We are in the last katun period of the Fifth Sun of the Maya Great Cycle. This began on April 6th, 1993 (my vision occurred in October of 1993). A katun is about 20 years in length, and there are 260 katuns in a Great Cycle of 13 baktuns (about 5125 years). Accordingly, the Fifth Sun ends on the winter solstice, 2012. One of the few surviving Maya books, the Dresden Codex, refers to the beginning of the Great Cycle as the Birth of Venus on the 12th of August 3114 BCE.

During the last eight years of this Fifth Sun, Venus again shines out of the darkness with two rare passages across the Sun. Transits of Venus across the disk of the Sun are among the rarest of planetary alignments. Indeed, only six such events have occurred since the invention of the telescope (1631, 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874 and 1882). The next two transits of Venus will occur on June 08, 2004 and June 06, 2012.

From the divine perspective Venus is the Sister Planet of the earth, something the Maya seem to have known. The movements of these two planets are directly linked. Venus may be viewed as a cosmic mirror to the earth. It is from such a point of view that the dramatic importance of the upcoming Venus passages, and the interest devoted to Venus by the Maya, may be understood. While Venus conjunctions are frequent events, Venus Transits, where the light of the sun sends the energy of Venus to the earth, are rare events.

June 8, 2004 begins the ‘time of Venus’ or more correctly, the ‘time of the Morning Star:’

“The start of the last Mayan Age was the Birth of Venus, the Quetzalcoatl star on 12 August 3114 BC. On the last day of the age, 22 December 2012, the cosmic connections between Venus, the sun, the Pleiades, and Orion are once more in evidence. For just as Venus was indeed ‘born’ on the earlier date, it’s rising just before the dawn being heralded by the Pleiades at the meridian, so it now symbolically ‘dies.’ (The Mayan Prophecies, pg. 211)

Thus ending the Age of the Fifth Sun. And what does all of this foretell?

THE RETURNING HERO

This page is excerpted from Dr. Husfelt's forthcoming book Winter 2006, ‘The Return of the Feathered Serpent, Survival and Renewal at the End of the Age—2006 – 2012.’ All rights reserved. No part of this page may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of quotations embodied in articles, websites, books and reviews.

The cultural hero, and his return, is one of the most enduring as well as important cross-cultural archetypal prophetic themes known to humankind. Its importance is due to its message of hope and renewal. The meaning stays the same, only the name of the hero changes.

To the Mesoamerican’s, the white prophet or the cultural hero was known as Quetzalcoatl, the ‘Morning Star’ or the ‘Redeemer.’ The Hopi prophecies speak of their spiritual hero, Pahana, the ‘Purifier’ or the ‘Elder White Brother.’ The early Hawaiian’s worshipped Lono as their ‘Savior’ and ‘Lord of Peace.’ Ancient Polynesians told stories of Wakea, “a bearded white man variously called Viracocha or Quetzalcoatl who walked all over North and South America preaching and healing people.” (Ancient Tonga, pg. 82-83) And to a segment of the western religious culture, the returning savior is known as Jesus.

Symbolically, the return of the hero represents the spiritual concept of the infinite cycle of death and re-birth. But it as well represents the return of light or enlightenment to a world void of love and a humanity that has darkened once again through materialistic greed, dogmatic religious beliefs, war and inequality. The spiritual histories of many cultures portray the morning star, the planet Venus, in this same emblematic role as the returning hero. Why Venus? There are a multitude of reasons that stretch as far back as ancient solar mythology where the returning hero time and again is also portrayed as the born again sun-god:

“At dawn, as soon as the brightening morning star in the east announced that the sun was rising, the priest called his assistants together and kindled the fire upon a mound of earth by rubbing together two sticks in which the God was supposed to be hidden. As soon as the spark shone in the ‘maternal bosom,’ the soft underpart of the wood, it was treated as an ‘infant child.’ … There is no doubt that we have before us the Vedic Agni cult the original source of all the stories of the birth of the Fire-Gods and Sun-Gods…” (In Quest of the Hero, pg. 184)

Venus and the Sun, both intertwined together in an immortal dance of re-birth. As the morning star, or the light coming out of the dark of the night, Venus announces the arrival of the Sun. It is the harbinger of the day to come. It stands at the breaking of dawn as the last star to disappear into the glory of the Sun.

Since Venus is the brightest heavenly body apart from the sun and the moon, its brilliance has always symbolized enlightenment as well as the journey to bring this light to the world. Venus spends part of its time as being either the morning star or the evening star. This perception of Venus as being ‘twins’ and the significance of its luminosity underscores the mythological religious ideals of many cultures. The ‘twins’ designation symbolizes the dual forces manifested in humans and the dualities of life, the light and the dark, male and female which contain the potentiality for a unified balance of wholeness or oneness. For that reason Venus is viewed as being the bridge builder, the rainbow link between pairs of opposites, specifically spirit and matter. This is also the role of the returning hero who teaches that equality and balance are of the utmost importance in achieving spiritual transformation.

