Rating: 
Summary: one of the best books I've ever read
Review: Anyone with an interest in indigenous people as well as a lust for fascinating accounts of wayward travellers will find this impossible to put down. Humorous, yet poetic at times, the writer has a gift to share, and he does so with incredible dexterity. The insights into how the Maya lived within nature, their social heirarchy, inside jokes, love of life, and slow victimization by 20th (and 21st) century power-mongers make this account a valuable resource for all human beings. Interestingly, the Mayan calendar, put forth centuries ago, ends within this decade, fodder for Armegeddon-theorists in the last half century. Prechtel's book helps to explain how this happened before his eyes and the role he has come to play in keeping the soul of the Maya alive.
This should be a must-read for anthropologists, linguists, spiritualists, environmentalists, economists, missionaries of all faiths, travellers, and policy makers. And yet with such a broad base, it remains a fascinating narrative as well. This was unquestionably one of the best books I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: one of the best books I've ever read
Review: Anyone with an interest in indigenous people as well as a lust for fascinating accounts of wayward travellers will find this impossible to put down. Humorous, yet poetic at times, the writer has a gift to share, and he does so with incredible dexterity. The insights into how the Maya lived within nature, their social heirarchy, inside jokes, love of life, and slow victimization by 20th (and 21st) century power-mongers make this account a valuable resource for all human beings. Interestingly, the Mayan calendar, put forth centuries ago, ends within this decade, fodder for Armegeddon-theorists in the last half century. Prechtel's book helps to explain how this happened before his eyes and the role he has come to play in keeping the soul of the Maya alive.
This should be a must-read for anthropologists, linguists, spiritualists, environmentalists, economists, missionaries of all faiths, travellers, and policy makers. And yet with such a broad base, it remains a fascinating narrative as well. This was unquestionably one of the best books I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: Must read for those trying to understand a tortured culture
Review: Even after traveling to Guatemala a half dozen times for business and pleasure, this book opened many doors to understanding the embattled Mayan culture and to build a greater respect for it. Alas, I was saddened by the book's message -- that another unique culture is rapidly disappearing -- but armed with the knowledge gained from reading the book, I feel that I will be able to relate to indigenous peoples and their plight better, thanks to the authors. Read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing cultural and religious insights of Atitlan
Review: Having traveled to Guatemala 5 times, and having lectured on the devastating civil war that caused untold economic hardship, destruction of cultural identity and hundreds of thousands of dead and disappeared, I read Martin Prechtel's book with interest. I have visited Santiago Atitlan 3 times, once with students, and felt I had a small grasp of the religious practices. But I was wrong. Prechtel's account of his life with the shaman and the spiritual hierarchy of the village is an incredible revelation. The Maya tendency to keep their important beliefs secret, was much deeper and more significant to their culture than I could have guessed. Reading this book is a fascinating and up to now unavailable look at a culture that sees itself as an integral, unseparable part of nature and the universe. The connectedness experienced by the atitecos is something that we in our materialistic, compartmentalized culture have lost, or perhaps never have had. Prechtel offers us the chance to glimpse the underpinnings of the Maya belief system. His writing, that once in while seems overly flowerly, sets the scene to guide us into this magical world. His fascination with his own learning there does not lead him to idealize these indigenous people. There are sharp doses of reality in this book; of diseases and death, and hunger and feuds. To gain an amazing perspective into the lives of a fascinating people, I highly recommend Secrets of the Talking Jaguar.
Rating:
Summary: How he found the words...
Review: I'm almost done with this book. It's fantastic! He writes very lyrically without over doing it. It's not too flowery or hokey.
Rating:
Summary: a superbly written work
Review: I'm astonished that this book is not better known. Perhaps it's 'cause the title makes it sound like yet another addition to the awful genre of new-age pop shamanism garbage. But nothing could be further from the case! This is easily the finest work written on Meso-American shamanic practice -- and surely the most significant work on the topic since Mr. Castaneda's earliest books. But The Talking Jaguar is a thousand times more grounded, detailed and genuine than Castaneda's problematic work, since it is written from a position deeply within the particular tradition that it is translating for us. Perhaps most remarkable is the luminous eloquence of Prechtel's language -- the book is written in a style that carries something of the flavor of the indigenous oral tradition, a style worthy of the reverence accorded by most oral peoples to the beauty of living language. That so many experiences and insights rooted in indigenous, participatory, oral modes of awareness managed to be translated onto the written page, without losing their ancestral wildness, is something of a wonder. It's a landmark text, a kind of talisman filled with clues for those working on behalf of the wild, more-than-human earth. Don't miss it.
