Avoiding the holidays (rant)

There are a lot of reasons why I don't like the holidays.  I'm not a Christian anymore and the constant refrain of the Christers, as I call them, is mentally exhausting.  Keep CHRIST in CHRISTMAS they scream on billboards and on Facebook and in person,  not caring or knowing that most "Christmas" rituals were stolen from older pagan traditions.   These people get royally offended at the generic greeting of Happy Holidays and don't seem to understand that Happy Holidays includes everyone, while Merry Christmas excludes everyone who doesn't worship Jesus. To me, one is friendly, the other rude.  Do what you want with your Jesus but keep him out of my face.
What elements of Christmas, you ask, are taken from pagans?

• The son of a god being born at the winter solstice--the feast of Osiris (ancient Egypt), who was the son of a god and who died and was resurrected, was on 12/25.  Mithras (ancient Rome) was also born on the solstice, died and was buried and resurrected, and I believe he also might have been born of a virgin but don't quote me on that.
• Evergreen tree--Druids of ancient England decorated trees to celebrate the winter solstice.
• Mistletoe kissing--a pagan fertility practice.
• Santa--modern Santa was pretty much invented by Coca-Cola and I never understood what he had to do with Jesus.
• I don't have any idea where presents came from but not from Jesus.  All my presents when I was little came from Santa, Jesus never gave me anything.

Just a few of the many.
The Jesus hysteria, of course, is a big one that makes me want to crawl into a turtle shell around Thanksgiving and not come out.   Another is holiday music.  Even on the radio, on stations that usually play lovely loud rock music, they are playing those same rock bands warbling mournfully about the holidays in a way that should truly offend anyone of any sense and taste, of any religion.
Of course, my Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), triggered by the loss of light leading up to the winter solstice, makes everything that much worse.  The turtle shell idea is that much more inviting--I don't want to come out and why should I?
The thought of entering any store during that same time period is anathema to me.  I don't want presents.  I can't afford to reciprocate and I don't want more STUFF.  I spent last year de-cluttering my house, why should I junk it back up with stuff I don't want or need?   People desperate to get the latest, greatest, hottest STUFF, the must-have stuff, the looks on their faces as they pay with charge cards and layaway and their mortgage money just makes me ill.
I try to take a step back and allow others to play out their karma and their own lives while I hide. I think about how much fun I'll be having a year from now as Baktun 12 winds down and for probably the only time in my life, everyone talks about the Mayan calendar.

Happy Winter Solstice.  Enjoy whatever holiday your like, in your own way.

3 new Jaguar Nights volumes!

Jaguar Nights: A Journey Through the Tzolkin
My 592-page book on the Tzolkin, is available through me or from Amazon.  A Kindle edition is coming soon.  $30.00
The Mesoamerican Tzolkin is a beautiful and simple calendar as well as a system of astrology and divination. Jaguar Nights is a uniquely organized reference book devoted to this sacred 260-day cycle. Each of the 260 days has two entire pages of comprehensive information. No flipping pages to figure out what everything means! It includes advanced information on how to use the calendar for divination augury, relationship compatibility, rituals, astrology, and how to find significant dates (electional astrology), all fully explained. Includes 92 years of correlation date charts (1930–2022). The Tzolkin holds the keys to many doors and to life cycles previously unnoticed. Use Jaguar Nights for two Tzolkin cycles as a personal diary and energy tracker, and as a reference for many years. When you immerse yourself in these alternate time cycles, the world starts to look different. You relate in a new way, you see patterns that you never noticed before. Learn to define your place in the great spiral of time, and find your relationship to the cosmos, with the Tzolkin. Step out of your world for a little while, and find a new set of rhythms to live by. 

Jaguar Nights: A Journey Through the Tzolkin

or Jaguar Nights: Journey on Amazon.

---

Jaguar Nights 2012 Jaguar Nights 2012 incorporates some new information from the big book. Jaguar Nights 2012 is $16 for a 62-page desk/purse calendar (8.5x5.5"). Each day has the Mayan Long Count, Haab and Tzolkin information, the sacred 260 count, the Aztec Xiuhpohualli (equivalent to the Haab) and Tonalpohualli (equivalent to the Tzolkin), as well as a countdown to 2012. All Tzolkin/Tonalpohualli dates numbered 1, 7, 8, and 13 (the sacred numbers) have energy readings, plus each month has the moon cycles and holidays (national, fun and pagan as well as a few from other religions).  Kindle edition coming soon.

or Jaguar Nights 2012 on Amazon .

