Musings: Shamanic, Animal, Planetary & more

12/12/12 12:12

2012-12-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

It's 12-12-12! (The 12th gate out of 13.)
Welcome the light and open your spiritual gateway wide! Clear your karma and make way for healthy, happy relationships and ways of being in the world.
This spiritual activation gate will bring the highest frequencies ever encoded in the Light of the Ascended Consciousness, followed by the final gate in 9 days on 12/21/12 when Baktun 13 begins.
All the spiritual energies we have been working for since 1/1/1 will be fulfilled and available very soon.
Make it count today! Be light, be love.
Shamballa on!
(image source: ME! This is a drawing I did for a class on Merkabas and Sacred Geometry)

Jaguar Nights merchandise

2012-11-15T11:17:00.003-05:00

My artist Mike has put up two of his designs, both used in Jaguar Nights 2013, as t-shirt designs on Zazzle.

The shirts are available in a multitude of colors. The designs are Rabbit in the Moon (I LOVE IT) and Jaguar Warrior. The rabbit design is probably going to be the back of the Mayan Oracle cards. You can search Zazzle for "MichaelGiza" (no space) to see all of his work.

In Meso themed work, he also offers Sun God cards, Sun God t-shirts, and the Jaguar Warrior on red greeting cards, turquoise and brown greeting cards, playing cards, and a red notebook. The Rabbit is also available on a mug. (soon to be mine) The Sun God picture gives you an idea of the style of artwork and color that will be on the Mayan Oracle cards.

Jaguar Nights 2013 in Kindle & print, with screen shots

2012-11-15T10:52:00.002-05:00

Jaguar Nights 2013 Mayan-Aztec Calendar is now available in both print and kindle formats. The Kindle format has color pictures for those using a Kindle Fire or a Kindle app on a smartphone or tablet. Click the cover or the above link to purchase either version. Because of the large expense of mailing from Amazon to me and from me to you, I'm only selling books in person, not via mail anymore.
The print version is in a totally new format, expanded from 64 pages to 110, with more room on each day for writing. It is one week per 2-page spread; Saturday and Sunday are a bit larger, and there is an informational panel.

Compared to 2008,2009, 2011, and 2012, which had 2 weeks per 2 page spread with all information at the back of the book. People complained that there was not enough room to write appointments and notes with this format. So I listened,and changed it!

It's hard to make a Kindle screenprint; I don't have a Kindle Fire, just an old-school black and white one, but here are prints from the emulator program. The daily graphics are in color and so are the photos.

I welcome comments and suggestions. This is my first attempt at a Kindle calendar so I'd love to know what you think. transformations at obsidianbutterfly dot com.

Cruise 2012: Grand Cayman (NOT!) and homeward bound

2012-10-25T17:36:00.000-04:00

All night the boat was heaving and groaning. Since we were so low we heard lots of water rushing, and things clanking around. Not surprising that early in the a.m. Jacques the lisping cruise director said we’d be getting into Grand Cayman at 10:45 instead of 10:00 due to the waves, and that we’d dock elsewhere than Georgetown but no shore excursions would be rescheduled. Ours was at 11:30 so we weren’t worried. It was the only one we were doing with our friends—Reef and Ray Snorkel—and we were really looking forward to it, because we love Grand Cayman and the sting rays there.
Just before we were ready to follow our ticket, our friends called. They had been in line at the excursion desk and found out that all the snorkeling tours had been canceled. We were sad to miss our sting rays but we’d still get to walk around, buy cigars and rum cake right?

By the time our friends came down 1 level to our room, they had announced that, although 5 tender boats were circling the Liberty waiting to take us all off, we weren’t going to Grand Cayman. It was RIGHT THERE outside the window and we couldn’t go. Will was so angry. He really loves Grand Cayman and he was feeling better and he promised his friends at work good cigars. Our plan was to go to the comedy show that night, 3 comedians back-to-back for 3 hours, after dinner. We all went to the pool, since we had bathing suits on, and while there, Jacques announced that the comedians had been waiting on Grand Cayman to be picked up and thus…no comedians either. We were all mad. We had to wave goodbye to our favorite destination without going there, not knowing when we’d be back, and no comedians either!?

So it was two days back to Miami. The pool water had all sloshed out so that day after Grand Cayman I didn’t spend much time in the pool. The second formal night, the night we didn’t go to Grand Cayman, had no lobster for my hubby. The next day they had refilled the pool so I worked out for over an hour in the early morning before it got too hot. We ate at the burger bar for lunch again, our usual spot, indulged in the Chocolate Buffet after that, had our last dinner in the nice dining room, watched Pirates of the Caribbean for a while, while the pool water sloshed out around us—I saw video when I got home of a Disney cruise and the pool wasn’t half as violent, I didn’t even think of video taping the pool! Packed up, headed home, feeling very sad. (more under the pics)

One thing that really bothered my friend and me was that the Carnival Liberty's decor was so UGLY. Pictures don't do its ugliness justice. Who designed this ship? Were they blind or high? Were they freshmen in high school?
Here are more pics that weren't discussed & thus ends this chronicle.

Cruise 2012: Dolphin Extravaganza!

2012-10-24T17:17:00.000-04:00

We were last in Roatan (Honduras) on our 10th anniversary, 9 years ago, on the second cruise ship that ever went to the island. And wow how Roatan has changed. We docked at another of the ubiquitous dock-side shopping experiences. This one was on a hill above the ship (no tenders!). (more text below pics)

Our dolphin swim and snorkel didn’t leave until 10 a.m. so we had time to walk around first. The first few shops I went into hoping to find some Mayan art were disappointing. Honduras is at the edge of Maya-land, I know, but I did have hope. But these shops seemed to carry art that looked more African, or even Australian. I hadn’t found anything AWESOME yet for me or my friend and this was my last stop where it was possible. Then I saw a place called Roatan Stone Art. It was exactly what I had been looking for, and if Roatan had been an earlier stop I probably would have spent my budget there. Nothing mass produced and badly carved, only nice and unique items. I bought a pair of altar bowls. Since we had forgotten towels and water my husband headed back to the boat with the bowls to get the towels.
We had to fill out ridiculous paperwork to go on the tour. Basically it said we could be eaten by, or at least munched on, by all sorts of wildlife from horses and iguanas to sharks, stingrays and dolphins, and if we did get eaten it wasn’t the tour group’s fault even if they shoved us into the mouth of a shark. Excellent. We signed.
We took a short ride on a small Hyundai bus across the island from Mahogany Bay to Anthony’s Key Resort and the Roatan Maritime Institute where the dolphins were. We walked through the jungle to a dock where we boarded a very small boat to cross the water to a little key, or cay, where the dolphins live. One person said there were 24 dolphins, another 30. Lots of dolphins, some babies. They were Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins, some bred in captivity and some wild-caught.
The dolphin for our group was a 10 year old female named Marley who had rejected her last baby, which is apparently very rare, and the baby had been adopted by an older female. She was a goofball of a dolphin. Everything she did, she’d roll over a little and get her eye just out of the water and look at us to see if we approved. The male trainer was trying to get her to blow his whistle and she was sticking out her tongue at him and then flopping her head around so her tongue flapped out of her mouth and laughing at him. He said, “this isn’t a trick, this is her!” and then the dolphin went to the female trainer and immediately blew her whistle with no tongue action. (more text below the pics)

Basically we stood in waist-deep water with the dolphin and the trainers in front of us and the dolphin did tricks and swam back and forth in front of us so we could pet her. We all got our pictures taken hugging her and getting a “kiss” (dolphin leans its beak on your cheek and grins). We had 10 minutes to take our own pictures and videos (some of which are above...and more text is below).

