The Tree that was Swallowed by the Cenote

I am not going to lie. This story has had me stumped for more than 2 weeks. My head and heart are so full that I have not known where to begin. So I figured it would be best to just dive in.

I usually plan out how to share these things, but this time the webs just go in so many directions that it feels like I am just going to have to go with the flow and tell it to you as if you were standing here, in front of me.

But before I even get started, you need to know that this is part of a story that has been unfolding for YEARS and it will really help you understand the significance of things if you go back and read the other blog posts leading up to this one. There are four. Its called The Saga of The Speaking Cross. I can only talk about so much stuff here, so reading those will really help fill in the back-story!

Ok… where to begin?

The Tree was Swallowed by a Cenote!

At the beginning of August (this year, 2024) an incredible thing happened in a tiny town in Yucatan called Xocen. A prophecy was fulfilled. The prophecy said, “When the ceiba tree falls into the cenote, it will be the beginning of the end of the world”

Now, no one knew WHICH ceiba tree of course. Prophecies are like that.

But there is this non-assuming town that many of the Maya people in the Mexican state of Yucatan call, The Center of The World. So, of course it would make sense for the event to happen in the center of the world!

And, just by chance, there WAS a big beautiful and very old ceiba tree in the center of town, at a park, no where near a cenote. That was the problem, the tree was not near a cenote.

For those of you who just arrived to this crazy blog site, a cenote is a sink hole that opens up into a vast underground river system in Yucatan.

Now, I had been to the town before. To see the Speaking Cross (see, this is why I suggested you read the saga!) and I vaguely remember someone telling me there was a prophecy about the tree and the cenote, but they didn’t think it could be THAT tree because there was no cenote close by. I seem to remember us joking that cenotes DO open up occasionally in random places and maybe one would open up and swallow the tree there!

(I’m sorry, this is not going to be a short blog post)

Anyway, on August 5th of 2024, the earth gave way.

The tree disappeared completely.

Scuba divers dived down into the water to a depth of 40 meters (120 feet) and could not find it.

So I gathered a small group of brave souls and we went to investigate. I thought it would be fascinating to get first hand accounts of what happened and see if there was more to the story (imagine me laughing hysterically now) Little did I know, the story would connect to POWERFUL happenings in this tiny place.

The Rain God Ceremony

There is a ceremony the Maya do every year on the 3rd of May to ask the rain god Chac to send his blessings to the earth and to send rain so the crops will grow. It is the day they begin planting. (It is also a very significant day to the Speaking Cross! The stories overlap.)

The name of the ceremony is Chaac Chac (to you and I those sound like the same word). It is elaborate and can take days to complete. They cook special tamales, do long rituals, and gather everyone and pray many prayers led by the local J-Men (shaman). My good friend, Don Francisco, has led these ceremonies in his own town and told me many things about them. One thing that kind of blew my mind is that they pray UNTIL IT RAINS! Usually, they are coming out of the dry season, and it may not have rained for weeks, or even months! The ceremony is so powerful though, that Don Francisco said it almost never takes more than 24 hours of praying for the rains to come!

So why is this important? Because they used to do the Chaac Chac ceremony under the ceiba tree! (in the town of Xocen, that is. Every town does their own Chaac Chac ceremony)

In 2020, they stopped doing the ceremony to the rain god.

That’s bad.

They stopped because of the pandemic, but then they just never started again.

The Goddess in the Tree

There is a legend, ok its not a legend, its real.

There is a real, powerful, and a bit scary thing about these ceiba trees. There is a nasty goddess who lives inside one (or maybe many) of them. Her name is Xtabay. She appears sometimes as a green tree snake and . . . sometimes as the most beautiful woman you ever saw, well if you are a young man who enjoys alcohol. She pretty much only appears to them.

You see, Xtabay had a thing against young drunk men. It was all her sister’s fault.

So, way back before the Xtabay was a goddess, her name was Utz’colel. She was gorgeous and lived in a tiny town in Yucatan. She has a sister named Xkeban who was just as gorgeous. But the two of them were very different in personality.

While Itz’colel was very prim and proper and did all the right things, Xkeben was a bit of a floosy. That is to say that she enjoyed the company of many of the young men in the village. She was not known for being prim and proper, but for quite the opposite. However, she often took in drunkards and homeless and injured animals and helped them.

Now when Xkeben died, beautiful flowers with a lovely fragrance grew up all over her grave and the scent was so strong that it filled the village.

So of course, Xkeben’d sister, Utz’colel, figured that because Xkeben has sweet smelling flowers grom on her grave when she died even though she wasn’t very righteous, that she, Utz’colel would surely have flowers even more beautiful and sweeter smelling grown up on her grave when she died because she WAS so very, very righteous.

(I bet you know where this story is going)

So of course, when Utz’colel died, horrible smelling cactuses grew up on her grave and filled the entire village with the stench.

Well, Utz’colel didn’t really appreciate that. In fact, it made her very very angry.

So, she turned herself into a goddess and renamed herself Xtabay, and she took her vengeance out on yong drunk men. Actually, she is still taking her vengeance out on them.

