Dear reader,

Rebel-rousing Pluto going into Capricorn on November 26th is a sign that people will rebel against the status quo, and the status quo will push back hard, and this is happening all over the world right now. Our governments and social structures are in for huge changes in the coming years. Combined with Uranus going direct within the same day, these planetary aspects signal that volatility, extreme behavior and abrupt change is up ahead--a preview of 2009. The aspects suggest big earthquakes affecting big cities, too. And right on cue with the November 13th , 2008 New Year's Day in the Mayan calendar system, the world got a burst of hope and light, just like their anciently- themed year predicts,when consciousness surpasses technology". Barack Obama was elected president, and overnight on November 5th, the world became a more hopeful, connected, caring place. There's another surprisingly positive development in December 2008: The heart, and all it stands for, moves into the center of peoples' lives...the hearts of many people open. Peoples' connection to their spiritual nature grows greatly.

So, the omens are that there is both a lot of bloodshed up ahead, and a lot of hopeful developments--it will be a year of extremes. Today in the Santa Fe New Mexican, the headline is about algae as a new cheap viable source of energy, and an article about scientists in Michigan coming up with a revolutionary way to produce energy from still water. Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, scoffed at the Scarcity Principle, that people ever had to go hungry anywhere...he thought people could create their way out of anything. Scarcity was something manufactured, political--and that's the theme of the Mayan year that just ended on November 12th, 2008...this last year is called"the end of manufactured lack.""Consciousness surpasses technology"suggests that through collaboration, new inventions and the raising of our collective consciousness, we'll go and grow in unexpected new directions, connecting on higher levels. In honor of the stupendously astute Mayan calendar, this month's messages will be for the Mayan year ahead, ending November 7, 2009. First, a little background about the Mayans and the Mayan calendar, from the book, "It's About Time" by by Deborah DeLuca Hall, PhD.:"We aren't taught much in typical American education about the Maya, however they had an incredibly advanced civilization before the arrival of Europeans. They created cities with millions of citizens. They created elegant and highly perfected art, architecture, astronomy and social organizations. Theirs was possibly one of the greatest of the ancient civilizations. They calculated planetary cycles with incredible precision. They built monuments and cities unequaled in our own time. Their interest in cosmology and spiritual development is unequalled by any of the "ancient" civilizations that we usually study like Egypt and Greece."

The Mayan calendar cycle ending December 21, 2012: "The cycle most referred to by archaeologists and anthropologists is the "Long Count". It begins about the time that recorded writing was established...and we hear a lot about its end. You may have read that the end of the Long Count predicts the end of the world - physically. No information I have suggests this to be the case, so if that is what you wanted to hear, then you probably don't want to read further. According to the Mayan elders, this count-down is to the end of one more era of human evolution. There have been others, a concept familiar to students of the Christian Bible literature. And it hails the BEGINNING of yet another era which will start in Year Cero...So one way to look at it, is that this calendar of the Maya may just simply be describing creation of increasing levels of human consciousness."