---

Jaguar Nights Companion #1: Reverse Tzolkin Ephemeris
This e-book is part of the Jaguar Nights series of calendars and books. It is a reverse ephemeris—instead of looking up a Gregorian calendar date to find which Tzolkin date it is, all the Gregorian dates from 1900 to 2060 are ranked by Tzolkin date. Find out when a Tzolkin date last happened and when it will happen again. This can be useful for interpreting divination results, electional astrology, personal guidance, journaling, daykeeping, and more. This is not meant to be a stand-alone book; you need knowledge of the sacred 260-day Tzolkin calendar of the Maya to utilize the information. Only $5.


Reverse Tzolkin Ephemeris on Amazon Kindle.
 Download a free Kindle Reader app here.

---

11/11/11 Welcome to the 11th gate

Today is the 11th gate, the "big one" we've all been waiting for since the series of gates started on 1/1/1 (which seems so long ago).  There are two more gates, of course, 12/12/12 and the final 12/21/2012 which initiates Baktun 13 in the Mayan Long Count calendar.
In numerology, 11 is a master number.  It signifies you plus God (whoever you think God is).  So today is a godly day, multiplied. (22 is also a master number, and in some numerology systems so are 33 and 44, but we only have 13 gates so it won't get that high!  Maybe on 02/22/2022 something will happen.)
It's a time of global and personal activation, of energy upgrades.  Take everything in and transform.
This series of 13 gates is unique because usually a galactic gate opens and then closes.  In 1999 there was one that opened between 2 blue moons (opened on the first one, closed on the second one) and the energy was crazy--but temporary.  These gates, however, are permanent.   Each one builds on the energies and changes of the one(s) that came before.
So even if you don't think you feel anything, or don't understand what's going on, that's okay.  You won't miss anything--it's happening even if you don't know it.  The crazy occupy wall street thing? I'm sure that's part of the changes. 
(image source & more information on 11:11)

10-28-2011--Calleman's calendar end

Today is finally here.  On this particular 13-Ahau, out of all the 13-Ahauob around 12-21-2012, Calleman picked this one, today, to be HIS idea of the "end" of the Mayan calendar.  (Why not 14-July 2012?)
I'm waiting.  The sun is shining.  It's a little cold out.   No end seems to be in sight.
Calleman's fractal concept of the Long Count is that the 13 Baktuns (we are coming to the end of Baktun 12) equal the 13 Heavens.  But somehow he has also decided that the Tzolkin ends today.  As in, tomorrow is NOT 1-Imix, but nothing.  Huh?   But then he hedges and says maybe it will continue.  I really don't pretend to understand his interpretation of the calendars.  It SOUNDS good on the surface, especially if you don't have any background, but when you really sit and think about it, it's all illogical.
His claim:

(T)he universe attains its highest quantum state and creates a new stage for life (at the top of the nine-storied pyramid). It is thus a common misunderstanding that a “new” cycle will begin after the calendar comes to an end. This is a misunderstanding because what is coming to an end is not a cycle to begin with, but nine linear directed evolutionary waves. The only aspect of the prophetic Mayan calendar system that may be described as cyclical is the 260 day tzolkin and this is the only cycle that will come to an end.

I have no idea what that means.  He goes on to say that

This would likely mean an abrupt end to all future energetic regulation of our lives and actions and a sort of freedom shock. Life would be lived fully moment by moment by moment and each moment would be an eternity that would not be organically linked to other moments.

I thought we were all supposed to be living in the moment already?  

You know what the sad thing is?  There really are AWESOME fractals in the Tzolkin.  I wish I could love his ideas, but they don't quite click for me.

I wonder if he will go away tomorrow or jump online to post about today?
image source

Elongated skulls and brainpower

I was watching Ancient Aliens last night.  (My husband remarked, "is this show a training course for crazy people?")  Honestly the topics all run together but this one, as many of their episodes do, featured the elongated skulls of some ancient Egyptians and also people from Peru.  According to the show, either the elongated-skull people are ALIENS or they are trying to look like ALIENS.  Now I think there just might be ALIENS don't get me wrong and perhaps they visited the planet a few times, but everything from the past is not freaking ALIENS.  The show is funny, though.
Back to long skulls.I don't really care if the people with long skulls were alien or human or hybrid. I'm interested in the INSIDE of those skulls.  What did their brains look like?  Were they smarter or dumber than people with regular round heads?  What was the size of their brain case vs round skulls?  I know they can do this with tiny pellets, come on, hasn't any anthropologist ever wondered?  I put together this picture of a regular brain and a Peruvian mummy skull from a couple of sources and it seems evident to me that these people should have had HUGE brains, right?  What part got bigger?  How did that change them? 

