Círculo de palabra
Breaking the agreements that bind us to failure
Trecena reading for the Jun K'at, Se Kuetzapallin, the one web, the one lizard.
Welcome to the Festival of Corn. Today was both an invitation and a celebration in Rancho Viejo, or “Old Ranch,” the place I would take you for a retreat if you visited these cloud forests of Veracruz. I’ve begun a new project—offering free videography to the countless artists who live here as a way of supporting and strengthening my local community. Yet, because of the rain, I missed the chance to enjoy the beautiful movements of the stunning dancers who were performing today.
The second moon is always the rainiest here, when tropical monsoons and hurricane troughs combine with the first weak cold fronts from the north. Just yesterday, parts of the city lost power for hours, and creeks transformed into raging rivers that swept cars from the streets. Instead of admiring—or recording—the beauty of my dancer crush, I’m here writing this with great love, knowing that the few who read it will receive some benefit from it.
That’s the spirit of corn: nourishment for all. And so, even though I couldn’t attend the festival that begins this trecena, I take it as a good sign. Beginning these thirteen days with these words and this approach has already changed how I feel about it. It’s an act of breaking the old agreement that Kuetzpallin means negative traps and bad luck. If you too are breaking internal agreements that no longer serve you, then we’re in for a beautiful harvest.
K’at carries the flint—the tijaax—in its left hemisphere, giving it the power to cut ties and loosen knots. This is its development, its lesson: to break free. People of this sign often break agreements naturally. This can be good or bad, depending on their state of mind. They’re easily drawn to confusion and negativity but eventually learn to free themselves from that magnetism, becoming wiser and richer as they do.
For us, there is always a choice, as we’ve learned from previous readings. We must consciously agree to be part of this circle of medicine—or else, by default, we’re agreeing to something lesser. Our readings are not prophetic for those outside this circle; something entirely different may happen to them. This is the point and the path: we won’t be freed from the greater evils by some external force transforming us all at once. We must choose to transform ourselves. That choice will naturally draw us into circles, for we are social beings who depend on our networks for our well-being. No medicine or advice is truly good if it doesn’t help you build bonds and strengthen your community.
Breaking agreements is also the act of making new ones. Like neurons, when one connection is lost, a new one forms. If we see beyond the narrow, dark lens of fear, we realize nothing is truly lost—each release opens space for something better. In fact, fear itself is what makes us lose what we cling to. In the animal kingdom, fearful members of a pack become untrustworthy and must be corrected or expelled; fear always brings decline. That’s the first agreement we need to break.
People of K’at excel at this—they dare to do what others fear. A society ruled by fear is the next agreement we must break. This brings us to the “books” of our inner agreements. I sense this trecena will reveal which inner contracts need review and release. The first agreement we must make today is to allow this circle to be your medicine. You either agree to that, or you choose the illusory freedom of consumerist individualism—the artificed system whose trecena has ended. Believing you can be completely isolated, making no agreements and building nothing with anyone, is to keep your covenant with the artifice. And the artifice—spirit of no one and nothing—becomes your only destiny.
Our agreements are not only mental. They’re the pathways of our intent, our spiritual connections. Even in the spirit world, we cannot exist entirely alone without guides and allies. When we break an internal agreement that has kept our universe limited, our spiritual strings shift. New allies may appear, and their presence can feel uncomfortable at first. If we treat them with the disrespect taught to us by so-called “civilization,” they will leave, and we will be truly alone, falling back under our old keeper.
I invite you to become aware of your spirit world—your unseen connections and the movements of invisible energies—and how they’re tied to your inner dialogue, to what you tell yourself. Breaking agreements will feel strange at first because it means agreeing with something greater than ourselves and, therefore, disagreeing with our old selves. But that’s the point. What we think of as “ourselves” is malleable. Our egos can be educated—and they should be.
