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The Lacandon Maya are the last Maya who have traditions that have been kept entirely free from christian influence. They number in the hundreds in two locations in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Unfortunately, these traditions are quickly dying out, due to the encroaching modern life and christianity.

A very few Lacandon still worship Maya gods in rituals and have multiple types of sacred places they visit. These sacred places are various caves and natural rocks dotted around their landscape that they view as abodes of their gods. Ancient Maya ruins are also seen as houses of the gods. The Lacandon used to do pilgrimages to these places and burn copal in "god pots" and offer offerings. Then they would take a little stone, bring it back to their village, place it in their gods pots, which would then be seen as a house where the god itself would be present. The god pots would be stored in a little building called a god house. A ceremony that would be carried out for these god pots was the balché ceremony. Copan was burned in the god pot, and they would be offered the alcoholic drink balché and ritually prepared food. The last aspect, the sacred food, was prepared by women. The balché would be drunk by the participants in the ritual. Lakes were also seen as abodes of gods, and Lake Mensäbäk and Yahaw Petha were seen as an entrance to the underworld. They have at least 13 gods. Hachäkyum is their head diety. Mensäbäk the god of storms, who lives in Lake Mensäbäk and invites people to live with him after they die. Other gods include T´up, Ah K´in Chob, Säkäpuk, Kayum and Itzanah. When a god pot is abandoned, it is deposited in a cave. Which almost all god pots have been. Because the Lacandon rituals are rapidly disappearing. The Lacandon are split in two groups, the Southern and Northern. The southern abandoned their gods already in the 1950s and adopted evangelical christianity. The northern has kept their rituals for longer but they seem to finally be disappearing, also being encroached on by christianity who harrass the remaining ritual masters. Currently, there is a single ritual master left, Don Antonio Martinez. He might have carried out his last balché ceremony with no one to learn the sacred rites and being harassed by christians. A sad possible end to the maya religion, I hope something drastically happens to revive the ancient traditions.

Myths and stories from the Lacandon

Sources:

The Worshipers of Stones. Lacandon Sacred Stone Landscape

Maya Pilgrimage to Ritual Landscapes

The Lifepath Dialogues (Read this one in particular to know about the latest developments among the Lacandon. The author personally knows the last Lacandon ritual master)

The Last Spirit Keeper

I have been made aware that the Lacandon Maya still worship Maya gods with any christian influence. I’ll make a post about them hopefully within a week or so.

Edit: welp, this turned very sad.

Is notable for a being a fairly long amulet inscription. It follows a tradition of amulets used against evil and illness, and confirms Thor’s use of his hammer and his relation to thunder and the sea (think, the story involving fishing Jörmungandr) in a direct written, pagan source.

There is still to this day a ritual dedicated to the Punic goddess Tanit that is carried out to invoke rain.

A description of the various types of folk-tales from Iceland. So far I have only read the chapter about elves but that is very good and compiles and compares, chronologically all mentions of elves and vættir through the entire history of Iceland.

A Swedish ballad known as “Proud mister Alf” contains a passage where a man is visited by Odin. Read it here.

This ballad is similar to parts of the Icelandic saga Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka which you can read here.

There Faroese version is here.

This paper discuss this type of ballad and it’s origins. It actually argues that the the Swedish and Iceland version have a separate origin

Additional discussion.

Þrymskviða is a story recorded on the poetic edda. It is notable for having survived in folkloric ballads recorded in most of the nordic countries as far back as the middle ages.

This includes Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

Here is a link to versions in the various languages.

This book (in Danish) discusses it’s origins and spread throughout the nordic countries as well as how the different versions differ from one another.

A local tour guide told me it is a tradition to break into the Saint Louis No. 1 cemetery in New Orleans at night, scribble (a single) X on her grave and make a wish. If the wish comes true the person will return later with an offering.

Because of these scribbles, which is considering defacing of her tomb, there is a camera pointing at her possible grave at all times and it is currently being restored and cleaned up.

A good source of folklore and surviving pagan practices are church documents that describes practices evident in pre-christian Roman and Greek sources, archeological evidence, and early modern folkloric sources.

This book is the longest description I have read of this type of source. It discusses to what extend these texts can be read as actual evidence of existing practices, or just per verbatim repetitions of existing church texts. It never really concludes anything but mostly agrees that these really are evidence of existing practices.

It is split in multiple sections for different types of practices.