TEMPLE OF FINGERS & TOES
MOON CYCLE : ONE IMIX
February 9, 1986 to March 10, 1986
ONE
Freshness and openness to experience. Consciousness looking for opportunity. A clear path. The phoenix rising from the ashes. Adventure. Finishing assignments.
IMIX (ee meesh’)
Dragon, alligator, primal trust, source of life, Primordial Mother, physical protection, undivided primal waters, divine nurturance and support.
The whole of the chronological sequence of Moon cycles comprising The Lightning Path is based on the timing of my initial revelation of its existence. That revelation came on March 3,1986 which, according to the Lightning Path, occurred during Moon cycle ONE IMIX. The revelation thus came very close in timing to the Voyager 2 fly-by of Uranus, the planet astrologers commonly relate to all things sudden and transformative!
ONE IMIX (highlighted). First of 260 stages of the Tzolkin Journey.
For several years prior to the sudden appearance of The Lightning Path I had integrated my self-motivated research into an ongoing documentation process I called “lunation journaling." The purpose of this practice was to journal my research findings according to the changing phases of the Moon. I had made myself aware of those phases as a form of spiritual practice begun in 1972. Then, fourteen years later, that practice of inner work contributed to a dramatic shift in my self-awareness.
The Flammarion woodcut
Caption reads: "A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet...."
REVELATION
My attempts, over the winter of 1985-86, to journal the flood of insights encountered in reading Jose' Arguelles' book Earth Ascending, had impelled me to expand my journal to a jumbo-sized sketch book. Now, as I sat alone in my study, on the morning of March 3 and opened the book to a new page, I suddenly became aware of a powerful, and vastly expansive, mystical presence pervading my whole being. I have searched for suitable metaphors to describe that moment and the closest thing I have come to is a scene from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when, at a remote mountain camp built especially for the event, a group of scientists awaits the arrival of extraterrestrial visitors. Sure enough, the moment of direct contact comes with the sudden, spectacular, and overwhelming arrival of a gigantic Mothership! ( I have since encountered an image on the Internet that is even more resonant with my experience. Click here to access it.)
Image from movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind
It is this dramatic arrival of the Mothership that resonates so deeply with what I experienced, alone in my home office early that spring morning. Not only did I feel the overwhelming presence of a beneficent transcendent force but a mysteriously invigorating light suddenly infused my body from head to toe. My whole sense of self was drawn upward into a vastly spacious realm where I saw a delicate scaffolding of light-infused symbols stretching out before me. I immediately recognized these symbols as the hieroglyphs of the Mayan Sacred Calendar (Tzolkin) and I understood that they were now present as a form of spiritual guidance if I was willing to bear them in mind as I continued my lunation attunement journey. All that was required of me to begin to receive that guidance was to pay close attention to the New Moon point of each successive lunation cycle, just as I had done over the prior fourteen years. Now, however, I would have both a number and a hieroglyph from the Tzolkin to inform and inspire me.
Prior mystical experiences with unseen spiritual forces had prepared me to trust this kind of spiritual guidance and no sooner had the whole encounter ended than I began to move ahead, thoroughly flush with inspiration and energy. Mysteriously, my ongoing lunation cycle attunement practice had revealed its embededness in "13:20 time" -- the endlessly repeating cyclic time of the Tzolkin.
My Lunation Journal Entry Begun March 3, 1986
The Beatles song Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds came to mind as I began creating this image but different words to those in the original song came to mind:
Picture yourself in a boat on a time beam
with pulsating people whose lives are Divine.......
Now, with a quarter century of experience of the path revealed to me on that fateful March morning in 1986, it is clear to me that the Mayan Sacred Calendar, in both its traditional use and as it is used on The Lightning Path, maps an archetypal journey of the ascent of human consciousness from the primacy and subjectivity of the mother’s womb (IMIX) to the objectivity and universality of the Sun (AHAU). The Sun is here considered to be an intelligent intermediary between Earth and the Galactic Center (Mayan Hunab Ku). Every New Moon signals entry into a new stage of the journey. Consequently, at the New Moon just one week after my initial “Mothership” encounter in Moon cycle ONE IMIX, I consciously entered Moon cycle TWO IK, the second stage of the Lightning Path journey. It was during this Moon that my resolve to stay with the process really began to be tested.
The First 260 Moons - From my Lightning Path journal (1986 to 2007)
Continued in 2 IK