Now that we have a viable idea for the ritual and purpose of the Maya ball game, there is the enigma of the Age of the 5th Sun. Why were there only five suns, and not seven. The answer to that question is in the equality of the father and the son, and the coming forth of the father from the mother. The objective of creation is the accomplishment of the top step of the Six-Stair-Place. That step represents the possession of the message. We cannot become the message, nor can we become the medium. We have always been the message and the medium. Time for the journey can be measured through the four steps of the created elements and the acquisition of the subject which reveals the light of the First Mother and First Father. We are intended to join the ancestors, not to overcome them.

Let us repeat the journey of the Maya to emphasize why there were only five suns. The ancestors of the Maya started where we all must begin, in a cosmos of incredible beauty and mystery.

Before the first sun had risen, before the first dawn,

the gods assembled themselves at Teotihuacán.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
 

See the Caiman Tree and the mouth of Quetzalcoatl?. Wandering through this Six-Stair-Place, they saw the awe of its majesty. They wondered if there was a message written in the stars. They found help to the right center, where seven stars point the way. They drank of the gourd of the Big Dipper calling it Seven Macaw.

It may at first seem preposterous that humans would look to the stars to find out where they are and where they are going. But, the Scientific American Magazine published a cover story article in August 1975 which demonstrated that migrating birds used the stars to travel from pole to pole. Thus, the stars have been guiding creatures on the earth for untold millions of years. Undoubtedly, the humans saw the same stars as the birds, and they followed those stars, as well. Like the birds, humans made associations in various groups. The first, and most important group was the stars in the cloud of the Milky Way. It revealed much about the heavens and the earth, for to wandering birds and wandering humans, the stars say, "as above, so below".

For four days they performed penance around a sacred fire.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
 

The first writers in the sky probably chose simple figures they could visualize from their experiences on the earth. This process "projected" the terrestrial creatures up onto the heavenly vault.

The fundamental need for security would have driven the star writers to become familiar with their own zenith location, and a special place which never seemed to die. This place acted like the top of the world, and all the creatures in the heavens danced around it. This is the north pole to the creatures of the northern hemisphere, and the south pole to creatures "down under". Of course they hadn't yet decided the nature of "down under", but eventually they would need to define an up.

Egypt defined the south as Upper Egypt. The Asiatics did not believe in the foundations of Egypt, they defined Israel as up, and Egypt as down. That is why the Bible repeats the phrase, "up out of Egypt I have called my son".  It is fairly clear that the ancestors of the Maya called the north region as up, however, we should not assume that they did not "flip the poles" during their travels, like what happened to Egypt. The current scenario has it that the Native Americans crossed the Bering Strait during the last ice age about 20,000 years ago. This scenario is biased by the belief that the peoples who settled the Americas could not navigate the oceans.

Recent data presented by archaeologists indicate that the Australian continent was settled over 60,000 years ago. Settlement of Australia requires that people be capable of moving family groups across vast stretches of open ocean. It is fairly clear they did not swim to Australia, nor did they arrive with full families stranded on logs that happened to float ashore. The idea of floating on water is a technology that is probably nearly as old as the mastery of fire. I would venture to guess that the mastery of the technology of the celestial gods is older than the mastery of fire or water, for the birds have yet to learn to use fire, or build rafts, but they have had the astronomical know how for millions of years.

Astronomy has one unavoidable enigma. What we see in the heavens is the way it was many years before. We cannot look into the heavens and see how they are at the instant we look, because the light from the stars comes from so far away. The bare heavens tell us how it was in the heavens. The handwriting on the cosmic walls tells us how it was on earth. The value of time for each star can be determined by knowledge of the speed of light and the distance to the star. This measure causes astrophysicists to conjure the idea of a Big Bang. This idea may be appropriate to the cosmos, but it does not tell us anything about the ancient skywatchers. To learn about the ancient skywatchers, we have to be able to read the graffiti which they marked upon the celestial vault.

