The Incantation for Jaguar Madness is a very old piece of "traditional" medicinal writing, surviving in a late 18th-century manuscript known as El Ritual de los Bacabes. Containing much traditional native lore in a series of poems or incantations, it is a valuable record of pre-Columbian Mayan belief-system(s).
The following translation of the Incantation for Jaguar Madness is by Dennis Tedlock (2010). He explains, in his Introduction to the text, that the madness in question was often associated with rage, fury, but also with limitless sexual desire or hunger (in common parlance: nymphomania?).
It is, I think, a beautiful piece of writing in its own right, and serves as an example of native Mayan oral poetry. NB: Tedlock's rendering is in prose.
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The Incantation for Jaguar Madness
One Lord, one and only Four Lord, Sky Lord would have been in Chaos, Sky Lord would have been dark when you were born. Who are you, owner of chaos? Who are you, owner of night? You are in chaos, Great Lord of Days, the eye of the sun was plucked out when you were born. Who is your mother, what father begets you when you do penance?
She is Red Rainbow, White Rainbow, she is the point of the lancet, the tip of the penis, this is your mother, your father, begetter, together behind there, together behind the sweat bath when you were born, the desire in that chaos, desire in that darkness, the spitting snake was in the tree, the spitting snake was on the rock when you were born, desire in the darkness.
Master of Drunken Madness, you are the desire in chaos, you are Master of Stupid Madness, you are Lascivious Madness, you are Jaguar Madness, you are Master of Macaw Madness, you are Deer Madness. Who is your tree? Who is your bush? What served as your bed, your bower when you were born?
The red tree of madness, white tree of madness, black tree of madness, yellow tree of madness, the red macaw acacia, white macaw acacia, black macaw acacia, yellow macaw acacia are your trees. These are your trees, you Macaw Madness. The red mamey, who is the white mamey? Who is the black mamey? Who is the yellow mamey? Who is the red viper tree? Who is white, black, yellow? The red frangipani, who is white, black, yellow? These are your trees, Lascivious Madness. Who is the madness? You are Stupid Madness...
You will be where she is, a needle for drawing blood, a needle for gore, respite comes for the chaos, respite comes for the darkness, the bond is shaken loose where she is, a needle for drawing blood, a needle for drawing gore, the seizure is shaken out, there where he vomited water, only it wasn't water flowing, it was gore flowing, Master of Traveler's Madness, Master of Drunken Macaw Madness flowed out.
What about the desire of chaos, the illness of madness? Drain them away then, you Four Gods, you Four Who Pour the Years. They will fall where she is, Yellow Sun Face, Yellow Dripper of Gore, where she is, the sole owner of the accursed gore. Drain it away then, to the place where she is, the sole owner of accursed gore, drain it away then, you Four Gods, you Four Who Pour the Years, it will fall where she is, the star of Stupid Madness, it will lie four days in the place where she is, the star of Stupid Madness.
He bit his arm, relieving the chaos, relieving the darkness, and he also tasted blood in the sweat bath, and he tasted the blood on the foundation stone. Well then, throw the desire of chaos there, desire of darkness, you Four Gods, you of the Four Directions, it will fall into the heart of Hell where its father sits, Ultimate Enemy of Fire, where she is, the Foreigner, Doorkeeper of the Earth.
This is its mother, this is its lustful father when it arrives in the heart of hell. Raucous, thunderous are the cries of the birds. What about this chaos, you Four Gods, you of the Four Directions?
This will be the dialogue concerning the Ultimate Enemy of Fire when speaking to the Four Gods, the Four Directions.
Raucous are the cries of birds, the bringers of omens on her behalf, the Foreigner, Doorkeeper of the Earth, red-breasted birds, white-breasted falcons, red-breasted falcons, thrushes in the sky, thrushes in the clouds: these will portend your fall into the heart of hell. What about stupid madness? What about macaw madness? What about jaguar madness?
Well then, the desire of chaos is yours to level out, you Four Gods, you of the Four Directions. Aha! The water spreads thin, but what flows is not water but blood flowing, gore flowing from the tree of Master of Macaw Jaguar Madness.
This will be the dialogue when speaking to the Four Gods, those of the Four Directions, concerning her, the Foreigner, Doorkeeper of the Earth.
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As Tedlock notes, fascinatingly, "Behind the various references to a lancet, the tip of the penis, and a needle for drawing blood is a ritual of sacrifice in which men of noble descent drew blood by piercing their foreskins. Judging from the incantation, this ritual was conceived as reenacting the myth of the founding of a patrilineage, with the instrument of sacrifice and the foreskins playing the parental roles and the child emerging in the form of blood."
I strongly encourage you to look up Tedlock's 2000 Years of Mayan Literature, a fully illustrated and incredible-looking resource for the pre-Columbian literatures of Mexico and Guatemala (incidentally, it is out in paperback now, for just under twenty dollars).
For further information on the manuscript of the incantation itself, see Ralph L. Roys: Ritual of the Bacabs: A Book of Mayan Incantations (1965) in English and Ramón Arzápalo Marín's El Ritual de los Bacabes (1987) in Spanish.




Incantation for Jaguar Madness
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