An awful appalling hollowness gripped my gut. As I made my way through the storming jungle, on hands and knees, crawling at times, running and just trying to fly away, Hornsby’s face in that hopelessly blank moment before the lightning struck haunted me. I staggered and cried trying to dispel the vivid memory of his death, as he looked at me with glaring and enlarged eyes, answering to me in a resolute fleeting look.
“He knew, he knew,” I cried out against the howling winds. “The bastard knew he was going to die.”
I anguished like a man defeated in battle. The gash over my head streamed blood down my face, stained with the rain. My hair tousled, the disorder of my clothes and the aspect of Hornsby’s death made me a frenzied possessed spectacle.
Exasperated in the clutches of the hurricane’s alley, I was wrung out with an utter loneliness; homesickness and then a premonition stole over me. I sensed I was not alone. Searching about the jungle the fierceness and rapidity of a gleaming black object moving amidst the tropical forest growth instinctually made me feel imminent danger. I glared amazed as it was overtaken by my presence as well.
Its yellow black slit eyes were no farther than five meters from me. Between us was a fallen tree, offering a momentary projection for me to make an escape. The panting Jaguar crouched down in a black heap, its claws digging into the earth to strike with its full force. I was disarmed having left my machete at the top of the temple. My bare hands were my only protection. In an instant, I was sure I would be devoured and consumed as its predator eyes fixed on me.
“Leave me alone, go away,” I cried out in defiance.
The boiling commotion of the hurricane seemed to subside into the background for a moment. The Jaguar and I were locked in a scrimmage of out witting each other’s fear. The Jaguar growled with a horrendous guttural threat back at me. I could see his body tighten, his great paws were flattening out, preparing to make its leap.
Maybe it would be my chance to turn and scramble in a blind panic. But the Jaguar would be about my throat before I had even flinched a muscle. If I fell on my knees and pleaded for mercy, he might be offended with the excess of my fear and see the worthlessness of the blood lust kill.
The struggle would be over soon enough I assured myself. A strange eloquent admiration of being killed by the savage brute force penetrated me. But then the Jaguar’s eyes widen staring beyond my shoulder at some obscure shape. I didn’t see what it was at first, but only heard a rhythmic song being sung amid the fury of the hurricane.
“Jujuntsit in jitik in wok jujuntsit in jitik in k’ab tan u pek in nej tin wu’uyaj u tar a k’ay ch’iknach netak in wenen tin kashtai u pachtakih che?”
The Jaguar snarled, flashing its white fangs in cursed defiance. I stood frozen not wanting to turn away for fear the jaguar would pounce on me. What was behind me or what was being sung above the roar of the hurricane’s force put fear into beast’s eyes, causing it a sudden reversion of its fury to attack me. Slowly the Jaguar stepped backwards, without taking its eyes off of the object.
“Oken tin wenen yokor jenen che? Tu yek’er in nok’ tu yek’er in k’ab tu yek’er in shikin.”
The voice reached higher tones, loudly singing. The jet-black Jaguar snarled again as if complaining of being deprived its prey and made a quick leap off into the jungle.
In an outbreak of impulsive avowal I yelled, “I scared it off,” jumping up in deranged delight.
Even though the hurricane was at its fullest strength, I dismissed it as nothing to be concerned about. The Jaguar’s threat surpassed the hurricanes wrath. The beast’s prey had escaped. Turning around I was dumbfound to see the white tunic clad Moise standing on the trunk of a huge mangrove tree, smiling.
The wind tossed his long black hair about his face, but his close-set eyes peered at me. A bolt of lightning struck above us, exploding into a bluish flame and raining down fiery sparks upon my head forcing me duck for cover. Deafening thunder rolled over me. I was footsore and exhausted. If but for a moment he appeared to sing a song of protection from the Jaguar on my behalf, in the next moment Moise vanished.
I rushed to where he had been. From the corner of my eye I saw a figure moving quickly through the brush. It stumbled, fell and regain its self. Thinking it was Moise; I ran stumbling over more fallen debris. When I finally came around the trunk of tree to confront him, I was met with a surprise.
“Senor Jules, que pasa!” It was Cristobal coming face to face with me.
“Cristobal!” I cried, hugging him. “You’re alive!”
“Donde está, Don Hornsby?” Cristobal asked.
“Muerto,” I answered not knowing how to convey the tragedy.
“Huracan,” Cristobal said seeming to understand the circumstances.