To some the morning star was ‘God’s Eye’ positioned between darkness (ignorance) and light (knowledge) but always the wayshower to understanding and wisdom. The great Lakota Black Elk spoke of the importance of the morning star as follows:

“Morning Star, there at the place where the sun comes up, you, who have the wisdom which we seek, help us in cleansing our-selves and all the people, that our generations to come will have light as they walk the sacred path. You lead the dawn as it walks forth, and also the day which follows with its light, which is knowledge. This you do for us and for all the people of the world, that they may see clearly in walking the holy path, that they may know all that is holy, and that they may increase in a sacred manner.” (http://www.bluecloud.org)

Venus rules Libra, which is symbolized by the sign of the scales representing balance. According to a friend, Elizabeth Van Buren, in her wonderful book, Lord of the Flame:

            “…a special feature of the root, heart and brow chakras is that an inverted triangle lies at their centre. Inside these are three knots or granthis; the kundalini breaks these as it passes through them. These knots are called respectively the knot of Shiva, the Knot of Vishnu and the knot of Brahma. Since Brahma is the Universal Father-Mother, Vishnu the son born of the two-in-one and Shiva, the third member of the all-male trinity, god of the lower world, this symbolism seems to confirm that the son of God who has entered the Earth-plain many times to redeem the planet is represented by the heart chakra and is the balance, the scales his emblem.” (Pg. 258 – 259)

Even though Elizabeth refers to the Cultural Hero as the son of God, the enduring teaching and message, of each returning ‘sun of God,’ was focused on achieving a balance between spirit and matter with the additional knowledge that we are all a child of God, divine as well as human. To the returning hero, separateness is the illusion; oneness is the reality.

Accordingly, the secret to life was achieving oneness through the balance of our divinity and our humanity. The Mesoamericans Quetzalcoatl, known as the morning star, represented the symbolic teachings of death and resurrection as well as characterizing this dualistic knowledge of balance and harmony. As an archetype the Plumed (Feathered) Serpent or Quetzalcoatl represented human beings dual nature: the feathers stood for our divine or spiritual nature (the Father) and the serpent represented our humanity or connection to physical creation (the Mother).

Venus as well figured prominently in the prophecies of the Maya:

 “The Maya of Central America believe that the present Earth cycle will end between December 21, 2011 and June 6, 2012. During this period, they predict, an interesting planetary alignment will occur. Venus will pass in perfect alignment between Earth and the sun, with the transit lasting approximately 8 hours…For centuries, our ancestors have associated Venus with the culture hero, the bringer of peace and tranquility to a cycle previously dominated by chaos…The Hopi prophecies also speak of the “lost white brother,” Pahana, the culture hero who is the equivalent of Mesoamerica’s Feathered Serpent…The peace star is the sign of the culture hero, Pahana. This is the planet Venus, the bringer of all things to the center…Venus/Quetzalcoatl, the Morning Star of enlightenment, rises in the east, and the shore where the ocean meets the dawn sky—the mouth of the dragon—is symbolic for the New Age. When the old cycle was over, it was said, Venus/Quetzalcoatl would return reborn in the jaws of the dragon.” (Return of the Thunderbeings, Le Vie, Jr.)

Even in the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, we discover Venus, star of hope, as being symbolized by Eärendil, the half elf (divine-angelic) and half human:

“... Hail Eärendil, star most rediant, messenger most fair! Hail thou bearer of light before the Sun and Moon, the looked-for that comest unawares, the longed-for that comest beyond hope! Hail thou splendour of the children of the world, thou slayer of the dark! Star of the sunset hail! Hail herald of the morn!” (The Shaping of Middle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien)

In addition, it is interesting to note that the morning star rises in the darkest part of the night and is seen by only a few who are awake (awakened) at a time when the majority of others and the world are asleep. The morning star is like the thief in the night. For that reason, the return of the hero is noticed by only a few. Many have not understood this connection between the returning hero and the morning star. And as a result, in the past thousand years, the false return of the cultural hero has tragically resulted in the destruction of two different cultures. The white sails of Captain Cook’s ships spoke of the return of the Hawaiian’s white prophet Lono. Not only was Cook not the returning hero but he betrayed the trusting and spiritual Hawaiians, which eventually lead to the introduction of Christian missionaries and their poisonous message of separation and original sin. And the same catastrophe event occurred to the Mesoamericans with the appearance of Hernando Cortéz and his Spanish conquistadors.

Even though both cultures had lost sight of their original spiritual base of peace and love and had reverted to war-like behavior and the resultant human sacrifice, the false prophets opened the doorway to the introduction of Christianity and to an even greater sacrifice: the one of heart and mind, unity with nature and the freedom of belief:

“It would not do for us to brush aside contemptuously the notions held by the Hawaiians in religion, cosmogony, and mythology as mere heathen superstitions. If they were heathen, there was nothing else for them to be. But even the heathen can claim the right to be judged by their deeds, not by their creeds. Measured by this standard, the average heathen would not make a bad showing in comparison with the average denizen of Christian lands. As to beliefs, how much more defensible were the superstitions of our own race two or three centuries ago, or of to-day, than those of the Hawaiians? How much less absurd and illogical were our notions of cosmogony, of natural history; how much less beneficent, humane, lovable the theology of the pagan Hawaiians than of our Christian ancestors a few centuries ago if looked at from an ethical or practical point of view. At the worst, the Hawaiian sacrificed the enemy he took in battle on the alter of his gods; the Christian put to death with exquisite torture those who disagreed with him in points of doctrine. And when it comes to morals, have not the heathen time and again demonstrated their ability to give lessons in self-restraint to their Christian invaders?

It is a matter of no small importance in the rating of a people to take account of their disposition toward nature…

The poetry of ancient Hawaii evinces a deep and genuine love of nature, and a minute, affectionate, and untiring observation of her moods, which it would be hard to find surpassed in any literature. Her poets never tired of depicting nature; sometimes, indeed, their art seems heaven-born. The mystery, beauty, and magnificence of the island world appealed profoundly to their souls; in them the ancient Hawaiian found the image of man the embodiment of Deity; and their myriad moods and phases were for him an inexhaustible spring of joy, refreshment, and delight.” (Unwritten Literature of Hawaii, pg. 262-263)