dragonfly
09-19-2003, 04:27 PM
The day Hurricane Isabel blew through North Carolina, I curled up on the sofa with my dogs while the wind howled outside and listened to Daniel’s Burning Man talk.
It was amazing. "Fucking beautiful," as Daniel would say. It got me thinking about a lot of things. I'd like to share one tangent here.
At one point during the talk, after someone’s amazing off-the-cuff description of the Mayan calendar, an unidentified man speaks. He talks about the importance of the synthesis of Western and non-Western ideas and points to the Zapatistas, who he says do everything by the Mayan calendar.
Though I’ve spent time in Zapatista communities, I did not know this.
That got me thinking about a thread I started here back in February about weird coincidences/concurrences/synchronicities surrounding the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, many of which involved Mayans and Chiapas and Zapatistas. (To read them, go the “Ecology” topic on the board and look at a topic titled “Shuttle Disaster a Message From Gaia?” My Feb. 8 post addresses the Chiapas stuff specifically.)
The week prior to Isabel’s arrival, I had been semi-joking with my husband that I expected Isabel to hit D.C., because it would further those weird coincidences, as another disaster involving a “Columbia.” And then there’s the whole Columbus/Isabella connection – it’s believed by scholars that the likely first likely contact between the Mayans and the West occurred in Columbus’ 1502 voyage between Hispaniola and the Darién peninsula of Panama.
So when I heard the guy on the tape start talking about the Zapatistas and the Mayan calendar, it suddenly occurred to me: The whole Isabel thing WAS weird -- another noospheric event, like the Columbia disaster, or the huge East Coast snowstorm following the February anti-war protests, or the unprecedented sandstorms following the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Consider:
* Isabel became a hurricane on Sept. 7. On Sept. 10, it strengthened and was declared a Category 4 storm. That same day it also shifted course toward the East Coast of the United States.
* On Sept. 10, World Trade Organization talks opened in Cancun. “The convention centre, blocked off by steel barricades and armed vehicles, is at the tip of an inaccessible causeway lined with strip malls, sex clubs and giant five-star faux-Mayan-temple hotels, which tower over the real, ragged descendants of the Maya who sleep on the roadside at night,” Katherine Ainger wrote in the Sept. 15 New Statesman.
* At the talks’ opening, 10,000 Mexican farmers and trade unionists protested trade rules. Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos broadcast a message to protests via a private radio station. “This is a world war of the powerful who want to turn the planet into a private club,” he said. “We are the immense majority. The globalization of those above us is a global machine that feeds off blood.”
* On Sept. 11, Isabel strengthened further, becoming a rare and extremely powerful Category 5 storm, the strongest Atlantic Hurricane in five years. That same day, Lee Kyang Hae, a South Korean farmer and fair-trade activist, ritually stabbed himself to death to protest the WTO talks.
* On Sept. 14, WTO talks broke down when representatives of poor countries walked out after the United States, the European Union and Japan rejected demands for trade policies that address their needs. That same day, news reports projected that Isabel would slam into the East Coast by the end of the week.
* On Sept. 15, the U.S. military began thinking about sending its warships out to sea to avoid the storm. The ships got orders to leave the following day.
* The storm hit land on Sept. 18. It shut down the U.S. government for two days. President Bush moved to Camp David.
* Images of the storm (see http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Storm_pages/isabel2003/sat.html ) look like a conch shell.
* The conch shell is an important symbol in many ancient cultures. According to Hindu mythology, it produced the primordial sound of creation and was one of the five weapons of Vishnu to destroy evil forces. To the Bon, it is an instrument that led to enlightenment. The Aztecs used it to call the rain god Tlaloc. The Maya associated conch shells with the underworld and used conch trumpets during rituals to call ancestors or supernaturals.
* The Mayan observatory at Chichen Itza is called El Caracol – the Conch Shell – for its winding interior staircase. El Caracol’s sky windows still mark precisely the positions of stars and planets.
* In July, the Zapatistas dismantled their Aguascalientes – centers where visitors from civil society interacted with the rebels – and replaced them with new structures called “caracoles” – conch shells. The document announcing the change (available in English at http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/2003/marcos/caracolJULY.html ) was titled “Chiapas: The Thirteenth Stele.” Here is an excerpt from Part Three of that document, titled “The History of the Upholder of the Sky”:
“According to our earliest ones, the sky must be held up so that it does not fall. The sky is not simply firm, every once in a while it becomes weak and faints, and it just lets itself fall like the leaves fall from the trees, and then absolute disasters happen, because evil comes to the milpa and the rain breaks everything and the sun punishes the land and it is war which rules and it is the lie which conquers and it is death which walks and it is sorrow which thinks.
