CEIBA (Silk Cotton Tree)

Home to the Spirits of the Forest

The Silk Cotton or Ceiba Tree [Ceiba pentandra (L.) Gaertn.] is one of the largest trees in the American tropics. The tree has played an important role in the spiritual and economic lives of the peoples who live in the circum-Caribbean region. For the Mayan culture, the Ceiba was called the Tree of Life

The Wacah Chan (or Whac Chan, a.k.a. Mayan Sacred Tree, Mayan World Tree or Mayan Tree of Life) represented the three levels of the Mayan universe. It was believed that all three universes were joined by a central tree. The roots of the tree plunged into the Maya underworld and its branches reached into the Overworld or the Heavens. The central tree was associated with the color green and the four trees in the Middle World were white, red, yellow, and black. The white tree represented the ancestral dead and the North, the red represented the rising sun and the East, the yellow represented the South and right hand of the sun, the black represented the West and the Underworld.

According to Hernandez Aquino (1977), Ceiba (pronounced "sayba") is a Taino word. Christopher Columbus in 1492, and Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo in 1526, were both impressed by the size of the canoes that the Indians in the West Indies and coastal Central and South America made from the Ceiba tree. These canoes (another Taino word) were hollowed out of tree trunks all in one piece. Some were 10 to 12 spans wide (a "span" measures 9 inches or 1/8th of a fathom), and could carry more than 100 men. The wood is exceedingly lightweight (specific gravity = 0.23), and is easily worked. However, because the wood lacks durability and is susceptible to insects and decay, it is not used for other kinds of construction. Dugout canoes, like the one below, are still made today from Ceiba trees. Locally, the name "Kayuka" is used instead of canoe.

Kayuka canoe made from a Ceiba tree.

The Tainos believed that the forest was inhabited by spirits called opas. Opas were the spirits of the dead, and one could identify opas because they lacked navels. They were supposed to come out of the forest at night and feast on guayaba fruit. In fact, it is tropical bats who eat guayaba fruit at night which led the Tainos to associate opas with bats.

Opas, as spirits of the dead, are also associated with the dieties who ruled the world of the dead. According to Ramn Pan, the Jeronymite friar who was sent by Columbus to study the native mythology, "They say a certain cem, Opiyelguobirn, had four feet like a dog and is [made] of wood, and often he comes out of the house at night and enters the forests. They go there to seek him and bring him back to the house. They bind him with cords, but he returns to the forests." Jos Juan Arrom suggested that this spirit who constantly sought the woods, where the the opas or spirits of the dead dwelt, served as the daylight guardian.

Activities are merely changed from one condition to the other. It is not clear of the association of mythical beliefs surrounding the Ceiba and the Ayahuasca ceremony, but Ceiba pentandra is also used as one of the ingredients to some versions of the hallucinogenic drink Ayahuasca used for thousands of years and to this day by Shamans of Central and South America. "Ayahuasca," a Quechua word meaning "vine of the soul," is shorthand for a concoction of Amazonian plants that shamans have boiled down for centuries to use for healing purposes. Though some call the mixture a drug, indigenous peoples regard such a description as derogatory. To them it is a medicine that has been used by the tribes of the Amazon Basin for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years, demanding respect and right intention. The main chemical in the brew, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), accounts for ayahuasca's illegality in the United States; DMT, though chemically distant from LSD, has hallucinogenic properties. But it is ayahuasca's many plant ingredients cooperating ingeniously to allow DMT to circulate freely in the body that produce the unique ayahuasca experience. This ceremony causes intense psychological visions known to transform and heal the user. For more information go to National Geographic's article on the subject.

Greek mythology assigned a similar role to Cherberus, the three-headed dog who stood at the river crossing that marked the entrance into the realm of Pluto. In line with Arrom's conclusions, Antonio Stevens-Arroyo identifies Opiyelguobirn as one of the twins who assist Maquetaurie Guayaba. Maquetaurie Guayaba was the Lord of the Dead, Master of Sweetness and Delight, symbol of the guayaba berry (whose juice produced a black body paint which symbolized death), Lord of Coaybay ("the house and home of the dead"); he was represented by bat symbols. Opiyelguobirn as Guardian of the Dead and Master of Privacy and Felicity, was the twin of Corocote, Guardian of Sexual Delight, Romance, and Spontaneity, he was a picaresque spirit. However, this is only one of the ways that Opiyelguobirn was represented. As Henry Petitjean Roget points out, "Zemis (or cemes) are not specific representations but symbolic entities...like many symbols, [they] cannot be reduced to a single interpretation." Petitjean Roget associates Opiyelguobirn with the discovery of the first wild bee honey. As such, he is a metaphor for the power of the cacique (chief).

Image of Opiyelguobirn the Taino Cemi (spirit) who guarded the world of the dead. This amulet was discovered in a 9th century archaeological site at Paradise Park, Jamaica

 

Various beliefs in supernatural spirits were brought to the West Indies from Africa by enslaved peoples that are identified as Garifuna's here in Guatemala. It is likely that these beliefs also were influenced in the 16th century by the last remaining native peoples One of the modern words for spirits of the dead in the West Indies -- Obeah -- may originally have come from the Taino name (Zombi). In 1936, Anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study Obeah in the West Indies. She lived in Jamaica from April to September and attended numerous local ceremonies. Jamaicans believe that "duppies" (spirits of the dead) live mostly in silk cotton trees and almond trees. For that reason neither tree should be planted too close to the house because the duppies who live in them will "throw heat" on the people as they come and go. Duppies are responsible for various kinds of mischief and can hurt a living person such that medicinal cures (including "balm baths") must be sought from local Shamans who serve as both "doctor and priest." We should keep in mind that while modern Jamaicans recognize that belief in duppies is a part of their heritage, the practices associated with these beliefs have faded with time. To find a more complete image of duppies we must look to the past. In this regard, Hurston's (1938, pp. 43-44) observations during a "nine night" ceremony (so named because it lasted nine nights), which takes place after a person dies, are instructive:

Vases and relics with ceiba-like cones are fairly common

"It all stems from the firm belief in survival after death. Or rather that there is no death. One old man smoking jackass rope tobacco said to me in explanation: 'One day you see a man walking the road, the next day you come to his yard and find him dead. Him don't walk, him don't talk again. He is still and silent and does none of the things that he used to do. But you look upon him and you see that he has all the parts that the living have. Why is it that he cannot do what the living do? It is because the thing that gave power to these parts is no longer there. That is the duppy, and that is the most powerful part of any man. Everybody has evil in them, and when a man is alive, the heart and the brain controls him and he will not abandon himself to many evil things. But when the duppy leaves the body, it no longer has anything to restrain it and it will do more terrible things than any man ever dreamed of. It is not good for a duppy to stay among living folk. The duppy is much too powerful and is apt to hurt people all the time. So we make nine night to force the duppy to stay in his grave.'"

When and if you get the opportunity, look at the sacred ceiba tree and you may notice that its spines resemble the round conical bumps that the Maya incorporated on their incense burners, cache vessels and burial urns.