NOOZINE

The Bowl of Light: Ancestral Wisdom from a Hawaiian Shaman Hank Wesselman, PhD Sounds True Press

Thu, 2 Jun 2011 21:14:07 -1000

Among indigenous cultures there is a growing urgency to bring forth native wisdom teachings, often specifically mandated by ancestral traditions (Maori, Aboriginal, Hopi, Iroquois, Maya), to help heal what is going terribly wrong with the Dominant Society and its death grip on the bio-sphere of the planet. Books and classes abound on topics like shamanism, sweat lodges, vision quests, ayahuasca, and all things native. A decades long renaissance of Hawaiiana in the “developed” world continues with the publication of Dr. Hank Wesselman’s book The Bowl of Light by Sounds True Press.

Compared to indigenous counterparts in the Americas, the Hawaiian culture is remarkably well preserved. Captain Cook, the first Englishman in the islands, (legend has it some Spaniards preceded him by 50 years) triumphantly stumbled upon the islands in the mid 18th century. By that time Indians from the eastern woodlands of the United States, throughout Mexico, Mayaland and Peru, to the Altiplano of South America had been systematically murdered and enslaved, their sciences and cultures burned into near oblivion. Brutal and cruel and blatantly illegal as the colonization, annexation and eventual statehood has been for native Hawaiians there are still vibrant cultural strains abounding. The language is intact to a remarkable extent; hula (as essential to Polynesian/Hawaiian culture as libraries are to Europe) is preserved, taught and practiced worldwide; healing arts such as Lomi-Lomi massage are presented internationally by masters (and their students) who trace their genealogy back centuries. Though fried spam and eggs are considered local food and diabetes ravages the population, the “old ways” are still spoken about with joyous fondness and hushed reverence. Sacred sites, heiau, are meticulously maintained and legally protected. The Spirit of Aloha is alive and well in the islands, and willingly shared by respected elders (kupunas) and teachers (kumu).

Max Freedom Long became aware of Hawaiian spirituality in the early part of the 20th century and published a series of books that are still good reading to this day. In the late 20th century, Serge King launched a lucrative career hawking his New-Age take on “Huna”, a term coined by Long referring to a supposed “magic code” of Hawaiian mystics, healers and Kahunas. Closer in authenticity are the classic volume Hawaiian Mythology by Martha Beckwith first published in 1940 and the excellent two volume Nana I Ke Kumu - Look To The Source by Mary Kawena Pukui, E. W. Haertig, M.D., and Catherine A. Lee in 1979.

The Bowl Of Light is a story of a remarkable friendship and collaboration between two men of purpose; Hale Makua, a beloved teacher in the Hawaiian community; and Hank Wesselman, author, PhD, shamanic workshop lecturer with a strong background in anthropology. It is also a vehicle of conveyance; a brief study of Hawaiian cosmology presented to a sympathetic and classically educated scientist. Hale Makua, as his lifetime of teaching wound down, found a published western scholar, familiar with Hawaii, with whom he felt he could entrust his writings, knowledge, and experiences as a kahuna , a keeper of wisdom. The exchanges between these two are so significant as to outweigh the poor writing style. Ponderous and repetitive prose is interspersed with dialogue so flat as to render it hardly believable as actual spoken conversation. That being said, one hopes the details of spiritual hierarchies, an Ancestral Grand Plan, the nature of the self (or selves) and other aspects the aging chief relates; such as Makua’s own mythic voyage on the second canoe from Sirius some 26,000 years ago; and the travels of Lono, “. . . a real man living in the mythic past” from the South Pacific through Hawaii and on to the state of Maine; have been accurately recorded and interpreted by the good Dr. Wesselman. They read as though they have been written from Wesselman’s memory much later and lack the spark of actual quotes.

The Bowl of Light is a translation of Hawaiian mythology, which is natively flowing and poetic, beautiful in its utterance off the tongue, into western metaphysical, psychological and religious terms. Linguistically, and in terms of world-view, this is a difficult match. Throughout the book we are belabored with a back and forth dialogue between the two that seem too similar in tone and emphasis. What has been conveyed for millennia through movement and chant, the convection of step, hand position and voice, rhythm and tone, atmosphere and mist, does not translate well into “neo-shaman, consciousness transformation, paradigm shifting” terms. In the final chapter the author reports he has edited out the pidgin english of Makua and honored his wishes to have no recording device used. This is a great loss. Hale Makua was a fine orator and articulate conveyor of the multi-layered nuances of Hawaiian wisdom tradition which do not translate directly into the noun oriented structure of the English language. A highly intelligent and worldly man, it’s hard to imagine he needed much editing.

