CAPI TACO'S FIELDNOTES: Mayas of Yucatán

What can Maya spirituality teach us about current efforts to colonise Mars?

Tomas Salem — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 00:59:37 GMT

This week I attended a made-for-gringos fire ceremony led by Tata Búho, one of the Maya shamans who live on the shores of Lake Atitlán.

Why should you care? Because it reveals how the West is finally beginning to listen—and what we do with that listening will shape our spiritual and ecological future.

Búho invited us to make offerings to the 20 nahuales …

Plant medicine is a helluva teacher

Tomas Salem — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 21:28:11 GMT

The final chapter of my Yucatán journey is a long-awaited ritual with plant medicine. I’ve explored the therapeutic potential of psilocybin mushrooms for some time, and in Mexico, these and other sacred plants like peyote and Xanga are used ceremonially. Increasingly, Westerners are coming to see these not as drugs, but as medicines that can open doors …

We must acknowledge the wounds of colonization to understand lack and abundance

Tomas Salem — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 21:19:03 GMT

While Chichen Itzá impressed with scale, Uxmal took my breath away. The pyramid is smaller, the ball court less imposing—but the detail in the stonework, the layout of the plazas, the rhythm of the architecture—all of it made it easier to imagine how life once flowed through this city. Uxmal flourished during the Late Classic period, and by the time the…

Reincarnation is a game changer to your relationship to life and death

Tomas Salem — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 21:11:57 GMT

Many of the contemporary, motorbike-riding Maya of Yucatán live in villages like Tinum. Their spirituality blends Catholic elements with ancient Maya cosmology—saints and Christian holidays are often linked to Maya rain gods, agricultural cycles, and ancestral spirits. While Honorio and his family practiced traditional baptisms and agricultural rituals,…

Magic unfolds when you follow the signs

Tomas Salem — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 20:57:24 GMT

After being nudged toward the Maya world, I hopped on a ferry to Cancún, planning vaguely to drift west toward Mérida. But the lady at the bus terminal had other ideas. “Stop in Valladolid,” she said. So I did. And that’s how I ended up in a cobbled colonial town built with stones from an ancient Maya city.

In the mid-1800s, Valladolid became a key batt…

What I've learned from the Maya of Yucatán

Tomas Salem — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 20:48:12 GMT

I felt called to sail to Mexico. Now I know why. After patching up the boat on Isla Mujeres, I finally sat down and asked the voice inside my head, or perhaps inside my gut, what to do next. I’ve started trusting those inner nudges—even when they send me straight into chaos. Like sailing across the Atlantic, for instance.

So, when I got the message—“Go …