If life was a carnival, what mask would you wear next?

On Maya tricksters, sacred mischief, and the freedom to play new roles in life.

This week, I visited Santiago de Atitlán, a town across the lake from Lomas de Atitlán, where I’m currently in an artist residency. Santiago is known as a spiritual center for the Tz’utujil Maya and home to the syncretic figure Maximon—Saint Simon, or “the grandfather”—an ambiguous spirit blending Catholicism and Maya beliefs. His effigy is kept in private homes for a year at a time and visited by devotees (and increasingly, tourists). He is tended by a brotherhood who act as intermediaries, helping people voice their needs and requests. I didn’t ask Maximon for any favors, but he still handed me a way of seeing life differently—one I think you’ll want to test for yourself.

Among catholics, Saint Simon is seen as a protector of the marginalized—beggars, thieves, and sex workers—and a bringer of justice and revenge. He is associated with financial and sexual energy, and loves alcohol and tobacco. These items, as well as money, must be offered in exchange for help in matters of health, romance, and prosperity. Meanwhile, Rilaj Mam (grandfather or ancient one) is the Maya embodiment of Maximon, connected to earth, cycles of harvest, and depending on whether cosmic balance is upheld, he can either bring blessings or punishment. He is not seen as morally pure but rather, relationally just.

In other words, Maximon is a trickster—a boundary-crosser and being who resists fixed categories, exposes hidden truths, and brings transformation through disruption. Tricksters live in liminal spaces—between life and death, human and divine, order and chaos. Spiritually, they show that reality is fluid and categories are porous. They break rules, lie, steal, or behave inappropriately—not just for fun, but to shake up systems that have become rigid.

Maximon is both loved and feared, and that challenges the binary thinking of coloniser and colonised, good and evil, and the sacred and profane. Like other trickster figures, he reminds us of the complexity of the human, mirrors human flaws, and reflects our greed, lust, vanity, and folly—but in ways that make us laugh, learn, or see things from a new perspective.

Something is appealing, perhaps even carnivalesque, about the changing roles and different energies Maximon embodies. I feel both reverence, fear, and a certain level of absurdity as we sip aguardiente (spirits) next to the people who have come to ask him for help, while the men of the brotherhood carefully collect the ashes from the smoking cigarette they have placed in the mouth of the wooden mask that is his effigy. The blending of the sacred and profane makes me reflect on how my path has been full of virtues and flaws—and how I wouldn’t have it any other way.

What if life is a carnival? What role will you play next?

There’s something liberating in allowing yourself to embody the trickster, to wear different masks, or to play a new role, even when it feels scary, even when it goes against expectations placed on you by others or even by yourself. Over the last years, I’ve worn many masks: the expert, the lover, the provocateur, the explorer. Even the grieving widower (perhaps the mask I feel the most uncomfortable wearing). They have allowed me to explore different dimensions of what it means to be human. They have all taught me something, and all left an imprint. What masks have you allowed yourself to put on? What masks have you resisted? And how have they shaped your path?

A few days after visiting Maximon, I met a Maya tata—a shaman imparting traditional Maya medicine. His gift was to clear blockages that crystallize in our bodies. Not just from our own life experiences, but also from our ancestors, what spiritual teachers refer to as ancestral trauma.

In eastern healing traditions, there’s a large emphasis on the energetic body: chakras, meridians, and the flow of prana or life-force. The tata, however, did not work with energetic fields. He used stones and pressure points to release accumulated tension stored mainly in my face, neck, back, and chest. With the stones, he undid blockages that had crystallized and accumulated in the body. He described them as residues accumulated through life, but also the experiences of ancestors, inherited through blood and DNA.

The tata and I agreed that as a vessel for our souls, our bodies can also be understood as the masks our souls have chosen to wear in this life—as coming with a specific set of attributes, lessons, and experiences for us to work our way through. One of the core ideas of reincarnation is that we have decided on a particular life-path before being born, not because it expresses a deeper, true identity, but rather because of the experiences that come with that path. And this week has left me thinking: if our soul chooses a mask, then so can we.

Just like Maximon, we can embrace the ambiguities of our lives instead of pursuing purity and cohesion: we can approach life as a carnival, a masquerade, a set of roles that contribute to our expansion and evolution. We can play, experiment, and challenge expectations as improvisers in a cosmic theatre. And maybe taking one mask off is just an opportunity to put another one on, and discover how vast we really are.

---