Throughout the unfolding dialogue Wesselman takes great pains to portray himself and Makua, despite the endless fawning descriptions of “the kahuna”, as equals beginning with a comparison of their respective royal lineage; Makua directly to the legendary Kamehameha, conqueror of all the islands except Kauai; Wesselman and his wife Jill to obscure European royal families. Genealogy is extremely important to Hawaiians. Chants of introduction which precede any event or gathering may carry not only the parentage of the chanter, but the entire mythic history and cosmology of the Polynesian people. Thus the chants are both teaching tools and the vessels which preserve the lifeblood of the society. Wesselman provides many fascinating, occasionally illuminating, analogous teachings and traditions from his broad knowledge of western tradition and other indigenous cultures. These seem to delight “the old chief” who encourages the Doctor to elaborate. Consequently what we the readers get throughout the book is an exposition of Wesselman’s philosophy, which repudiates western psychology as inadequate and Buddhism as deluded, with Makua nodding in agreement.

“The kahuna mystics knew from direct experience that the dreamworld/spirit world and the dreaming are most definitely not illusions, despite what Buddhists and Western psychologists may proclaim. Nor is our Oversoul an illusion. They are real.”

This casting of reality and illusion into dualistic opposition misses the crux of Buddhism, Jungian dream interpretation and American Indian concepts of dream reality. Wesselman’s problem seems to be with the word illusion, which from a scientific standpoint means false, not real. Mahayana Buddhist philosophy utilizes the word to represent the means with which we construct our “reality”. “The world arises with your perceptions.”-Buddha. Hopi world view considers the “real” objective world to be highly symbolic, and our dreams and visions to be less encumbered symbolic reflections of a profound and unspeakable truth. Jung’s great teachings were mostly cast as explorations of our dream states and the symbolic nature of consciousness. The 13th century Buddhist reformer Nichiren pointed out:

“This sutra (teaching) expounds the original mind of waking reality. However, because the beings were habituated in thought to the mind-ground of dreaming, the Buddha borrowed the language used in dreams to teach the waking reality of the original mind. Thus the words of the sutras are the language used in dreams, but its intent is to teach the original mind, which is waking reality.”

To his credit, Hale Makua points out to Wesselman that Buddha himself must have been an initiate and understood the nature of “the dreaming”, but that perhaps his followers didn’t get it. Wesselman, who claims to have studied Taoism and Buddhism for many years, misses a great opportunity to engage Hale Makua in a profound exploration of the connection between these systems of thought and Polynesian beliefs about dreaming the world into existence.

Hale Makua was of impeccable lineage and training in the traditions of Hawaiian Warrior Chiefs. Hawaiian friends I have talked to about him express great love for this man and honor his importance as a “keeper” of genuine Hawaiian wisdom. Hank Wesselman’s friendship and collaboration with Hale Makua will hopefully lead to skillfull and light handed editing, then publication of the box of notebooks Makua entrusted to Wesselman. One hopes the box has been stored properly against the book-eating tropical environment of Hawaii, because the occasion of the priceless box in the back seat is briefly mentioned in one of the last chapters and not referred to again. Nonetheless, Bowl of Light is a great story of initiation and ritual on the rim of a volcano, talk-story between two friends and colleagues, a treasure trove of knowledge and myth, and most of all a glimpse for the rest of us into the heart of Hawaiian mystery.

Curtis McCosco

Before the Sun . . .

Tue, 5 Apr 2011 18:30:08 -1000

Notes before the sun rises again.

As usual I’m reading more than one book, though each has its own environment distinguished by both locale and intellectual neighborhood in my brain. One is the toilet-read, perched on a small roll around stack of drawers right in front of . . . well, the toilet where i absolutely must have reading material in hand for the plumbing to work right. Another is a walk-about volume setting on top of my shoulder bag for reading while digesting when i get outa the house for lunch, errands or just to get outa the house. Then there are research volumes piled around each of the computer stations thematically associated with the kind of work i do at that station.