How can a person mark the celestial vault?. Science "knows" that they cannot. And yet, science puts up satellites and space junk to mark up the heavens nearly every day. In the voyager spacecraft program, NASA paid Carl Sagan, and a crew of selected persons, to design a plaque to tell space travelers where voyager came from. This is truly an ironic, if not arrogant, act. A scientific community which cannot communicate with the celestial monuments placed on the earth expects an insignificant mechanical device to somehow encounter intelligent life in the far reaches of space, and then appreciate the scientists for what was accomplished. This is a clear failure to communicate, due to the grip of Seven Macaw. The way to mark the heavens is with a process and a science known by the words, "as above, so below".  In the dreams and fairy tales of children, all the graffiti of the heavens can be recorded. Some of the graffiti is of such profound value that monuments and temples must be constructed to assure its preservation. That is how the cosmic ball game has been played throughout the Age of the 5th Sun.

When the game is played sincerely, an individual can rejoin the ancestors in a dance of the gods. So lets watch Seven Macaw and see if the little bird of rational perception can lead us back to the far distant past and forward into the Kingdom of Heaven.

To accomplish a cosmic time measurement, we must first recognize that time is a metaphor for positions of light stimulus. Time does not exist, but we can measure the movements of the sources relative to each other. One of these sources will be a reference, and all the others will be related to it. The reference chosen by the Maya was the daily cycle. The long count calendar is a measure of days, or cycles of the earth. The angular movement of the sun around the earth represents one day, or a period of enlightenment. This cyclical reference is the source for the metaphor called time, and the acquisition of cosmic awareness.

The ancients did not see time as important, for them the important parameter was relative position to the zenith. The zenith is the Six-Stair-Place. Every place on earth or in the heavens is an angular measurement from the local zenith. When a person travels, his zenith stays with him, and his home stays with the stars. Thus, if the home zenith stars are five degrees north of his local zenith, then his local zenith is five degrees south of his home zenith. After several trips, he learns how much effort it takes to move his local zenith five degrees (300 nautical miles). But, listen carefully and you will hear the inevitable truth. This relationship "as above, so below" only works if the earth is perceived as a ball. All travels on the earth required the ancients to learn the stars and the facts of the size of the earth. That is how the dimensions of the earth got recorded in the Great Pyramid of Egypt over 4500 years ago. It was common sense, and sacred science with a subjective message.

When the truth of the ball of the earth becomes known, the game in the cosmic court can begin. The next information required is the measure of the cycle of the day. That leads to the polar axis, where the circling stars always reveal where the sun is located to the adept that knows his angles and his stars. The position of the polar axis is recorded in the myths, legends, and sacred scriptures which are the graffiti on the cosmic vault.

Over many centuries, the myths, legends, and sacred scriptures lose their alignment with the stars due to the wobble of the earth axis around the pole of the ecliptic. The pole of the ecliptic is relatively fixed amongst the stars, and the pole of the galaxy. Thus, over long enough periods, it becomes possible to create legends, myths, and sacred scriptures that tell of the originating point for the cycle of the heavens and the movement of the polar axis. These sacred scriptures become the most valued possessions of any culture. With them, the whole universe can be understood like a map of the ball of the earth, and a person can go anywhere on earth at any particular moment and know precisely where his local zenith is relative to his home or destination zenith. First the traveler orients his zenith to the creation story, and then finds the colure of the equinoxes and the solstices. With this information and the sacred scriptures, he can determine the Age of the Sun, and the way to wherever he is headed. This adept has ascended the Six-Stair-Place.

There are four critical poles to know in this divine travel technology. The zenith is the personal or physical axis. The earth polar axis is the material axis of the earth. The ecliptic polar axis is the rational axis of the light of the sun. The galactic axis is the spiritual axis of the eternal gods. Egypt knew these four axes as the Djed pillar. They showed the pillar of Osiris as a single pole with four planes.

This same idea was illustrated in Stella 25 where Hunahpu holds the pillar of the north pole with Seven Macaw sitting upon the third perch. In this scenario, the lowest perch is the earth polar axis; the second perch is Hunahpu's personal zenith axis at the winter solstice of 2012; the third perch is the ecliptic axis which is aligned with the earth and Hunahpu's zenith.

