A young man, traveling with twelve others, experienced rejection, miraculous generosity, and hostility in various towns. His miracles caused fields to transform into forests, water, and stones. Accused of sorcery, he was captured, killed, and buried, only to rise again. He punished his betrayer and ascended to heaven, instructing a cock to signal his departure. The man was revealed to be Jesus.
Source
Ethnology of the Mayas of
Southern and Central British Honduras
by John Eric Thompson
Field Museum of Natural History
Anthropological Series, Pub.274, Vol.17.2
Chicago, 1930
► Themes of the story
Hero’s Journey: The protagonist embarks on a transformative adventure, performing miracles and facing challenges, leading to his death and resurrection.
Sacrifice: The protagonist is captured, killed, and buried, symbolizing the ultimate sacrifice for a greater cause.
Resurrection: After being executed and buried, the protagonist rises from the dead, demonstrating the theme of returning from death.
► From the same Region or People
Once there was a young man who went to travel with twelve other men. He arrived in the town and asked for lodging, but the owners of the house only permitted him to sleep in the henhouse. He did not want to sleep there, so he found another man who gave him lodging and who gave him a large mat on which he and the other twelve could sleep. He told the man’s wife to grind corn on the metate, giving her a fistful of maize. The woman did so, and with the handful of maize made sufficient tortillas for all of them. He went away at dawn after leaving money on the mat. The man went on and saw some men sowing. He asked them what they were sowing, but they did not reply.
► Continue reading…
Then he told them that trees would come up in the milpa, and it was so. There sprang up trees over a milpa, which it took three days to cross. He saw some more men sowing, who again refused to tell him what they were doing. To these he said that they were sowing water, and a great expanse of water sprang up. Yet other sowers he caused to sow stones. Passing farther on, he again met some sowers, and these he caused to sow cohune palms. Then he passed on and crossed over a river. As he was crossing the river, he stepped on some fresh-water snails. The twelve men who were coming along could not find him, and questioned the fresh-water snails. The snails replied, “Don’t you see that he has trampled on us and turned us over?”
He came to a town where the people cursed him, saying that he was a witch doctor. Then he prepared a big feast, but the chief of the town wanted to kill him because of his sorcery in causing the milpas to grow trees, stones, water, and cohune palms. The man hid himself inside a harp at his feast. All the twelve young men were drunk. The chief did not know the man by sight and he asked the man’s servant to point him out. The servant said, “You will know him because he is the only one who does not eat.”
The chief and his soldiers looked in at the window and noted which one did not eat. They caught him and tied him and left him lying down. Then they called in a blind man and placed a machete in his hand and guided him over to where the sorcerer lay bound, and, placing the point of the machete against the sorcerer’s ribs, they bid the blind man drive it in. He did so, and the blood of the sorcerer, gushing out onto the eyes of the blind man, restored his sight. They took the body of the sorcerer and buried it and made a feast. After the feast they took the bones of the chickens they had eaten and threw them on the spot where the dead man had been buried. The bones instantly became a live turkey and a live cock. They told the birds to crow if the dead man came to life again. At midnight the dead sorcerer came to life again and told the turkey and the cock not to crow. Then he took the servant who had betrayed him and placed him in a big house under the earth and said to him, “You are to be the lord of the earthquakes. You will shake the earth three times.”
The man returned to the house and told the cock that he was going up to heaven at midnight, saying, “If you see me or even a bit of me or even my foot, you can crow and wake up the sleepers.” Then the man went up into heaven. The man’s name was Jesus.
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Dreamtime Whispers 