Today began with traditional foods grown in the area. This included eggs with amaranth leaves, watermelon, papaya, black beans, chili sauce, and tortillas—always delicious and never disappoints! The director of IMAP, Ines, joined us and spoke about the energy of the day (Noj) and how wisdom and knowledge was what our energy meant today. The woodpecker was the animal associated with the Noj nahual because of its intelligence and being able to see things we cannot.
It is a day for transforming our ideas and innovations, but we have to think carefully about how to use our intelligence and channel it in the right direction. We also learned about the Maya cross and how each nahual has a different cross containing a head at the top of the cross for how life started for you: B’atz’ on the right side of the cross being the main parts of what you do in life (maybe you are a healer or an artist); the Aq’ab’al the left represents the balance and discipline; and the Kan at the bottom is where you are going and your path.
Next we were joined by Goyo and we ventured off to Renee’s garden that we started the previous day to plant five plant varieties: radish, amaranth, lettuce, parsley, and cilantro. We learned about spacing and the depth to plant each variety. We hiked back up to IMAP and got right into a workshop about the different types of seeds, the many different ways of propagating different plants, ways to process seeds, always discussing when is the best time to do these things during the moon cycle. We looked at how to store seeds and how Goyo is experimenting with keeping seeds in the fermenting stage for months at a time compared to the normal 3 days. We took a quick break for lunch which was a tomato based chicken soup with rice, veggies and, of course, tortillas!
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