Secrets of the Talking Jaguar by Martin Prechtel

Secrets of the Talking Jaguar Reviews

• 
  Jeni Hogenson

  One of my absolute favorite books because it takes you directly to the heart of an indigenous culture that lived in a way that is so true to the heart and themselves. At least the way it's told. Beautiful and evocative, if you like reading stories about different cultural perspectives, this is excellent and takes you deep into something we don't seem to treasure much any more...and I can't even put that into words.
• 
  Gina

  There's a rule of thumb test I heard once to determine if a comment is patronizing to a person or group. If you switched the parties in the comment, would you find the statement offensive or obviously wrong? If so, it's probably patronizing. This works well when applied to comments about men and women or races, but I think it also applies very well to this book. If I read a book that spoke in almost uniformly glowing terms about a modern society, and dismissed an indigenous culture in gross generalities, picking only its worst moments and tendencies to characterize it, and implied that pretty much all of its people are spiritually dead and immature... I'd think the author was offensive and almost certainly wrong. So, all this is to say I found this book a little patronizing. The Noble Savage stereotype, as it were, promoted by Himself.
  
  The book tells about how Prechtel, raised on a Pueblo reservation in the southwest US, wanders around Mexico and Guatemala in an aimless search in his early 20s until he finds his home among the Guatemalan Maya in the village of Santiago Atitlan. There he lives for 13 years and is apprenticed and becomes a working shaman. He is fully accepted and fully loves his life there. Eventually he is forced to leave the country with his wife and children as a result of civil war, although his exit is not clearly explained.
  
  His descriptions of his training, the beautiful land, the village life, and especially the spirituality of the Mayans were wonderful. I learned a lot about the culture of the village, and their view of the world and their place in it. It certainly is radically different than a modern mindset. His life was full of amazing adventures (some of which I admit to being a tiny bit skeptical about) and it makes for a great story.
  
  The thing is, though, it's also a call for each of us to find our own indigenous heart, to recognize the poverty of our own alienating, deadening experience in a modern society and return to a true, spiritual, enlivening, rich life as embodied in his Mayan village. (Conveniently, he teaches classes and workshops on how to do this throughout the US. Yes, I'm a bit cynical). I just didn't feel it. I think a lot of this might be my membership in paradoxically one of the most corporate AND one of the most "indigenous" religions around in our modern society. If you don't know much about Mormons, you'd be surprised at the number of elements of our beliefs and practices I found echoed in those of the Mayan. I'm not saying the religions are related, and there are many *significant* differences. Only that our temples, views about holiness and priesthood, ideas about humanity, and ideas about community are similar in many respects. Maybe this is why I don't feel many of the horrible effects of modernity he describes. I do not discount his own experience of alienation during his time in the US, nor his obviously joyful finding of a people and culture where he felt fully embraced, challenged, valued, and alive. I enjoyed his story. But I don't think it is mine.
• 
  Kat

  I read this for a Fairhaven class on the anthropology of shamanism. The professor, Leslie Conton, has been dogged by controversy surrounding her experiential methods as an anthropologist, as her ethnographic work has consisted of studying various cultures' shamanic practices by training as a shaman in those cultures. No longer allowed to conduct shamanic journeying workshops as part of the class, she assigned Secrets of the Talking Jaguar because it was "the closest thing she could give us to an experiential education" on the subject.
  
  Well, that whole subject is very sticky and I don't think here is the place to write any more about it. But Prechtel's memoir was definitely in stark contrast to the dryer, more purely ethnographic materials assigned, and I relished it. I don't know how an author can describe the ineffable, and I imagine the answer is that he can't--but this is still a beautiful, evocative piece of writing.
  
  Traveling aimlessly around Central America, Prechtel happenstantially (I want that to be a word) ended up in a Tzutujil Mayan village in Guatemala, was chosen despite his protests to train under the village shaman, and stayed (I think) 15 years, before being forced to leave due to political circumstances. It doesn't sound true, but as far as I can tell, it is. Now back in the U.S., Prechtel is working to inform people about the sociopolitical situation of indigenous cultures in Central America. A pretty amazing dude. This book is mostly about the spiritual and social aspects of his shamanic training and practice, and the relationship of these things to his experience of being a cultural expatriate/import.
  