King Tut, his step-mother Nerfertiti and his sister (forgot her name) were all depicted with long, graceful skulls.  But if you look at his actual head next to a sculpture of him, it doesn't quite measure up, does it?  The angle isn't 100% but it's obvious that his head is more pointed and squat.  But clearly the head in the sculpture is achievable--look at the mummy from Peru.  So why was it important his people THOUGHT he had a big long head?
Looking for "elongated skulls" on Google Images, quite a few photos of current people with long skulls come up.  Whether these people have naturally long heads or have been artificially deformed, I don't know, but I have to wonder if anyone has ever taking an MRI of their brains or one of those scans where they ask you to do math and memory problems and see what lights up.  Or get them to donate their bodies to science and dissect their brains.


Is there a reason, besides aesthetics, to deform your skull?  Does it make you smarter, increase your memory, give you better math or verbal or spacial skills?  Or is there no brain in the extra space, just bone or fluid?  I found one result on Google books which says it's "mere displacement of the brain" that "does not change intellect" but that baffles me.  That Peruvian head looks like it could fit two extra brains.  Then again, the book is from 1869.
Anyway, lacking any formal training in physical anthropology, and also lacking any elongated skulls to work on, there isn't much I can do except wonder why someone who does have training and skulls isn't working on this.

Sources: skull w hair  tut bust  tut skull   regular skull alien guy skull combinations by me

Jaguar Nights: A Journey through the Tzolkin is almost ready

The long-awaited full volume that inspired the yearly calendars, Jaguar Nights: A Journey Through the Tzolkin, Explorations of the Mayan Sacred Calendar, is almost ready for shipment. (Around Thanksgiving.) Price will be about $30. Over 600 pages of exhaustive material on the sacred calendar.

---

Back cover blurb:

It’s About Time!

The Mesoamerican Tzolkin is a beautiful and simple calendar as well as a system of astrology and divination. Jaguar Nights is a uniquely organized reference book devoted to this sacred 260-day cycle. Each of the 260 days has two entire pages of comprehensive information. No flipping pages to figure out what everything means! It includes advanced information on how to use the calendar for divination augury, relationship compatibility, rituals, astrology, and how to find significant dates (electional astrology), all fully explained. Includes 92 years of correlation date charts (1930–2022). The Tzolkin holds the keys to many doors and to life cycles previously unnoticed. Use Jaguar Nights for two Tzolkin cycles as a personal diary and energy tracker, and as a reference for many years. When you immerse yourself in these alternate time cycles, the world starts to look different. You relate in a new way, you see patterns that you never noticed before. Learn to define your place in the great spiral of time, and find your relationship to the cosmos, with the Tzolkin. Step out of your world for a little while, and find a new set of rhythms to live by.

823 years of BS, or why that rumor is wrong

You've probably gotten the email, or seen the Facebook post, about how this year (2011) is so incredibly rare and that it hasn't happened in 823 years (or won't happen again for 823 years).
I honestly don't know how anyone with half a brain can fall for that. Or forward it.
Think logically. We have SEVEN weekdays. So January 1 can be on any of those days. That's SEVEN different calendars. But oh wait, there's leap year. So you need another SEVEN calendars with February 29 on them. (But you can see that there's only 7 versions of January 1 through February 28.)
That's a total of 14 calendars. The 7 leap year ones, obviously, don't get used very often. But 2011 isn't a leap year. In fact, 2005 had the EXACT SAME CALENDAR (gasp) and it will come around again in 2022. It is not rare at all. And I have no idea where the bogus 823 year figure comes from. 823 years ago was 1188. This year, January 1 was on Saturday. In 1188 it was on Friday--but it was a leap year, so it does correspond with our calendar from March 1 on. (The point being that it's not the exact same calendar.)
From Virtual Perpetual Calendar, here is calendar 6 (this year's) and 200 years of occurrences.

Please, please, please, STOP SENDING/POSTING this nonsense.  Or at least do it where I can't see it.

Free lecture by Gevera...Relationships in the Mayan Calendar

Relationship Aspects in the Sacred Mayan Calendar
Starting a business? Thinking about getting married or adopting a child? Wondering about a new love relationship? There is a simple way, using the 260-day Sacred Mayan Calendar, to get a snapshot of the energy of two (or more) people, or even a person and a calendar day. Time permitting, relationships from the audience will be parsed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I will be at the Astrological Society of Connecticut's New Age Fair from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. selling calendars and crystals, and presenting a free lecture from 11 a.m. to noon. Admission to the fair and the lecture is FREE and the vendors are always great. You can also get a variety of readings and horoscopes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sunday, February 20 · 11:00am - 12:00pm
Keeney Center
200 Main Street
Wethersfield, CT
You may RSVP on Facebook.

---