Then we put away our cameras and got our snorkels and fins (fins were required; I actually had bought a pair but Will had to rent them) and we got to snorkel freely around the lagoon while dolphins dive bombed us and played with us. It was so awesome. If you had a piece of seaweed a dolphin would come and steal it. Even the babies came around. If you spun in place they’d race around you in a circle. You’d hear them squeaking and then they’d come from behind (always from behind) and roll to look at you with their big brown eyes as you laughed and tried to pet them. There were also all kinds of cool reef fish to look at, and corals, and lots of grass under the water. It was maybe 15-20 feet deep and the various fish we saw were maybe 8-10” long at most. It really felt like they were playing with us and teasing us, especially if you had seaweed. If you put your hand out they would come and push it with their noses (the trainers did that a lot to them) like a cat or dog would. I can’t explain how amazing it was.
My mask kept getting water in it and I wasn’t scared or panicking, only annoyed that I had to come to the surface and clear it out. Not one bit of panic attack, even when water came in my snorkel! Normally we disdain having others take our pictures for money but in this case, we bought the pictures. The deal was that it was $12.50 for each picture, minimum of 2, and if you bought all them of them it was $40 on a thumb drive, plus $10 for each other person in your group. So a couple was $50. I bought the thumb drive for $50 with no hesitation because some of the pictures came out really good.

We went for a drink at Fat Tuesdays on the way back to the ship & Will took my picture with the parrot-bird and Toad Purse. Will had a Hurricane in an Atti-tube cup and he said it was the worse Hurricane he’d ever had. He actually dumped it in the trash it was so bad.
At dinner our friends surprised us with a heart shaped cake from the bakery that said Happy Anniversary (even though our anniversary had been 2 weeks before) and then we went to see Edge Evolution, a juggling show, a sophisticated one. He did juggling, ancient yoyo work, and thunder sticks, and did it on stilts and blind folded. The ship was plowing through violent waves (Hurricane Sandy) and he only missed one trick because of it.

Cruise 2012: in which we get rained upon

2012-10-23T17:02:00.000-04:00

During his morning visit, Will got an inhaler from the doctor, with the same medicine they’d been putting up his nose with the nebulizer. It went with the antibiotic and steroid pills he’d been given the day before. Dr Fullerton is a cool doc. He’s from Florida and had been a doctor in both the Army and the Navy, and had been stationed in Groton and liked it in New England. When he gave Will the inhaler he told him to hide it in his pocket and not tell the nurses because we’d “already paid enough” for everything. I thought that was pretty nice of him. He showed us where he got attacked on the face by jellyfish while swimming in Cozumel the day before, preparing for an Ironman in a few weeks. He swam the actual course he’d be doing in the competition, a full one, with a 2.5 mile swim, 110 mile bike ride followed by a full marathon.

Then we took tender #18 to Belize City and walked around for exactly an hour. The first thing I saw was the world's biggest cockroach, thankfully dead.
We were going to do the chocolate factory tour but it was lame and not worth $20 a person even with free chocolate bars included. I had a chocolate shake there—it was high cacao chocolate, slightly bitter, the good stuff—and Will had an espresso, both made with local organic beans. While we were in the chocolate place there was a torrential downpour, like monsoon quality, rain solid in the sky, downpour. It made me feel a little better about missing Xunatunich since they said you can’t climb the pyramid to see into Guatemala in the rain. I really wanted to go, of course, to add another ruins site to my collect-the-whole-set, but not at my husband’s health’s expense.

The shopping village featured many, many wooden pillars carved into Mayan glyphs. I took photos of a lot of them but they were actually kind of lame. The gylphs didn’t make any sense, they were just crammed 4 or 5 to a pillar. I bought a few things and we actually were about to board the very same tender that had brought us to the village (it had made a round trip to the ship while we shopped) but it was going off empty. (more text below pics)

We were back in time for lunch, and Will felt really tired after only that little bit of slow walking. We ate at the hamburger place and I worked out in the pool and we hung out there for a little while.
At dinner, I went in alone while they went up to the steak house. The waiters kept trying to fill all 4 glasses with water. I’d say, “they aren’t coming” and hopefully they’d say “maybe they are” even though I said they went upstairs to the steak place. Then they offered apple pie a la mode for dessert. My husband loves apple pie. I got it to go for him and I went to get myself another piece of chocolate cake. And the bakery was out of chocolate cake. Evidently someone came along and bought the whole cake! They had carrot cake only, and one single chocolate chip cookie which seemed so lonely I just had to take it back to the room with me. I called room service for some hot chocolate and had my dessert in the room.
When my husband finally came in he laughed because I’d brought him dessert. All 3 of them had 14 oz individual (!?) cheesecakes for dessert (and not finished them) and apparently the cheesecake was awesome and the food was awesome and I should have gone except that I don’t care much for steak and I hate seafood and that’s all they had. He said he’d have the pie for breakfast.

