Colette Obrien

 

 

 

 

 

 

Publication, May 1, 2008

 

 

 The Classic Maya created a civilization of astonishing sophistication, invention and harmony. Based on an understanding of mathematics and astronomy, they conceived of the world as based on time and transformation. Their home in the Yucatan was the enlightened Athens of our hemisphere…

One of the things I’ve realized about the Maya is that their civilization’s attitudes toward Time, Transformation and Spirituality hold deep significance for questing men and women today; important wisdom about the meaning of life that is no longer available; wisdom lost long ago in the jungle.

15 years have passed since my first encounter with the Mayan culture of the Yucatan, years of passion that has not waned.  I have made photographic shows created in the region, written dozens of poems, and a novel “Time and Transformation.”

 

 

 

I traveled throughout the region to the sites of the ancient Maya studying what we know of their culture.  In between trips I continued my research and wrote the stories that came to me from the place; stories, of magic, enchantment, beauty, love, transformation, and dedication; of a brilliant, highly evolved culture that understood the laws of the universe in a creative and unique way.Drawing on actual events and beliefs of the Mayan culture, I’ve crafted a novel that is both a spiritual and a physical journey where love and betrayal, religion and transcendence are married together in the experience of the hero twins, Balamka and Hanahpu who discover that it is not just their own growth that is at stake; the gods are dependent on them for their own re-union, and their culture must have the new vision that they bring if their world is to survive and regain it‘s balance. A message I believe is sorely needed in our own time, and for the Maya, time was everything. Time and Transformation is both a factually based historical novel, that travels through the mythology and spiritual beliefs of the Classic Maya, and an imaginative journey of spiritual discovery through a fascinating world of sorcery, magical practices, and human sacrifice; of mystics, and elaborate cyclical understandings of time, astronomy and mathematical genius, where both the light and the dark work in equal measure against one another. Through the efforts of the twins, Balamka and Hanahpu, the new vision emerges; one that arises through their individual journeys into the hearts and minds of the Goddess, Ixchel and the God, Itzamna, through whom they learn the true nature of the interplay between physical and spiritual reality.There isn’t much time and for the Maya, time is everything. According to Classic Mayan mythology, after the divine male twins, Ixbalamka and Hanahpu, redeemed mankind from the limitations of the third age and brought them into the fourth, The Toltec God, Quetzequotl, prophesied: The destruction of this age and movement into the fifth, will come about through the efforts of another pair of twins; a male and a female. It will signal the end of my dominion. You are therefore required to sacrifice all male/female twins at birth. Pursued by the Toltec prophesy that seeks their death, a pair of male/female twins, Balamka and Hanahpu — mysteriously abandoned at birth — must develop their preternatural powers in hiding before they’re ready to stand and lead their people against the emerging tide of violence and human sacrifice the Toltec have re-instituted. Set on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico at the height of the Mayan empire, 700 AD, Balamka and Hanahpu bring a vision of far greater importance than they could ever have imagined; the unique nature of that understanding is that not only do their people need this new vision to survive, but the gods depend on them for their own re-union. Thus their dual task is to move their culture to a new age of understanding — and by so doing — unite the gods.