Katharine – thank you for your reflections and insight – yes, absolutely: as you explained, that is exactly what happens with centralised power – it tends to implode one way or another. The “return to centre” that I am talking about is a multi-level contraction: all individual things will return to its own individual centre. In other words: natural decentralisation. In political-speak we could say a move from uni-polarity to multi-polarity.

I am glad that you honed in on this point, because I think it is important to make a clear distinction.

In relation to the Mayans failing – yes, is true that they made the same errors as us in terms of deforestation and over-exploiting their immediate environment – when I visited Copan in Honduras this was explained on a series of signboards at the archaeological site – I have published some quotes over here:
http://gypsycafe.org/2015/11/01/copan-maya-site-discovery-1/

The Mayans had various city states in the Yucatan and Central American region and they were often in conflict with each other, although I think there was never one unified centralised Mayan state or nation – so for example if one city state failed, others continued.

Something interesting I have learned about the “collapse” of the Mayan civilisation is that they developed their cities on energy centres. Everything was about energy for them – and the cycles of time related to it. When the energy shifted after hundreds or thousands of years out of their cities, they would abandon them and would return to agricultural lifestyles until they found new energy centres to build new cities upon – this sometimes took a hundred years or more. From a Western perception it may look like an inexplicable collapse… because we would never dream of abandoning our infrastructure for the countryside, because “the energy shifted”.

Also, they understood that all civilisation rise and fall and everything has its time, so they may not have viewed their own “collapse” as such a disaster – but as you also mentioned, the biggest disaster that befell them was the Spanish invasion. The Conquistadors destroyed virtually all Mayan literature systematically and only a very few books remain. This is the real tragedy – most of the codices that have survived are copies – like the Chilam Balam books that contain the Katun prophecies that I wrote about in the Energy Transitions series.

You are right about so many symbolic languages having similar imagery and messages and I think it points very much to universal archetypes in the collective unconscious as Carl Jung had also identified – and so they appear centuries apart in the artworks and mythologies of people at different ends of the planet. Truly fascinating!

The other idea of centralization is individualization, the idea of self-sustainment through concentrated personal power. This is consistent with co-operation in that each individual participates voluntarily as an equal. This also supports the idea of the New Age of Aquarius in astrology, the brotherhood of man, opposite the Leo end of the pole, which represents the ego.

Amazing how all these symbolic languages support and reinforce each other.

You are welcome. Thank you for reading.

Stephen, thank you for your comment! Sorry for the delayed reply. I´m currently in Peru, so I´m online sporadically. Yes, I remember The Fountain – great film. Another such film which connects with the New Age I think is the film Avatar. It´s very possible the directors of these films were also drawing on ancient wisdoms intuitively – and I think that is why it resonated so much with people and also ties in with not everything being fiction – as you said.

Mythology, although seemingly fictional were actually used as highly advanced guidance systems in ancient civilisations. For example in the Maya culture´s most famous book of mythology, the Popol Vuh, there is a “Lord of Death” or “Demon” (I don´t remember the exact details) which used to pester people who didn’t sweep in front of their homes..! We can well imagine how fear of the “sweeping demon” motivated people to sweep very often! And of course it served that function – a subliminal system to motivate people to keep their lives tidy and organised (at least that is my interpretation of it..) – and mythology holds many other functions and more – such as ancient wisdoms and truths, which can be carried forward into the future, generation after generation.

What I learned from the preface of Popol Vuh, for the Mayans words were sacred and they had to be expressed thoughtfully – and their effects or repercussions had to be considered.

I had a discussion a while ago with someone who lives in France, who said to me that if (modern) children were brought up on mythology they would likely be much better prepared for the real world and they would probably be much wiser too.

I very much appreciate your comment and that it inspires you to expand on some of your pieces is humbling and inspiring in return.

The article inspires me to expand on certain pieces of fiction I’ve been working on for a long time as well.

Yet all is not fiction. The deeper meaning of the article is clear — that we must return to our roots, our center. I think this is a necessary message for this “new age” that we are entering into.