Cruise 2012: in which I get to keep my organs

2012-10-22T15:46:00.000-04:00

On Monday, I woke up at 3 because Will was coughing, and saw that we were in Cozumel, 4 + hours early. I tried to put the room service tray outside quietly in the dark, dropped it, broken glass everywhere, woke up my husband with the noise, had to call for a clean up, the phone didn’t work, had to hunt down a steward in person to clean up the glass. He came in with the vacuum, you can imagine the noise and confusion and mess. My bad.
Went up to the Guest Services desk to tell them my husband had pneumonia and we had no phone and by the way, we’re in Cozumel, are you going to get my bag now? Hilarity ensued as the person said, “You can’t go ashore yet.” “I don’t want to go ashore yet. I want YOU to go and get my bag.” “You can’t go ashore yet. We don’t dock until 7.” “yes, but clearly we are docked already at 3 a.m., so how about someone goes and gets my bag?” “We docked early because someone had a heart attack.” Oops, they were just determined to have someone go to the Mexican hospital, weren’t they? “That is too bad, but what about my bag?” (I am a heartless, selfish bitch sometimes, I admit it.)
Finally she checked and found out that the bag was coming into the Cozumel airport at 1 p.m. and they’d go get it then. So I had no need to search out a dive shop and buy new snorkeling equipment.
I went ashore in Cozumel alone at 7 a.m. (Will had an 8 a.m. doctor appointment.) I had already arranged for a rental car to be at a rental place at the dock at 7:15 a.m. They had assured me that the rental place was in a gas station “right there.” Yes, right there. After you navigate on foot through their tourist village of shops and eager proprietors, then down a promenade and through a parking lot and across the street and asking random Mexican men “Donde esta el Pemex? Pemex aqui? Alli? Donde?” and then finding the Pemex and the rental place and it doesn’t even open until 8 a.m. They were supposed to have an automatic transmission Chevy Aveo with air conditioning waiting for me. No Chevy Aveo in sight. No proprietor in sight. Out comes the muy mal, un poquito espanol again.
Finally Omar the car guy was located, hanging out with the glass-bottom boat guy. (His name was really Omar.) He had no idea I was coming or that I expected a vehicle. He said he would get me a manual transmission car with A/C. I said no, must be automatic. All he had was a Geo Trakker 4x4 with no A/C, but it was automatic. I said fine. I paid way too much money for it and waited for it to arrive. It was red. And rust. It had no side windows. It had no carpets. The floor had holes in it. The check engine light was on. “Es bueno,” They said. “No es bueno!” “es bueno!” They give me a map, in Spanish. The only landmark was the gas station itself and a shell in the intersection where I needed to turn right on my way to the San Gervasio ruins. Reverse didn’t work. The brakes really didn’t work. Solamente hablo espanol un poquito. And thus, sola, I was off. Oh, and I couldn’t get my cell phone to work, that was a bonus. Alone in Mexico, with purple hair, the worse rental car in the history of the world, and my cell wouldn’t connect to any network. Great.

In this paragon of a rattling, hiccupping vehicle, I set out into the Mexican jungle. First I had to drive through the Mexican city and deal with all the topes (speed bumps) and people on scooters with small children and street signs I couldn’t quite decipher and a confusion over which blue building I was supposed to turn left at?
Apparently Mexican men, workers crammed into the back of pick-up trucks, really like fat women with purple and blond hair and big black hats who are alone in barely functioning vehicles. Or maybe they just want a green card, I don’t know. But I was very popular. Lots of honking, waving, wolf-whistles, being called “chica” and generally hollered at favorably.

I found my way to the giant shell in the middle of the intersection and turned, leaving the city and entering the type of long boring jungle road with occasional slum-houses that Mexico has everywhere. Oh, and lots of vultures, just hanging out on the sides of the road, waiting for my vehicle to crash so they and the jaguars could fight over who eats me. Probably they’d id me by my purple hair streak after the animals were done.
The turn off to San Gervasio didn’t warn of the dangers beyond. Honestly the road was about 10 miles long, the speed limit was about 1 kilometer per hour and it was in terrible shape. I thought my red rusty car-thing would shake to pieces on it. At the end, I parked against a tree (oops—more on that later) and went in. It cost a whopping $8 American to enter.

I hired a little Mexican man, a Maya, for $18 American, to be my guide. His name was Ruben (like the sandwich, like my evil mailman at home). He was from the Uxmal area originally but his grandfather the shaman told him he had to “go east” and so he ended up in Cozumel in 1956 and had been working at this site ever since. San Gervasio is the modern Spanish name for this site, a small sacred complex devoted to the fertility goddess Ix Chel. I guess it isn’t very popular; no one else was there. Ruben and I walked around for two hours, talking. His stories were a confusing mix of Christianity, New Age, and ancient paganism. Some of what he said was wrong but I wasn’t going to argue with an old native man who claims a baktun is 2000 years long (it’s 396, approximately). Of course Mexican-style Catholicism is basically a mix of the old religion and Jesus-worship in a way that’s much more pleasing than how American Catholics worship. (I know because I used to be one, at least on the surface. Scratch me and you’d find a pagan, always.)

Ruben showed me a place where 2 bodies had been excavated. He said they were priests who didn’t quite live to be initiated fully and they had been carbon-dated to 10,000 BC. He scoffed at all of the plaques erected by the government and said they were all wrong and laughed at me for taking pictures of them. The internet says that it’s a late Classical site, erected probably around 1,000 AD so Ruben’s dating was only about 11,000 years off. He said the site was devoted to the study of the sun, moon, and “eastern star” (Venus, I presume). The arch is at the exact center of the island (not according to any maps, but…) and is perfectly aligned to the cardinal directions and at noon on the five equinoxes (I know, there are only 2 per year) the sun is right overhead. There is another name for this, not equinox, but I can’t remember it, and it only happens at certain places on the earth, and it might be ecliptic or solar zenith, but that doesn’t seem to be it either.

As we were walking toward the arch, Ruben mentioned that there are ocelots there. I’d been disappointed at the lack of iguanas (one big male and maybe a dozen females, the amount that should have been on a single building there) so I was excited to maybe see an ocelot. Ruben misunderstood my agitation and said “now you are afraid of the tigers, huh?” and I said, “No, I want to see one!” Although I was confused if there were ocelots there (small wild cats, spotted) or jaguars (much larger cats, sometimes called tigers). Ruben said that many hurricanes had hit the site and many of the animals were killed. They were expecting a big population explosion of iguanas in the spring.

A dry cenote he showed me was next to a dry pond and he said a hurricane in 1988 drove the water underground and that when he saw both were empty he cried because it was fulfilling some ancient prophecy he knew of. The water is 4-6 feet underground now, and the government archeologists have no interest in excavating to get it back to the surface. Ruben also said the round cenotes were all dug by Spaniards and that people were sacrificed into ponds, and sacrifice was always voluntary. (text continues under the pics)

I made an offering a spring water at the altar to Ix Chel (he said I did it very nicely, and faced the proper way) asking for creativity, although the original request there was for pregnancy, 19 of them per woman if the internet is to be believed.
One of the buildings with red handprints, the one with the male iguana in the niche, he said was a sweat lodge (temazcal, although I couldn’t remember the Aztec word right then) for women who wanted to get pregnant, and that babies conceived after the mothers went to this sweat lodge could be priests. And the handprints were made by the priests themselves as they were initiated from age 2 to age 30 (or maybe 32, 30 years of training?) and then every 30 years after that until they died at age 90. (text continues under the pics)

He had joked when I hired him that his fee was $18 and double if I didn’t like it. As we walked back to his station, he said, “I hope you didn’t like it,” and I said that I did, but I paid him $25.
Forsaking all logic and reason, I decided to drive around the perimeter of the island, alone in the rental car from hell with no phone. That was when I found out about the reverse gear, or lack thereof, since I had parked with the car’s nose against a tree. Slamming the gear shift violently from drive to reverse caused it to kind of lurch backward until I could get around the tree, drive back down that hideous road, and then for reasons unknown to me, turn left to drive around the loop rather than right and back into the town. (more text under the pics...)