Curiously, the road and toilet volumes have drifted into the same lane, or perhaps more accurately, are running parallel tracks with the common sub-current of shamanism. The in-house volume (sounds more dignified than toilet-read), The Bowl of Light, is about friendship between a paleontologist, Hank Wesselman, and a Hawaiian kahuna, Hale Makua, who is descended from a long lineage of kahunas and royalty. Wesselman, who for the past 20 years or so has been practicing and teaching shamanism, can also trace royalty in his genealogy.

The out-the-house read, Of Water and the Spirit, is about Malidoma Somé’s life journey from a Dagara village in Burkina Faso, Africa into academia and the western world teaching about the ways of his people. The grandson of a great and powerful shaman, Malidoma periodically returns to his village to both refresh his connection and teach ways of navigating the dominant western culture to his people. I’ll soon explain why it is so important for me to get up before the sun and write to you, dear blog eater and dedicated Nooziner, about shamans, bones and the fate of Japan.

Shamanic practice begins with connecting to one’s ancestors, spirit guides, devas, little people, power animals, gods, goddesses and daemons. Ancestors, however, come first and a major part of what indigenous people see as the great disease of the west has to do with being disconnected from the spirits of our ancestors. For instance, I have no idea what my maternal grandfather did for a living or what songs my grandmother sang. They both died long before i was born (no clue as to the circumstances) and, being poor Irish immigrants, they were apparently more interested in their children’s future in the new world than preserving memory of the old country. My father, late in life, developed some curiosity about his genealogy and paid to have a family tree researched and drawn up. It seems my heritage is a long line of undistinguished commoners with the slight exception of some Scots clan leaders and bandits. My guess is that my mother’s side of the family is equally bereft of royalty or bloodline of the holy grail.

Developing a heartfelt appreciation for ancestors, whatever their station in life, brings into our lives a sense of continuity and, as the connection becomes stronger, useful sources of wisdom, even assistance, not available to the the typical western mind dismissive of such mumbo-jumbo superstition. One secret is that the bones of our own body can harmonize with the bones of the ancestors and, to take it one important step further, the bones of our great nurturing mother earth; rocks, mountains and tectonic plates. This works both ways; with a bit of training we can feel the etheric vibrations of the ancestors and the rhythmic pulses of the earth, but the ancestors can vibe us out as well and the earth resonates with our footsteps and internal vibrations. Subtle, yes, but powerful once we’re tuned to feel the exchange.

A wild and beautiful friend, Toby Christianson, comes to the island periodically to teach workshops about shamanic drumming and hold private sessions. Toby studied for many years with the aforementioned, Malidoma Somé, and recently rekindled their soul-friendship. I just love getting under Toby’s drum, literally. During sessions the client lies face up on the floor and Toby stands astride, hovering his large djembé drum slung by a strap across his shoulder above the person’s chest and solar plexus. Five Element Healing rhythms thunder out the bottom opening as Toby trance-voyages in contact with his guides and ancestors. They tell him a story through the drum. “The sound of the drum is tuning the soul”, Toby has told me. As the rhythms evolve and turn, I begin to hear a multi-voice chorus singing within a standing wave that develops with the intertwining rhythms of pounding beat. It seems as if I’m lying in the center of a circle of spirits, elders, women and men of power, medicine beings all. My body seemed like a sack of churning water with a skeleton floating in it. This last time, joints were snapping and vertebrae were popping, especially in the mid-thoracic as my sense of ancestral presence grew into a strong physical reaction. The important thing was the movement of the bones, that was the sign for me that the connections have been made as my body unravels blockages and my joints loosen, freeing mind and soul to soar.

I’ve been using shamanic healing techniques for many years and recently I was doing massage on an old acquaintance, a kahuna from the north shore of Kauai, who teaches lomi-lomi, traditional Hawaiian massage. I told him about these adventures doing what I call bone-floating and connecting with ancestors. He said our ancestors are in the spine, the oldest near the base at the aptly named sacrum. I did a particularly strong elbow stroke right between his sacrum and ilium flexing that connection and causing the first two lumbars to pop. “That’s some old, really old ancestors talking, bruddah”, he joked in pidgin.

The skeletal structure is designed to carry the weight of the body transferring its burden and its own weight down into the earth. In a perfectly aligned and balanced skeleton the downward force of gravity causes the body to lift. Motion, which is an alternating rhythm between balance and imbalance, converts gravitational force into kinetic energy, all the while pulsing the earth’s surface with every step. Like dancing on a drumhead, every aspect of the life condition of the dancer, runner, walker goes into each footfall thus awakening ancestors who love the feeling of motion, of sacred dance.