“Si.”
“Tigre.”
“Saber.”
“Sequir, mi,”
The two of us took off toward the refugee camp. Cristobal still had his machete so he carved a path for us, dodging falling branches along the way. I staggered over rocks, branches, trying to keep up with Cristobal, feeling a remorse for Hornsby’s death.
There was no place to find shelter, so we moved on the best we could. I noticed that Cristobal’s white shirt was blood stained about his left shoulder. He had winged by a bullet from the helicopter’s gunner. Looking worse for wear, his spirit was vibrant and serene. Having found him, my spirit was rejuvenated. The rest of the day was spent foraging our way in a southerly direction, through the carnage of the hurricane. By late afternoon the hurricane had subsided into a tropical rainstorm eventually dying out completely.
When night fell I stoically observed the sky; a brilliant celestial heaven so crystal clear I felt I could have reached out and touched the stars. The Milky Way filled the sky like a stellar cloud. The constellation’s Orion and the Southern Cross were visible, among the grand spectacle of the Milky Way. The twinkling light carried me into deep reflection.
What Hornsby was telling me about Quetzalcoatl and the importance of being an artist in your spiritual life, caused me to wonder if there was really a time upon this earth when all things were not in a chaotic condition? When the world was shared in tranquility, no harm and no untimely ending to one’s existence. Was there a time when a stable manifestation of naturalness was the only action taken? Could this time, if it ever existed, be the future of our world, when the end of this Tun Mayan calendar cycle comes to an end?
Such is the magic of the universe’s method, directed by the ultimate mastermind that conducts with precise regularity that which out strips man-made technology. Nothing could be more powerful, essentially divine than the creative order of this universe, that we have a privilege to exist in.
As I continued to gaze at the celestial heavens above me, Cristobal prayed, evoking the protection of some Nican Tlaca deities. In his own way, Cristobal was ritualizing a velorio or wake ceremonial service for Hornsby’s spirit. He brought the simple prayer service to a climax by dancing and singing to himself. I was too exhausted to participate, curling up into a fetal position to stay warm and dozed off.
The next morning we started out at daybreak, swiftly covering the jungle terrain to arrive at the refugee camp. The ravages of the hurricane became more apparent as we made our way. The upheaval of trees, plants and corpses of wildlife littered the landscape. I questioned Cristobal whether we were on the right track, since we had no compass to navigate by. He calmly reassured me answering that if he could find me he could find the refugee camp.
During the time we spent hiking towards the Rio San Pedro thoughts turned in my mind, maybe needlessly in exaggerated fashions. The restlessness of humankind seemed to be erroneously out of sync with the universe’s consciousness. I had become aware of my sensory acuteness since living in the jungle, which was something that technological inducements of a modern world never accomplished.
Given the discovery of the Soul Chamber, I had learned one thing: That man has not been progressing in accordance to universal principles. Instead, what has been manifested is a disastrous feedback loop only perpetuates artificial extensions of a gross unthinking paradigm that is deadening our senses. This keeps us in a mental paralysis, unable to connect to the psychic resonance between organism and energy.
If the origin of consciousness is the connection to the universe, which gives us the higher state of pleasure since we live in harmony of the energy of intelligence, than our development of a democratic industrialized hierarchy is an obstruction to the purity of this natural experience. This is what drove my inner contradictions, as I was experiencing an imperceptible shifting within my own psyche prior to embarking on this expedition.
Hornsby, in the final moments before his death said the earth contained nodal points that were moved by the tectonic plates. These points were sacred to those who understood the true nature of human existence upon this planet. The Mayan temples were constructed as markers of these electromagnetic power spots that emitted pulsations to keep the planetary grid in balance.
Even though our current modernized society believes that the way we are is because we made it so, in reality, we are enslaved in the final hurricane gesticulation of this planets evolution and the cosmos. Economic and political order of the last cycle of the Mayan calendar known as the Twelfth Baktun is disintegrating, as the failures of its infrastructure must give way to the inseparable relationship between the next consciousness and its cosmic nature. The more human conflict there is among nations, the greater the suffering of the planet, the harder to remain connected to our divine purpose. I feared there would be more cataclysmic events as political leaders demand war to make peace.
Hornsby believed that the Tzolk’in matrix is the key for us to understand and to adhere to our salvation. Hornsby’s aberration, his extravagance to live on the edges of human consciousness, was his genius that served the progress of the world. Judged and scorned for his passionate indulgence in the common passion to know what lies behind our moral intentions, Hornsby found the Soul Chamber as a spiritual warrior and revolutionary against the enormous human ignorance.
