Other Calendars

Calendric Wisdom South Of The Border

The calendric wisdom of indigenous Mesoamericans has come to be increasingly appreciated in recent years. As prescient observers of celestial cycles and their connections, agricultural and otherwise, to terrestrial events, they came to remarkably similar conclusions about the nature of time itself, despite striking cultural disparities. Spurred by academic impetus imparted by early investigators along with the pending conclusion of the thirteenth Baktun, scholarly interest has focused primarily upon Mayan temporal mensuration. Other systems evolved throughout this region, however, also offer fascinating material, especially when evident parallels are highlighted and psychically explored. Lucky Six Farms, in particular, is convinced that the depths of Mesoamerican calendric wisdom have yet to be fully or fairly plumbed.

Calendric Wisdom - Aztec And Maya

Probably the best known alternate Central American calendric system was developed by the Aztecs. The complex nature of all such systems has long been recognized, since each significant social group employed not just one but several intercalated calendars, each with a specific purpose. Like the Maya, the Aztecs recognized an overriding ceremonial primacy for a recurring 260-day cycle wherein constituent units were assigned simultaneous numerical and symbolic aspects. Enumeration was progressively incremented through subcycles of thirteen digits but twenty symbols, thus requiring passage of 260 days until numeral and symbol again matched their initial configuration, resetting the cycle at its starting point. The Maya referred this the entire sacred 260-day count as the Tzolkin, while the Aztecs used the term Tonalpohualli. In both cases, however, it is clear that the orderly designations were utilized to accommodate a highly specific sequence of presiding deities. The better these entities and the transitions from one to another were understood, the better one could adapt to shifting conditions inherent in their qualities.

Calendric Wisdom - Interpreting The Counts

It is interesting to note how even extreme pressures of cultural heterogeneity coupled with inevitable vicissitudes and horrors engendered by foreign conquest have produced so few ostensible divergencies in attributes of individual days. For example, the day on which I am penning this blog according to the Tzolkin is 12 Muluc (Water); its Tonalpohualli designation is 12 Atl (Water). Thus, despite semantic differences, key aspects of the period remain virtually identical. Although this kind of striking consistency is by no means uniform across the two calendric systems, it is nonetheless common enough to be indicative of a powerful noumenal foundation, a conceptual base transcending arbitrary vagaries of cultural whim and accident. In this spirit, we hope our inventory of venerable herbal aromatics, including smudge sticks and White Sage essential oil, smudge cones, and whole leaves, always subserves their highest traditional and sacred roles. 

By Alan Beck

 

Sounds Of Silence

Wisdom Without Words

Humanity in these post-modern times is gradually coming to appreciate the power of wordless wisdom. Perhaps this is a natural result of ubiquitous doublespeak, which has lamentably evolved into a primary mode of expression throughout academia, advertising, personal relations, and politics. When verbalized conceptualizations lose their hold on lived and living experience, the primordial energy of silence becomes overwhelmingly relevant. I am reminded of this fact virtually every day as I stroll across the rocky high desert acreage of Lucky Six Farms. Down every trail and every turn, I am confronted by silence so complete that it can only be characterized as awesome. And it is within the abyssal depths of that awe that a real wisdom gradually manifests.

Pure Wisdom Of Pure Nature

The grand workings of Mother Earth reverberate across that all-consuming quiet. Every sense strains forward in response. Her movements are slow and deliberate as the great granite boulders, some as large as a multistory building, populating the mountainsides. In this connection, it is fascinating to note how Native American Tribes believe even the stones here have souls and harbor feelings. Such sensitivity can only grow from the sheer force of ever-present silence and the patient calm it inevitably engenders in all who come to seek it out. On these sacred lands, even birdsong is rare, almost as if such notes were saved only for the most pressing communications and heartfelt outbursts. Animals seem fully as aware of the penetrating presence, the intense significance of silence as we humans.