“Our earliest ones said that it happens like this because the gods who made the world, the most first, put so much effort into making the world that, after they finished it, they did not have much strength left for making the sky, the roof of our home, and they just put whatever they had there, and so the sky is placed above the earth just like one of those plastic roofs. Thus the sky is not simply firm, at times it comes loose. And you must know that when this happens, the winds and waters are disrupted, fire grows restless, and the land gets up and walks, unable to find peace.
“That is why those who came before we did said that four gods, painted in different colors, returned to the world. They placed themselves at the four corners of the world in order to grab hold of the sky so that it would not fall and it would stay still and good and even, so sun and moon and stars and dreams could walk without difficulty.
“However, those of the first steps on these lands recount, by times one or more of the bacabes, the upholders of the sky, would start to dream or would be distracted by a cloud, and then he would not hold up his side of the earth's roof tightly, and then the sky the roof of the world, would come loose and would want to fall over the earth, and the sun and the moon would not have an even path and nor would the stars.
“That is how it happened from the beginning, that is why the first gods, those who birthed the world, left one of the upholders of the sky in charge, and he had to stay alert, in order to read the sky and to see when it began coming loose, and then this upholder had to speak to the other upholders in order to awaken them, so they would tighten up their side and put things straight again.
“And this upholder never sleeps, he must always be alert and watchful, in order to awaken the others when evil falls on the earth. And the most ancient of journey and word say that this upholder of the sky carries a caracol [conch] hanging from his chest, and he listens to the sounds and silences of the world with it, and he calls the other upholders with it so that they do not sleep or in order to awaken them.
“And those who were the very first say that this upholder of the sky, so that he would not sleep, came and went inside his own heart, by way of the paths he carried in his chest, and those ancient teachers say that this upholder taught men and women the word and its writing, because they say that while the word walks the world it is possible for evil to be quieted and for the world to be just right, they say.
“That is why the word of the one who does not sleep, of he who is alert to evil and its wicked deeds, does not travel directly from one side to the other, instead he walks towards himself, following the lines of reason, and the knowledgeable ones from before say that the hearts of men and women have the shape of a caracol, and those of good heart and thoughts walk from one side to the other, awakening the gods and men so that they will be alert to whether the world is just right. That is why the one who stays awake when the others are sleeping uses his caracol, and he uses it for many things, but most especially in order to not forget.”
It was amazing. "Fucking beautiful," as Daniel would say. It got me thinking about a lot of things. I'd like to share one tangent here.
At one point during the talk, after someone’s amazing off-the-cuff description of the Mayan calendar, an unidentified man speaks. He talks about the importance of the synthesis of Western and non-Western ideas and points to the Zapatistas, who he says do everything by the Mayan calendar.
Though I’ve spent time in Zapatista communities, I did not know this.
That got me thinking about a thread I started here back in February about weird coincidences/concurrences/synchronicities surrounding the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, many of which involved Mayans and Chiapas and Zapatistas. (To read them, go the “Ecology” topic on the board and look at a topic titled “Shuttle Disaster a Message From Gaia?” My Feb. 8 post addresses the Chiapas stuff specifically.)
The week prior to Isabel’s arrival, I had been semi-joking with my husband that I expected Isabel to hit D.C., because it would further those weird coincidences, as another disaster involving a “Columbia.” And then there’s the whole Columbus/Isabella connection – it’s believed by scholars that the likely first likely contact between the Mayans and the West occurred in Columbus’ 1502 voyage between Hispaniola and the Darién peninsula of Panama.
So when I heard the guy on the tape start talking about the Zapatistas and the Mayan calendar, it suddenly occurred to me: The whole Isabel thing WAS weird -- another noospheric event, like the Columbia disaster, or the huge East Coast snowstorm following the February anti-war protests, or the unprecedented sandstorms following the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Consider:
* Isabel became a hurricane on Sept. 7. On Sept. 10, it strengthened and was declared a Category 4 storm. That same day it also shifted course toward the East Coast of the United States.
* On Sept. 10, World Trade Organization talks opened in Cancun. “The convention centre, blocked off by steel barricades and armed vehicles, is at the tip of an inaccessible causeway lined with strip malls, sex clubs and giant five-star faux-Mayan-temple hotels, which tower over the real, ragged descendants of the Maya who sleep on the roadside at night,” Katherine Ainger wrote in the Sept. 15 New Statesman.
* At the talks’ opening, 10,000 Mexican farmers and trade unionists protested trade rules. Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos broadcast a message to protests via a private radio station. “This is a world war of the powerful who want to turn the planet into a private club,” he said. “We are the immense majority. The globalization of those above us is a global machine that feeds off blood.”
