Spirit Totem for My Birthday

In a recent journey, I was given an image to create as a totem for this emerging cycle in my life (or at least for the next few months of transition from fall into winter).

Sagittarian Vision Mirror Totem

The image shows a Snowy Owl perched atop a blooming Prickly Pear Cactus. Owl is holding a Snake in its beak. Behind Owl, in the night sky can be seen the blue-white star field of the Pleiades. Some of the major stars of the cluster mark the head and the tail of the Rattlesnake (in Owl's mouth). In many Mayan dialects, the word for rattle and Pleiades is the same.

Below the Cactus is a pair of flaming antlers - a shamanic gateway and protective sign. On either side sits a pair of Smoking Mirror hieroglyphs (based upon the Aztec variant of this Meso-American symbol with the vision plume merging from the mouth of the skull). The mirror represents contemplation, the smoking mirror is that of journey and vision quest by the Mirror Lord.

Owl has come to me over the last few months introducing itself as a new companion and power animal to guide and watch over me in this next phase of my life.

Upon receiving this journey image and during creation of the actual digital image, I was struck by the similarities of the central totem (Owl, Snake, Cactus) with that of the Mexican flag (Eagle, Snake, Cactus) - itself originally based upon an Aztec hieroglyphic place sign for their capital city of Tenochtitlan (where Mexico City stands today). Legend has it their leader was informed in a dream by the god of war, Huitzilopochtli, that they were to settle in the place where they would find an eagle on a prickly pear cactus holding a serpent. The place where they saw this sight was quite inhospitable - a swampy area in the center of three lakes - on a small island in the Lake Texcoco. This is where they settled and built the great city of Tenochtitlan with its Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon.

On the nature of perception, illusion and hyper-dimensionality: DMT Art

Roger Essig - "DMT Entity"

Alex Grey - "Light Weaver"

"Most folks experience an overwhelming sense of being in contact with one or more entities while under the influence of DMT - entities which are 'natural', unavoidable real, but startlingly alien. Perhaps not friendly or malicious, seemingly insightful & knowledgeable yet beyond emotion. This aspect of the experience is what takes it beyond simple mental pattern projection upon 'quantum perceptual noise'... It's the utter strangeness, the self-contained self-defining self-evolving properties of the experience that makes the entities accepted as 'real'."

- partial (updated) comment that I posted today on "Singing to the Plants" blog in response to Steve Beyer's posting "Thoughts on DMT Art." Check out the samples of great visionary art and read Steve's full article.

Ritual Posture: Mayan Oracle

Mayan Oracle

9.29.08 - Libra New Moon. On the left we see the oracle holding up her hand (which holds an obsidian crystal mirror used for divination). Above her hand are two Mayan hieroglyphs - the upper one for "smoking mirror" (the obsidian gazing device, also denoting human consciousness) and the lower one for "oracle speaking" (or a divination).

To the right center we see the path of the seeker into the forest/jungle... To the far right is a multidimensional projection (hologram?) of the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque. In front of this appears a symbolic constellation consisting of several Native American petroglyphs - a pair of shaman protectors, an ancestor/ancient one (in the center, egg-like), and a turtle below (recall that the Americas were referred to as Turtle Nation.) The ancestor and shamen are riding on the back of the great turtle - also a symbol of the fecundity and power of Mother Earth.