Rating:
Summary: 13 working parts to the heart
Review: I've seen too many drunk, passed-out, "Maya" in Guatemala, laying belly-up on the side of the road, the asphalt ribbon some strange skimmer in a waterless aquarium of patchwork land plots, to really romanticize the "beauty" in drunken public rituals and feasts. Yet, Prechtel makes a really solid case for Beauty breaking the Glass Ceiling to the Gods: Beauty in the ornate ancient eloquence of their speech (often expressed in food terms of deliciousness and "cooking"); Beauty in their many layers of opulent, intricate clothing; and yes, Beauty in being drunk out of their gourds from having made themselves irresistibly delicious to the Gods during an income-leveling, life-renewing, inner-twin calling, Desire-Fest with the Gods. Other than having to walk two miles with no shoes to fill a tank with water before going to school, it makes me Wanna Be Maya. I guess I have to start with my Bundle: objects, previously unknown to me, exactly like one seen in a dream. "One's power would then have an actual physical place to sit...The spirits must have a home, or they become sad orphans or renegades. A person whose spirit has no home becomes depressed or a criminal". Maybe if I could have a dream about mousetraps or blossoming avocado seeds, I would be spared the ignomy of 21st century affluent society. Then I too could divine that Holy Boy has his hand near Mountain Goddess's cucaracha and avoid getting lice in my eyebrows. Or at least have enough breakfast cereal to fill my molars. The real message here is, don't send missionaries, Peace-Corp volunteers and aid (lawyers, guns and money), it ain't going to change something that was never really broke. Or if it is broke, it wasn't meant to last that long anyway, and just gets fixed the time-honored way of remembering the Gods with feeding Them deliberately and ritually. Try telling that to a Psych major Peace Corp volunteer, and watch them beat themselves with a solar oven brick. Chiviliu is laughing all the way to the buried cigar box.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic Novel: A Journey to the Navel of the Earth
Review: Let me begin with: WOW, what a book. Prechtel and Bly's collaboration on this wonderful insight into the soul of the Mayan people is so much more useful than an anthropological study of the Maya. Prechtel's perspective is that of an insider and reading this book is like reading primary source material. I doubt there is a comparable work available (at least not among the books and articles I have read). From Prechtel's mentor Chiv to his vivid descriptions of Mayan folklore, there is a thread binding the observations in this book that made the reading of it a real and emotional experience. I lived in Guatemala for 2 years as a child and for me reading this book was also a reminder of myself. Far from a dry, rigid, academic piece, The Secrets of the Talking Jaguar is for everyone with an interest in Guatemala, the Maya, justice and spirituality. Thank you Martin Prechtel.
Rating:
Summary: Rare insights into a unique culture
Review: Martin Prechtel offers a rare experience: an inside view of another world most of us will never be able to experience. His account of his adoption (as an adult) by a Mayan village shaman and subsequent training is fascinating in its detail and sensitivity. I've read many accounts of shamanism in various cultures, but this books transcends the genre.
Rating: 
Summary: Fiction at its worst
Review: The author would have better served his readership by admitting the entire tale is a work is fiction. Poorly researched fiction at that. Riddled with factual, geographic and cultural inaccuracies, he does a great disservice to native people he claims to respect and serve. I have been a student of the Maya for almost thirty years and spent much of that time in the areas the author claims to have inhabited. A casual tourist to the markets in the area could come away with a more accurate description. Many of the incidents he describes would be abhorent to the local Maya population. While the final chapter describing the genocide of the last 25 years is fact,the rituals and social structures he describes are nonexistant. The H'men would certainly not include a drunken, lazy, fat gringo in any meaningful discussion of closely held lineage practices much less "initiate" him and allow him to marry into a local clan only to abandon his "family". This is yet another example of cultural prostitution to sell a book. The Maya of the area have suffered much at the hands of latino politicians, protestant missionaries, and the hordes of international tourists. The author only adds to the indignities with his misguided fictional tale. Judging by the other reviews included in this list, he had filled a niche for the idealistic and gullible hoping to escape modern life. Unfortunately, the society he describes never existed.
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