Most everyone acknowledges the physical benefits of good spinal health, but it is also important for spiritual health, (and longevity according to chinese medicine). A flexible strong spine is the foundation for well being of the rest of the body by providing, among other benefits, unimpeded transmission of neural pulses between the brain and all organs, tissue and cells. Transmission of subtler energy between the self and the greater cosmos, including ancestors and those for whom we are ancestors, is also greatly aided by a dynamic resonant spine and skeleton. Unfortunately, dominant religions and scientific orthodoxy of the modern world and its dominant culture have conspired to impose a way of viewing the world that believes human life begins at birth and ends when you die, so once your ancestors are in the ground, they’re gone, or at least incommunicado, idling in heaven or burning in hell. This is tragically dis-empowering, one more example of the intentional atomization of “developed society”.

What we do upon the earth, even what we think, impacts the planet by resonating the global drumhead. Conversely the rumblings and rhythms of the earth are resonating in our bodies, hearts, minds and spirits. These ripples in our field-of-self and the field-of-earth propagate around us in all directions and to the past and future. There is no escaping this. Only by acknowledging this rhythmic inter-pulsing of fields can we learn our place and power within this dynamic system we call the cosmos.

"When we walk upon Mother Earth, we always plant our feet carefully
because we know the faces of our future generations
are looking up at us from beneath the ground.
We never forget them."
-Oren Lyons, Onondaga Nation

The recent earthquake and tsunami that wracked Japan still resonate with agony and danger. At Fukushima on the eastern coast, deadly man-made toxins are pouring into the sea, spewing into the air and leaching into the soil; a grim testament to colossal folly, overweening hubris and ambitious greed. This dire situation eclipses BP’s undersea oil gusher, though that criminal negligence continues to poison the Gulf of Mexico. The Maya have a term for the age in which we live, Earth in Revolt. This is the era of the descending Bolon Yokte K’u, one of the few direct prophecies evident in Mayan hieroglyphic stone carving. This mythic force, often symbolized by a jaguar paw subtly introduced in murals and on ceramics, represents conflict and war springing from an underworld in turmoil. The Maya recognize 9 underworlds, some in the sky above, shared by all the world’s entities including humans.

The Ainu people, indigenous to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, believe the Japanese archipelago, and the entire world, rests on the back of a fish whose movements cause earthquakes. The fish cannot be separated from the world and, as a great primal force supporting the world, shudders the shared underworld of humans and cosmos. Conversely, storms in the minds of people are turbulences in the skies of the underworld. The dragon of the earth stirs, the great carp of black water startles, a human spine twists and the skin of the planet erupts. Conditions in the mind of the people, the twists of the spine, reflect and are reflected by the movements of forces in the world and underworld.

“If you live in a country that knows no decline or diminution, in a land that suffers no harm or disruption, then your body will find peace and security, and your mind will become calm and untroubled.” Nichiren, 1260 AD.

What country today can we point to as an example of this kind of peace? Bhutan, isolated as it has been for centuries perhaps? Yet television has been recently introduced, so that peace cannot last long. If there are no peaceful countries, why has Japan suffered so from the rumblings of the underworld and the rush of the sea against its coast? In looking at images of the devastation of Japan, I was reminded of the destruction by warfare they suffered in WW2, of the utter collapse of other societies around the world, (such as the cradle of western civilization, Iraq), due to war and its aftermath of starvation and dislocation. Japanese people traditionally pay great homage to their ancestors and consider themselves descendants of the sun deity, chosen people. Centuries of internecine warfare ensued between rival clans, the people’s resources were exploited to fund these civil wars, and religions were usurped to justify greed and cruelty.

Yet simultaneously, Japan hosted a renaissance of Buddhism, an evolutionary advance of Chinese Mahayana doctrines, often under state tutelage, for several hundred years during this conflicted era. The same conditions of war and strife earlier in China, coincided with essential refinements of Mahayana Buddhism, especially by the Hua Yen and Tien Tai schools, the latter of which also enjoyed state tutelage. But, Japan’s good fortune as germinator of Buddhism became mitigated by its obsession with war, money and power. Imperial Japan broke out of its isolation and aggressively began expanding an empire on the mainland during the mid 20th century. After years of distorting Buddhism and Shinto, the ancestral folk religion of the indigenous population, to suit its imperial ambitions thereby dishonoring all ancestors and future generations, this karmic destiny came to a climax with defeat in WW2, capped by the unleashing of the atomic age. However, following defeat and utter destruction of their society, Japan restructured as a democracy and became the great fount for the spread of Buddhism, especially to America, its vanquisher.

