The Lost Art of Resurrection

An excerpt from my memoir, Riding Spirit Horse: A Journey into Shamanism.

 

Like a golden luminous jewel, Palenque perches above the lush tropical rainforest in the foothills of the Chiapas Highlands of southern Mexico. Humid air hangs heavy in this jungle acropolis overlooking the coastal plains of the state of Tabasco. Shrouded in morning jungle mists and echoing to a dawn chorus of howler monkeys and parrots, this temple city has a serene, mystical atmosphere. In antiquity, the Maya city was known as Lakamha, meaning "big waters." Tranquil spring-fed streams meander through the city and the temple summits offer spectacular views of the ruins and surrounding jungle. Flourishing in the seventh century, Palenque is an architectural masterpiece of unsurpassed beauty and spiritual force.

Palenque's most prominent structure is the Temple of the Inscriptions. The elegant temple crowns an imposing eight-stepped pyramid 75 feet above a great plaza. The temple gets its name from hieroglyphic inscriptions on three stone tablets, known as the East Tablet, the Central Tablet and the West Tablet, on the structure's inner walls. These large carved tablets emphasize the idea that events that happened in the past will be repeated on the same calendar date. The edifice was specifically built as the funerary monument for K'inich Janaab' Pakal, also known as Pakal the Great, ruler of Palenque in the seventh century.
 

Deep in the heart of the pyramid, Pakal's remains were found in a stone sarcophagus, wearing a mosaic jade death mask and elaborate jade jewelry. The intricate carving on the top of the seven-ton sarcophagus lid itself is an iconic piece of Classic Maya art and was crucial to understanding how the ancient Maya viewed death and rebirth. The magnificent bas-relief shows the cross-shaped World Tree -- which manifests in the dark night sky as the Milky Way or "White Road" to the Underworld -- and Pakal's relationship to it in death. The king is depicted at the moment of his divine resurrection in the unen or infant form of the lightning deity K'awiil, ascending from the Underworld on the starry Milky Way road to paradise and eternal life.
 

At Palenque, the Maya carefully encoded instructions for gaining eternal life in their architecture, art and hieroglyphic inscriptions. The Maya believed that the real purpose of our lives is to grow ourselves into godlike beings of power and beauty. Survival of the personal aspect of the soul was the goal for Maya shamans. They believed that there are two souls. Every human being has a "life soul," one that is linked to the body and that, should it depart the body, would cause death. It remains within the body until the moment of death. There is also a second soul, or "free soul." The free soul can roam free from the body without harming the person. It corresponds to the dream or astral body. Upon death, it journeys to the pool of souls from whence it may reach back to us and communicate with us through portals to the Underworld -- caves and pyramids.
 

The resurrection of the free soul was what the ancient Maya shamans hoped to achieve. The Maya believed the soul to be regenerative to its core; ultimately its purpose is to regenerate itself. The human soul manifested from the Otherworld paradise through the portal jaws of the great Vision Serpent. If it succeeded in growing into its divine potential by nurturing itself through education and ecstatic bonding with the gods, it could recreate itself after death wearing its own individual "face," then dance forever on the surface of the infinite otherworldly sea. The lightning-serpent energy that fueled the soul's resurrection came from the rain deity K'awiil.
 

The Maya shamans believed death is "behind the times," caught up in a previous and less advanced era, lacking knowledge of the art of resurrection. There is a dramatic difference between the idea of resurrection and a belief in the soul's immortality. Resurrection -- raising up again -- means that something has truly died and then brought back to life. Immortality, on the other hand, assumes unbroken continuity of the soul's existence after the death of the body.
 

The ancient shamans of Palenque built a resurrection generator on a large elevated plaza in the southeast corner of the city surrounded by jungle covered hills. Archaeologists call this ch'ulel "power plant" the Cross Group or Temple of the Cross complex. It is made up of three pyramid temples arranged in a triangular pattern. The shaman architects who designed the Cross Group believed they had discovered the earthly site of the three hearthstones of creation. In Maya cosmology, a triangle of three stars in the Orion constellation represents the hearthstones of the cosmic fire the gods had set to begin the present world age. Using geomantic divination, they detected the location of the invisible stones and built the temples over them, forming the shamanic infrastructure that powered the resurrection process.
 

