Chol Ritual Language
with Terrence Lee Folmar, Heidi Altman, Ausencio Cruz Guzmán, and Bernardo Pérez Martínez
©1996 J. Kathryn Josserand and Nicholas A. Hopkins

The Lexicon of the Sacred

In the vocabulary of ritual and ceremonial activity, there are other nouns of interest that are not titles for religious or ritual offices. One large set of these has to do with concepts of the soul and the tripartite nature of Man, who in the traditional conception consists of the ch’ujlel ’soul’, the bäk’tal ’body’, and the wäy ’animal companion’.  This triad of entities is imbued with ’life’, kux-täl-el (based on the positional verb root kux ’to be alive’).

Numerous words are based on the adjective root ch’uj ’holy, sacred’ (which in Classic times was represented through a word-play as the homophone ’droplets of liquid’). In its various derivatives, the root appears in ch’uj-lel ’the holiness, the soul’; ch’uj-lel-äl ’the deceased, the dead one’; ch’uj-el ’mass’; and ch’uj-ul ’spirit, sacred, holy, relation with God’, as in ch’uj-ul-bä ’otot ’holy house’ or ’temple’.  The root ch’uj appears to be the root that ch’uj-wanaj ’cargoholder’ is based on, but it is not the root that ch’ujyijel (or ch’uyijel) ’prayer’ is based on. This term is derived from the transitive verb root ch’uy ’to raise up’, and signifies ’that which is being raised up’, that is, ’prayer’.

The soul, ch’uj-lel, figures in a number of metaphorical expressions: the cadaver is referred to as i-bäk’tal ch’ujlelal ’the flesh of the soul’, and the skin of one’s companion animal (wäy) is known as i-bujk i-ch’ujlel ’the shirt of one’s soul’.  It is the ch’ujlel that is called forth by the shaman in order to cure a person when he or she has suffered a shock: päy-ben ch’ujlel ’to call the spririt of someone’.  It is the ch’ujlel that is sensed in the pulse as the shaman diagnoses illness: täl-ben ch’ujlel ’to pulse (feel the pulse of) someone’.

Sets of related terms, such as those just described, give insights into the Chol belief system that are difficult to obtain by any other means. Folk systems of knowledge and belief are not formally organized and codified: There are no standard reference works to consult, nor is the knowledge taught in a formal way in classes or organized instruction. As a consequence, speakers of the language are not always consciously aware of many of the relations between concepts which are nonetheless implied by the nature of the words used to express the concepts. Analysis of vocabulary can therefore provide insights into the unconscious logic of a belief system, resulting in hypotheses which can be tested by other means (such as structured interviews). This is the area of investigation which logically follows the pilot study just undertaken, and we look forward to continuing these lines of inquiry in the future.

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