So, karma is a mixed bag, and messing with ancestors is dangerous business. Only a fool would claim to understand with any precision the vagaries of his own karma, let alone that of a nation, so allow me to plunge ahead here and speculate. Japan’s actions reflected the minds of the people; both the oppressors and the oppressed, and despite symbolic gestures toward ancestors, evil deeds dishonor both the ancestors and future generations. The repercussions involved in perpetrating the fraud of the Emperor’s divinity have to be especially dramatic, because it was a central deception to the greater pack of lies that justify any war.

“When a nation becomes disordered, it is the spirits that first show signs of rampancy. Because the spirits become rampant, all the people of the nation become disordered.” Benevolent Kings Sutra.

Educator and Buddhist scholar Daisaku Ikeda, in a speech to members of Japan’s Komeito Party in 1972, observed that Japan was leading the way out of an age of military competition among nations into an age of economic competition. Japan at the time was the first and only constitutional democracy to forbid the formation of a standing army (our own Founding Fathers thought it a dangerous bad idea as well) and banished nuclear weapons from its territory. Ikeda went on to say the economic competition among nations would eventually be eclipsed by humanitarian competition. What a concept; nations vying for the opportunity to do the right thing! The economic success of Japan is awe inspiring, but it is tinged with evil. America’s imperial military ambitions have in part been underwritten by Japan’s purchase of US debt in the form of T-Bills. And Japanese citizens routinely consider re-arming a “defensive” standing military force and changing it’s policy toward harboring US nuclear weapons bearing ships and aircraft. Rumor is they already unofficially do.

Having no coal or oil reserves of its own, Japan went for the insidious development of civilian nuclear power when Eisenhower proposed his Atoms For Peace hoax back in the 1950s. From outset, the Atoms for Peace sales job was purely for the purpose of keeping nuclear weapons development funded by US tax dollars outside of the Pentagon budget, disguised as a way to generate electricity that “would be too cheap to meter”. To this day research, development, manufacture and deployment of nuclear arms falls under the Department of Energy, not the Defense Department.

Now the worst fears of a nuclear power plant catastrophe are being realized, far surpassing the two most famous accidents Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, but the end is nowhere in sight. It’s impossible at this time to calculate the toll on Japan’s economy and what it will do with the massive pile of US IOU’s it is holding. The population of all Japan is reeling in shock, industry is already in a tailspin, and fishing grounds in a radius around Fukushima have radiation levels one million times the safety threshold. Currently there is no working plan that will stem the leaks and the place is too hot to just bury or entomb. Perhaps again, Japan will rise phoenix-like from its own ashes, lead the world away from nuclear power and usher in the next era of humanistic competition. Nothing less than an evolutionary awakening in the minds of the people will ease the bones of the ancestors, pacify the great fish at the bottom of the world, and calm the rampant spirits.

Curtis McCosco

LACC - 1967

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:30:34 -1000

The stars were conspiring to drop a sub-vortex of hipness down on Los Angeles in the fall of 1967, specifically on the City College east of Hollywood. The main shaft of this psychedelic storm had blown a hole in the web of reality the year before in the Bay Area where every step you took in Haight-Ashbury seemed like a new rabbit hole opening up underfoot. But the gentle hippies and playful freaks had morphed into something terrifying to behold when that twisted genius Augustus Stanley Owsley the Third started flooding the streets with his benzedrine laced White Lightening LSD. Gone was Purple Haze and the season of the witch by the end of the Summer of Love. Speed and heroin rushed in and took hold like a nightmare Jonestown and now all that the straights and gawkers in their air-conditioned tourist buses could see were the dregs of the children of America hustling for a fix and calling home for air-fare.

I’d fled the looming college scene in Boston, not to mention police surveillance, and left behind academic scholarships for a free ride to the west coast in early spring of ’66. Another kind of education ensued on the streets of Berkley and Hollywood, plus points in between on the hitchhikers paradise HWY 1, which wriggled along the leading edge of westward consciousness expansion, the California coast. One evening, perched on a cliff south of Big Sur, meditating high above the Pacific shore, the sun had left me stranded following its arc of descent into another world. So I decided to give this college thing a try.