  I lent my copy to David Ney a couple of years ago after he tried to convince me to read Carlos Castaneda, and he still hasn't read it. So if you want to borrow it, I'll get it back from him.
• 
  Andrew

  This book goes up there in the handful of books that actually weave into fibers of my soul. I read it based on the recommendation of several friends who are students of Martin, and the timing couldn't have been better. Like Martin starts our in the book, my wife, daughter and I are traveling now with grief-stricken hearts, and confronting the pervasive spiritual illness sweeping the world. True hope is hard to come by, but the stories the author shares of his life in Santiago Atitlan actually see the chance for humanity to reconnect with our natural souls. Maybe it will take generations, but I am grateful for elders like this who can offer a grounded perspective of what "healing" actually means in today's world.
• 
  Kayleigh

  This, as a natural cynic, is a truly transformative account of both Maya culture and a deeply inspirational peek into the civil war's effect on a people. Martin begins with flowery language in defense of the reverence of nature that is both repelling to a modernized person and compelling in mystery. His own fascinating history, as a young integree to Pueblo culture in New Mexico, his exile, then discovery and integration to shaman culture in Highland Guatemala lends context to forgotten concepts and a vignette into the indigenous cultures' oppression in the 1980s. Prechtel is a wonderfully poetic writer, whose prose compels the reader forward despite their own preconceptions of "indigenous culture". This account alone truly adds value to the ambiguous, ill-annotated history of a people subjugated as collateral damage to corporate and political objectives.
• 
  Rachel

  This book was beyond words and I cannot wait to dive into more of Prechtel's work. His talk "Grief and Praise" is an utter favorite of mine and Secrets of the Talking Jaguar was filled with mysticism, beauty, heartache, laughter and words that drip with images of the Maya people. What a storyteller and writer!
• 
  Amy

  this is one of the worst, dumbest books I have ever read. white man shaman? not uh.
• 
  Nicole Petersen

  Honey in the Heart
• 
  Joshua Buhs

  Don't judge a book by the cover.
  
  The cove of this one is beautiful, a painting by the author. He's a really good painter. He's not a really good author.
  
  This is a story about his life; born to a Westerner and a First Nations Woman, Prechtel was raised in the American Southwest, a rebellious youth who was ultimately betrayed by his mother (she died), his father (in grief, he fled), and his wife (she cheated on him with a white man). Penniless, he left for Mexico, where he spent some time, before continuing on to Guatemala. There, he found the village of Santiago Atitlan, where he lived for more than a decade, learning a particular Mayan style of life.
  
  The book obviously is in the same vein as the Carlos Castanada books about Don Juan. I remember reading through that whole series in my mid-teens and being very taken by them. We now know that they're pretty much all fake, but the power of the writing remains. (Whether I would think so some quarter-century later, I don't know.) It could be that Prechtel's books are completely authentic--although a few things give me pause--but the writing is incredibly flat and prosaic.
  
  It is worth noting that the book--the first in a series, apparently--is introduced by Robert Bly, author of Iron John. I've read that book, too, and although Bly is often lumped in with the men's movements of the early 1990s--the Promise Keepers, etc.,--his book was always a bit more tricky than those atavisms. He has a sense of the absurd and the dramatic and the weridnesses of life. None of that is in this book, but I could see why he might be drawn to it. Prechtel is enacting many of the initiation rites that Bly feels are needed in this modern world.
  
  Indeed, one of the reasons why I am leery about this book is it reads like a transliteration of Bly's ideas. Prechtel cannot connect to The Feminine (it's not capitalized in the book, but might as well be) because he has not made it as a man: and so is rejected by his wife and the waitress he is considering marrying in Mexico. He leaves the U.S. when he is 20 and returns at the rather significant age of 33: without saying so, he wants us to link his learning with the lost years of Christ. But he escapes crucifixion.
  
  When he arrives in the village, he is greeted as welcome--somebody there has been sending him the dreams to tempt him there all along. That's not as extraordinary as all of the help he has received making his way to the remote village. Everyone just seems to accept him and he becomes friends with everyone--yet to this point no individual has really been described, including the woman he fell in love with in Mexico.
  
  That pattern continues through the book. Even the man who teaches him to become a shaman (because, of course) is hardly more than a name. It's a very narcissistic book, with everything in the universe there not for its own reasons but to improve Prechtel's own soul, and to impart wisdom.
  
  Another reason I have trouble accepting this as an actual document is too often does Prechtel slide between saying the particular group of Mayans he lives with believes certain things or does certain things and ALL Mayans do such things and there is an essential indigenous soul.
  