Merging Self Into Wisdom

Like pieces of flotsam sinking beneath the mirrored surface of the sea, we find our egos, our pettiness, whatever of us that is not cosmic merging into the utterly imperturbable, the self-evident - and Biblical! - “I am.” Indeed, there is something profoundly divine in this uncanny desert silence. I believe this is because wisdom equals truth, and truth is necessarily distorted in the telling. Just as ineffably minute quanta cannot be touched or even investigated without changing their state, so the pressure of descriptive words chaotically warps the absolute, perfect state of true Being. For this reason, hermits and mystics of all faiths have sought the miraculous wisdom of silence. Hopefully, just a bit of this transcendent magick is conveyed through our purifying herbal products, which remain the most natural and direct expressions of Mother Earth’s peaceful fecundity.

By Alan Beck

Organic Perspectives

True Wisdom In Theory

Where does true wisdom lie? As many readers already know, Lucky Six Farms leases all of its White Sage fields from world-renowned Madre Grande Monastery. In addition, all of our products - essential oil, hydrosol, smudge bundles, cones, and whole White Sage leaves - are processed according to rigorous standards first set forth by the Monastery. The arrangement allows for a continuing exchange of opinion and information between the two organizations, an ongoing and often remarkably fruitful discussion forging links between pragmatic aspects of organic farming and esoteric Theosophical principles. Key components of the latter include belief in extremely long evolutionary cycles or waves, wherein immutable hubs of conscious being are carried across immense gulfs of time and space in a cosmic process encouraging constructive change. The wisdom of this approach has been recognized by cultures as diverse as the western hemisphere Maya and eastern hemisphere Hindu. 

True Wisdom In Practice

Farmers who personally participate in their profession can find much with which to identify in this perspective. Such an expansive view is directly at odds with most popular notions of progress largely derived from post-modern corporate demands. Instead of catering to inflexible, narrow time-lines set by requirements for quarterly profits, farmers must cultivate patience, genuine adaptability, and openness marked by a keen awareness of seasonality and yearly yield. Stately movements of sun, moon, stars, and clouds against a solid background of soil gradually unfold the stage on which successful cultivation thrives. Thus, the difference in thought patterns between farmer’s market and commodity market are clearly evident and often stark.

Fruits Of True Wisdom

At Lucky Six Farms, we are - and have always been - firmly committed to the living Earth that supports us, the welfare of all her children, and the long-term spiritual satisfaction of our customers. Profits are merely a vehicle for achieving these ends rather than ends in themselves. Whatever the bureaucratic arrangements necessary for our enterprise, we acknowledge the fundamental validity of traditional views: in the final analysis, our blue planet and her wondrous resources cannot be owned by anyone. All we can hope to do is ethically manage those elements that lie temporarily under our aegis. We know that responsibility alone constitutes a serious charge as well as an unparalleled privilege.

By Alan Beck

Fractal Farming

Living Links Of Earth

Our Earth is much more than a dirty, moist ball of rock hurtling through a bleakly immense vacuum. Home to millions of species as well as humankind, it is a wondrous repository of psychic energy penetrating to the most subtle depths of mind and matter. Specifically, it embraces a highly ramifiedl, undeniably living network, wherein intuition, knowledge, and feeling transcend the fleshly barriers of individual lifetimes. Wisdom teachings throughout the ages emphasized an essential identity between the self-consciously small and the immutably great, between Microcosm and Macrocosm, that is, between (wo)man and the overarching cosmos wherein (s)he thinks, speaks, and acts. Lamentably pushed aside for two centuries by soulless mechanistic philosophies, this primordial truth experienced a recent resurgence via insights generated by fractal geometry and its allied disciplines. Ideas drawn from fractal research and the related field of chaos theory have shown how our Earth conforms to patterning and order wholly independent of scale.

Fractal Earth

By uniting the greatest and smallest components of our being, by forging stupendously gorgeous visions of absolute interconnectedness, fractal thought has done much to rescue us from spurious philosophical isolation and return us to our authentic roots in sacred wholeness. Those who work at Lucky Six Farms and its leaseholder, Madre Grande Monastery, have long contemplated the realities now coming to light in the guise of fractal concepts. We see our duty in making Blake’s “universe in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour” come alive.

