Karen Speerstra - Hunab Ku: 77 Sacred Symbols for Balancing Body and Spirit

Copyright 2005 by Karen Speerstra and Joel Speerstra

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except brief excerpts for the purpose of review, without written permission of the publisher.

The Crossing Press
A Division of Ten Speed Press
P.O. Box 7123
Berkeley, California 94707
www.tenspeed.com

Distributed in Australia by Simon & Schuster Australia, in Canada by Ten Speed Press Canada, in New Zealand by Southern Publishers Group, in South Africa by Real Books, and in the United Kingdom and Europe by Airlift Book Company.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Speersta, Karen.
Hunab Ku : 77 sacred symbols for balancing body and spirit / Karen Speerstra and Joel Speerstra.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78587-9
1. Divination. 2. Numerology. 3. Signs and symbols. 4. Chakras. 5. Maya cosmology. I. Speerstra, Joel. II. Title.
BF1761.S64 2005
133-33dc22
2004026850

v3.1

One colorfully painted scene on a Late Classic Mayan vase shows several seated scribes surrounded by baskets of codices. The writers, with bundles of quetzal-feathered pens sticking out of their hair, are holding up pottery cups and tipping a few. This depicted ceremony was called cleansing of the books.

We feel thats what The Crossing Press did. They took our art and our manuscript and thanks to Jo Ann Decks keen eye and early enthusiasm as the publisher, and Brie Mazureks kind and careful editorial management of all aspects of our books life, this is the handsome result. Furthermore, we are indebted to Shirley Coe, our diligent copyeditor, who asked dozens of the right questions and painstakingly waded through layers of detail on every page, and quite literally, like the early Mayans, cleansed it. We are also very grateful to the cover designer, Nancy Austin, and to Jeff Puda, who masterfully crafted the pages of this hunthis bookwhich we have held in our minds for roughly thirteen years, from inception to fulfillment, and now, together, we can hold in our hands. We raise our cups to you all.

Those early Mayan writers, or ah tsib, were also called ah kuu hun, keepers of the holy books. We thank these esteemed calligraphers, who brushed red hematite paint onto bark paper and made careful gridlines for their intricate drawings. Without them, the Hunab Ku design would have disappeared. And we thank all the other ancient artists, sculptors, builders, and keepers of the seventy-seven sacred symbols that found their way into Hunab Ku.

We traded Mayan quill pens and conch-shell inkpots for drawing pens and Photoshop. Together, we worked and reworked this codex, often scrubbing the pages as talc-clean as did those early ah tsib. And, like them, we also reveled in the precious collaborative hours we spent together creating Hunab Ku.

To every author listed in our bibliography, we thank you for your research and for your own ingenious hun-making. Our special admiration and thanks go to Jos Argelles and Carl Johan Calleman, for sharing with us their insights regarding the Mayan calendar and culture. To them, we say Bravo!

Our deepest gratitude goes to a diminutive, bright-eyed Lithuanian woman named Marija Gimbutas, who, before she died, graciously gave us her permission to recopy any of her art, asking, Will the illustrations be used for healing? That is our fondest hope, we assured her. Then, draw them! she smiled. Gimbutas was eager to inspire everyone with the goddess culture of prehistoric Europe.

We have shared these images with many friends over the years; some of them, like Laura, read and helped edit portions of the manuscript. Some, like Julia, helped with scanning and digitizing the art. Some just played with the images. So, we thank you: Laura Baring-Gould, Julia Blackbourn, Janet Ryan, John and Nancy Whiteman, Sharon Bauer, and, of course, all the Sophias for their wisdom and tender support. And, we offer a special prayer of thanksgiving to our extraordinary friend John, who, when we were discouraged, said, Go back to the tree when the fruit is ripe.

And finally, our thanks to Nathan Speerstra and John Speerstra, the other two members of our family, who have encouraged us, nurtured us, listened to us, read our multiple drafts, and waited, expectantly, as Hunab Ku took shape and was born. Every ah tsib deserves that kind of enthusiastic and unconditional loving support.

Mayan Mentors

The Maya people of Central America left large footprints behind, including lingering impressions of the universe for us to ponder. Their name most likely came from Mayab, the Yucatn Peninsula on which they settled. But it seems no small coincidence of language that the Eastern word maya brings to mind mother, matrix, magic, mind, measure. And, of course, mystery. They abandoned their dozen or so magnificent cities around 830 CE . Tikal, alone, covered twenty-three square miles and had a population of about 500,000. Romes perimeter boundaries at the time measured only eight miles. The Maya people left their network of irrigation canals lined with raised gardens and walked down white stone roads to disappear into the rain forest. Where had they come from? Why did they leave?

In the 1550s, Spanish galleons slipped into Central American bays and coves; the newcomers noted vine-covered pyramids stepping up two hundred feet into the air and jaguars prowling abandoned temple courtyards. The people who greeted the strange eastern ships knew of their own ancestors from the carved stones, stories, and books they had left behind. The great stone stairway in Copan, for instance, with its twelve hundred glyphs, dedicated in 755 CE , still stands as a strong, quiet reminder of their mythology.

Five or six million Maya live in Mexico and Central America today, speaking thirty-one distinct languages. Surviving Quichs, largest of the several dozen Mayan nationalities, still worship at these ruins and keep safe the ancient calendar their ancestors left.

It didnt take long for those sixteenth-century Spaniards to ferret out and begin to translate the clever riddle- and pun-filled books. Their hinged gesso-covered pages proudly displayed brightly painted ideogramsa picture language, similar in some respects to Egyptian and Chinese. When unfolded, some of these codices, with their cat-skin covers, extended twenty feet. After they were proclaimed heretical and dangerous, the Mayan books were tossed onto bonfires; only three documents are left, and some of those are copies of copies. All of the surviving Mayan languages spoken today come from two languages these ancient texts were written in: Yucatecan and Cholan.