Lots of vultures. Men in trucks yelling at me. The loop road was under construction so lots of shunting between the small beach-loop road and the bigger real road. I was almost back to the side where the Carnival ship was docked when my map flew out the lack of windows. Now the Carnival Liberty is a pretty big boat, and it was docked right against the land (not on top of it, like the poor Concordia last winter) so I figured if I could see it, I could find it, and thus the gas station where I had to return my vehicle.

I was watching the kilometer signs go down in number, trying to convert to miles and thus time in my head, when a giant alebrije flashed by on my right. I collect small alebrijes (Mexican wooden, painted folk art from the Oaxaca area) but never had I seen one 20 feet high. I pulled into the exit road of the place since the entrance had already passed me and damn if I didn’t go nose against the wall and no reverse on the damn gear shift. And two guards with guns at the store staring at me as I slammed the car in and out of drive until I could inch around and park near the giant blue animal and take some photos and then zoom back up the exit and be on my merry way. I figure they probably were selling awesome alebrijes in the store but any store that has armed security I probably can’t afford right?
I found the ship, found the gas station, and put $10 worth of gas in the car. Then it wouldn’t start. I thought I’d have to abandon it at the pump but then I got it going. I returned it and started back to the ship. The glass-bottom boat guy stopped me. “Did you just drive around the island and come back?” He was indignant. I showed him my San Gervasio wristband but he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted me in that glass bottom boat. I explained that my husband was in the sick bay with pneumonia and I was a bad enough wife for abandoning him so I could trek around Mexico alone with purple hair and a car from hell and probably men who wanted to harvest my organs in a hotel bathtub but Glass Bottom Boat man didn’t care. I needed to be in that boat. I did not go into the boat.
I walked back through the shopping village, got a couple of little alebrijes for my collection and a few other items, back onto the boat, and bye-bye Mexico until who knows when. At least I made it there in 2012 right? (more text below pics)

My hubby was just finishing his room service lunch. He was only slightly better according to the medics, so with great sadness I made my way up one floor to the excursions desk and handed in our Xunatunich tickets for full credit. There was no way he could go and I felt guilty enough for my Mexican morning alone.
Our bag was delivered around 4:30. It was almost anti-climatic at that point, even though I was very happy to have my snorkel.
When we met up with our friends for dinner, we found out that our waiters had been very concerned by our absence at formal night, especially since we’d been asking the night before if that was lobster night. I guess one of the waiters had seen me around the sick bay and thought I was sick. Since my friend is a nurse she knew that Will had been really sick but she didn’t know it was pneumonia until they saw us again. They had gone to Coba and climbed the pyramid there and had an awesome time. Everyone was glad to have us back. Everyone but me ordered cheesecake for dessert. Apparently it was the world’s worse cheesecake (exepct possibly the cheesecake at Ponderosa many years ago) and when they complained, the waiter (who looked a lot like Karl Pilkington from the Idiot Abroad series on Science Channel) said, “I never recommend the cheesecake.” Which we learned was his code for “that sucks, don’t order it.” So they KNOW the cheesecake is bad but they keep making it the same way? After dinner we walked upstairs to the steakhouse. Nothing on the menu was worth the extra $35 to me but my husband and our friends really wanted to try it, so they made reservations for the next night.
Below are the pictures that aren't mentioned in the narrative but you may enjoy looking at them. No more text after that.

Cruise 2012: in which pneumonia strikes

2012-10-21T15:18:00.000-04:00

After not sleeping well again, I was up very early on Sunday 10/21/21. We both coughed all night. I went down to the medic and explained about the lost bag (which really did contain a full, brand-new sealed bottle of Nyquil) and my yearly chronic cough (which I haven’t had in years, this cough was acute) and got a small bottle of cough syrup free. I went upstairs and dosed Will with it. It was green and horrible. I wanted him to go to the medic for real but he said he was afraid they’d put him off the boat for having “flu-like symptoms” and refused to go.

I gathered my lost luggage paperwork and headed to the Guest Services help desk and spent a lovely hour there winning friends and influencing people. Oh that’s right, that was Toad Purse making friends, not me. It turned out that our Carnival Cruise protection plan actually covered the airline losing the luggage. If the luggage wasn’t located in a timely manner, or if I needed to purchase replacement items before it was found, Carnival would pay me back. Even if I had to buy $100 more worth of new snorkel equipment. They gave me two toiletries kits (just to add to my gallon of existing stuff) and a voucher for free cleaning because somehow I packed only shirts in my carry-on and all my pants in the duffel bag. I had the cargo pants I wore on the plane, and another pair of capris, and some spandex bike shorts. That was it.
We had arranged to meet our friends for lunch. Will could barely walk or breathe. I asked if he wanted to go to the medic and he said no. We headed the length of the ship to the back, found our friends, picked up plates for the buffet--and Will said, “I need the doctor.” Put down the plates, walk back to the front of the boat and down from level 9 to 0 and the doctor’s closed until 3. My poor husband was doubled over half dead. I found a crew member and told him it was a real emergency, that Will couldn’t breathe, and he called someone and the medical people arrived and swarmed him. They had him in their little sick-bay bed almost immediately, oxygen tubes up his nose, IV in his arm, then a mask over his face to administer medicine. His oxygen saturation level was only 86 (should be 98 or 99 percent).
I stayed for a while but I was useless and in the way, and the nurses said he’d be there until at least 3 p.m., so I left to go to the 24 hour pizzeria and see if I could find our friends (I couldn’t, and I couldn’t remember their room number to call them). I came back at 3 to see if he was ready to go. He wasn’t. I thought we’d make it to formal night and he’d get his lobster. We didn’t. He wasn’t allowed to walk. He wasn’t allowed on shore the next day. They had to call for a wheelchair. They called at 5 and it didn’t come until 5:45 and our dinner seating was at 6 so there was no way we could make the formal night since we needed to shower (I’d gone in the salt water pool early in the morning and my hair was crusty, for one thing).
Will had multiple breathing treatments, antibiotics through the IV, pure oxygen up his nose, and his level was only in the low 90s. The nurse said that if he’d gone into an emergency room in the U.S. with his symptoms, he would have been admitted. They said he could go to the hospital in Mexico the next day but obviously we didn’t want that, and they also thought he’d probably get better care staying on the ship. (My friend, who is a triage nurse at an ER, said that the prices on the ship were really very cheap and it would be cheaper to get a physical there than in the U.S. without insurance!) He had two chest x-rays on their crappy little machine and he had pneumonia in one lung. The bill was $800, charged to our on-board account (also known as our Discover card). The nurse pronounced him “a very sick man” and made me feel slightly guilty for not staying at his side all day.
In lieu of formal night’s lobster and steak, my husband had a sandwich from room service and I had more pizza. When I came back he complained that his room service sandwich had been too small and I walked back up to deck 9 to get him another one from the deli; it was a bigger, better sandwich with more meat, he said.
I was still angry over the loss of our bag. I found a flyer that said if you applied for a Carnival Fun Points credit card you’d get a free backpack. I filled out the app and climbed up to deck 5 (we were on 2) and got 2 free backpacks so I’d have a small bag when I went ashore for cameras, water, etc., since my tote bag was MIA inside the duffel. I have no idea if we got the credit card or not and honestly I don’t care, I only wanted the backpacks. They also gave me 2 lanyards for our Carnival IDs and punched mine so I could use the lanyard.
I found the bakery and bought a giant piece of chocolate cake for $2. It did not make me feel better.
The medics had already said the only way Will was going ashore in Cozumel was en route to the hospital. I was worried about our excursion to Xunatunich the next day in Belize; it was a long bus ride and then hours of walking around Mayan ruins and climbing the pyramid. I didn’t want to go alone. (Our friends went to Altun Ha, which we already visited on a previous trip in 2003. Or maybe they went cave tubing. Either way, not with us.) I was worried if Will’s breathing got bad he’d end up in a Belize hospital, and who wants to be in a hospital in a country with only 3 stop lights. In the WHOLE COUNTRY. I can’t imagine what their jaguar-to-stop-light ratio is but I bet it’s very high.
I stopped by the excursions desk and noted that there were no refunds within 24 hours of an excursion if cancelled and only 25% refund if cancelled with more than a day’s notice. I showed them the $800 bill saying PNEUMONIA and they agreed to cancel Xunatunich for a full refund if necessary. So no Mayan pyramid in Belize for me this trip. :(
I stopped at the Guest Services desk to check on the bag. They said it was sitting in DC, having never made the plane. I was somehow completely unsurprised by that. But it was going to be sent to Cozumel, and someone from Carnival would pick it up and transport it to our room as soon as we arrived in Cozumel at 7 a.m. the next morning.

