Summer Solstice. Dawn breaks on the longest day of the year. I look out across the town from my hillside aerie, watching the shadows pull back from the advancing rose light. A train whistle moans low and lonely. It’s a small town, dissected by the train tracks running north and south. The train rumbles into view, heading north, blocking all the early morning traffic on the town’s main thoroughfare.
I stretch out my antennas across the internet. What gives in other parts of the world? What are people thinking and talking about? What is on the mind of folks in Mexico and Brazil and India and Japan and Africa and Europe and China and Russia and the East Coast of the United States and all the other faraway places? What is the state of affairs with the plants and animals kind enough to share the world with me? What do I know of the atmosphere and the oceans and the movement of the tectonic plates on the planet’s mantle? What of the greater world of the galaxies and black holes and dark matter and other universes beyond the horizon of this one? What of the subatomic world of electrons and massless photons and quarks and strings and branes unfolding into all eleven dimensions? What of the past, of all the people who have come and gone, of all their dreams. What of all that I do not know and cannot conceive?
After more than 5,000 years, the Mayan Long Count Calendar is coming to an end on the Winter Solstice of 2012. The date coincides with other prophecies and divinations. What will people think when they look back on this date from the future? What are we about to pass through?
I try to build a vision in my heart of what I am really asking: What is the significance of 2012—and what follows in its aftermath? I shake the coins and let them fall in the full blossoming of synchronicity, six times. The train rumbles north past the crossing. Traffic moves east and west again. The Oracle speaks.
The primary hexagram, the one that answers the first part of the question, What is the significance of 2012, is named “Provoking Change”. It is the first of the 64 hexagrams and represents the power of ending something in the right way.
Image: A male warrior dances with the storm, holding a lightning bolt in one hand and a feather in the other. Where the lightning bolt forks, it takes the form of a serpent of fire, light, and energy. The rattles around his ankles make thunder every time his feet strike the ground and his eyes are fixed on the sky above.
Interpretation: This hexagram represents the great forces essential to creating a new beginning. The male warrior symbolizes the way of testing and training human nature that increases its versatility and fortitude. The lightning bolt symbolizes the focused application of action and intent that provokes dramatic change. That it takes the form of a serpent of fire, light, and energy means that your vision is part of a living creative force whose movement shatters all that is cold, dark, and stagnant. The dance symbolizes a personal ritual that connects you to creation’s underlying rhythm of movement and resistance. Dancing with the sky, the storm, the lightning, means that you can sense the rhythmic force of love surrounding you as the feminine and masculine creative forces continue to create and sustain the spark of life within the night of matter. Making thunder in the sky, making earthquakes in the land means that your actions trigger a great explosion of potential which, although it cannot be seen, sets in motion ramifications great enough to change what has come before. Holding the feather means that you are rightly connected to the higher, celestial, forces of the sky, while holding the serpent means that you are rightly connected to the lower, terrestrial, forces of the earth. Taken together, these symbols mean that your actions break up the inertia of the old and set in motion events that cannot yet be envisioned.
When the heirs of the patriarchal culture of greed and oppression renounce their inheritance and turn their backs on the very way of life that offers them advantages over their peers, then the end of that culture is nigh. Here, the Oracle uses the male warrior to symbolize the challenge to the status quo. Those who are reared within the culture of dominance and force, in other words, are in a unique position with just the skills needed to bring it to an end. Although it would be easy to identify the patriarchal culture with one nation or a group of peoples, the sad truth is that most of the governments and religions across the globe suffer from this same disease.
The Oracle is clear on this point: the warrior here is as at home in the sky of spirit as he is on the earth of life. This is what sets him apart from his predecessors. He dances with Creation. As the masculine half, he provokes change for the feminine half. He voluntarily shifts allegiance to the new.