The Temple of the Cross is the largest and most significant structure. They placed it on a hill at the northern apex of the cosmic hearth. On the inside back wall of the temple sanctuary, they installed a carved stone tablet depicting the branching World Tree at the moment the Maize God lifted it to the sky. At the western corner of the triangle, they constructed the Temple of the Sun and erected a tablet on the back wall portraying warfare, human sacrifice and a shield adorned with the Jaguar Sun God. At the eastern corner of the hearth, they built the Temple of the Foliated Cross honoring the deity Unen K'awiil, a personification of young maize, and placed within it a tablet showing the World Tree as a maize plant. It depicts King Pakal, wrapped in his death shroud, rising up from the Underworld in his "resurrection body."
 

The shaman-astronomers arranged the pyramids so that as the night sky wheeled through its yearly cycle to reenact the events of creation, the three temples would engage this celestial pattern and reactivate the sacred time of that first awakening. On August 13, a date the Maya associate with creation, the night sky goes through a cycle from dusk to dawn that recounts the story of the transition from the third world into the fourth world when humans were created. During that evening, when the stars and constellations took up their creation-resurrection positions, and the glowing Milky Way/World Tree rose in the heavens, the temple complex came alive with Otherworldly forces.

"The Shamanic Bones of Zen"

In The Shamanic Bones of Zen: Revealing the Ancestral Spirit and Mystical Heart of a Sacred Tradition, celebrated author and Buddhist teacher Zenju Earthlyn Manuel undertakes a rich exploration of the connections between contemporary Zen practice and shamanic or indigenous spirituality. Drawing on her personal journey with the black church, with African, Caribbean, and Native American ceremonial practices, and with Nichiren and Zen Buddhism, she builds a compelling case for discovering and cultivating the shamanic, or magical elements in Buddhism -- many of which have been marginalized by colonialist and modernist forces in the religion.

Manuel is an ordained Zen Buddhist priest who previously led the Kasai River Healing Sangha in Oakland and now lives in New Mexico where she leads the Still Breathing Zen Sangha. For many years Manuel has also practiced singing, drumming and ceremonies from a variety of Indigenous traditions including Caribbean, Native American Lakota and Vodou from Dahomey, Africa. She writes, "I wondered: if the shamanic bones or Indigenous roots that were suppressed in the rising of Buddhism were unearthed, would the practice make more sense to practitioners, especially to black, Indigenous and people of color?"

Manuel speaks in deeply personal rather than theoretical terms about the underlying shamanic reality of Zen practice. Such awareness is crucial for the development of contemporary Western Zen. Displaying reverence for the Zen tradition, creativity in expressing her own intuitive seeing, and profound gratitude for the guidance of spirit, Manuel models the path of a seeker unafraid to plumb the depths of her ancestry and face the totality of the present. The book conveys guidance for readers interested in Zen practice including ritual, preparing sanctuaries, engaging in chanting practices, and deepening embodiment with ceremony. The Shamanic Bones of Zen will turn your conception of Zen inside out.

Return of the Sacred Feminine

"The world will be saved by Western Women." --Dalai Lama
 

We live in an age of accelerated change and transformation. It is a head-spinning, anxiety-inducing time. We see severe climate change, devastating oil spills, species dying off, and a deadly global pandemic that has affected everything and everyone. We find corruption and stagnation in business, politics and religions around the world. We see worldwide systemic racism, inequality and oppression. We see mass social delusion, extremism and a plethora of misinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories. We witness fear, anger and hopelessness in our communities.

 

None of the countless issues we face on this planet today can be resolved by our current masculine, left-brain analytical thinking. A functioning, sustainable whole requires the feminine and the masculine to be integrated within the individual and within humanity as a whole, and we are increasingly aware of the dysfunctional results of millennia of human development based almost solely on patriarchal, masculine value systems. The patriarchy has now reached a toxic degenerate phase. After the leak of the Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito opinion that will most likely overturn Roe v. Wade, we see the true patriarchal hatred of, contempt for, and prejudice against women. With autocrats like Vladimir Putin, we see the twisted rage of the male ego, which turns cruel and psychopathic, given unlimited power over others.
 

The feminine wasn't always subordinate to the masculine. According to world mythology, it was the Earth, Nature herself, who provided our oldest ancestral forefathers and mothers with the concept of the Great Mother and with a value system based on Nature's ways and cycles. The Great Mother was a symbol of life itself, for all life emerged from her womb. She sustained all of life through the nourishment she provided, and all living things returned to her upon death. Therefore, the Great Mother was seen as the life-giving, nurturing, creative and intuitive force. 
 