Cruise 2012: in which much goes awry

2012-10-20T10:34:00.000-04:00

The first of several entries detailing my recent cruise to the Caribbean. There are other pictures, featuring my giant stuffed traveling toad, on my Toad Purse Facebook page.

We did what we were supposed to do. None of it was our fault. Really. I never went to sleep on Friday night. I don’t think Will slept much either. So we were up by 2:45 a.m. and left by 3:30 a.m. for a 5:50 a.m. flight. We were at Bradley in plenty of time. Checked the big bag (remember that sad statement later) and got on the plane with the carry-on bags. See? Everything in its place.
Or not.

toiletries interlude: When we went through security in Bradley, I got stopped. They didn’t put me in the bomb box this time like they did in North Carolina a few years ago, but I got pulled aside and my bag searched. Why? I did an unforgivable sin. I packed my toiletries in a GALLON ziplock instead of a QUART. They decided that since it was toiletries for two, the gallon bag was okay just this once. I did not point out that a gallon contains 4 quarts not 2. But I got lectured by some 85-IQ guy in a fake cop suit. “THIS is a quart bag. THIS is your bag. THIS is a GALLON.” Well jeez I’m sorry okay, clearly I’ve totally ruined the airport for the day and it better shut down. I got off with just a warning, this time.

The captain comes on. Says that through a snafu of some sort (not his fault, either), we are on the wrong plane. At the wrong gate. The plane in which we are all ensconced is actually going to Newark instead of Washington DC. And it needs maintenance. Apparently it needs maintenance so badly that it can’t possibly go the couple of extra hundred miles to DC instead of Newark. So “they” (presumably the same “they” that put us on the wrong plane) won’t let us stay on this plane. Possession is NOT nine tenths of the law with planes, I guess.
We all get off the plane, collect our carry-ons from under the seat and the overhead compartments where nothing shifted because the plane never moved. We walk down the stairs, across the runway, up the stairs, across the concourse to another gate, outside, down the stairs, across the runway, up some more stairs (tiny planes didn’t fit the jetway) and get on the IDENTICAL plane. Meanwhile our baggage is doing the same, invisibly.
We’re on another plane, supposedly the proper plane, waiting again. Wondering why it was okay for the previous plane to fly to Newark to get serviced but another couple hundred miles to DC would have caused it to fall apart in midair or something. And what idiot flies from Hartford to Newark anyway?
And now this plane is out of gas. I can’t make this stuff up. We have to wait for the gas truck to come up and fill up the plane. Obviously this makes us very, very late. We’re in the air still at the time we’re supposed to board our next plane to Miami. Naturally we are very concerned about making that flight. We’re meeting a cruise ship, not merely checking into a hotel, so time really matters. And our friends were picking us up at MIA at 11 a.m. in their rental car so we could all have lunch somewhere fun before hitting the cruise ship at 1:30. Well, not HITTING it, that would be bad. Getting there.
The flight attendants assure us that they will hold the connection planes and if not we’ll AUTOMATICALLY be booked onto the next plane going to our destination and our bags will AUTOMATICALLY follow. Because clearly our one hour layover has been completely eaten by the whole wrong plane no gas debacle.
They announce our connecting gate of D4 at Dulles. They announce our arrival gate of C18. We land. C18 is right near D4. Our plane is still at D4. And there’s a random plane at C18. That plane is injured in some way and can’t leave. Or maybe it’s in a snit, it’s an emo plane. I don’t know.
Our plane is going on a Sunday drive (although it’s Saturday) cruising at low speed around the Dulles runways waiting for a gate to open. We keep checking out D4. Plane to Miami is still there. The flight attendant tells us to tell the gate attendant as soon as we exit this plane to call D4 and hold the plane while we run. Gate C21 opens, even closer to D4.
The attendant at C21 is a major bitch. She doesn’t want to call D4. We beg. She is in a snit, probably related to the snit of the plane still crouched at our real gate of C18. She calls. We run. We are both sick, coughing and my lungs are falling out but we run and get to gate D4 and there’s our plane and the f*king attendant there won’t let us on the plane.
“We called ahead! We RAN.” We’re fat and sick. Give us a break. She was adamant. “We don’t hold flights.” “We called! We ran!” Nope. TFB, basically, go back to customer service at gate C19 and complain.

sick interlude: Tuesday night we had dinner with my mom. She works at an elementary school as a recess and lunch lady. She is always bringing home exotic kid diseases. She was coughing that night. Wednesday I woke up coughing and with no voice, and Friday I skipped the gym because I was still coughing, and of course Will started coughing too. I called my mom before we left and said she made us both sick right before our vacation and she denied it.