Destiny unfolded at LACC, suspended there on Vermont Avenue somewhere between USC downtown and UCLA out on the westside. Registration per class was cheaper than its corresponding used textbook you could get at the funky bookstore across the street, flanked by a head shop to the left and a taco stand on the right at the corner of Normal Avenue, where, two blocks east, I had an apartment. The “campus” was laid out like some Forbidden City with buildings surrounding the “Quad” green zone in the middle with the great gate, nondescript as a hole in the wall, facing east, open to the rising sun. This place was jumping with every shade of skin tone possible, political activists, teachers more interested in people than tenure, hot liberated women, and music, music, music.

It was here at LACC (I only lasted a semester and a half) that I met fellow travelers of all persuasions dancing the spiral path. The brightest burning among us seemed to flame out before the apocryphal age of 30 and most of the rest bought the suburbia pill or the jesus wine. Me? I caught the Buddha-bug at a brightly lit meeting house just off the Sunset Strip. But I’m getting ahead of the story here.

Three guys from LACC I hung around with were American Indian lads my age from the Morongo Indian Reservation 100 miles east of L.A. up on the high desert at the foothills of the San Bernadino Mountains. They grew up in the days long before casino money came to Morongo, in the kind of beat-down poverty that would make South Central L.A. look like upward mobility.

They used to laugh at me when I told them how I had some Indian blood, and they’d get downright derisive about hippies with their beads and feathers and talk of the great spirit. They just wanted off the reservation before suicide and glue sniffing became viable options compared to alcohol and jail. “Yeah, it’s hip to be Indian. Why don’t you come live with us out on the Res? You can go on a vision quest, talk to a coyote.” They were just getting interested in AIM, (the American Indian Movement was there on campus, right alongside Brown Power, La Raza, the Black Panthers, and the Nation of Islam) and put up with my rambling about the Iroquois Confederation, but they were mostly interested in chicks and smoking my fine Michoacan Green.

One day I read them a short article I’d found in National Geographic analyzing the complexity of the Aztec Calendar, listing alleged predictions, etc. But mostly the article was about its end date sometime in the 21st century (it’s not the same date as the Mayan calendar 12/21/2012). The article speculated whether the Aztecs were predicting the end of the world. For the first time I heard these three talk among themselves in their native tongue, back and forth for about five minutes. “What’s up fellas?” I asked.

“Gonna be the end of your world.” my friend said. “Red man gonna be back on top.”

The three of them were staring at me, not smiling. They exchanged a few more words, then started chuckling. “Don’t worry. You’ll be alright. We’ll give you a blood test.” At that we all burst into uncontrollable pot induced, roll on the floor, full belly laughter.

Their words stuck in my memory for all these years. After decades of study of indigenous cultures, shamanic practices, myths, comparative world views, and the fullness of Mayan cosmology due to the intense interest in their famous calendar, I’m beginning to get an idea of what my friends meant. At first I thought they’d been spending too much time with brothers-in-arms over at the A.I.M. secret headquarters south of the college just off Vermont Avenue. Or perhaps they were talking about a revival of the ill fated Ghost Dance, a messianic, peaceful, ritual-based movement that spread among tribes from Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) to the northern plains and southwest deserts in the closing years of the 19th century. Wovoka, its charismatic founder, was a seer and medicine man who instructed his followers to dance and sing and bath for five days at a stretch and that, “You must not fight. Do no harm to anyone. Do right always.” He had been assured by God in a daytime dream on the “day the sun died”, (probably the total eclipse of January 1, 1889), that this was the way to reconciliation and coexistence with the white man. The Sioux even adopted a “Ghost Shirt” to protect them from the bullets of the white man, but the shirt, the dance, the songs of joy were not enough one cold day on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek two years later.

I’m sure now that these three guys were implying something much more sublime, a wisdom passed between generations only a people conquered or enslaved can know; there is a deeper truth than what is apparent in the world. All else may be destroyed and assimilated, but a spiritual essence survives like a reduction over a cooking flame into a potent, highly charged rue, one whose flavor permeates the melting pot of America.