Action: The masculine half of the spirit warrior guides the movement and energy of the unseen forces, stirring them up and then setting them in motion, calling them forth and then directing them against places where benefit is dammed up and unable to follow its natural course. Where greed, ambition, hatred, and contrariness are allowed to fester, true need goes unmet and people suffer unnecessarily: the spirit warrior provokes change in order to break up stagnation and release pent-up creative energies, freeing up benefit so that it might achieve a new equilibrium and flow to all. Before action, there is a heartfelt need whose power is so great that it moves you to act on its behalf. After action, you find that the benefit you helped instigate has taken on a life of its own and no longer depends on your efforts for its continuation. Because you are inspired by the ancients’ vision of a balanced and harmonious way of life, you win the hearts of others. Because you place the interests of the whole ahead of your own, you help eradicate the selfishness, self-interest and self-centeredness that has lead to the present impasse. Because you deliberately tip the scales so that they might right themselves again, the stagnation of the old is replaced by a new, dynamic, equilibrium.
The Oracle points at a wide-spread movement among people in touch with the unseen forces, who channel the power of enlightened intention into the transformation of the obsolete techniques of divide-and-conquer by which governments and religions have long kept people at each others’ throats. This forecast predicts that movements already underway will grow and unite in their efforts to bring people together everywhere with the goal of creating a new balance based on an equitable sharing of resources and responsibilities. It further forecasts that those instigating such profound change do so for the common good, out of a heartfelt passion to see a world governed by justice and humaneness, and not in anticipation of securing a position of influence in the new order.
But what, given the climate of mounting insecurity and authoritarianism, would provoke such a change?
What, given the history of civilization, would provoke such a metamorphosis?
The 2012 Imago Gene
Once a caterpillar hangs upside down and becomes encased in its chrysalis in preparation for its metamorphosis into its predetermined butterfly form, its digestive juices turn against it, dissolving the body of the caterpillar into a soupy juice. There is no caterpillar or butterfly at this point, just a liquid phase between. Then something altogether remarkable occurs. Specialized cells, which served no purpose in the life of the caterpillar, are suddenly activated in this liquid state and take on their predetermined role of organizing the cells of that liquid into the body of a butterfly. These are the imago cells. They serve no purpose but to awaken at the time of complete dissolution and reorganize the other cells into the fully metamorphosed adult form.
Ours is not the first generation to envision the Golden Age of Humanity. We are, however, fast approaching the time that has been intuited by prophets, seers, sages, visionaries, mystics, shamans, and poets as the turning point from a profound ending to a profound beginning. Why a similar intuition in so many? Because the intuition of the universal transformation is actually the dreaming imago gene of humanity, turning over in its sleep within the chrysalis of certain individuals, preparing to awaken at the moment of social disintegration and reorganize the juvenile body politic into its fully metamorphosed form. The intuitions, prophecies and visions, in other words, are generated by the imago genes within our DNA. The closer we get to the time of metamorphosis, the closer to awakening the imago genes come and the greater number of people begin experiencing the ever-strengthening sense of looming change.
New research derived from the Human Genome Project demonstrates that novelty and life-enriching experiences can activate gene expression within minutes throughout the body and brain: we are actually transforming ourselves from the genetic level up when we are experiencing a healing environment or a creative act.
No other mechanism satisfactorily explains why so many people across so many different cultures and historical epochs have foreseen the same time as the Great Ending—or how so many people are to simultaneously undergo the metamorphosis of worldviews that is to lead to the Great Beginning. That all this is predetermined may strike some as disconcerting. But it is predetermined only because civilization disintegrates after a period of greed and animosity. Most of us will take solace in the fact that a safety net has been set in place that, no less strange and incomprehensible than the magnetic poles of the earth reversing their polarities, will awaken the long-dormant will to transcend of humanity and reverse the self-destructive patriarchal worldview
Intent: Whether the stagnation is internal or external, familiarize yourself with its inner workings, its strengths and weaknesses, who it answers to and who depend on it, what it ignores and what it overreacts to, the passion of its allies and its opponents. As a pattern of weak points and blind spots emerges, focus your aim on provoking the greatest possible change using the least possible force. Do not be concerned if you cannot match the strength or resources of others: if you are in the right, then allies will join your cause. Your endeavor succeeds because you purify your intent to sincerely strive solely to see benefit moving freely among all.
