#004 More than just fortuitous events
Greetings, traveler. We will continue our journey focused on the birth of a new relationship with time. We are holding the impossibility that we are on some level connected with a black hole in our galactic center. We started observing new beginnings that present themselves as available ideas in the field. We noticed the challenges of connecting with other versions of ourselves that want to come to the surface together with the external change happening around us. And we are learning to dream not only with ourselves but with every living being in order to reconnect with the natural abundance. To remember who we want to be, and to build the beautiful world we can become.
Our fourth solar seal comes as a Yellow Seed. We are learning to create our own existence. Autopoiesis. We believe is a fortuitous event, happening by chance. But, in fact, is a series of fortunate events. We just do not fully understand the cosmic dance yet. The archetype of the innocent, with so much to learn in the cycle of life ahead, is the best representation for all of us at this point. But the potency already exists inside of the seed. Just waiting for the best conditions for flowering. How to define your actions to flourish?
Temporality Lab
Every new day deserves its own celebration as we do in a new year. What to expect from the future? What new seeds do we choose to plant for a new cycle that begins? What do we collectively envision? How to sow and nourish our dreams like someone who are planting stardust here on earth?
In recent years we have all been taken out of our comfort zone and called to a new adventure, which involves imagining a new time and rescuing radical visions for humanity. Dreams were the basis of inspiration for many cultures and until very recently, different peoples consider dreams as divine messengers and believe that their messages contain wisdom and guidance for human steps on Earth.
I'll share two short pieces about the collective experiments I started. The first one shifts what we consider the beginning of the year to July 26th, after a celebration we call Day Out of Time. We hosted an online session to talk about the archetype of this cycle 2021-2022: the Yellow Seed. After the challenge of a Blue Storm year we all have been facing with COVID 19 and the climate crisis, we invited travelers around the world to activate the service of sowing seeds in the field of the future.
In the social life of ancient Mesoamerican peoples such as the Aztecs and Mayans, many calendar systems were used to track the cycles of time. The Long Count monitored the great ages we went through in the cosmos. The Tzolkin, with a focus on self-investigation, synchronized life to collective archetypes that arrive on the planet as a tide of time frequencies. The 13 Moons guided the timing of crops and the planet's natural cycles, along with the seasons.
There was also a 20-day cycle called Vinal. The year was divided into 18 vinals and each one was a period in which a certain community social function was performed, each also with its own name. As 18 vinals (18x20) = 360, there was also an extra cycle, the cycle number 19, of 5 days in which people collected themselves to process that cycle lived, and to forgive others and themselves for any deviations from their vibration, of your essence, that have taken place. This 19th cycle is also called Uayeb and runs from the modern 20th to the 25th of July. At the end of this cycle, everyone gathered to celebrate the present time and dream of the time to come.
We shared and invitation to feel the closing of a cycle and use the few days ahead as a period of forgiveness for what needs to be forgiven, making room to dream seeds for a time to come. We offered an open event, a Day Out of Time as an online experience with guests specialists who speak and live this planetary seed-planting service.
With Kali, performer. Cris Lisboa, writer (Go, Writers). Lua Couto, researcher (Futuro Possivel). Luciana Bazanella, trend analyst (White Rabbit). Luciana Pinheiro, art therapist (The Colors Of The Soul), Marta Moreno and Tauã Moreno, artists (Native Therapy).
Seeds are dreams, dreams of abundance. So the second temporal experiment was initiated by Luciana Pinheiro – artist, writer, and therapist – and me with a community of fellow time travelers.
From December 25th to January 6th we count thirteen nights. This time was known by priests and magicians as a period of restoration of dreams for the new twelve-month cycle being the thirteenth night, the epiphany, the representation of the synthesis of the whole year. I mentioned 13-day cycles before.
This is just one more. Astronomically, at this time, there is a configuration of the Earth's axis in relation to the constellations that are closest to us and that is why ancestral wisdom tells us that the dreams of this period bring seeds from the stars.