One such essence which survived the holocaust of conquest is the Mayan creation myth in a manuscript, the Popul Vuh, inscribed a generation later. In one part of this epic, the Hero Twins, sons of the deposed One Hunahpu who raised the World Tree, journey to the underworld to beat the Lords of Xibalbe at their own game. Through the many trials they hope for a chance to shoot with their blowguns the interloper, the false ruler Seven Macaw, and restore the severed head of their father to its rightful place in the World Tree so that it may rise again. At a crucial turning point of the story, the heroes must leap into the sacrificial fire and be consumed to restore the natural cycle of death, regeneration and birth in order that a new world age be established.

This is the underlying story of the Mayan Calendar end date of December 21, 2012. But, it is this entire era, not that single day, that is being referred to; an era when the dominant culture’s power comes from its love of power. This is endemic in a world out of balance, Koyaanisqatsi, as the Hopi say. The World Tree is to be raised again by what may be called the Perennial Philosophy preserved by some indigenous cultures, espoused by Buddhism and hinted at by Quantum Theory. Sacrificial fires roar and invite us to join the cycle of rejuvenation.

Curtis McCosco © 2010

2012 Beat

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 05:00:35 -1000

The 2012 “End Date” phenomenon is a gathering storm, picking up superstitions and biblical scale mania like a midwest twister. Even the “Intelligent Design” folks are scratching out shelter in a “purposeful universe” allegedly affirmed by the Mayan Calendar. What started out as a quaint “New Age” trend in the ‘80s with Jose Arguelles and his Harmonic Convergence, has blossomed into, well . . . a major motion picture replete with computer generated disasters and a happy ending for our hero. The most common refrain I hear among the chronically spiritual set is “SOMETHING’S happening”, which makes me want to break out in harmonic response, “what it is ain’t exactly clear”.

We moderns now look back to the ancient Maya, who brought us this prickly date with destiny, for clarity. In the west we like things written in stone, which is a good thing since our 16th century Jesuit brethren burned everything and everyone in Mayaland that wasn’t stone, or precious metal or a candidate for soul saving and slavery. And even then only one stone carving has been found with the end date of December 21, 2012. That would be the Tortuguero Monument #6, all that remains of a T shaped structure erected around 670 AD in present day Tabasco, Mexico.

The story of the discoveries and scholarship involved in reconstructing the 5,125 year Maya Long Count Calendar, which spans the years between August 11, 3114 BC and December 21, 2012 AD, is one of the great true adventures of the modern world. (A terrific book on the subject is John Major Jenkins‘ The 2012 Story, which I’ll be reviewing soon.) Yet we’re left with the task to discern what this mysterious calendar with a definite last day (more precisely, the transition date to a new calendar round) means to us in our everyday lives. Or is this another flash in the kaleidoscopic spectacle of illusion, a subliminal cut in the MTV video of the 21st century that only hints at meaning because probing the depths of meaning is far too time consuming?

It is difficult for us in the atomized west to appreciate how the Mayan calendar was, and is, intertwined with their cosmology, creation myth, divination, world view and quotidian routine. Our western calendar demarcating the passage of days, change of seasons, maybe the tides, holidays and little else compares poorly to the depth and richness of its Mayan counterpart. Contrary to popular belief, the Maya were not obsessed with time, though the accuracy of their various calendars (they had at least 17) would be unrivaled until the 20th century. The Maya, like all Native American peoples had no word or concept like our abstract time. Their’s was an earth based system to calendarize the rhythms of the cosmos, to discern the natural sequences of life, man and the world.

The Maya, and all native people of the Americas, recognize a rhythm to their inner lives which is played out within greater rhythmic structures of the land, sky, waters and fellow creatures. Even larger rhythmic patterns involve the sun and moon, planets, stars and, most importantly, the Milky Way Galaxy. The Long Count Calendar is one fifth of the grand precessional cycle of 25,625 years, the length of time for the slow wobble of the earth’s axis to return to pointing at the same the same spot in space. This eccentric axial spin, combined with the earth’s solar orbit, produces the seasons and the sun’s apparent movement, gradual change of the sunset/sunrise location on the horizon against the backdrop of the Milky Way. In the year 2012, on the winter solstice, December 21, the dawn sun will rise precisely aligned with the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. This is why the Maya designate the date as the transition from the end of the fourth age, or world, in the precessional cycle to the fifth age–world–sun.

