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.

[Re-blog of my blog editorial for The Huffington Post]

Two-thousand-and-nine is drawing to a close. We’re at the end of the decade and inching towards the culmination of the ancient Mesoamerican Mayan calendar…nearing the epoch of who knows what?

Literally, philosophically, pop culturally and sociologically, the zeitgeist points to the fate of the world hanging in the balance. The Hollywood disaster flick du jour 2012 (which grossed $165.2 million in its international debut), brought to light the doom and gloom position on the end-date. Interestingly enough, this year was also the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s modern science-shaping work On the Origin of Species.

Great timing for Swedish biology expert/ Ph.D and leading Mayan author Carl Johan Calleman who just released The Purposeful Universe, his latest tome on human evolution and Mayan cosmology. As Calleman explains in his book, the Greeks held two understandings of time: Chronos (literal clock time) and Kairos (synchronous mystical time, or ‘the right time’). In light of this and the relevant millennial mindset concepts he covers, one might say the author has it both ways–in synch with Chronos and Kairos.

This isn’t the only manner in which he has it both ways, so to speak. Early on in his book, Calleman talks about the age-old feud between the die-hard Darwinist mainstream scientific community, and religious zealots/ new Creationists. He sets forth on a bold mission–bound to ruffle feathers on both sides — systematically building his case: the scientists and the creations are both wrong … and right.

This wouldn’t be the first time Calleman had introduced a revolutionary but contentious theory. In his previous books The Mayan Calendar and The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness he presented his belief that, based on his calculations and research, the end date is not December 21, 2012 (as most believe) but October 28, 2011. Furthermore — at odds with another leading Mayanist John Major Jenkins — he explains that the Mayan Long Count was not a calendar of physical planetary/galactic alignment and movement (Chronos) but a calendar of increasing energy pulses of evolution (Kairos) which would reach a zenith on 10/28/11.

The fact that Calleman’s findings predicted the month and year of the global financial collapse (almost a decade before it happened), among other assertions, has helped his work gain merit and respect….unless of course you’re one of those hard-nosed scientists who believe in separating your peas (science) from your carrots (spirituality). Albert Einstein, incidentally wasn’t. He was famously quoted as saying: “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”

So, how can Darwinists and Creationists both be right and wrong? Calleman’s core theory, implied by the title The Purposeful Universe, is that evolution is no accident. In some circles the culturally problematic term “intelligent design” might seem to apply. One of the core points for Calleman–a spiritual but not religious scientist–is that evolution does not happen gradually but in quantum leaps. He points out, “the lack of survival value for an organism to have a nonfunctional organ, such as half a wing.”

The author admits that an unfit and weaker species can be phased out, but does not view survival as the driving force behind evolution. Its catalyst, says Calleman, is consciousness. In other words, God, or the energetic current behind life itself or however you choose to dub it, is driven to evolve because it wants to know itself.

His aim in the book is to show how the quantum leaps in evolution actually follow a pattern based on the Mayan Long Count calendar (ending in 2011). The Mayans came up with some advanced cosmological concepts (like the precession of the equinoxes) without the use of sophisticated technology and tools.

Calleman leads the reader through a theory of holographic resonance–which incidentally has been to some degree written about by venerated scientist scribes like Rupert Sheldrake (who Calleman mentions in the book). Sheldrake sought to explain how a bird, for instance, could learn a new behavior and suddenly that same species of bird, on the other side of the world, would adopt this behavior with no contact to the original animal, via morphogenetic fields.

After the Big Bang — the moment of ‘takeoff’ — these fields (or in Calleman’s book ‘halos’) allegedly began forming as an ascending interconnected system which has progressed consciousness from simpler life forms through to today’s highly complicated human beings.

Calleman’s theory is called the “Tree of Life,” and it ties in the archetype present in many cultures’ mystical roots — Judaism, Norse religion, Hinduism, Mayan culture, etc. In the book, he also discusses esoteric topics like the Golden Mean, the Fibonacci Sequence and sacred geometry while referencing mainstream science journals like Nature, and archeologically verified facts about the Mayan civilization and calendar.

Calleman is not alone in mixing ancient knowledge with science and spirituality. One might argue that this hybridization really took off during the early Millennial years. In the environmental science field, James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis (‘the earth is a single organism’) was initially scoffed at but today it seems to have proliferated, resonated and gained new ground.

Yet, his writings seem more aimed at swaying the rigid and uncompromising members of the old guard scientific community than at selling books to questing New Agers. However, Calleman smartly begins his journey of science and consciousness on a philosophical note before getting into the hard data.

The core of the book is however largely scientific — including theories that something other than DNA acts as ‘chief organizer’ in higher organisms. This can of course put off the science and math-challenged. But the native Swede — whose English writing is excellent–conveniently sums up many of his points in italics.

Calleman’s methodology recalls for me the meticulousness of Leonard Shlain’s The Alphabet Versus the Goddess (another great philosophical/spiritual evolution book by a member of the scientific community). Both writers and thinkers were keenly aware of how their out-of-the-box theories were likely to be received. They therefore went to extremes to leave no stone unturned.

So laymen need not be afraid to read The Purposeful Universe even if they are not predisposed to science. As deep and challenging of a read as this book might be for the Average Joe, it’s well worth the effort. Calleman is a large part of the zeitgeist of symbiosis between science and spirituality that I suspect will only increase with time.

The nay-sayers can cross their arms, shake their heads, sit back and call it pseudo-science because it doesn’t fit into the their box. But it takes a real scientist (and evolved human) to look beyond the tried and true and shed meaning on the unknown and unquantifiable. It is, after all, the age of ‘dark matter’ and quantum physics.

Calleman, in my opinion is that true scientist who has intelligently intuited the meaning behind the chaos. To paraphrase the Einstein quote, ‘God does not play dice with the universe.’