On top of the head of Seven Macaw is a fourth perch. The shaft of this perch is ninety degrees to the common shaft of the other three perches. This perch represents the galactic axis, and the Way of the Dead, for a vulture sits on the perch.

Thus, Stella 25 defines one specific moment in the 26,000 years the pole of the earth cycles the sun, 13 Baktun, December 21, 2012, the day One Hunahpu is returned from the dead; the day of conjuring of creation. It also aligns the first four elevations of the Six-Stair-Place. If an adept can reach the message of Stella 25, then the adept has carried the subject through the medium to understanding. The adept has won the ball game. He holds up the spirit of Seven Macaw to the next generation as an example of what they can expect. This example cannot be understood unless the younger generation goes down the Caiman tree and is born through its mouth as the resurrection of the beheaded First Father. Hunahpu did it. Any Maya who is as sincere, and as willing to give of his personal physical being, can succeed in the great Cosmic Ball Game.

One of the gods, Quetzalcoatl, faced the east, and there, off in the distance,

the sun rose over the horizon.
As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.
 

The correspondence of Stella 25 is shown in this star chart over Mexico City on December 21, 2012 centered on the axis at the top of the ecliptic (TOE).

The vertical axis of the star chart is the polar axis which runs from the winter solstice at the arm of One Hunahpu/Ophiuchus, through the north pole at Polaris, and on to the summer solstice at the arm and head of Hunahpu/Auriga. The horizontal axis is the galactic axis which runs ninety degrees from the polar axis to the Maize at the top of the galaxy (TOG), and to the staff of life at the bottom of the galaxy. This is the message of Stella 25, and it defines the complete cosmos without any indication of time. It is a perfect representation of the creation myth and the most important information required by any Maya who wants to understand the cosmos in which he has been given life.

Around the pole of the ecliptic, we can step off the five 13 Baktun periods of 1,872,000 days, or 5125.36 years (1 Baktun = 144,000 days). The total cycle is 65 Baktun, 9,360,000 days, or 25,627 years. The current estimate for the Platonic year which 65 Baktun describes is approximately 25,727 years; a variance of 0.4%. When the precessional calculations were performed around 500 BC in Izapa, the precessional rate was approximately 26,055 years; an error of 1.6%. But, we can recognize the long count calendar as a ritual calendar used to synchronize the planets and the sun to the unit of days, and the Maya base twenty numerical system. The useful duration of the long count calendar was somewhat less than three thousand years, for they clearly intended that the generation after 13 Baktun would use a method similar to theirs to recalculate the heavens.

The celestial technology describes the objects of the heavens with incredible accuracy. But, it is the subjective aspects that are most intriguing to adepts. The subjective aspects demonstrate a clear intention in the design of the cosmos.

• Why is the underworld down?.

• Why is First Father buried under the roots of a tree?.

• Why does a flower grow on the top of the world?.

• Why do the Father's sit directly opposite the sons?.

• Why does the birthing mother sit directly opposite the death and resurrection of the king?.

• Why is a youthful king coming forth at the mouth of the cosmic Caiman tree, as if it were the fruit of the tree?.

• Why does the father image take a serpent out of the mouth of the Caiman tree?.

• Why does the trunk of the Calabash tree lean such that it crosses from the ancient head at the top to the resurrected man at its roots?.

• Why does the man at its roots have his feet in a fire?.

To the ancient skywatchers, the answers to these questions were all the same. First Father intended it to be that way. First Father caused First Mother to bring forth the fruit of his intention. To the Maya, this was sufficient proof of the "intelligent design" of creation.
 

There should be little doubt by now that the Maya believed in the "intelligent design" of the cosmos. It is not my purpose to support nor deny such incredible insight. My purpose is to simply show how they came by their perceptions. Now we need to examine the first four days of the Maya creation and the Age of the 5th Sun to see if there is any general corroborating evidence that the heavens support the Maya creation story. This is a process of conjuring, which involves looking for messages that can be carried by the heavens and by events on the earth. The heavenly messengers are well known, but the events on earth must be chosen to fit the heavens for the pre-historic periods.