He claimed that we didn’t understand the true use of technology as a means to extend the completion of the larger matrix circuit of nature; instead we used this evolutionary energy grid to create a dissonance reality of degenerative static that suppresses the empowerment of consciousness.
In time, Hornsby said, there would be warriors breaking down the dominant powers of the mechanistically contrived paradigm that built the occidental civilization, and instead bring a real prosperity and peace to this earth. He had spoken these words to me in the Soul Chamber as if they were written in fire upon the hieroglyphs. He had told me that the Tzolk’in round cycle will bring an end and new beginning.
“We will come out of the rainy period, the period of barbarism and into the investiture of a time of clear skies. This will herald the coming of the solar deity, Hunahpu, the Ultimate Being of the Universe,” I recalled his words.
The existence of the Soul Chamber was the Holy Grail, proof of our origin of consciousness: The common genesis of human existence and divine countenance.
“There are events coming in our future that bring us to our ancestor’s past,” I thought to myself as I trudged along through the jungle’s overgrowth.
There were few signs of the refugee camp. I did discover the stone campfire hearth as a reference point but other traces had been washed away from the hurricane’s fury. I surmised that Cassarina, Dr. St. Germain and the others had broke camp before the hurricane arrived otherwise there would have been tracks, a well-defined trail. Or had they fled a patrolling “death squad” or worse yet had been captured prior to the hurricane’s arrival.
As we surveyed the area, a billowy white thundercloud passed over the sun. Its shadow fell across me causing me to recall the frightful phenomenon of the storm, Hornsby’s death and the abstraction of the Soul Chamber’s enlightenment of the Final Day’s remarkable liberation.
Wondering through the brush I found the remains of the clinic structure that had been torn down by the wind, its cane walls scattered like splintered toothpicks. The whole ordeal of the expedition felt pitiful as my hope of seeing Cassarina again was dashed.
Searching further, I found the grave of the Mayan woman we had buried days before, the stone markers still in place. But where had Cassarina gone? My eyes welled up with tears, as I despaired by the gravesite. What would I do if Cassarina were dead? The dismay drowned my heart. I crumbled upon the rotting soil of the marshy lowland jungle. The discovery of Soul Chamber and what it contained was overshadowed by the death of Dr. Hornsby. I wavered between the events unable to make sense of it.
Cristobal called out to me in the tone of a heart uplifted in some tender admiration of life’s miraculous moments.
“Senor Jules,” he called out to me coming through the jungle brush.
With the reins of the bridle in his hand he lead one or our horses, a bit worse for wear that miraculously had survived the river and hurricane. The saddle and my backpack were dangling on one side of the horse’s torso.
Renewed in spirit, I quickly ran to him and the horse. Unlashing my backpack, I dumped out the contents, spilling the water soaked items out on the ground. Rummaging through it, I found the film cassettes were still dry, protected by the plastic canisters renewing hope that I could expose the death squad massacre at Father Hernandez’ mission.
My journals were soaked through, but what was foremost in my mind was something I had given little credence before; The Anahuac Mythology book that Father Hernandez had given me. Once I put my hands on it, I sat down, crossed legged and gripped it in my hands as a priceless treasure.
“Anahuac,” I thought. The word resonated within me. It loomed up off the book cover, embracing me as if it was trying to tell me something.
“Que es?” Cristobal asked me.
He stood by the horse; the two of them seemed to be anxiously waiting for me as I glanced over at them.
“Right,” I muttered, realizing that this was no time to dwell in my intuitive musing.
I collected the things I had dumped out on the ground and put them back in my pack, including the book. Cristobal had re-secured the saddle on the horse, so I lashed my pack to the saddle horn, just as it was prior to crossing the Rio San Pedro days before.
El Ceibo, the closest village, was across the Guatemalan/Mexico border where food and rest could be provided to us. We’d have to cross the Rio Usumacinta again, but I was seasoned to the perils that lay ahead. As I turned my thoughts upon the prospect of returning to Mexico, it hit me.
“The Hotel Anahuac in San Cristobal de los Casas would be the place that Cassarina would go,” I thought.
“Vamos,” I shouted to Cristobal and grabbed the horse reins, headed at a brisk pace toward the west.
The End
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