On Tuesday I went to San Andres Itzapa, where there is a temple shrine to Maximon. In the courtyard outside there were the remains of several small fires where animal sacrifices had been made that morning. The temple itself was a hall with all the walls covered with plaques from devotees expressing their thanks to Maximon for answered prayers. At the end of the hall were steps up to the shrine. A model of a man sat surrounded by flowers, cigars and bottles of alcohol that devotees have brought. Many people come to recieve a ´cleansing´, which I was able to watch. The witch or priestess took the flowers and alcohol that the devotee had brought and they stood in front of Maximon and touched his feet. She said a prayer and then took the flowers and waved them infront of the devotee, then hit him with them over his body (a bit like those swedish massages I´m told!) She then took a mouthfull of the alcohol and spit it out over the devotee and repeated this a few times. This cleansing ritual is supposed to get rid of the mistakes of the past and give protection for the future. Apparently it´s very popular with prostitutes.
I thought that Maximon (or Saint Simon) was a distortion of the catholic veneration of saints (some churches in Antigua have similar walls full of plaques from people giving thanks to a particular saint for miracles or answered prayers) but actually Maximon is not a saint at all, and isn´t part of the Catholic church.
The belief grew during the colonial times when the indigenous people were slaves to the Spanish and cruelly treated. They wanted a protector, and the belief in Maximon, who´s known as the Protector of the Mayans, developed.
The majority of Guatemalans are Catholic (although mostly nominally) but a small number eblieve strongly in the power to Maximon and travel a long way to visit his shrine- both with prayers and with thanks.
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