.
“Adrian, where did you get this sticker on your bottle?”
“The woman I met from Hawaii last week gave it to me.”
My voice was full of excitement, “Adrian, this is the coffee bar I go to all the time when I am home in Kauai and here you have a sticker on your bottle!”
We both laughed, feeling deeply connected as we felt our worlds collide in magic, knowing the power of Spirit speaks in little signs like this sticker, a breadcrumb marking the trail we are on of life being guided by a greater purpose.
If you have been inspired by this story and feel called to support, I am open to all suggestions. One vision is to support Adrian’s village in opening a school to give and teach Mayan Abdominal Massage. I would love your feedback and to hear your visions and suggestions. Please email [email protected].
Also, to connect with Adrian and learn the history of the Mayan Ruins + get involved with the support of creating a Mayan Abdominal Massage school, you can find him on Instagram: @conciencia.tours
With love and devotion, Priestess Allie-Numana.
