No disrespect to any of my colleagues who might be current employees of the LA Times (believe it or not, there still are folks over there), but with no ill spirit, and in passing, my mother gave me an apropos ‘media nugget.’

We were discussing the choice to name the LA Times‘ ‘alternative’ web entity Brand X in the first place. I felt it connoted Douglas Coupland’s pioneering novel Generation X–a bit of a throwback retro reference. My mother insisted that it sounded like a prophylactic.

I can’t agree with her more. In fact, it not only sounds like a prophylactic, but it’s a GREAT name for a line of condoms. I can picture the black wrapper with a silver name logo emblazoned on it. Hey, maybe if the LA Times (and its entities) fold, your libido doesn’t have to.

Great fakes, tea and crumpets, and a nearby Portuguese-speaking gambling capital….I’m there.

In the interesting of continuing ‘the Pagan agenda,’ I am writing this blog to bring awareness to the upcoming Winter Solstice which will take place Monday, December 21, 2009 at 9:47 in the morning Pacific Standard Time.

The Winter Solstice may be thought of as the “new moon” of the year, a time of seed-planting. At this point–just after the longest night on the 21st–the days will begin to get longer, ushering in the proverbial light. Many people perform rituals or simply hold intentions in their heads at the new moon each month. The Solstice contains a similar spirit, but in a way it is the seed-planting for the entire year. This is, at least how the Mayans saw it. Perhaps that is why the traditionally accepted end date of their calendar was December 21, 2012–Winter Solstice time.

This year’s Solstice is a particularly potent one whether you follow (sidereal/vedic) astrology or the Mayan calendar.

Firstly, it occurs in the middle of a Mars station (Mars stations retrograde on the 20th so its arc of influence is a few days on either side of that date). When a planet stations direct or retrograde its energy hangs heavier in the sky and has a more intense (strongly felt) influence.

This is also a “13″ energy in the Mayan tzolkin calendar, therefore the highest “ascension” energy. For me this is personal because it will be “13 Kan” (or 13 Lizard). Kan happens to be my Mayan Day Sign. This energy will nevertheless affect everyone and set a tone for the year. Kan or Lizard represents heightened creativity as well as sexual energy (seeing as both emanate from the same place and require the same type of flow). It is a year to focus on your personal creativity and how you can best create.

At this time Jupiter and Neptune will be in a conjunction and Venus, Pluto and the Sun in a loose (within five degrees) conjunction, setting up more powerful energies. The Jupiter and Neptune energies together tend to produce the feeling of being “blissed out,” for lack of better terms. This combo is rife with the energy of optimism and idealism. Venus, Pluto and the Sun will likely conspire to produce a sense of reinvention, breakdown and breakthrough–both in yourself and the ones you love (or your values).

This is the best day of the year (I’m actually already attributing these configurations to 2010) to plant seeds. Meditate or do whatever makes you centered: housework, gardening, hiking, exercise, golfing, whatever…but be open to receiving the thoughts of what your soul’s true intentions are. What do you REALLY want?

This first step is really important because without it, you cannot know what will bring you passion and passion is a necessary ingredient for manifesting whatever. Once you have done that, put your intentions out there.

A lot of self-helpy people tell you to write this down. Personally I find that to be a load of crap (unless you’re doing it casually like in a journal and not writing an ordered list). I find that keeping the flow of ideas in your head (rather than putting it “out there”) is what works. Somehow when you write it down, it loses a little of the push. I’m not saying nothing can happen but part of the energy dissipates. This is why many of the great and powerful secret societies passed information and wisdom on through word of mouth. Something happens when you write something down–it becomes indoctrination, expectations ensue, etc.

My plan is to go macro/micro in my intentions. I want to start with a personalized creative intention for the world in 2010. ‘Peace on Earth’ seems like wasted assertion to me–and it’s loaded with phoniness. If you REALLY want peace on earth, manifest an area, an invention, an energy flow that might create that, rather than uttering the words with self-aggrandizing glee, “Peace on Earth.”

Next I would think about my friends and family and how I’d like to see them in 2010–what their dreams are and how this could happen. Then I’m going to go into my personal intentions.

At that point I am going to completely let go of all of it–of thinking of any part of my intentions until at least New Year’s Eve. Why then? Because that’s another landmark energy day–a full moon eclipse in sidereal Gemini. At that point, I will begin to see some of my intentions sprout up into what I like to call “mini-festations.” These are minor outward signs like finding a dollar when you were intending a lot of unexpected money coming your way or being invited on a road trip when you were intending a free trip to Europe or something. When these sprout up–on the lunar eclipse–I can then decide if I still want to bring those things in my life or to block them with opposite (new) intentions.

If I do still want those manifestations in my life, I can begin to take a (small) role in their activation at the full moon eclipse. This doesn’t mean pushing and “making” something happen. It means getting creative about related intentions. For instance, if you manifest that trip to Europe and get the mini-festation of being invited on a road trip locally, you might plant new intentions of getting invited to a special opening party in Europe (so it relates to you original, larger intention).

Anyway, that’s my two cents. After some of the insane things that have (very literally) manifested after my japa meditations (japa being akin to mantras), I am a full-time, life-long believer. I wish you all the best of luck on the Solstice. Put it out there and enjoy!