The feminine principle stems in its origins from this nature-based concept, as the female body exhibits the same patterns and cycles as nature. Consequently, the feminine was seen as the life-giving, nurturing, sustaining and life-embracing force, the creative vessel of life that contained, birthed, nurtured and protected. Not surprising, then, that ancient people respected the feminine. The power of the feminine as a calm receptive energy is the key to bringing balance to the world's excessively masculine state -- in other words, aggressive, extroverted, loud, superficial, materialistic, ego-driven culture.

Meeting My Spirit Guide

An excerpt from my new book, Shamanic Journeys: An Anthology.
 

My journey into shamanism began in 1988 when I learned how to take a shamanic journey. Learning to journey is the first step in becoming a shamanic practitioner. Once I learned to journey, my shamanic training began. I sought out and met my spirit helpers and guardian spirit. I made friends with the spirits of Nature. I communed with the archetypal realms of the collective soul. The spirit world became my classroom, and the spirits became my teachers. My first powerful journeys took place outside in the wild, immersed in the natural world. They were transcendent flights of the soul that I shall never forget.
 

I remember riding my bicycle through the forest one summer day when a monarch butterfly flew directly into my path. The butterfly is an archetypal symbol of transformation, transmutation and the human soul in world mythology and religion. Virtually all cultures have marveled at the process that transforms a caterpillar into a fluttering butterfly. When I encounter one of these remarkable beings, I stop and observe them carefully. I have learned to trust these endearing spirit guides. I once had the soul of a deceased relative appear to me as a butterfly on the day that she passed away. The butterfly landed on my nose while I was hiking that day. I felt her presence and knew that she was with me. Butterflies have brought me messages from my ancestors and guided me to specific places of power in the web of life on many occasions.
 

The monarch butterfly fluttered across the road in front of my bicycle and into the pine forest. I felt the urge to follow it. Over the years, I have learned to trust my intuition and follow my inner urges. This is a common form of communication and instruction by helping spirits.
 

I got off my bike and pursued the butterfly into the woods on foot. When it paused or changed directions so did I. If I lost sight of it, the monarch would soon reappear. Eventually, the butterfly led me to an area of disturbed soil under the forest canopy. I found several badger burrows dug into the sandy pumice soil. Badger is a spirit helper who connects us to our inner knowing and helps us see below the surface of things. The energy felt different here. There was an electrical tingle in my hands and scalp. I knew instantly that this was a power place for me -- a place to journey.
 

I returned the next day on my bike, bringing a Walkman cassette player and headphones so I could journey listening to the sound of drumming. I also brought a voice activated micro-cassette recorder so that I could narrate and record my journey as it transpired. This can be distracting at first, but it is one of the best ways I know to make sure you are getting all the information your helping spirits are giving you. On my first journey sitting near the entrance to a badger den, I encountered some very influential teachers.

The drumbeats carry me away on the wings of an eagle. I soar high over South Sister (a volcanic peak in the Central Oregon Cascades) and then dive into a cave on her south flank. Clear quartz crystals shimmer from the walls, floor and ceiling. I transform into a man and follow a narrow path through the crystal cave. The path leads me through a labyrinth of twists and turns until the cave ends abruptly in a wall of crystals. A small portal appears in the wall and sucks my awareness into a dark tunnel. I spiral downward and come out of the tunnel onto the rim of a red mesa. I see a pueblo below me at the base of the mesa. I hear drumming and chanting and see many dancers.

Suddenly, I become one of the dancers. I gaze at the man who plays the booming drum. He wears a ceremonial kilt, sash and red headband. He smiles at me and chants loudly. At the sound of his voice, I transform into a golden eagle and take flight. I circle the pueblo and then glide over the desert. I soar towards the sun high above the Earth. I see the Earth below transform into a beautiful crystal globe. I fold my wings and plunge to the Earth below. I fly across the desert to the ruins of an ancestral Puebloan cliff dwelling built high in the alcove of a towering sandstone cliff. I fly into a doorway and transform once again into a man. 

 

I look at the floor of the room and see the white bones of a human skeleton. The skeleton rises, transforming into a beautiful Pueblo woman wearing a royal blue shawl and a radiant white knee-length manta-dress embroidered with corn designs. Her black hair is styled in a traditional butterfly whorl. She wears white buckskin moccasins and a woven red sash around her waist. She walks toward me and gently caresses my cheek with her hand. She smiles and says, "I am your guide."  

