Making sense of ancient predictions
By Abigail Lewis
When a news team reports on a nontraditional spiritual event, it always highlights the quirkiest visual image—pyramid headgear, beads and feathers, indecipherable incantations. I can’t help but wonder what CNN might say about the exercise our group of 40 gringos is about to undertake in a workshop with Sergio Magana, a Mexican healer of Toltec lineage, trained in the Nahuatl tradition. We’ll pair up and “share our power” through our eyes as we chant, Tin tin palin panoltia chicahuatica,* then seal it with a vigorous jump into a bent-knee position, arms folded and extended parallel to the floor, and a caveman-like grunt.
The eyes and the chant, sure, but the jump and grunt? Alternative as my spirituality may be, indigenous traditions are not my path and I am, in fact, here as a reporter. Yet as I glance discretely around this refurbished old barn in the hills of Ashland, Ore., nobody else seems even slightly fazed, not even the Washington, D.C. couple I chatted with earlier, so mainstream they’re employed by the government.
We all stand and I locate my first partner, a dignified older English woman, and despite my reservations, I experience an energetic exchange when we go through the exercise. It continues as we serpentine around the room and I pair with a range of people that covers 50 years and a multitude of subcultures. Somehow Magana’s playful demeanor and confidence—not to mention, one must assume, his shamanic energy—have created the space for participants in this disparate group to quickly connect on a deeper level.
The Lineage
There’s nothing mysterious or other-worldly about Sergio Magana. Wearing a polo shirt and jeans, he is sprightly and almost elfin, not what the word shaman might conjure. In his tradition, he cannot even call himself nahual—one who has the ability to influence perception and even reality—until he’s been practicing for 52 years.
Prior to the Spanish conquest, the scions of noble Central American families had the nahual dream-state
ability inculcated in them from childhood. It was driven underground by Catholicism, and Magana first learned of it from his childhood nanny. Today there are no more than a thousand teachers worldwide, hardly enough to meet the demand precipitated by near-simultaneous predictions in the Mayan and Aztec ancient calendars of the imminent end of time.
The lineage of these traditions is complicated. The ancient knowledge began, Magana says, with the nomadic Chichimeca—chi meaning power (here it’s repeated), meca meaning lineage—so a lineage of “double power.” The Chichimeca passed their wisdom to the Teotihuacans, or “enlightened ones,” who in turn gave it to the Toltecs, who taught both the Mayans and the Aztecs. The most powerful of the seven Aztec tribes was the Mexica, thus their country is named for them; Mexico translates as, “the place of the navel of the moon.”
Although the Aztec calendar is similar in many ways to the Mayan, the Aztec divide their “long count” into four periods called Suns, each of which lasts 6,625 years. We have been in the Fifth Sun for a very long time, but back in 1991 we began transitioning into the Sixth Sun, the sun of balance. In all natural cycles, such as day to night, one season to the next, there is this gradual transition, and if you look at changes in the world’s consciousness since 1991, you can see the transition happening. Think about shifts in awareness over the last 20+ years; yoga, a vegetarian diet and meditation were all considered fringe in 1991.
Now finally, on December 21, the balance will shift and we will move solidly into the Sixth Sun. Instead of our laws being dictated by human beings, nature will dictate terms to us; we have begun to see how we will have to adapt our way of life to environmental changes. The calendar indicates that the Fifth Sun will end with earthquakes and much suffering, which is already a reality, but speaking less literally, our whole system is shaking. The widespread interpretation that “everyone will die” more likely means we are dying to our old ways and will be transformed.
“Everything is changing,” explains Magana. “Old systems aren’t working any more, and people are looking for solutions.” As the activity of the sun increases and we get more “light,” for balance we need more shadow. If you’re thinking Jungian light and shadow, that’s not it. In this tradition, light is awake time and its concomitant distractions and pursuits, the tonal (accent on the second syllable); dark is the spiritual, dreaming time, the nahual. The dreaming, or dark element, is said to be four times more powerful than the awake.
“The Fifth Sun,” Magana elaborates, “is a sun of light, of awake, of tonal, therefore it is external. In an external orientation, where is God? Outside. Where is medicine? Outside. Where is satisfaction? Outside. When you change to the Sun of Darkness (Sixth) (as we are now doing), it’s like sleeping or closing your eyes.” This, he says, is why meditation is done with closed eyes, so that you can go to the dreaming, to your unconscious. With the advent of the Sixth Sun, all the information we have been seeking externally is now found internally and we can recover our power.
Transforming the World through Dreams
The Toltecs, the Mexica and the Mayans were experts at discovering the synchronicity among the subtle spiritual energy, astronomical phenomena and human consciousness, but the Mexica were the most highly specialized in the study of lunar cycles, dreams and dreaming-while-awake (ensueño) states, and how they influence our physical reality. Carlos Castaneda, author of The Teachings of Don Juan, wrote about these concepts, but whereas he used peyote, all shape-shifting in the Mexica tradition is done with the breath.
The most sacred exercise of the breath is to use it to enter the dreaming state, and to use the breath to “cleanse” our shadow, our “cave.” In every moment, the physical world is created out of the subtle world; we create our tonal from our nahual through quetzalcoatl, the holistic balance of tonal and nahual that allows us to achieve knowledge. So we can go into a dreaming state to alter reality. We can also gaze into an obsidian mirror of a very specific size (so as not to open too many energetic doors), using a meditative exercise to change our reflection. Through specific actions we can learn how to modify reality by means of our consciousness. Quetzalcoatl means “the enlightened one,” and also the rising of the serpent, as in kundalini. When the energy rises, we can access the power of creation.
The Fateful Date
On December 21, the day we shift fully into the Sixth Sun, we will have eight precious seconds of no time. Eight seconds in which the Sun, the Pleiades, the Milky Way and the center of the galaxy will be in perfect alignment, and time—this construct we have created to manage our physical existence—will be suspended. This alignment of the forces that give construct to time, says Magana, is a great opportunity for humanity to “align our personal intention with the cosmic intelligence.” It begins precisely at 3:31am PST on December 21, so be ready.
December 21 is an ending, but it’s also a beginning, and also part of the infinite continuation. It is an opportunity for us to create the future that is literally of our dreams. As Magana says, “We are synchronized with all life, and guided by the rhythm of the universe. We’re not separate from the cosmos.”
*We call the supreme being to come into our lives with strength and abundance.
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