In the previous chart, the five ages of the sun were sectioned. They were also named in accordance to the four perches of Hunahpu and the final age of enlightenment. The first day, or period of enlightenment, would have begun in -52.0.0.0.0 (~23,614 B.C.) when the north pole was at its present position, and ended in -39.0.0.0.0 (~18,489 B.C.). During this period, the north pole was dominated by the constellation of the king, Cepheus. We can associate Cepheus with the rock under Sculptor, and the cave in which Sculptor is hidden under the galaxy. It may be appropriate to associate that age with cavemen, but we must not forget that this was an age when great migrations to the Americas were occurring. In the Greek myths, Cepheus was Chronos, who was fed a rock to begin the age of Zeus. In the Catholic tradition, the first leader of the church was Cephus, which means rock, and was the name given to Simon Peter. This day we will call the day of earth, when material aspects of the lands were on the minds of men.

The second day began in -39 Baktun (-18,489 B.C.) and ended in -26 Baktun (13,364 B.C.). During this period the north pole was dominated by Cygnus the swan. It represented a period when many of the rivers and lakes of North America were under ice and peopled by the generations of nomadic families searching for sustenance along the rivers and waters further south. This day we will call the day of water, where physical prowess was important to the families of humans who lived in the great wildernesses of North America, and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere.

The third day began in -26 Baktun (13,364 B.C.) and ended in -13 Baktun (8,239 B.C.). This day begins with the Lyra, a clear indicator of air, for a Lyra is a musical instrument which depends upon the vibration of air to make its sounds. Half of this age was dominated by the Pillars of Hercules. For our conjuring purpose we will recognize the constellation of Hercules as holding apples in one hand and a club in his other hand. In this aspect, he represents the hunter-gatherers who populated the Americas. It should also be noted that he stands with his feet "up" and his head "down" in a north to south attitude. The last ice age ended during a period when the north polar axis was at the Pillars of Hercules, and we can probably assume that southward orientation dominated the human psyche as a direct result of the northern ice fields. Due to Lyra and the head strong attitude of Hercules, we will call this period the day of air, for humans were beginning to think about conquering their environment and sanctifying their tribal lands.

When the fourth day began, the head of the serpent in the hands of First Father/Ophiuchus and the foot of Hercules marked the north polar region in -13 Baktun (8,239 B.C.). The ice had withdrawn and the fields were cultivated to prepare the way for inspired human civilizations. The period soon changed, for the constellation known as the Maize God dominated the polar regions until 0 Baktun (3,114 B.C.). The summer sun would have aligned with Virgo throughout most of the age. The Egyptian Elysian Fields, as well as the Happy Hunting Grounds of the Maya Maize God, would have been in the polar regions throughout the day and the night. During this age, civilizations would have desired to flip the poles so that north was up. And, there should be little doubt that the Maya record had seen this "Golden Age" as the time of great spirits and the day of fire.

The final day began on 0 Baktun, September 6, 3114 B.C. This was to become the day of self enlightenment. This day, humanity would meet First Father when the sun finally set. The journey through the four days of the created elements would unfold in a following age of incredible technological advances. Much of the advances were in the use of war machines, but great civilizations and monuments would arise as humans began to realize their own destiny, and domesticate the environment. They were going to become Sons of God, and they were fully aware of the meaning of the term. But, before they could become the Sons of God, they would have to battle the greatest adversary they could ever expect to meet. That adversary was self knowledge. Given the great technologies which they would acquire, could they control it and not use it for self annihilation, or possibly world destruction?. 

Many civilizations came with the technology of the gods and were destroyed by their offspring, due to adolescent desires. To protect their technologies civilizations hid the truth in myths and monuments so that only the selected few could acquire it. If the masses had the knowledge, they would undoubtedly use it for immature self interest and destroy the civilization of God Kings. So, during this age a new kind of knowledge was to become a dominant factor in human endeavors; the knowledge of good and evil. During the first four days, there was no evil, just a world to come to know. But, as the Golden Age came to an end, it was clear to the great civilizations of the world, that civilization as it had come to be known would be destroyed by the very children who were the motivation of the ancestors. These arrogant children became obsessed with becoming Sons of God, and denied their own flesh and blood.