In the closure of 2021, we shared an invitation to experience an adventure of radical reimagination. For 13 days and nights, we dreamt together, collecting these dreams. Dreams about the next cycle of a revolution around the sun and its four seasons, twelve months, and thirteen moons.
To the Lakota culture, dreamcatchers represent “the web of life”, and aim to filter good dreams by inspiring people to fulfill their visions. We connected with different temporal practices, such as the daily kin, and the 28-day moon cycles, and also agreed to meet again every 20 days to talk about the star seeds we dreamt of together.
By the way, I recommend the biography and life anthology about Hilma Af Klint that was written by Luciana Pinheiro, available in Portuguese, Spanish, and in English. We still will talk more often about her. About both of them. For today, as you noticed, both experiences use the roots of questioning the current colonial temporality to regain the skill of dreaming about more fortunate times. So I'll write once more about it to you.
From fortuitous to fortunate
Our ancestors used to wake up having the Sun as their natural clock and guide themselves through the weeks and months having the Moon and its phases as a natural calendar. Cyclical time is based on solar and lunar cycles. Among the many peoples and cultures in connection with nature and cyclical time, in Mesoamerica, the Mayans had different systems for observing and counting time. They were timekeepers, guarding time with their sophisticated calendrical system with many counts.
One was called Haab, of 365 days. They counted 20-day cycles, a vigesimal system expressed also in the twenty fingers and toes in a human body. Each cycle was called vinal (20 days). 18 vinal cycles over a year, each with its own name, completing 360 days, just like the 360º in the radius of the circle. A year is a solar ring since we move around the sun in a trajectory in the shape of a ring. The 19th cycle of the year was 5 sacred days called Uayeb in which people used to thank for the learning they had lived that year, celebrate and offer each other different gifts in the form of art and prepare themselves spiritually, emotionally, and mentally for the new year that would begin.
Another one was called Tzolk'in, of 260 time units. A timekeeping system that is considered sacred. The same 20 days were the connection with 20 archetypes, represented by 20 solar seals, cosmic energies or essential qualities of the universe, the divine being that exists in each and all of us. The data packages coming from the source, there are available in the field as a synchronization tool. These packages were connected to each other in streams of 13 pulses, like the drops of the ocean making a wave, but at the same time the ocean itself.
This count could be used in a fractal approach. The same habits of the cosmos, the same "recipe", happening on shorter or longer scales. 260 days, 260 months, 260 years... or even bigger, on a deep time scale. Just to you know, the Galactic Center is approximately 8 kiloparsecs (26,000 light-years) distant from us. The first cycle, Haab, accounted for the movements of the Earth in space, and the second cycle, Tzolk'in, observed the frequencies of time. A duality as matter and energy, particle and wave, only understood by Western civilization many centuries later.
To change the zeitgeist – the spirit of our time – we must change the zeitgeber – the reference we use to guide ourselves. Clocks are colonial locks. Time isn't money, time is a cosmic dance, our connection with the cosmos. Time is art. Questioning the limited mindset coming with the Gregorian calendar and its linear temporality in our minds and in our societies is our next step. To decolonize time we must start experimenting with other temporalities through a decolonial approach.
Four pillars of reality.
And... Time begins. More than angular movements in space representing days, months, or years, time is frequency. Timelines are, in fact, time in motion. Time is the memory of space. Living energy that informs the pillars of reality. And also a playground in four dimensions to the art of expression, experimentation, integration, and transcendence.
1. Unity, Energy, Magnetism, The Dragon, The Primordial Force, Red.
2. Duality, Life, Polarization, The Wind, The Word, White.
3. Trinity, Emotion, Electricity, The Night, The Dreamer, Blue.
4. Timelines, Time in Motion, Autopoiesis, The Seed, The Innocent, Yellow.
I am not asking you to understand that. Just to accept and contemplate for now. Subtly, more pieces will start to appear in our puzzle. A temporality of spirals in which history does not repeat itself... but rhymes.
