GUATEMALA | Friday, 4 January 2013 | Views [988] | Comments [2] | View Larger Image
"I've smoked 21 cigars today, and I have a lot to go. Fortunately, I have my son to help me," Patty Vofani, shaman, says at two in the afternoon at the altar of Maximon in the small town of San Andrés Itzapa in Guatemala. She is paid to smoke the cigars as a form of sacrifice to a deity called Maximon. Maximon, also known as San Simón, is a deity quite unlike anyone else: A reincarnation of at the same time a Mayan mountain god, the Spanish conquerer of Guatemala, Judas and the archangel Michael - to name a few.