The celestial nemesis in the carnage is the absence of a polar god who could be an example for life. Gone were the days of the King, the Swan, the Lyra, the Hunter Gatherer, and the Maize God. Earth, water, air, fire became false metaphors in a bygone age when men had not achieved significant self knowledge. All that was left was an instrument with an iron hand, the Big Dipper, and its companion the Little Dipper. These were not made by the gods, these were formed by human hands. The resulting loss of orientation toward the subjective measures of cosmic life was stealing the soul of the ancestors from the descendants. A battle for the heavens was to ensue. Would the technologists defeat the spiritualists so that the Age of Enlightenment would become an age noted for spiritual ineptitude?. Or would the age result in a return to the Golden Age which had been fired by the inspiration of the Elysian Fields?.

Egypt stood fast on the wisdom of the Golden Age and erected the Great Pyramid complex and the Great Sphinx to assure that the death of Osiris, could be overcome when the king returned to the polar axis. They knew that the subjective guidance of a polar king would cause future children to wonder if others had known their king before. Stonehenge was also constructed at the end of the Golden Age. These monuments, and others were built around the world to record the lost Golden Age, so that one day, civilization could recover what self knowledge was destined to destroy. Humanity is a very courageous species, but it cannot survive when self knowledge dominates cosmic knowledge. The cosmos was about to be removed from the ball of the human world, as the vernal equinox passed the bull on its way into the underworld and the Valley of Death in Piscis. Fortunately, these ancient cultures had sufficient wealth, and the wisdom to use their wealth, to record the cosmic truths which would otherwise be lost forever. A technological culture has no way to go except toward self and world destruction. The very premise of such cultures is the rape of Mother Nature and the abomination of its animal origins. Technology has not employed to prove the value of mankind, it has been used to demonstrate inadequacy in the natural world.

To preserve the memories of the Golden Age of the Maize God, the Maya conjured Seven Macaw to show how humanity had lost the game. The battle with Seven Macaw has not yet been won by the Maya. In fact, their own kings helped destroy the ancient wisdom. The European conquerors hastened an inevitable fate. The European conquerors were insensitive because they had succumbed to the technologies of state under the Roman Empire, while the New Jerusalem of Teotihuacán was being planned and constructed. At the peak of the Roman Empire, the Mesoamerican Empire and civilization was substantially more civilized than the arrogant people who built coliseums and circuses for the destruction of animals and people....  These barbarians masqueraded as civilization because their laws prevented a person from dedicating his own heart to the beneficence of the cosmos. The Maya saw Andromeda and they called for the salvation sacrifices to ward off the impending destruction. The fate of the Mesoamericans was written in the heavens. They knew it. The Egyptians had known it. The fabricators of Stonehenge knew it. The ones who did not know it were the ones who would become the usurpers of civilizations. With spear, sword, chariot, gun, bomb, and finally television, the technologists would put an end to the subjective heavens. Cosmic stars were replaced by human stars in the nightly course of civilization.

In their arrogance, the usurpers would call the subjective heavens, superstition and nonsense, as they closed their eyes and perceived nothing of subjective value in the cosmos. The technologists did not understand cosmic value because it was superstition, not objective fact. Rational self knowledge was the only form of knowledge that could be useful to these technical dead hearts. They had traded the uplifting power of the dream for the security of material existence. The human world ball had become a stone. Today, psychologists are given full power to dethrone the gods and teach young children that pursuit of self identity is the ultimate accomplishment of any human life. There was an ancient valley of death in the subjective heavens, it is located where a cloud comes over the earth, and a Caiman tree stretches toward the Father's right hand. We stand at the moment of death and resurrection for a very simple reason, we are the children in Xibalba denying the dreams of the first fathers, who understood that the head of First Father would be hung in a tree as an omen for our usurping self knowledge.