* On Sept. 11, Isabel strengthened further, becoming a rare and extremely powerful Category 5 storm, the strongest Atlantic Hurricane in five years. That same day, Lee Kyang Hae, a South Korean farmer and fair-trade activist, ritually stabbed himself to death to protest the WTO talks.
* On Sept. 14, WTO talks broke down when representatives of poor countries walked out after the United States, the European Union and Japan rejected demands for trade policies that address their needs. That same day, news reports projected that Isabel would slam into the East Coast by the end of the week.
* On Sept. 15, the U.S. military began thinking about sending its warships out to sea to avoid the storm. The ships got orders to leave the following day.
* The storm hit land on Sept. 18. It shut down the U.S. government for two days. President Bush moved to Camp David.
* Images of the storm (see http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Storm_pages/isabel2003/sat.html ) look like a conch shell.
* The conch shell is an important symbol in many ancient cultures. According to Hindu mythology, it produced the primordial sound of creation and was one of the five weapons of Vishnu to destroy evil forces. To the Bon, it is an instrument that led to enlightenment. The Aztecs used it to call the rain god Tlaloc. The Maya associated conch shells with the underworld and used conch trumpets during rituals to call ancestors or supernaturals.
* The Mayan observatory at Chichen Itza is called El Caracol – the Conch Shell – for its winding interior staircase. El Caracol’s sky windows still mark precisely the positions of stars and planets.
* In July, the Zapatistas dismantled their Aguascalientes – centers where visitors from civil society interacted with the rebels – and replaced them with new structures called “caracoles” – conch shells. The document announcing the change (available in English at http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/2003/marcos/caracolJULY.html ) was titled “Chiapas: The Thirteenth Stele.” Here is an excerpt from Part Three of that document, titled “The History of the Upholder of the Sky”:
“According to our earliest ones, the sky must be held up so that it does not fall. The sky is not simply firm, every once in a while it becomes weak and faints, and it just lets itself fall like the leaves fall from the trees, and then absolute disasters happen, because evil comes to the milpa and the rain breaks everything and the sun punishes the land and it is war which rules and it is the lie which conquers and it is death which walks and it is sorrow which thinks.
“Our earliest ones said that it happens like this because the gods who made the world, the most first, put so much effort into making the world that, after they finished it, they did not have much strength left for making the sky, the roof of our home, and they just put whatever they had there, and so the sky is placed above the earth just like one of those plastic roofs. Thus the sky is not simply firm, at times it comes loose. And you must know that when this happens, the winds and waters are disrupted, fire grows restless, and the land gets up and walks, unable to find peace.
“That is why those who came before we did said that four gods, painted in different colors, returned to the world. They placed themselves at the four corners of the world in order to grab hold of the sky so that it would not fall and it would stay still and good and even, so sun and moon and stars and dreams could walk without difficulty.
“However, those of the first steps on these lands recount, by times one or more of the bacabes, the upholders of the sky, would start to dream or would be distracted by a cloud, and then he would not hold up his side of the earth's roof tightly, and then the sky the roof of the world, would come loose and would want to fall over the earth, and the sun and the moon would not have an even path and nor would the stars.
“That is how it happened from the beginning, that is why the first gods, those who birthed the world, left one of the upholders of the sky in charge, and he had to stay alert, in order to read the sky and to see when it began coming loose, and then this upholder had to speak to the other upholders in order to awaken them, so they would tighten up their side and put things straight again.
“And this upholder never sleeps, he must always be alert and watchful, in order to awaken the others when evil falls on the earth. And the most ancient of journey and word say that this upholder of the sky carries a caracol [conch] hanging from his chest, and he listens to the sounds and silences of the world with it, and he calls the other upholders with it so that they do not sleep or in order to awaken them.
“And those who were the very first say that this upholder of the sky, so that he would not sleep, came and went inside his own heart, by way of the paths he carried in his chest, and those ancient teachers say that this upholder taught men and women the word and its writing, because they say that while the word walks the world it is possible for evil to be quieted and for the world to be just right, they say.
“That is why the word of the one who does not sleep, of he who is alert to evil and its wicked deeds, does not travel directly from one side to the other, instead he walks towards himself, following the lines of reason, and the knowledgeable ones from before say that the hearts of men and women have the shape of a caracol, and those of good heart and thoughts walk from one side to the other, awakening the gods and men so that they will be alert to whether the world is just right. That is why the one who stays awake when the others are sleeping uses his caracol, and he uses it for many things, but most especially in order to not forget.”