At this point my lungs started to bubble and burble, this means bronchitis. I could barely walk. No more running in my future. Will went ahead to get into line and get our AUTOMATIC new flight to Miami. Our whole entire plane was in line already. Luckily it was a small plane with few people! I called Expedia on my cell phone (I bought travel insurance). Expedia called United. They were on hold with United, I was on hold with Expedia and waiting in line at United. This is efficiency at its best, folks. Finally they arranged for us to take a taxi to Reagan International Airport 45 minutes away and switch from United to American and get to Miami at 1:40 which seemed like plenty of time to make the cruise ship which leaves at 5:00 right. Because there were no more flights on any carrier to Miami from DC that would get there in time to make the cruise ship. When we get our turn at the United CSR they give us a voucher for $70 for the cab fare to Reagan in Virginia and tell us to run and that we probably still won’t make it. “What about our checked bag?” “It probably made the flight to Miami, it will be waiting for you there at the United unclaimed baggage.” Now, remember that we got off the previous flight and RAN and didn’t make it, how the heck did our luggage make it? But they said it did so we had to believe them.
I text my friends that we aren’t going to be lunching with them or need a ride and to go to the ship without us. Dulles offers no golf carts. We have to run again, the length of the airport, not even any people-moving sidewalks. We have to find a specific brand of cab that will take our voucher. We find one. My husband offers the guy $40 extra in cash to get us there before 10 for our 11 a.m. flight (it’s 9:30). Hey, it works in the movies. The cab driver programs his GPS. That’s a little worrying but I try not to freak. He takes off sedately. The highway is uncrowded. He is going fifty in a fifty-five zone. I call Carnival and explain our predicament, and tell them that there are still about a dozen people from Hartford stuck at Dulles and no clue how they are going to make the ship. The cab driver, ignoring the cash Will’s waving, continues to poke along. I ask the Carnival lady, “What happens if we miss this flight?” because just then we hit a 2 mile traffic jam leading to exit 75 which is the one for the airport and now it’s 10 a.m. and we’re dead stopped. The Carnival lady says we need to “make our way to Cozumel” (the first port of call, on Monday) and meet the ship there. This sounds expensive. The next flight to Miami from anywhere in Washington DC leaves at 3:45 and we’ll need to be on that to collect our bag, which is waiting for us in Miami remember, so we can’t even fly right to Cancun from DC if we miss this flight. Which it looks like we are going to do. Because of this stupid cab driver who wouldn’t take a bribe and now we’re stuck in traffic anyway and it’s 10:00 a.m. and we need to be in line for the plane already and we have to go through security and get our boarding passes before we can get on the plane. So we are losing our minds. And coughing, don’t forget coughing.
We arrive at the airport at 10:15 and the driver, realizing finally that he’s a jerk, doesn’t take the $40 but he does make us come back into the cab and sign a bunch of paperwork after we've already collected our reduced luggage and are walking away. We try to do curbside check-in but we can’t because we only have vouchers, not boarding passes. We go into the e-ticket line (because that’s what the CSR at the other airport said we had) but we couldn’t get the machine to work with any numbers on our paperwork. The crabby lady there said we had to wait in the long line for unimportant peons. I’m almost crying and my lungs are burbling away. We’re in the long line. The curbside check in guy comes in with someone’s bags and sees us in line and gets mad. He says “I shouldn’t get involved, but you shouldn’t be in this line! You’re going to miss your flight. You should be over there!” He points to the e-ticket area. We tell him that dragon-bitch sent us away. Dragon bitch is glaring at us. The curbside guy pulls us out of line and past dragon bitch to some nice guy named Mike who takes care of us instantly and says the security line is short and we’ll make it but we have to get seat assignments at the gate.
And then I remember the stupid gallon bag and this is DC and 9/11 and all that and I want to kick myself in the head. I resolve to just abandon the toiletries if they give me a problem about my big bag. They don’t even notice the gallon bag, thank all the gods.
We run again. I’m wheezing and coughing. We get to the gate. The flight is boarding. I run to the desk and say “we have no seat assignments” and the woman, bless her lovely heart, hands us our tickets all printed out and waiting. We get on the plane! We make the ship! All is well! Well, no. Remember, way back at 5 a.m. in Bradley, 6 hours ago, when we checked our duffle bag? Yeah, that duffle bag. The one checked through on United to Miami that was going to waiting for us at United’s unclaimed baggage area when we got there at 1:40.
We get to Miami International Airport. We go to the baggage claim area for American and claim our carry-ons that got checked through. Then I go to the Carnival desk and ask for help and in exchange I buy 2 tickets on the Carnival transport bus since our friends are already on the ship, their rental car long turned in. The Carnival lady calls United. They have no record of the bag. They say that because we got moved to American, they have the bag. She calls American. They say that it’s a United claim tag and United has to help us and they have no record of the bag. I leave my husband at the Carnival desk with the bags we have and trudge about a mile to the United desk to find our other bag. I was there a very long time. They had no record of anything. By the time I was done there I wasn’t sure that I existed or that I had flown to Miami at all that day.
Even though I was freaking, I let a guy go ahead of me because he was crying. They (the same They that can’t figure out what plane goes where, I’m guessing) had failed to check his luggage through to Bonaire and he needed to claim it and get back through security to his Bonaire flight and the baggage wasn’t on the carousel and he only had 48 minutes and basically they told him “we’ll find it and send it to Bonaire on the next flight” and he said “that’s in 3 days, the flight I’m leaving on!” and it was his scuba equipment (my friend goes diving there, I guess it’s gorgeous) and he ran to catch the Bonaire flight with no luggage at all and I felt terrible for him. Also in line were a pair of off-duty cops who said that the airline lost “seven bags of confidential police material” whatever that means and they were pretty pissed off too. And they probably had guns. I kept my distance. Apparently there was a cop and fireman convention in town.
When it was finally my turn (I wasn’t freaking out yet, we had 2 hours to get to the ship, it was a half hour away and we had a ride arranged on the bus) the guy was super nice and helpful but still could give me no information about my mysterious invisible missing bag. He made copies of my documents and filled out the form saying my black duffel bag, style 25 (oh yeah, this bag has been lost by airlines before), with my snorkeling gear and half our clothes and more toiletries and my tote bag and 2 umbrellas and a notebook and extra batteries and basically all kinds of stuff I packed because we NEED it, is missing.

I had to write down every port of call and the ship’s shore times (provided thanks to the kind Carnival lady who called both airlines for me) so the bag might be able to catch up on one of them. The guy said that he was sure the bag made it onto the DC to Miami flight and they’d find it and send it to the cruise ship before it left the Port of Miami. Even though we ran and didn’t make the flight, our bag was evidently magical and did. We gave up on our poor missing duffel bag and got on the last bus to the cruise ship with two ladies.
As we were (running of course) going through the port doing the check-in procedure, they asked us if we had any “flu like symptoms” and we lied without blinking an eye, holding in our coughs. We’re fine, keep moving, nothing to see here.
Will was feeling worse and worse. I’d left a lung behind in DC. We had dinner with our friends and went to sleep after a long and stressful day, both feeling sick and with no sleep the night before. That was Day 0. Oh, and our bag didn’t arrive.

how to live multidimensionally through sacred geometry

2012-08-26T14:41:00.000-04:00

Here is a reprint of a new Sacred Geometry article on my website.

