CHAPTER SIX: DREAMTIME - CONTINUED

At the grotto’s entrance sat five puma’s. I suspected them to be the guardians keeping vigil for intruders. They all roared at my presence, then went silent by the wave of my guide’s hand.

We continued downward along a long corridor inside the cave. The air was filled with the smoke of copal incense. I noticed numerous tunnels leading off into shadowed darkness on either side of me. The sound of trickling water infiltrated the damp air. Deeper we went with only the flickering flame of his lamp to see by.

Eventually we came to a large grotto with a large stone alter in the center. He motioned me to sit down on piles of fresh water shells and terrestrial snails. Obedient, I did what I was told.

In the flickering shadows about me, I noticed the grotesque shapes of Mayan deity faces sculptured on what Lacandones called, lak-il k’uh or copal incense burners. More than that, I noticed anthropomorphic art on the walls of the cavern becoming animated.

“La’in ka, Moise,” the old aborigine said with sincerity, squatting across from me. He was speaking a different tongue than Hach Wink. I surmised he was telling me his name. My whole perception was a pulsating field of panchromatic molecular energy. A thousand eyes surrounded me, peering out from the darkness of the chamber.

“Xibalba,” Moise said. “Aqui.” He was telling me I had entered the Underworld of Mayan mythology.

Moise reached out quickly to grab my hands. He inspected the fingertips of each hand delicately touching the contours of my fingernails like reading brail.

“Chal balum.”

This time I could make sense of what he was saying. He spoke the Hach Winik word for “jaguar” releasing my hands. I realized that he was determining my onen, the particular animal ancestry I was related to, necessary in interpretation of dreams. The shape and texture of the fingernails was the key.

“Que socaste?” Moise asked me. He spoke perfect Spanish. How I found the words or even the ability to communicate with him, I don’t recall. The moment after he asked me about my dreams, a jolt of energy ran from the bottom of my spine up through my body and out of my head. I felt the emission of a warm surging vortex type beam just above the brow of my eyes.

My nightmarish dream played out like a holographic projection within the cave. There was the beginning scene of the sun rising in the eastern horizon, illuminating the jungle canopy. The landscape opened up in a vast distance, almost as if I could see the breath of the Maya Forest that covered southern Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula and northern Guatemala spanning off to the shores of the Caribbean.

As the sunlight became more pronounced, the luxuriant jungle vegetation was dotted with pinnacles of magnificent stone temples and acropolis palaces. Shafts of radiant golden morning light prompted Moise to say, “Ah kin” the Mayan name for Sun Day or loosely translated by the Lacandon as “Prophet.”

The celestial night slowly became extinguished by the vibrancy of the sun’s crimson rays illuminating against towering white clouds about the skyline. As the sun rose further in the sky, the vast openness of the jungle became visible. All was extraordinarily peaceful.

There appeared a long ornate stone causeway running through the jungle’s vast expanse. The causeway connected three major temples that were separated by hundreds of miles in direct alignment. Here was the colossal wonderment of the Maya dynasty as it appeared over a thousand years ago. As I looked closer at the causeway, I saw the busy activity of a populated civilization.

“Yaxbe,” Moise said, pointing to the stone causeway’s image suspended in mid-air before me.

He had spoken the Yucatec Maya word for “green passage.” Moise’s crooked index finger stretched out from his hand. When the tip of his finger touched the image, it rippled momentarily, liked the surface of still water when disturbed by a gentle breeze. Turning to smile at me, Moise glanced over at a specific location. There was a large river basin closest to the temple near me at the base of a mountain range. The farthest temple seemed to be located on the Yucatan peninsula and the nearest by the Chiapas Highlands.

“Yaxchilan,” Moise pointed to the nearest temple to the south. Then he directed my attention to the furthest temple and said, “Calakmul.”

Below Calakmul, among the temples directly to the south he pointed one out as, “Masuul.”

Then directing my attention toward what would be north central Guatemala his elongated finger pointed to a temple called, “Cancuen.”

But what caught my eye was a prominent temple situated midway in a direct line between what Moise had pointed as Palenque and Calakmul. It was engulfed in a purplish color. The whole structure was transparent with three glowing geometrical orbs contained inside of the pyramid.

“Yaxkin,” Moise said pointing to this middle temple of pulsating light that shot a beam of radiance straight up into the heavens.

But at that second the sky dimmed. The sun was being eclipsed. Then, I heard a large rumbling sound deep within the earth. The causeway shook. The people wavered, trying to steady themselves. Than they ran scared as the causeway stone crumbled from the shifting earth beneath them. Some of the temples fell to ruin, while the jungle accelerated in tropical growth. The three-orbed illuminated temple disappeared.

I could see many people falling between gapping crevasses. Others tried to save them but it was in vain. A vicious upheaval knocked them back. Lightning bolted from the darkening sky. Thunderclaps echoed against the very walls of the alter chamber. Some of the natives struggled to their feet only to fall again from the earth’s violent tremors. The causeway buckled and broke apart like dried sticks being snapped in half and then the ruinous rubble was swallowed in a terrible convulsion of a natural disaster. The day turned into a pitch-black night.

“Kisin,” Moise muttered.

He was referring to the Lord of Death. Moise was right. I knew from Lacandon dream interpretation that the eclipse of the sun meant the death of someone. But here my dream ended.