This book is the result of decades of careful research and observation on the part of the author and is a valuable contribution to anyone interested in understanding the Maya world or the broader topic of world mythology. The Lacandon are a very small group of people living in the forested zone near the southern reaches of the Usumacinta River, which forms the border between Mexico and Guatemala. Their area has been greatly impacted by accelerating cultural and economic pressures in the last 50 years.
In his introduction, Boremanse states that cultural change has been erasing the old ways to the point where younger people do not know or care to know about them. Even by the time of the fieldwork he conducted in the 1970s and 1980s (which forms the basis for the current work), the author states that the Southern Lacandon group had largely abandoned the cult of the titular incense burners, commonly known as ‘god pots,’ and retained only their oral traditions. Boremanse's recordings, transcriptions, and translations of Northern Lacandon traditions allow the reader to enter a worldview that has largely ceased to exist, and the poignant photographs from that period enhance that experience.
The reader will find tantalizing connections between what is presented here and in other sources for the study of Maya mythology, such as the colonial-era Chilam Balam books of Yucatán, and the various versions of the Popol Vuh from the Quiché Maya tradition in Guatemala. Chapter 2 recounts and analyzes the origin myths of the Lacandon people and provides intriguingly different versions of elements familiar to students of Mesoamerican mythology, such as trips to the underworld, magical transformations, culture heroes, moral directives, multiple creations, and explanations for both natural and historical occurrences. Appendix C contains Boremanse's fascinating transcription and translation of myths, tape-recorded in 1994.
One wonders where the women are in the Lacandon world. Women seem to have had little to do with the religious life of this group. Boremanse describes a culture in which the men from each family group constructed their own temples at a short distance from their residences and supplied their own incense burners and their sanctifying relics. Males are responsible for tending these incense burners, which are the means by which they communicate with and propitiate their vengeful and even irascible deities.
The range of specialists who communicate with the old gods and intercede on behalf of others in their communities that I encountered during my research in Yucatán are absent in this culture. Although some of these roles may well have been the exclusive domain of men in the past, there are indications that this has been changing. Women there also serve as midwives and masseurs, and dispense plant medicine. Of course, Yucatán is a very different and much more populous place, but the counterpoint was especially interesting to me. Likewise, the Lacandon ritual categories of divination, propitiation, and first-fruit ceremonies were familiar to me from my time in the peninsula.
I only wish I knew more about the individuals who provided all this rich cultural material, but perhaps that is just the prosaic commentary of yet another reviewer who suggests a book different from the one under consideration. Finally, it seems to me that the information in the penultimate chapter, which addresses the ways in which Northern Lacandon religion has been changing in recent times, could have provided valuable context as part of the introduction.