Here, the Oracle advises against fighting fire with fire or force with force. To know one’s opponents better than they know themselves is possible, just as it is possible to adopt a worldview that one’s opponents cannot divine. To know the pressure points by which one’s opponents can be thrown off-balance is possible, just as it is possible to be utterly inscrutable to one’s opponents. No force is necessary when lightning and thunder startle one’s opponents. Greater strength and resources are not necessary when people everywhere no longer fear their opponents’ threats and intimidation. Such a movement is based on the fact that when people look across borders and ideologies and see their own relatives, the forces of hostility and alienation are already dying from within.
Typically, the Oracle’s answer involves two hexagrams, the first of which refers to the present or near future and the second of which to the future developing from those present trends. The present reading is no exception, involving a single line change in the first, or lowest, place.
1° The window of opportunity opens—you are poised to ride this wave all the way to the far shore. While others alternate between disbelief and relief, you are learning lessons that will serve you well. When lightning and thunder occur in the same moment, what follows afterward is the ecstatic life.
The bottom line of a hexagram represents the grassroots masses of people. This particular line change is an exceedingly auspicious one. It augurs complete success and foresees even the loftiest goal being exceeded. It does caution, however, that not everyone will join the cause: some will fluctuate between not believing that a real metamorphosis is possible and relief that something more equitable and humane is in the offing. Such people make ineffective allies and should be allowed to go their own way without fear of persuasion or reprisal.
For those in the vanguard of the movement, however, the time of transition offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cultivate unforeseen aspects of their character, develop new horizons of their spirituality, and hone their political acumen to razor sharpness. This turning point in history is unlike any other: the immediacy of information planet-wide means that there is no delay between action and response, between call and coordination, no distance between one place in the world and any other. It is like standing where lightning strikes: there is no delay between lightning bolt and its thunder. The long Dark Age of Humanity gives way to an equally long Golden Age of Humanity.
Whereas the first hexagram and its line changes can bee seen to answer the first part of the question, What is the significance of 2012, the second hexagram can be viewed as answering the second part of the question, What follows in its aftermath?
This is number 10 of the 64 hexagrams, entitled “Unifying Inspiration”.
Image: A female warrior gazes at the moon and paints what she experiences. In the sky, ancient creative forces sing of perfection and the moon echoes their song. Lightning falls from the sky, providing the warrior with the creative energy to paint her vision. The warrior’s heart opens and echoes the song of perfection, too. On her paper made of precious tree bark, she paints of the song she hears and of the butterfly of transformation she feels.
Interpretation: This hexagram represents a vision of the wondrous potential that can arise from shared experiences. The female warrior symbolizes the way of nurturing and encouraging human nature that increases its sensitivity and loving-kindness. That she paints the moon the way she sees it means that you contemplate the ways in which nature transforms itself and that you give them expression in your life. The moon echoing the song of the creative spirits means that you learn the ways of the unseen forces and make them your own. Painting with lightning means that you give voice to the perfecting power which runs like a thread of continuity from the past, through the present, and to the future. Opening her heart to the song of the unseen forces means that you see into the essence of the world and rejoice in the perfection you perceive underlying the surface of appearances. The warrior’s painting is heartfelt but modest, meaning that even our best efforts are incapable of fully capturing the power, scope, and grandeur of our vision. Taken together, these symbols mean that even in an experience as universal as gazing at the moon, you see into its essence and translate its meaning in ways that draw others together in a vision of the true significance and potential of the whole to which they belong.
Here, the Oracle foretells the stage following the 2012 transition, depicting it in no uncertain terms as a time of return to the earth-based worldview of the feminine aspect of human nature. Now that the mindset of competition and conflict has proven obsolete, it is replaced with a reawakened sense of camaraderie and commonality. Reconciliation is the byword of the Age. Benevolence spills from every pair of hands. Loving-kindness shines from every pair of eyes. Now that hands and hearts extend across borders and ideologies, people are free to treat one another like long-lost relatives, rather than the enemies that governments and religions painted them out to be.