  I did like the imagery of the gods having created humans because humans can create beauty and joy and use this to feed the God's hungers--it is a manner of praying and conversing with the divine world.
  
  According to Prechtel, there are two such tracks human's can follow to propitiate the gods. One is belonging to a village hierarchy, and acting, essentially, as an institutional memory of these negotiations. The other is shamanic, in which a person acts, essentially, as a lawyer for others before the divine courts, doing individual negotiations. Of course, though he was an outsider, he was accepted into both. (He was more determined to keep the "old ways" than most of the others in the village--though it is unclear how old these old ways were.) This book only deals with his shamanic training, though. Long Life Honey in the Heart deals with his chiefdom.
  
  The real problem, though, is that the initiation he describes is boring. He struggles here and there, but only for a paragraph or two, There's none of the soul-wrenching weirdness of Carlos Castanada. Like his trip across central America, things just happen, easily, he is accepted, he does his job, blah de blah.
  
  Blah.
• 
  Andrea Paterson

  Especially fascinating in terms of how language is a reflection of cultural reality and how language shapes that reality. Ex. the Mayan language spoken in this book does not have a word for "to be" and so there is no concept of "future." People live in a sense of belonging to the present moment. For example a traveller is said to "belong to the road." In the day time people "belong to the sun." Linguistically enlightening! Other aspects of the book were not as engrossing, but there was lots to keep me reading.
• 
  Tom Riordan

  The first half of this book was filled with amusing and sometime hilarious travel misadventures as he made his way to Guatemala. Once he arrived there and met the shaman he was to train with the tone of the book changed. His shamanistic training should have been the most interesting part of the book, but this section consisted of a dry, chapter long description of the village and other uninteresting narratives on his training that did not put you right into this part of the story. It was almost as if this section was written by a different person.
• 
  Margaret

  A tale of Mayan Shamanism told by a Mayan Shaman, it should be understood that English was not the main language used and spoken for the majority of this author's life. As the reader, if you can meet the author where his circumstances lie and accept his more poetic (sometimes exaggerated) manner of speech, you may just grow fond of his personal story about the indigenous soul and keeping it alive in a dark world. I know I did.
• 
  Brian Brogan

  The most engrossing and inspiring book... what a spiritual way of life could be like. What community can be like. Great adventure, brilliant storytelling... lyrically beautiful language - nonfiction at its best... Martin's other books run a close 2nd.
• 
  Chelsea

  This book is part epic journey, part lucid dream. A glimpse into a shaman's journey in 1970's rural Guatemala. Not to be taken lightly, or easily forgotten...
• 
  Letecia

  Martin's writing is candy for the mind. A wordsmith with an open heart.
• 
  Jay

  beautiful true story of a person transformed by engaging with an Indigenous community and the Earth and being transformed and healed by and through both. This is medicine.
• 
  Laurie

  Pretentious and patronizing.
• 
  Aaron Lanes Webb

  I read most of this book. I still have the last third to go or so. The chapters I remember were vivid and magical; surreal. The book was returned to the library because I mostly just listen to and read evolutionary herbalism lectures/notes these days, rather than reading books. The alchemical spagyric herbalist life takes commitment. That being said, I do have one book that I read perpetually, whose secrets the talking Jaguar might understand.
• 
  Bruce

  True story indigenous shamanic culture philosophy and world view by a person raised as an outsider in our culture who through trials and initiations is accepted into another, and then must leave it and return to ours.
  
  Essential. Cannot speak highly enough. Synchronisticaly my reading overlapped my journey into my most powerful shamanic experience so far, and was a really helpful guide and inspiration for my process.
• 
  Poyom Riles

  Loved it. An incredible story of his journey and worldview. This was my introduction to his work and it blew my mind. I have listened to him speak several times but I still haven't gotten my hands on another of his books.
• 
  Sol Beltran

  DNF: this author came off as oblivious of his privilege, egotistical and ignorant in his language in the first 50 pages I read. His description of women were uncalled. It wasn't what I was expecting, could've been condensed down to 150 pages max.
• 
  Carla Faletti

  Prechtel paints with words. Reading one paragraph is enough imagery to savor and chew for hours. Delicious.
• 
  Laura Crippa

  Boring
• 
  Daren

  The most fascinating tale I've ever read. Totally enjoyed this book from start to finish.
• 
  Nan

  Amazing, mystical journey. Uplifting.
• 
  Paul

  Amazing story.