Category: Spirituality/Paganism & Magick

The Burning of Washington

Another listless hurricane with an odd name (Gaston? Who ever heard of a storm named Gaston?) lashed the house with a desultory gust of warm rain and the faint and foreign scent of the tropics. Jemmy and Dolly, my ghostly guests, snuggled closer on the settee, and, raising their astral glasses of warm mulled port in a toast, offered to tell me the story of another August storm, when the fate of the nation hung on a fine thread of fate and coincidence.

A Once in a Lifetime Event: Time, Mythology and Paradigm Shifts

Back last year, as I was doing research on a very different subject, or so I thought, I came across an account of an expedition to Africa in 1882 to scientifically record the rare Venus transit of the sun. The head of that expedition was the famous astronomer, Antoine D’Abbadie, soon to become the President of the Royal Academy of France and perhaps the person responsible for the mysterious Hendaye Cross, so we might suppose that accurately tracking and timing the event was of the utmost importance, and not just to the scientific community. It was curious that someone connected to a mysterious monument, one that marked the time period of 1992 through 2012 as the season of catastrophe, should also be involved with an astronomical event that points to the same time period.

In the Amazonian tradition working with planta maestras (teacher plants) is known as the Shaman’s Diet. The working can be seen as a conscious body of actions to incorporate the plant spirit into one’s own spirit. From this incorporation or union, the plant spirit informs and teaches the maestro or apprentice. They learn the magical chants (icaros) which invoke the power of the plant, how to use the plant for healing purposes, and how to strengthen the dieter both psychologically and physically. The purpose of the diet is to prepare the body and nervous system for the powerful knowledge and expansion of consciousness given by teacher plants.

Recently a discussion based on the Mayan calendar regarding an upcoming economic crisis in the United States has emerged. As I have shown in my forthcoming book The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, the Mayan calendar does indeed with great exactness describe the ups and downs of the current economic system and this by itself is an important piece of news. Considering that we are getting deeper into a new Underworld, a new stage in the evolution of consciousness, such a discussion is indeed very much needed.

Humanity's path towards retrieving the Mayan calendar system really started with the Harmonic Convergence, August 16-17, 1987, when large numbers of people in the West turned out for a spiritual celebration. Although, it was not recognized at the time, this celebration had the distinction of falling on the first two days of a traditional Mayan tzolkin (260-day) round, such as befits a new beginning. Although he was not alone, José Argüelles was the main promoter of the event and in the seminal The Mayan Factor outlined several important ideas that would later be instrumental for elucidating the meaning of the Mayan calendar system. Among many other things, he emphasized the non-physical nature of the Mayan calendar system: "Naturally, most Mayan scholars are puzzled by what appears to be the use of 260- and 360-unit 'calendar' cycles that do not correspond in any precise way to perceivable astronomical or organic planetary cycles." Although both Frank Waters and Peter Balin some ten years earlier had suggested that the Mayan calendar system had a real relevance for the spiritual evolution of mankind, Argüelles brought this insight to a much higher level. The contours of a cosmic plan became visible.

Franz Anton Mesmer called it "magnetism;" Baron Karl Von Reichenbach named it "odic force;" Sigmund Freud observed it in human emotions and labeled it "libido;" Wilhelm Reich used the term "Orgone Energy;" Mechanistic scientists in the 17th through 19th centuries used many of its qualities in the element of ether, and the mystics embraced other aspects of "life force" within the concept of god. Throughout human history life force has received many names: In the east it was called Prana, (India), Qi (China), Ki (Japan), Mana (Hawaii), and Od (in the West).

The Oneness Celebration of June 6-8 this year takes place at an amazing gathering of energies in the Mayan calendar. In the age old Tzolkin calendar that has been used without interruption by the Mayan people for some 2500 years it falls on the days 4 Ahau, 5 Imix and 6 Ik, which are most commonly translated into English as 4 Light, 5 Alligator and 6 Wind. It is now timely to take a look at these energies in order to understand the nature of the possibilities that they will open up to mankind.

The Heart of Darkness: A Journey to the Dark Heart of the Empire

The day was as grey as a bureaucrat's soul. Fat Tuesday, the last day of Madi Gras, the pre-lent pagan hold-over of a festival in Latin countries, and in neo-classical Protestant Washington, the dark heart of the Empire, it was cold, rainy, grim and without the slightest glimmer of hope, cheer, colour or festivities. In the Washington of the New Pax Americana, it is always Ash Wednesday...

When most people think about the Tarot they think about fortune tellers. Indeed, the Tarot deck has become so associated with the art of divination, the peering into the future in an attempt to see what waits around the next bend, that most people don't know that the cards have another purpose.

The purpose of this article is to describe the role of the Oneness Celebration at the Venus transit on June 8, 2004 in its larger context. This will clearly be the "astronomical event of the year". To begin with, a Venus transit is an astronomical event where the planet Venus passes between the Earth and the sun - a sort of eclipse. Venus transits lasts for 6-7 hours and come in pairs separated by exactly 8 earth years minus two days. As far as human measures go such pairs of transits occur only rarely. Below is a list of the years of the most recent occurrences, where the second transit in the pair is given within parentheses: