The Song_A mysterious tale of the Mayan spirit world and the Mayan calendar

by Joseph Arnold

  “This is the way of these beings. They offer you a way to heal the loss even if you are not conscious of your own pain,” added Yumma.

  “As to the business at hand,” interjected Dana. “You are both healed from your respective unconscious pasts and as such, you will be tested to your edge. You are joined as one individual as the flow of light and dark energy. You are as individuals and as individual, at the same time. Your yin and your yang are now a perfect fit and you possess the urn, which will be vital in your tests.”

  “May I see the urn?” asked Yumma.

  Sarina glanced at Dana and he sent her a reassuring glance back. “Here it is,” she said as she passed it to him. Riley was hyper-vigilant as the urn was passed to Yumma.

  “I have wanted to see this again for thousands of years and here it is, complete although it has had many forms but the purpose was always the same.” Yumma held it as if it was the most precious gift he had ever held. He seemed overly focused on it and turned it over and over in his hands as if looking for something. He bowed to Sarina as he handed it back to her. “I have seen others like yourselves attempt to succeed on various occasions and in this life time, I may actually witness success.” Sarina nodded in thanks as a sudden feeling of apprehension trickled into her body and she shot Yumma a skeptical glance and pulled the urn close to her. Yumma only smiled back.

  Dana spoke again. “You must return to the spirit realm and find your own way. Your choices will affect the outcome and you must be clear and balanced when making these choices. Cum-Hau’s brother will be here soon and whatever occurs must be just and precise. Whatever path you choose, you cannot turn back. Go into this with a clear agreement to support one another no matter what happens. Yumma and I will be close, but we cannot make your choices for you. You must be centered. You have your gifts, and each other. You need nothing more. The appropriate timing is close. 3:30 a.m. is the prayer time and is when the veil between our realms is the thinnest. Go home and prepare yourselves for your journey tomorrow. You will know what you must do to prepare tonight, and remember, keep whatever preparation you choose sacred. Are there any other questions?”

  “What about those dark beings we saw moving together. The ones we avoided?” asked Riley. “Is there anything to worry about? They seemed pretty ominous!”

  “They were trying to redirect you, and failed. They seem to no longer be a threat so pay no heed,” said Dana. “If you had been visible to them, the outcome might have been very different. It was your gifts that helped you to not be seen. So you could think of it like a training program. I was not completely sure that was going to happen but grateful it did. You see, you possess abilities even I do not fully understand. Your gifts go deeper than I am capable of seeing so I cannot say what will happen next. Just trust yourself and stay alert.”

  Riley was eyeing Sarina who was not showing any concern, or was hiding it well. He wondered if she was clueless or just able to shroud her concerns and thus show no emotion.

  “What about my father, Camazotz?” asked Sarina.

  “We are not sure of his current role as no human has ever been in the spirit realm for so long. We do not know if he is even still human, but what is certain is that Cum-Hau needs him to carry out his plan. Maybe you two will receive understanding about this tonight. Go and be together tonight. Detective, do not leave Sarina’s side. Your powerful love for her will give her strength. And Sarina, your strong sense of ritual will bind the two of you together. Now go.”

  Sarina and Riley stood and excused themselves. They left the restaurant and Riley glanced back at the empty chair where the spirit of his ancient twin sister sat only days before.

  Yumma watched them leave and then turned and conversed with Dana. Yumma was waving his arms and Dana was attempting to calm him down when Riley glanced back.

  “I had the urn in my hand, Dana! I had it in my hand!” Yumma was motioning with his hands and was clearly distraught.

  “Calm down brother, all in good time. We need them for this situation to be resolved. Give it time. Trust me!” Dana placed a reassuring hand on Yumma’s shoulder to help calm him down as they both watched Sarina and Riley walk away. Yumma’s eyes were glowing red as he watched his chance to possess the urn slowly moving down the street.

  It was late and as they walked past the Music Academy. Surprised the shop was still open, they stopped into the gift shop to say hello to the owner. When Siphokazi looked in Sarina’s eyes, Sarina saw warmth and love and smiled. They hugged each other and she turned to Riley and said, “If you ever hurt this dear one, you will have to answer to me.” She winked at Riley who stood at attention, now focused on the present moment. Sarina and Siphokazi laughed and hugged goodbye. Siphokazi turned to Riley and nodded a farewell in his direction. She was suspicious of Riley but trusted Sarina.

  They rounded the corner to 3rd Avenue and walked to Sarina’s apartment. They both knew they had to be together tonight but what about after tonight? They were together as a result of unusual, to say the least, circumstances and had grown to love one another. Riley felt love’s power and the power of the quest yet he had only met Sarina recently and they had become so intimate so quickly. He was beginning to doubt if they would be alive in the morning. Could, as Dana stated, their love of each other be enough to face whatever was in store for them? Riley felt like a private promoted to a commanding officer in just a few short days without knowing who the enemy was or how to deal with it.

  “What will happen after this is over, whatever this is?” asked Riley.

  Sarina looked at Riley and said, “I was wondering the same thing. Are we in this to complete something, or is this just the beginning? Dana has shared so much information with us and I must admit I don’t understand some of it. He seems to give us just enough and then after we experience one aspect, he shares a bit more. I can’t help but consider our roles in this journey. Are we really a couple who can alter the fate of the human race, or are we just a small part of a greater plan we know nothing about?” Sarina was feeling similar doubts about survival, having become so close to Riley so quickly.

  Riley was a detective in the city and had history with friends on the force. It had taken him years to trust his friends and colleagues and now in a matter of a few days he had to trust these new players explicitly and that troubled him. He was now learning a whole new way of being, exposed to every unimaginable situation. He was chasing unearthly beings under the guidance of a mystic and an unusual and beautiful woman whom he had come to trust. The owner of one of his favorite restaurants was a creature from the spirit world that he had visited. Given his uneasiness with Dana, and his generally skeptical detective mind, he didn’t understand Yumma’s involvement and began trusting him less.

  Was any of this even real? Nothing like this had ever happened to him in his career in law enforcement and he wanted to see this to its conclusion. But he was exploring territories so foreign to him that he was beginning to question everything, including who he was, not a good quality for a detective who should be on top of any situation and solid in his convictions. Riley was battling how out of control this all seemed to him.

  Aside for all that, Riley had been willing to risk everything for this new love he felt for Sarina, which scared the hell out of him. Love is a powerful tool and he was feeling its power. He trusted Sarina to such a high degree that everyone and everything else was up for discussion, even the potential fate of his fellow humans. For him this thread of trust in his love for Sarina meant giving in to letting go of control and asking for help, which he desperately needed to do if he was indeed going to save humanity from self-destruction.

  He had not asked for any help from his precinct captain and this bothered him. He was going against all of his training, or at least a part of it. He was being cautious while trusting so much of what he did not understand. He felt strong and convicted yet apprehensive at the same time. Dana never stopped him from seeking the help of others but his own trust issues were infiltr
ating his entire consciousness. The only person from whom he could conceivably ask for help was Sarina, which meant potentially placing her at risk and he was not willing to do that. So many people had already died or had gone missing and he did not want that to happen to Sarina. Still, the battle within raged on.

  His former partner, Jennifer had been murdered as a result of this journey and Sarina had lost her father, her mother, and her sister. Wasn’t that enough? How was she able to carry on with all that had happened so far? He had felt the rush of emotion around his purpose of protecting Sarina and her comments about being a part of a greater plan was playing like a stuck record in his head. Was this all worth the risk? Part of him wanted to scoop Sarina up and whisk her away where she could be safe and free from all this turmoil. Of course, Dana would find them no matter where they fled.

  Sarina, on the other hand, had been feeling pangs of guilt. She was a research editor for a well-known publishing company in the city and had been about to go on the assignment of her life to interview the Thirteen Grandmothers of the Thirteen Nations, that had now been put on hold. She had lived a wonderful life with friends and colleagues. She also had a family of four boys living their new adult lives in the world. What would they think about all this if they had known all the details? Should she call them and explain it all to them? What would Riley or Dana think if Sarina had decided to stop and jump on a plane to Guatemala or back out because of her children? How would her boys feel if their mom perished for some crazy cause and with Detective Holden to boot? Sarina was conflicted for similar and also different reasons than Riley.

  She trusted mainly without apprehension. But Sarina also felt alone in her concerns about her family because, like Riley, she worried about her position where she worked. She too felt a deep love for Riley, maybe in a different way than he felt for her, but strong and powerful just the same. She did not sense that he needed her protection but she did realize that without her help he might not be able to see this through.

  They were both in this journey together but they approached it from very distinct and sometimes opposite directions. Sarina knew her experience was greater regarding the spirit world and mysticism and Riley’s was more from a gum shoe/logical perspective where everything needed to make sense. Sarina reflected again on how Dana had told them that what they were experiencing they could not even imagine in their wildest dreams. She sometimes dreamed about wild and unfettered adventures and here she was, smack dab in the middle of one. Although she had never dreamed about this type of adventure.

  When all was said and done, they both knew that they had to see this journey through to the end, whatever that may be. Their love for each other seemed to be the glue that held all of this craziness together.

  Chapter – Twenty Four

  Sarina and Riley had heeded Dana’s request to made their night together sacred. Ritual had now become a part of both of their lives and Sarina had meant to keep it alive in everything that they had experienced.

  “Are you afraid?” asked Riley as he lit a candle and incense while Sarina smudged in the living room filled with the objects of Sarina’s apartment with sage and called in the directions. Together, they created sacred space. Sarina was more in tune with rituals from around the globe and came to realize that some rituals were very specific but all cultures performed a general cleansing prior to any specific event. She had no knowledge of the event they were about to experience so she decided to use this simple, yet powerful ritual to sanctify whatever it was that they were about to do.

  “Yes, Riley, I am but I feel less so with you here. I’m concerned about my father and his association with The Knights of Templar and the connection with the Freemasons. And all that business about the Sumerians and Nibiru. My God, Riley, what have we chosen to do? Did we ever decide to go down this path together? I mean, I don’t remember making a conscious choice, do you?”

  Riley shook his head. “I know. This all seems so ... so ... I don’t even know the right word but what comes to mind is absurd. Everything I thought I knew has been shattered into a million pieces. I feel like I don’t even know up from down anymore. These forces seem insurmountable to me and that is speaking as if I knew what to expect!”

  Dana spoke of choice with Sarina and Riley and although they actually had chosen this journey, certainly it had been individual events that led to each and every choice. What they did not realize was that they made their first choice when Ann was murdered or maybe even on that day some thirty years ago when they met in that small rural town in Idaho. Some choices may have even been made in previous life times, before Cum-Hau, before the Mayan civilization and possibly before Earth supported a human species. All subsequent choices they each made had led them to this exact moment. Now they had made a choice to continue. This became plainly obvious to Sarina and Riley as they sat facing one another in that mystical apartment in the heart of San Francisco.

  “I know, Riley. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. I feel I can believe in Dana and that offers me some comfort ...”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. Dana does seem to be pretty cool about all this. Maybe a bit too cool. Hell, that’s my detective ego surfacing again; my damn trust issues. If I am going to do this, I need to believe and I need to trust. And although I have tried to explain this with whatever logic I know, I wonder if the thoughts were just messing with my head. But then I ground myself and take a few deep breaths, thanks to your influence, and feel the air fill my lungs and as I become more centered, those thoughts melt away and everything feels right, well as right as it can for me. I often feel conflicted when I attempt to use my logical mind to figure this out, but then when I look at the stars I sense a grandness greater than myself and that also helps me feel grounded and on task. Imagine that, me saying the word grounded.”

  “Okay. I’ll get a few items and make an altar and then we can set intention about our journey together and create this ritual.” Sarina pulled out a large sheet of paper and formed it into a box of sorts with the walls of the box about an inch high.

  “What are you doing?” asked Riley.

  Sarina had decided that the best specific ritual was the Despacho ceremony she had learned while in Peru. “I am putting together an ancient ritual from South America known as a Despacho ceremony. It is used in the Andean culture as a ‘sending off’ to mark the beginning of a journey. We use various personal items from each person and bind them together. We identify what we want our lives, and the life of our community, to be about. We communicate that to the cosmos. In that process we are connecting, and aligning, with Nature’s purpose and coherence. And just as the Munay-Ki rites (which are called in Quechua karpays, or empowerments) awaken and empower our full potential, so the Despacho breathes power into our lives. This ceremony can be blended with other cultural belief systems, at least I believe it can.

  A pause fell between them for a few moments and Sarina spoke. “Riley, do you believe in God?”

  “That was out of left field,” he laughed.

  “I'm being serious here.”

  “I'm sorry. That’s a good question. I have a dear friend named John who has degrees in Theology and Law. We talk about all kinds of things and God becomes center focus on occasion. When we’ve had deep conversations I sometimes feel like we’re one with God or source or some greater essence. I suppose the short answer is, ‘sort of.’ What I mean is that I believe I feel connected with something or someone greater then myself but not the old guy in the robe staring down at me from above. I feel … I don’t know … a greater presence like when I am among the trees just sitting. John has taught me that trees can be the center of a man’s world just as a child or wife or parent or any strong religious, political, environmental, or other conviction. To paraphrase Dana, ‘Eairth is my God and I need to keep that connection alive.’ Does that make sense?”

  Sarina was gazing into Riley’s newly blue-green eyes and said, “Yes it does. I believe that too. Your friend John is ver
y wise indeed. I hope I can meet him some day.”

  “In some ways, I think John has prepared me for this moment in time. He is a soul searching for his own answers and sometimes I give him a hard time because I don’t fully understand why he has been searching for so many years of his life or what he expects to find.”

  Sarina was gazing into Riley’s eyes half listening, half wondering who this man was she had been talking with in her apartment.

  “I think I now have a better understanding what John had been trying to tell me all these years. ‘Our own mortality is but a fleeting moment in time and we need to constantly search for our truest selves lest we become snared in a tempting illusion that in fact blinds us to our deepest meaning and blocks our encounter with bliss.’”

  Sarina led Riley through the Despacho Ceremony as she uttered words in English, Spanish, and Quechua. Riley followed along asking what she was doing. Sarina shared how the various items she placed in the center of the paper represented his family and his journey. She asked him for a lock of his hair and a button from his shirt. She wrapped these and other items she had gathered from special shops in Peru and placed them beside her own wrap. Together the two wrapped packages represented their combined journey. They honored Pachamama, the Eairth Mother, with the calling in of the four sacred directions along with above and below. Sarina asked for guidance and protection along their journey. Sarina used Florida water, which can be used to protect a person, by sprinkling or dabbing it on the individual, and special liquids she saved from her visits as offerings to the spirits of Eairth and the cosmos. Then Sarina and Riley offered the names of the sacred mountains they were familiar with from their lives and asked for protection from the spirits of those mountains.