 

I clasp her outstretched hand and we both transform into golden eagles. We fly away from the cliff dwelling and soar high above the desert. As the sun begins to set on the horizon, we separate and I return rapidly to the red mesa above the pueblo. I enter a small portal in the top of the mesa and retrace the passage back to my body.

The spirit guide I encountered in the preceding journey became my mentor in the ways of the spirit world. Known as Corn Woman or Corn Mother, she is an important deity archetype in Pueblo mythology. She represents fertility, life and the feminine aspects of this world. The importance of corn deities in Pueblo mythology reflects the importance of corn in the Pueblo diet. Each pueblo performs a ritual Corn Dance to honor Corn Woman and pray for rain, growth and fertility. A drummer and a chorus of chanting men support the lines of colorful dancers who move in a continually changing zigzag pattern. The dancers make gestures to indicate their requests to Corn Woman: lowering the arms depicts the lowering clouds, moving the arms in a zigzag motion denotes lightning, lowering the palms signifies rain, and lifting the hands symbolizes the growing stalks of corn.
 

The drummer I met in my spirit journey later manifested as a human guide in the physical world. Like the drummer in my journey, he wore a red bandana around his forehead and carried a drum. The shaman's name is Jade Grigori, and he mentored me in shamanic drumming.

The Seven Principles of Hermeticism

Hermeticism is an ancient religious-philosophical tradition based primarily upon writings attributed to the mythical Hermes Trismegistus, an amalgamation of the Egyptian God Thoth and the Greek God Hermes. Hermeticism was largely a product of religious syncretism, drawing together themes from Judaism, Hellenistic philosophy and mythology, and classical Egyptian religion. The surviving writings of Hermeticism are known as the Corpus Hermetica, which is composed of a series of letters from Hermes Trismegistus, wherein he tries to enlighten his disciple. These letters were lost to the western world after classical times, but survived in the Byzantine libraries.

Throughout its history, Hermeticism was closely associated with the idea of a primeval, divine wisdom, revealed only to the most ancient of sages. In the Renaissance, this developed into the notion of an ancient theology, which asserted that there is a single, true theology which was given by God to some of the first humans, and traces of which may still be found in various ancient systems of thought. As a divine fountain of writing, the Hermetic texts contain the natural laws of the Universe. Knowing these principles will broaden your viewpoint, expand your horizons, and aid you in the pursuit of fuller, happier, more meaningful life. The Seven Hermetic Principles are:

1. The Principle of Mentalism: All is mind, the Universe is mental. The structure of our Universe is thought, mind and consciousness. Consciousness determines the form of our experience. Consciousness is the "theater of perceptual awareness." It is the collective consciousness of humanity that shapes physical reality. We are the Universe made conscious to experience itself. We are mind. We live in a Universe of mind. From photons to galaxies, life is conscious intelligent energy that can form itself into any pattern or function.
 

2. The Principle of Correspondence: As above, so below; as below, so above. Humanity is a microcosm of the macrocosm we call the Universe. Each human being is a hologram of the Cosmos, a weaving together of universal information from a particular point of view. Essentially, we are the Universe experiencing itself in human form.
 

3. The Principle of Vibration: Nothing rests, everything moves, everything vibrates. The Universe is made of vibrational energy. Everything in the Universe, from the smallest subatomic particle to the largest star, has an inherent vibrational pattern. The entire Universe is created through vibration and can be influenced through vibration.
 

4. The Principle of Polarity: Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of complementary opposites; like and unlike are the same. A dual or binary progression underlies the structure of reality. At a fundamental level, the laws of the Universe are written in a binary code. The binary mathematical system forms the basis of computer languages and applies to everything from crystalline structures to the genetic code.
 

5. The Principle of Rhythm: Life is a rhythmic existence. Polarity gave birth to the pulse of life. Pulsation gave birth to time and material form, while the intervals of pulsation remained timeless and formless. All things are born of rhythm and it is rhythm that holds them in form. Rhythm and resonance order the natural world. Dissonance and disharmony arise only when we limit our capacity to resonate totally and completely with the rhythms of life.
 

6. The Principle of Cause and Effect: Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause. Nothing happens by chance. Everything that we see in our world is a result of causes. For every effect in your life there is a specific cause. The intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect).
 

7. The Principle of Gender: Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; gender manifests on all planes. In the Hermetic texts, masculine energy is described as active, projective, expansive and corresponds to spirit. Feminine energy is described as passive, receptive, nurturing and corresponds to matter.