As the final day of the Maya creation epic comes to a close, we can look to the heavens and wonder whether it will all happen again. Seven Macaw points the way to the days when the king will be on top of the world, again. We were warned two thousand years ago what would happen when we reached the eye of the needle of heaven, which is the cosmic moment when Polaris sits on top of the world. Look again at the star chart and find the camel which sits on the axis of 13 Baktun. This heavenly angel was used as a sign to suggest that self knowledge is a barrier to the cosmic kingdom. For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. And they that heard it said, Who then can be saved?. And he said, "The things which are impossible with men are possible with God" (Luke 18:25-27). The technology of the humans can never surpass the technology of the gods.

For the next two thousand years Seven Macaw will point the way to the King of Heaven. Are we to wait until the eternal city of the king returns to Teotihuacán before we acknowledge that our self knowledge can never exceed that knowledge which was present when the First Father conjured the creation?. Or can we do the proper thing at the end of the Platonic cycle to honor the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and the testimony which they held. Revelation 6:10; "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?". There will not be any avenging of the blood of the lost souls. That would be contrary to everything that the heavens have said for the last 65 Baktun.

One thing that should be expected is that we who dwell on the earth will recognize that we are the beloved descendants of ancestors who toiled mightily to give us a place to belong. They mapped the earth and the stars to show us their way. Their maps still exist. Their myths, legends, and sacred scriptures are still available to us. What is lost is self respect which comes from the appreciation of one's own ancestors. The kind of self respect that comes from being the descendants of kings and the Sons of Gods. We may fail in our moment of cosmic auld lang syne, but our lack of resolve will not destroy our ancestors, it will leave a blank place in the heavens where wandering spacecraft carry messages to aliens who have absolutely no stake in our world. Eventually, the ancestral record will be found again, and the civilizations which find the Great Hall of Records will pity a cultural decadence that denied its heritage for the sake of an adolescent self knowledge. We are the children of the end times. But, we could become the ancestors of tomorrow's child, if we simply looked to the heavens and marveled that such a fantastic story could have been found amongst those burning balls of gas and the cloud which surrounds our star as its cosmic mother. We do not have to stay at the bottomless pit in Xibalba, for our own ancestors showed us the way back to the top of the world.

Now is the time to prepare for the next cosmic cycle of life, and to rise to the heavenly field where the Maize God lives. There a woman clothed in the sun, with the moon at her feet travails to give birth. The Maya called her First Mother, and said that First Father brought through her voice the whole cosmos precisely as he intended to do. Did the Maya know that every object they could see in the heavens is part of a galactic group called the Virgo cluster?. Did they know that the Milky Way, which was the Tree of Life to them, came from her bosom?. These are objective facts which they had no way of knowing, unless the subjective message in the heavens told them to believe what their own eyes could see. But, that is so preposterous, that it should be scientifically deniable. Yet, that is precisely what the technologies of the Age of the 5th Sun have proven!.  We, and all the local galaxies, were born of the Virgin!.  The objective facts and the subjective story say the same thing. How could this be?. Was it intelligent design?. Was it just the purpose of a ball game in the Six-Stair-Place?

I will leave the answers to these questions for you to find. But, should you search, consider that the Golden Age of the human civilizations occurred when the northern summer sun was in the bosom of the same Virgin. Above the galactic plane where our star shines is a house of bread called Bethlehem. The Virgin gave birth to our star, and the galaxy where that birth occurred billions of years ago, in the very same Bethlehem. Is the ancient name of our sun, the Star of Bethlehem?. If you ever get lost in your galactic travels, just remember that the star where you were born is aligned to a cave below and a field of corn above, where shepherd's watch their flock. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. The present period of the cosmic ball game is nearly over.

But the child at the womb of the Caiman Tree will shine throughout the next great wobble of this ball in the heavens, as a sign for all who would desire this place as their eternal home. Teotihuacán will mark the axis of the House of Maize in 4400 AD, but any adept who can see how Teotihuacan answers the riddle, "as above, so below", can give their own heart to that same Eternal City. The outcome of the ball game is not dependent upon the earth, the sun, or the galaxy. The outcome is totally dependent upon how and where the game is played. Commitment is the how, and here on earth is the where. So, take your best shot, and when there are no answers visible, go ahead and shoot from the hip. But, just remember the riddle, and what happens above will happen wherever you play the game.