(You are probably wondering what this all has to do with the sacred ceiba tree falling into the cenote. Don’t worry, the tie-in is coming soon!)

So, Xtabay, as a goddess, can appear either as a bright green tree snake or as a mesmerizing, stunning, (snakelike) woman. She targets men who would once have been lovers of her sister, and she appears to them as the most beautiful woman they ever saw. Then she lures them, staying just out of reach and calling them to follow her.

I have a true story of this happening to a man in a small town near Xocen.

He did follow her. He was mesmerized, captivated by her beauty.

And so where did Xtabay lead this poor soul?

Well, of course, into the CEIBA TREE.

She would lead these young, intoxicated men into the tree, which is full or huge spines. And there they would be trapped FOREVER sleeping in a tormented sleep on a bed of spines!

Now Gato, the man who was actually taken by Xtabay, did not fall completely asleep before he realized what was happening and he was able to crawl out of the huge, sacred ceiba tree before it was too late.

But he was never the same again.

He uncle told me the whole story. He said it happened years ago and Gato can no longer hold down and job and is still plagued with visions of the beautiful goddess Xtabay trying to lure him back into the tree. In fact, everyone in town knows what happened to him.

Like I said, it isn’t a legend, its real.

The Woman Crying For Help

Well, the day the tree was swallowed by the cenote, a local woman who lived across the street came running to the door when she heard the earth crack open. She felt the trembling as if it were an earthquake and, terrified, she opened the door to see the great ceiba tree in the park across from her house disappear into the gaping hole in the ground and at the same time she heard a women crying out, “HELP ME! HELP ME!”

And then it was all gone. The tree, and the cry of the women. Into the watery depths of the cenote.

Because you see, the local people had forsaken the Chaac Chac ceremony a few years earlier and the sacred tree no longer hosted the sacred ceremony beneath its huge branches. But what it DID host was a bunch of . . . . .

young drunk men

Are you putting it together?

This is how these stories unfold when you are there. You are just talking to the locals, hearing their stories and trying to put the puzzle together. And then things fit into place in ways you never would have expected!

So, the locals believe that when the ceremony to honor and ask blessings from the rain god (one of the very most important gods in the area) was abandoned, when it was no longer held under the great ceiba tree, the goddess Xtabay came and took over the tree. The borrachos (Spanish for drunks) were drawn to the tree.

There is even a story of two men disappearing! (I still need to track down more info on that story during a future exploration trip!)

And the gods could not abide by this sacred spot being given over to the wiles of this nasty goddess. And so, the earth opened and swallowed the tree!

The Local Commentary on the Prophecy & the End of the World

Now remember, the prophecy said that when the tree fell into the cenote, it would be the beginning of the end of the world.

We asked many locals if they could expand on this. The general consensus was that, since Xocen is the center of the world, the things that happen there have repercussions around the world. To demonstrate this, many of the villagers told us about how when the Stone Speaking Cross Burned, the great pandemic began.

We were also told that they didn’t really know exactly what was going to happen because the BOOK that BLEEDS, the one that turns its own pages and tells the future of the world, was lost back in the 1940’s.

But those things are different parts of the story. And the locals also told me that they cannot really tell me these parts of the story, and really should not be telling me even little bits of it, at least not at that time. I was welcome to return on another day when I had time to spend the night in the village because the story of Xocen is very, very long. It takes 2 days to tell properly, and once it is begun, it MUST be finished,

. . . or something bad will happen.

HOPE: Don Francisco’s Commentary on the Prophecy & the End of the World

Don Francisco did a wonderful job giving us hope and explaining how it isn’t necessarily the beginning of the end. He said we still have a chance to change the destiny of the world.

If we change.

He said that the many drunks in town was just a small example of how life was going downhill. He said many people were getting depressed, there were suicides, and the crime rate was up. He said many people were not working, people were greedy and lazy, and the old gods were no longer being revered. He explained that if this continued, we would get one more chance and then that would be it…the real beginning of the end.

But if we went back to the sacred ways of living, of being kind to each other, of caring for our homes and families, and of honoring the earth, her inhabitants, and the old gods, peace would settle back on the earth and our future would be beautiful.

Take-Aways from this story

This all happened in the Center of the World. And whatever happens there affects the world on a global scale.
The Old Gods were abandoned.
The drunkards took over the holy space.
A spiteful nasty goddess punished these actions by taking 2 men.
The Old Gods became angry and opened a hole so the earth/cenote could swallow the sacred tree.
(Apparently the nasty goddess was punished too since she was heard crying for help!)
The Book that Bleeds is missing so the locals cannot look in it to see what will happen. (More on that in another post)
The locals are afraid something bad in going to happen across the globe because something bad happened in the town.
If you tell the story of Xocen and don’t finish it, something bad will happen.
Ummmm…..
Yeah…..
If something bad happens in Xocen, something bad happens all over the world.
And I have begun the story of Xocen but have not finished it.
In truth I don’t know if I can ever finish it.