This is a version of the text of my lecture at the Astrological Society New Age Fair on 19 August, 2012, minus the meditation.

All the graphics are opriginally from the two volumes of the Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life by Drunvalo Melchizedek, although I have altered them in many cases (I created the looping gif, and the multicolored Flower of Life sphere, and colored the merkaba positions).

Sacred Geometry is not what you learned sophomore year of high school. This is something much different and much more fun. Sacred Geometry is the organizational basis of all that exists, has existed and will exist. Found within these patterns are both two and three dimensional shapes which carry archetypal memories.

This is a very brief introduction to what Sacred Geometry is and how you can use these concepts to expand your consciousness. The basic form of sacred geometry is called the Flower of Life. It is a beautiful interlocking series of circles. Each circle’s circumference crosses other circles’ center points.
You can draw the Flower of Life yourself, using a high quality compass. The basic steps look like this, with the finished product (usually illustrated with a double circle as a frame) in the lower right.

The eye-shaped space in between each set of circles has its own meaning. One circle represents universal consciousness, the gold/solar source, and unchanging archetypes linked with, in the other circle, empirical consciousness, the silver/lunar reflection, and the changing realm of the senses, through the eye-shaped center that encompasses balanced human consciousness.

The curved lines of the Flower of Life promote feminine, right-brained thinking. When you apply the straight lines of Metatron’s Cube, you add in the left-brained, masculine thinking. So if you need to concentrate more on one type of thinking or the other, or you feel unbalanced, you can meditate on either the curved shape, the straight line shape, or the combination.

I call this Flower of LIfe figure “the mother of sacred geometry” because every important shape can be found within it, including the five Platonic Solids, named for the great Greek philosopher Plato. It is an ancient symbol which has been found all over the ancient world.

The five Platonic Solids are the tetrahedron, the cube (hexahedron), the octahedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron. If you have ever been involved with role-playing games, these will be familiar to you, as the shapes of the dice.

To find the 5 shapes within the Flower of life, you extract a shape called Metatron’s Cube. You select these 13 circles from the Flower of Life shape—this is called the Fruit of Life—and then join all the centers with 78 straight lines to make Metatron’s Cube. This ancient shape, named for an angel, has been used to ward off evil and can be carried as a talisman.

From within Metatron’s cube, you can find the five Platonic Solids:

Tetrahedron

Cube (hexahedron)

Octahedron

Dodecahedron

Icosahedron

The 5 Platonic solids are ideal, primal models of crystal patterns that occur throughout the world of minerals in countless variations. These are the only five regular polyhedra, that is, the only five solids made from the same equilateral, equiangular polygons. They have the same face shape on every side and only 1 angle per edge. All other shapes have different faces and/or angles. Also, if you spin any of these 5 shapes around its center point, its corners will describe a perfect sphere. The Platonic Solids occur in the crystal world. Working with them connects us to nature and the higher realms of the cosmos, especially those attributes associated closely with each polyhedron.

Each of these shapes has metaphysical properties, making them valuable tools for meditation and rituals.

The Tetrahedron is the four-sided (pyramid.( Each side is a triangle. (The pyramids of Egypt, Central America & elsewhere are five sided pyramids--four sloping triangular sides and a flat square/rectangular base.) It represents the powers of manifestation & creation, the element of Fire, the color Red and the Solar Plexus (third) chakra. Can help you burn through problems. It is masculine.
The Cube (Hexahedron) is the six-sided box. Each side is a square. It grounds the creation of the Tetrahedron into the physical realm. It represents the element of Earth, the color Green and the Base (first) chakra. Use for grounding. It is masculine.
The Octahedron is the eight-sided diamond. Each side is a triangle. It represents love, the heart and compassion, integration, the 8-fold path to Enlightenment, the element of Air, the color yellow and the Heart (4th) chakra. It can help you move forward. It represents your inner child.
The Dodecahedron is the twelve-sided ball with the pentagon faces. It represents the 12 faces of the God/dess within, Ascension, Mystery school teachings, the color Gold, the element Ether/Spirit and the higher chakras (8-12 and up). It connects you to the universal life force. It is female.
The Icosahedron is the twenty-sided ball with the triangular faces. It represents prayer, transformation, the color blue, the Naval (2nd) chakra and the element Water. It can help you sustain focus and momentum. It is female.

please vote for my other blog!

2012-02-09T16:43:00.001-05:00

Please vote for my Alzheimer's Blog so I can be a finalist! Simple like the page below (the link) on Facebook or +1 on google. Or you can share on Blogger or other popular formats.

Congratulations from SeniorHomes.com!
Alzheimer's Dad has been nominated to the SeniorHomes.com Best of the Web 2012 in the Best Senior Living Blogs by Individuals category. The Best of the Web 2012 contest highlights the best senior living and caregiving websites, blogs, and resources on the web for consumers and senior living professionals. Your nominee page has been published at http://www.seniorhomes.com/d/alzheimers-dad.

The top nominee sites by popular vote will proceed to the round of finalists and will be rated by our panel of expert judges. Final rankings will be decided by the expert panel ratings. In order to become a finalist, we encourage you to promote your website and get the vote out. Spread the word about your nomination by sharing your nominee page with your clients, customers, friends, and fans and asking for their votes. Finalists are determined by popular vote (total Facebook likes and Google +1s), so each person can vote for you twice! Voting ends on March 2, 2012.

Avoiding the holidays (rant)

2011-12-19T15:15:00.000-05:00

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!

2011-11-22T13:59:00.001-05:00

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

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

2011-11-11T10:08:00.001-05:00

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

2011-10-28T10:53:00.002-04:00

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

2011-10-28T10:33:00.000-04:00

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

2011-09-29T14:02:00.000-04:00

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

2011-05-19T15:05:00.000-04:00

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

2011-02-13T15:54:00.002-05:00

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.

Jaguar Nights 2011 is available

2010-09-02T13:50:00.000-04:00

Jaguar Nights 2011 is now available through me (see sidebar button) or through Amazon. It is no longer spiral bound, so I am offering a free personalized bookmark to everyone who buys from me directly or through Amazon.
The bookmark will have the date of your choice in the Long Count in Mayan notation.
If you order directly from me, just tell me what date you want. If you order from Amazon, forward the email that says the book has shipped to transformations (at) obsidian butterfly (dot) com with your address and the desired date.
I hope that you enjoy Jaguar Nights 2011 and that it expands your knowledge and understanding of the Mayan and Aztec calendars.

