Chamanes y Espiritus: tesoros de Museo del Jade, (“Shamans and Spirits: Treasures of the Jade Museum”), is the exhibit that the Jade Museum of Costa Rica took to the Cataluña Archeological Museum in Barcelona, Spain.

As part of an international agreement, the European public will now be able to appreciate this exhibit that brings the public close to religious rituals and spirits that our ancestors believed in. The sample will be open to the public as of today, March 28 and through June 30.

The exhibit contains a total of 188 archaeological pieces and 5 ethnographic objects. The pieces were created in clay, stone, jade, gold and shell and describe the technology used by the civilization, the religious references and social processes pf the Pre-Colombian inhabitants of America; the development of the different geographic areas, and the division of the country by archaeological zones.

One of the pieces, for example, made of jade, shows a bat with the wings extended, )See Image) the indigenous belief regarding the bat involves the following myth: “When Sibo (Bribri God), creator of the indigenous, realized that plants were growing in the bats guano, he asked the bat where he was eating. The bat told him that he went to the center of the earth were a mother, a daughter and a granddaughter lived. There, he would feed from the blood of the child. Sibo then sent the bat to bring the child, but the bat instead, cut her finger, when the family realized what had happened they got hold of him and cut him in half. The bat, sad, arrived to the presence of Sibo,the God to compensate him put him back together and left him hanging from its feet since it was the only way the bat could survive, he then told him that when people existed in earth and had animals he could then suck their blood”.

The bat has since been included in tales of death by indigenous groups almost all over America.

Visitors of the Cataluña Archeological Museum will learn about this and many other stories through this temporary exhibit.

If you want to visit the Jade Museum this Holy Week in Costa Rica, keep in mind it will be closed on Thursday and Friday but will open again to the public on Saturday with the exhibit “El Esplendor de los Castillos Medievales Catalanes” (The Splendor of the Catalan Medieval Castles).