The principal feature of this forecast, however, is its depiction of the creative forces both in the sky and being painted by the warrior. This points to a spiritual transformation that coincides with the social and cultural metamorphosis underway. Similarly, the focus on the song that the spirits sing and also pours from the warrior’s heart indicates that people hold themselves to the highest spiritual ideals, making a sincere effort to act as generously and lovingly as the creative forces themselves.
Action: The feminine half of the spirit warrior reawakens the masculine half to the beauty, joy, and truth to be found in sharing benefit. Fulfillment is not an intellectual state devoid of emotional conscience or social communion—it is, rather, a state of multiplying benefit that strives to overflow its vessel in order to enrich other vessels. So powerful is its sense of purpose that benefit will eventually withdraw from those who do not use it to fulfill others. The need here is for a sense of purpose itself, for those who are themselves misguided try to guide others and all concerned suffer from the leadership’s lack of perspective, compassion, and foresight. The heart must be filled with a vision of the great endeavor, whose collective purpose explains past events and actions, increases tolerance and understanding among contemporaries, and prepares meaningful responses to future events. People can sacrifice personal fulfillment indefinitely only if they feel themselves contributing to the fulfillment of something greater than themselves. For this reason, meaningless work in exchange for personal material security cannot hold people enthralled very long—nor can threats of losing such meaningless security force compliance in the long run. This is the time for a positive vision of unity that inspires people to set aside past conflicts, accept and respect one another’s potential, and work together toward a goal that ennobles the lives of all concerned. Only when people feel that all partake equally from the pool of resources do they willingly take up as much of the great burden as they can carry. Open your heart to the divine purpose of human life and your vision will be like a torch for others seeking to perfect their part of creation.
Here, the Oracle condemns the purposeless meandering of civilization up to this point in history: no true leadership with their hand on the tiller to bring a planet of people to the other shore of universal peace and prospering—a damning condemnation of those steering, since that shore is within sight of all. Instead, it is a civilization turning in a circle around material gain for the few at the expense of the many, demonstrating a profound “lack of perspective, compassion, and foresight”. How long did they think they could just blunder along uncaringly? How long did they think crisis management would work before the crises multiplied beyond control?
We see here the ages-old vision about to be fulfilled by the activation of the 2012 Imago Gene: a universal state of emotional conscience and social communion, a state of multiplying benefit, a collective search for the Great Endeavor, the common purpose, that prepares meaningful responses to future events in a spirit of unity and ennobling mutualism.
Intent: All those who have ever lived have gazed upon the moon, their dreams and memories and knowledge reflected forever in that mirror of the unseen forces. All those who have ever lived have bathed in the light of the moon, purified by the ancestors’ expression of a life in harmony with the world of nature and spirit. Every time the spirit warrior returns to the world, the moon awaits to inspire both the feminine half with an inner calendar for renewing the cycles of creation and the masculine half with an inner light for exploring the infinite night of the unknown. Drawing this hexagram, be grateful you can hear the song of the creative forces, that you can hear the language of creation: let what you hear echo in your own heart, dialog with it, and let it echo back out in your own thoughts, feelings, words, and actions.
The Oracle concludes the divination by saying that this Unifying Inspiration is the natural outgrowth of thousands of years of the collective human experience. A solid foundation of ethics survives from many traditions of mysticism that encourage a Life Way based on benefiting all others, including the plant and animal kingdoms. As this worldview attains ascendancy, civilization itself will constitute a healing environment—one in which the exploration of the numinous, in the experience of truth and beauty and art, leads people to a time in which they are already fulfilled and no longer looking elsewhere for fulfillment.
In Spring, all the flowers blossom together. In a time of Unifying Inspiration, people everywhere are free to contribute to the creation of a fully metamorphosed civilization. Each person will experience the activation of the 2012 Imago Gene as if seeing the full moon for the first time, awakening suddenly to the underlying harmony that unites nature, spirit and humanity in a single heartbeat.
—Oracle cast Summer Solstice, 2009
The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just been released by Larson Publications. It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams. Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.