This is the perfect po-mo ironic recession gift for the hipster consumer fighting the urge to consume (energy, like heating, to stay warm) but dying to consume for the holidays. This “informercial” made the rounds a while back but seeing as we’re knee deep in the holiday shopping season…

From Cern’s website:

“High-energy experiments could prise open the inconspicuous dimensions just enough to allow particles to move between the normal 3D world and other dimensions. This could be manifest in the sudden disappearance of a particle into a hidden dimension, or the unexpected appearance of a particle in an experiment. Who knows where such a discovery could lead!”

The above footage is of a strange phenomenon that has beset the Hessdalen Valley in Norway during different periods. It was brought to my attention by mayanist Carl Johan Calleman after I asked him for his thoughts on the so-called Norway spiral. He said he found it interesting that so much kundalini energy has been released along what he refers to in his books as the ‘world tree axis’ in Norway.

In his first book, The Mayan Calendar, Calleman identified central Europe (France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands and so forth) as being “most directly in holographic resonance with the peripheral galactic biosphere.” He attributed Europe’s often initiating role in civilizational development on the planet to this.

It seems to be a hotbed of activity what with the “Norway spiral,” Obama’s contentious Nobel Peace Prize and the Large Hadron Collider (at CERN in Switzerland). Anyway, it is interesting that Norway of all places was the site of the spiral and the Hessdalen lights phenomenon (which apparently was recorded and studied by physicists). Some sightings in Hessdalen could not be explained.

If I look at the events of the last week cinematically, they really make for quite a dramatic oeuvre whether you look at them metaphysically or through a mundane lens. If the spiral was in fact a failed Russian missile (which is the info authorities would like us to believe), it’s quite wild that Obama should be accepting the Nobel Peace prize there in the afterglow of a ‘missile spiral’ (and simultaneously starting another war in the Middle East).

Looking at the events through a personal metaphysical lens, I can recall exactly what I was doing at the time of the spiral’s appearance and how I was feeling. I was doing a late evening Kabbalah ‘words’ meditation. I remember feeling extremely charged and spiritually in-tune. I attributed it to the fact that it was a “13 day” (highest vibrational energy) in the Mayan Tzolkin calendar. I recall sensing, “something is ending…something is dying” very powerfully. Again, I attributed it to the “13 energy,” which signifies completion/ascension.

That night I had wild psychedelic lucid dreams (sans psychedelics) and recall the depth of my slumber bordering on a comatose state. I felt a pulse go through my brain which I interpreted (in the dream) as an aneurysm. I had seen (perhaps that night or the night before) Hebrew letters from my meditations in a ‘dream bleed’ (eyes-open, middle-of-the-night, dreaming state) with pristine clarity, flashing like slides at lightening speed, before my eyes. And that’s all she wrote, as they say.

I am actually finding is most odd that I placed an image of a blue-green spiral on my blog on November 7th. It was right after a deep meditation on the Mayan shift point into what Calleman calls The Sixth Night. It could have been a random coincidence. But these days, those don’t seem to happen much anymore.

The video above is of the strange, unexplained spiral that appeared above the skies of Oslo yesterday. Everyone is quick to say it’s the product of a Russian missile, but the timing is eerie (though not conclusive in and of itself, of course).

Yesterday, the NY Times published an article about the Large Hadron Collider, heralding that the Switzerland-based device had set a record for accelerating protons to energies of 1.2 trillion electron volts apiece and then crashing them together (beating out a U.S. record).

The article goes on to say: “The collider first boosted protons to the new energy record of 1.2 trillion electron volts on Nov. 29, and CERN hopes to be having sustained collisions at that energy within a week.” I know the so-called Norway spiral is no black hole. Obviously, we’d all be dead now if it were. But something’s fishy in the state of Norway (and Geneva for that matter). That would mean this spiral appeared within 10 days of the LHC’s landmark particle smashing record date. Did they in fact sustain collisions at that energy within a week? If so, what were the consequences. This isn’t like a world record for ‘most sky divers’ or ‘most pies eaten.’ Particle smashing at that acceleration is unchartered territory

Yes, I’m veering on conspiracy theory. Why? This story was made for it. And, it’s a fun use of my brain. I am of course wondering if the spiral is some [other non-black hole] side-effect of the Collider. But, having just read Carl Johan Calleman’s book The Purposeful Universe, (see last entry), I also have visions of spirals dancing in my head from a chapter he wrote on DNA. He says, “Living systems seem to have a preference for this corkscrewed form and synthesize only the components that have the particular D-form of nucleotides that may generate it.”

Calleman goes on to talk about the Mayan Tree of Life model (from which all of life’s pulses and consciousness expansion emanate). It’s not a literal tree with leaves, but the nucleus of the universe–that which charges us with “life” and evolution. “This ancient picture indicates that life, in this case exemplified by a human being that comes out of the Mayan Tree of Life, is corkscrewed into existence by a wave form (symbolized by serpents) emerging from this Tree.”

I’m sure I’m just being a romantic mystic with the heart of a poet and the mind of a sci-fi loving non-scientist, but I wonder if the Norway spiral was a new pulse of light from the cosmic Tree of Life–this time visible to everyone because we are in a higher state of consciousness. Perhaps we are now ’seeing’ evolution or the point from which all evolution emanates. That’s my two cents, for what it’s worth. I’m glad I’m not jaded and can still view life with a sense of wonder, awe and openness to the possible.