White Sage From Our Earth

We perceive how spiraling forms of our organically cultivated, purifying White Sage reflect the immense galactic whorls of energy that have woven our world from stardust. In a similar vein, we are confident the essential oils, hydrosols, smudge bundles, cones, and whole leaves we offer always carry an inextinguishably bright core of that understanding to each and every one of our customers. The benefits of our fractal farming are older than Stonehenge and newer than the latest findings of experimental math: we are delighted to make them readily available for you!

By Alan Beck

Dreams of the Great Mother

Maternal Calm

We feel her immutable bright calm in the floating hours just before dawn, before we can even perceive the outlines of her form with our eyes. We are heartened by her strength, inspired by her presence. When the disk of the sun moves over her, we can finally see her in full glory. She lies quiet but imposing, gently circumscribing our northeastern horizon. Eyes half closed in millennial repose, granite lips barely parted in the bright air, she dreams, weaving her maternal impulses into tangible form. She has given birth to the tangible and numinous, to creatures sharp and soft, to insights profound and simple. Those who have learned to know her, shamans, warriors, and the canny, may even be privileged to part the veil of her nocturnal visions, for they understand she is too wise to vanish into the stygian depths of sleep. Her calm is a paradox, filled with energy yet unperturbed.

Cosmic Calm

She is Madre Grande, the Great Mother, the mountain who lent her fame to the healing, teaching Monastery which, ensconced in her shadow, now bears her name and proud reputation. No one who settles near her remains untouched by her ancient power. We, who wild-craft and process her signal child, the purifying White Sage, love her. Long ago, during harrowing times, foreign conquerors sensed her displeasure and tried to blunt her magick. Although they mockingly twisted her into droll Mother Grundy, such a slight proved easy to ignore. Words without substance blow away like dust cast against a whirlwind. While truth may be silenced, it will never remain concealed.

Unique Calm Of Madre Grande's White Sage

Living and working daily in her shadow, we cannot forget the truth of her being. Like the indigenous Tribes, we continue to honor the mysteries channeled through her rough-hewn flesh. Our White Sage products, offerings of Lucky Six Farms which calm bodies while energizing minds worldwide, mark our tribute to her cosmic fruitfulness.

By Alan Beck

Lucky Six Farms' Multitude of Brilliant Suns

What Creates A Symbol?

Can a meaningful symbol be penned by the hand of Nature? The old Doctrine of Signatures isn't referenced much today, indeed few of us are even familiar with the name. Widely known and believed from the earliest days of Imperial Rome until the waning years of the Renaissance, the Doctrine held that a plant's form often symbolized its worldly function. Post-modern science dismisses the whole idea as superstition, yet Paracelsus - one of Nature's closest observers and a founder of experimental medicine - put as much stock in it as the mystic Jakob Bohme. Apparently, this concept ultimately springs from theological roots, specifically from the notion that Divine Intelligence placed plants here with just as much purpose as people. Thus, a plant's shape and color might well embody a key symbol indicative of its unique practical value.

I am certified neither as a scientist nor a saint. Nevertheless, as I take my daily stroll through Lucky Six Farms, I'm forcefully reminded of this ancient notion at virtually every turn. Why? The White Sage itself, whether burgeoning in countless numbers through immense wild-crafted fields or rising solitary from the high-desert soil, first makes its presence known as a perfect, symmetrical whirl of leaflets: a miniature, vegetative sun bursting with blue-green luminance.

Clarity Of Symbol And Meaning

Even a child would be instantly struck by the similarity. The resemblance is clearly delineated. It stands out prominently wherever it appears, even in dense chaparral; many visitors have remarked how it almost appears to be glowing: quite unusual for such a small, low-lying young plant!

White Sage As Symbol

Interestingly enough, Lucky Six Farms' White Sage serves much like a friendly, easily-portable sun. Tirelessly purifying, energizing, invigorating, and ever supporting our own variegated pursuits, the White Sage has earned its reputation for facilitating all positive and wholesome works. For me, our life-giving star has long been accompanied by spirit allies that assist its work: one of the most efficient is the White Sage: it symbolizes a better world for all.