Jaguar Nights 2011 and 2012

2010-08-04T15:09:00.001-04:00

I know I faked you all out saying Jaguar Nights 2010 was coming, and it never did. The finances just weren't (aren't) there for me to pay a huge upfront printing cost. Amazon has now implemented print on demand (POD) service for little authors like me and I'm about to take full advantage of it. I'm simultaneously working on Jaguar Nights 2011, Jaguar Nights 2012 and also the original Jaguar Nights: Journey through the Tzolkin that started it all. I hope to have them on Amazon next month, starting with 2011.
Unfortunately I will lose my spiral binding. To make up for that, if you purchase the book directly from me, I will include a free bookmark with your birthday in Mayan notation (or any other date you choose). If you purchase from Amazon, simply forward the email that says the book shipped and I will send you the bookmark separately.
I am hoping that I will be able to lower the price as well, since I don't have to front the printing anymore. I have to look more closely at the pay structure for POD, as I've never worked that way before. I also won't have to pay to ship my books to Amazon so that will help defray costs as well.
Sample composite day from the calendars:

I'm not set up for pre-orders yet as I haven't determined the price. You can email me (transformations at obsidianbutterfly.com) and ask to be notified when the books go on sale, or just watch this or my Jaguar Nights blogs' sidebars for purchase links.

An ending...

2010-07-02T09:43:00.000-04:00

When we knew Nutter was coming to the end of his long dying (almost 2 years ago, how time flies), we did not allow him to go gracefully, as we should have. We fought for him, to keep him comfortable, and most of all to keep him WITH us, for just a little while longer. Is there another shot? A pill? A supplement? To ease his pain, help him eat, so he won't have to go?
All was in vain, of course, and in the end the only recourse was the needle and the tearful goodbye.
And here I am again, fighting against saying goodbye. Not to a beloved pet, but to something that's been with me almost as long: my Pathfinder. I got it Memorial Day weekend of 1994 with 17 miles on the odometer. Almost 150,000 miles later, the transmission is shot and it's time to let my beloved vehicle go. I've dealt with only having access to a few radio stations because there's no external antenna anymore. Having no horn (watch for finger). Only having 1 speaker, all the way in the back, except sometimes when I hit just the right bump and the other back speaker pops on for a little while. The remotes, long ago broken. No cup holders (in 1994, people weren't coffee addicts yet). The body rot that twice a year I carefully sand and paint with Rustoleum. None of those things are deal-breakers for me. But 3 days ago it wouldn't shift properly. I filled it with gas, that didn't help, 2 days ago brought it for an oil change and they said the transmission is shot. Three to seven thousand to fix it, and it's not worth it. The guy said I can drive it maybe another 1,000 miles before it won't shift at all.
The sadness in my heart really is equal to losing Nutter. I had them both 16 years.
And I've lost so much in the last 5 years. All of my birds (Gwennie, Goober, Prism, Zeebo, Onnie, Hogan & Lance). Two kitties (Zen & Nutter). Numerous jobs. My dad. And now my car.
Next week is my Tzolkin return, the first time in my life that my Gregorian birthday and my Mayan birthday line up since I was born. (Happens again in 40 or so years.) Can I think of this as a rebirth, a fresh start? New kitties, new car, maybe soon a new job? (no, nothing on the horizon)
12.19.17.8.17 10 Tzec 11 Caban

Ancient pyramid tomb discovered in Mexico

2010-05-18T15:25:00.001-04:00

I found a couple of articles on this, both of which essentially say the same thing.
Archeologists located a tomb inside a Zoque (not Mayan) pyramid in Chiapa de Corzo, in southern Chiapas (Mexico--see map, below). They were looking at the layers of the pyramids (new pyramids in Mesoamerica were built on top of and around old pyramids) and inside found the tombs, which once had wooden roofs and posts. In one tomb was "a man aged around 50, who was buried with jade collars, pyrite and obsidian artifacts and ceramic vessels" and was probably a ruler or nobleman of the town. "The body of a 1-year-old child was laid carefully over the man's body inside the tomb, while that of a 20-year-old male was tossed into the chamber with less care, perhaps sacrificed at the time of the burial. The older man('s) ... face was covered with what may have been a funeral mask with obsidian eyes. Nearby, the tomb of a woman, also about 50, contained similar ornaments." The burials are approximately 2,700 years old.
Most interesting, the artifacts had Olmec influences. But because the site is not Mayan, it doesn't confirm any link between the Maya and the Olmecs.

(skeleton image source, map source = Google earth)

new book: how Mesoamerican Calendrics reveal patterns of destiny

2010-03-01T23:24:00.000-05:00

A former teacher of mine has just finished a massive book on the Mesoamerican calendar system. Based on the correspondence we've had, and the amazing training I got from her, this book has got to be awesome.

I will be picking up a copy soon, I hope you do too!

Death of a Furby

2010-02-17T19:39:00.000-05:00

Just came home from dinner. Opened the back door to a horrible noise, a combination of grinding plastic gears and white noise. My immediate thought was that the airhose came unconnected from the pump on the aquarium, or that the filter stopped sucking water and was grinding dry--the noise was coming from that area.   We checked, and the tank was fine. Then we saw, on the floor, Grey Furby, and he was making his death rattle.
Does Grey Furby belong on the living room floor? No, Grey Furby lives atop a tall bookcase with Angel Furby and Patches Furby and the baby Furbies.
We're in the process of moving our sleeping space from the back bedroom to the front, which we do every few years just for variety.   So everything is a mess, and the Furbies are not safely tucked on top of the bookshelf.
The cats found Grey Furby, who is a similar size to their hedgehog toy, and treated him accordingly.
I imagine poor Grey Furby, who has been in hibernation for a long time, being rudely awoken, thrown from the table onto the floor. He stretches, wakes up, offers to dance and play. Instead he is chewed on, tossed into the air, dragged down the stairs, and basically tortured by furry merciless felines intent on his utter destruction. Perhaps they pass him back and forth. Perhaps they jump on him and bite him, or kick him with their strong hind legs.
Something inside Grey Furby breaks. He is very old, and not used to this sort of treatment.   Instead of talking in his happy high-pitched voice, he begins to die, rattling and grinding and emitting white noise. This noise finally drives away his tormentors, but by then it is too late. Furby is dying.
To add insult to injury, I, who has only ever treated Grey Furby with affection, attacked him with a screwdriver, removing his batteries and putting him to sleep forever.
(picture from BBC.com)
Addendum: as I was finishing this sad eulogy for a Furby, I heard a thud and Sputz proudly carried Angel Furby into the bedroom so I could watch her destruction. Angel Furby and Patches Furby are now hidden.

Platonic Solid	Edges	Corners	Faces	Total	Numerology
Tetrahedron	6	4	4	14	5
Cube	12	8	6	26	8
Octahedron	12	6	8	26	8
Icosahedron	30	12	20	62	8
Dodecahedron	30	20	12	62	8
Star Tetrahedron	12	8	8	n/a	n/a