The Maya are not alone observing each winter solstice as a time of death, rebirth and renewal. The longest night on December 21 marks the beginning of gradually increasing light and is noted for spiritual and physical renewal in virtually every culture’s religious history, no doubt harking back to the earliest stirrings of human consciousness. What makes the winter solstice of 2012 so powerful is the synchronicity of the annual event with two events of galactic proportions; the 26,000 year precessional return of the winter solstice sun to the sign of sagittarius (where the galactic center appears in our sky) ; and the conjunction of the sun with the galactic center on the dawn horizon. The latter event occurs because the solar system is now in the midst of an approximately 40 year phase in which the sun is crossing the the ecliptic plane, the equator, of our mother galaxy, the Milky Way. The scale of this movement is so huge, the galaxy unimaginably large, that it is estimated this occurs every 63 million years (one revolution of the sun around the galactic center taking about 240 million years).

These calculations are a challenge for the most sophisticated computers, telescopes and space probes available today. The galactic center was more or less “accidentally” discovered by modern science in 1932, and determined to be a black hole in 1937. Archeo-astronomers estimate the Long Count, popularly known as the Mayan Calendar, utilizing the dark center of the Milky Way as its focal point, was first devised around 2,500 years ago in the proto-Mayan civilization known as Izapa. Not only did these ancient Mayan wizards discern the position of the galactic center and use it in their astronomy, they referred to it as, Xibalbe Be, the Dark Void and Womb of the Galactic Mother. Also, in order to mathematically/astronomically determine that there would be an alignment of the earth, sun and galactic center on the winter solstice, December 21, 2012, two and a half millennia hence, they would have to know the precise length of the solar year to within .4 seconds, less than half a second.

So they didn’t figure this out with math, or by any linear, kinetic, scientific method that would survive a peer review journal. This intellectual achievement is an order of magnitude more puzzling than the popular “how did the ancients carve and move those giant stone blocks” conundrum.

Is it the end of the world? Not if you think of “this world” as merely the third rock from the sun. But, if your world revolves around investment portfolios, derivatives, and credit default swaps, the world that supports your principles and bottom line has already collapsed.

Better questions are how rapid is the change from this “world” to the next? And what is the next “world”.

Stay tuned to NOOZINE and find out.

Or I shoot your freakin’ economy.

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:03:36 -1000

White collar criminals are so decorous in their language of bailout, leverage and asset acquisition. Criminals in the movies at least use language we can understand like extortion, loan sharking and cooking the books. So when a new sheriff comes to town it’s a good idea to learn what language he speaks and who his friends are, where he can put his boots up on the table and to whom he has to say, “yes sir”. Our new sheriff Obama speaks with language recognizable to a broad spectrum of Americans, but he has been corrected. During the campaign (remember those lost years as you were distracted nightly by the horse race?) Obama was taken to the woodshed for his entirely correct observation that when times are tough folks cling to their guns and religion.

During his inaugural address, Obama was inspiring in his clarity of the hard road ahead, inspiring in the manner of a prophet leading his people into the desert guided by hope and the joys of austerity. Minus a few oblique zingers toward the arch criminal sitting behind him on the platform raised above the multitudes spread upon the mall of the city of our governance, there was no language of indictment. Ya gotta wonder, if “we the people” brought him to this dance, who gets to bring him home?

“Follow the money”, says Donald Sutherland in the Hollywood blandishment of the career making news story broken by a pair of adorable Washington Post reporters. You don’t have to follow too far to find the faces of the money that brought Obama to Washington. They stand beside him now at various podiums. Hard to miss them, they’re wearing the suits with especially deep pockets, and shallow smiles. (Don’t miss the gold lamé pantsuit at State.) And their bosses want to get the vigorish on time. Let the principle ride forever, but you gotta pay the gravy, according to the Tony Soprano school of economics.

Now Obama has to sell this proposition to the cash cow that is his constituency. Pay off the bankers (through the shell corporations that were once banks and investment houses too big to fail) and see if there’s a little left on the side to fix some potholes and buy another dose of penicillin. Otherwise these extra starch suits are gonna pitch an economic firebomb through the plate glass storefront of the American Dream Store.

So no talk of jail time because it’s all legal and that’s all that counts. It’s right here in the paper slurry oozing out of congress, written in language so obtuse even the authors can’t decipher it without a coupla cocktails at a Georgetown bar. Besides, it’s much better to pay cash to these white guys and sign over Eminent Domain to the Orientals, Near and Far.

Plays better on TV.

by Curtis McCosco