The Cosmology of The Makers

I thought it was time to talk cosmology, not cosmetology, although some might think of it as spiritual hairdressing, but I don't quite see it that way. This tradition is not different than most others in basic concepts, it has, however, moved a great deal over the course of lives through which it has been followed. Like most traditions, it was in its early days filled with spirits, entities, influential elementals and other things that go bump in the night. As a child I heard a lot about 'haints', spirits, strange lights, weird sounds and the movements of things outside human experience. But they were all couched in terms very much like you would tell a child about Santa Claus; they were viewed very much in the same way at that point. I'm not suggesting there are not living beings apart from human beings that share our planet, but the mythology around those energies had been removed in order to deal with it much more directly.

The makers saw the world, people, everything as pure energy. In that sense they believed that absolutely everything was connected and not in casual ways, but in direct ways that created a cause and effect relationship for events far removed from each other. The power in the tradition relies on that simple belief, it's not complicated or drawn out, yet it seems to take a lifetime to truly understand the nature of how complex those relationships really are in terms of function. They saw the universe itself as a tapestry of energies, on level beyond the purely visual. Today we're starting to hear about dark matter, energy that we can't see, really measure or understand; yet that comprises the bulk of the universe itself. Our 'scientists' have now concluded that only about 2 percent of all matter in the universe is visible. An old maker from five hundred years ago would have heard that and said, 'so?'

When they looked at all this energy they realize that it rose and fell, moved and seemed to have direction - that it was not purely random. Somewhere in all that energy there had to be a guiding force, something the moved it, gave it volition and the will to act, whether that was in forming a world, or a human being. This gave rise to a split in the makers - one group becoming the theistic makers, and the others the agnostic makers. Theistic in the sense that they adopted a more cultural form of religious explanation for the process. The others kept working towards a finer understanding of what exactly that energy was, that current that seemed to underlie everything and concluded that it was 'intent' - the drive of the energy itself towards self-knowledge.

The energy itself formed the intent, not a 'somebody'. The 'somebodys' are a product of that intent. Everything that creeps, crawls, flies or swims is a product of the intent of life, if you choose to call it that, to know itself through experience. This is a very large concept to take in because we are only a small part of that process. Think of it this way - each thing in the universe, galaxies, solar systems, planets and the creatures that inhabit them are the creation of intent, without it there would only be chaos. Think of the monumental scale of that - the span of time, the experiments, life that has arisen, been replaced, fallen, recreated, tempered and grown… Life creates a disease, the disease kills man, life creates a man that can find a way to stop the disease.

Where they fell out with their counterparts was over the issue of sentience. The theistic makers believed it was the result of a sentient force, the others, and myself included, don't believe that - that it is a force, an energy, trying to be born. My teacher was theistic, I am not. In the end, I don't know that it matters very much, the theistic makers didn't take their concept of that sentience to mean 'god' in any religious sense. God to them was nature. I guess it just all depends on how high a tightrope you choose to walk. But, back to the concept…

Life came about through a very slow and laborious process of intent, each 'form' of life growing and changing. Each life that exists, each planet, every rock, every creature, contributes to the larger understanding of life itself, that intent which is inexorably heading towards some conclusion we cannot see. So while the agnostic makers saw no 'god' at all, the theistic ones saw a 'blind god'. I think it's an important distinction to make for people. I had not thought it really an issue before, but I think for some it's very difficult to understand the basis of the energy without something to hold onto that makes the trip less frightening.

Perhaps there is no conclusion - from an agnostic view - intent knowing itself in all forms, as they evolve ever onward - the infinite possibility of possibles. Very possible - but an open ended energy such as that isn't comfortable for a lot of people. I find it exciting, but I'm odd. Actually, open-ended energy makes a lot more sense to me. but it's a very hard thing to look at for many - and I don't really care where people line up. To me, both work. It's the core system that is the issue, understanding how this energy works. We tend to humanize everything, as though we are still the center of the universe.

Absolutely everything is connected; every atom, every molecule and more importantly the energy that binds those together and that is where makers work. This makes a highly skilled maker potentially dangerous without the right temperament and training, it's why I don't just teach anyone that wants to learn. Let's talk about the human part of the equation a moment though, since that's where most of us live.

Intent creates through an evolutionary process, even the theistic makers believed that - that each form of energy is experimentally changing all the time. As energies became more specialized in their expression a structure began to evolve as well. The structure supported the energy, but it wasn't a 'set' structure, it was an evolving structure of energy that we can't really see on a daily basis both because it is so enormous and we are very slow. Human energy evolved, so did other energies in the process, but for us, human energy is where we live and what we represent. Each form of energy had its own special ways of perceiving, understanding and functioning. This helped maintain the structure, but it also has a deleterious effect on our ability to perceive, because in order to function as human beings and survive within the structure of other energies we identify as nature, we had to 'agree' to give up certain ways of perceiving the world. We didn't agree with the larger intent that was pushing the form, we agreed with each other. The larger intent doesn't seem to really care one way or the other.

As each energy became identifiable through a long slow process of experimentation, it changed, some became human; others became other things. This pattern has been evolving a long, long time. So as energy became human in identifiable form, it also segregated from other forms which were doing the same. Vast pools of 'intent', from which life springs. It becomes human in physical expression through something they referred to as the 'mold', a gateway connected to this world through which 'human' life could emerge consistently. The mold however, is evolving as well, so human beings are still changing - so are other things in the world. Some attempts at life are dying out, others are being born, re: the new viruses that are becoming ever more virulent. So the makers felt we never 'died' in a put you in a box and forget about you sort of way. Each gave back the energy that animated them into life, back into that pool of energy from which life would again be reborn. But unlike traditional reincarnation, there was no 'life after life, but a mixture of energies, this was part of the process of human evolution - all of it motivated by 'intent' and the will to live. If it were all wiped out tomorrow, life would just start over somewhere else.

This is huge in the possible avenues of movement into "intents" and understanding, of awareness. The mind can't handle it. There is a point where it has to just be the movement, reason as we know it has a quick meltdown.

Think of the "reincarnation" thing as fragments of energies from other "lives". - we're recycled - just like a soft drink can :). It's a can in its current form, but from recycled metals it's also all the cans that came before it and make it up. (More about “reincarnation” in another discussion) You can also follow each strand of your own energy back into the threads that make you up, follow those into the pool and 'live' back the life that it represents, even though you may only hold a small particle of it now. Once you do that a totally new understanding of who you are emerges and things in life that have made absolutely no sense on a personal and behavioral level suddenly do. There is a process for it. It's fine to chase threads right now, but you need to be prepared to really track them, otherwise you can lose sight of who you are now.

It's not personality that continues life to life, it's awareness gained from one life to the next, so you can end up with weird 'fears', insights, etc, that don't match your personality now. If you look at it, it seems very impersonal and it is on some levels, but the saving grace from my point of view is that almost no matter what happens in life, or how you end it, you will have made a contribution from a unique perspective, we're all building eternity, without exception. The makers, being a generally hard to get along with lot however, weren't satisfied to stop there. They believed and I believe, that human beings, because of their agreements and the way in which nature has 'bent' them, use only a fraction of the real energy they have available to them in a lifetime. Acting on that assumption they altered the tradition in some pretty severe ways, until now it is a constantly evolving, moving intent of its own, to connect with and move along with the larger intent.

So when I have talked about personal intent, I mean exactly that, the measure of 'intent', of life that you have been given, it is a part of the larger intent which we have free will to use however we want as long as we possess it. We are in essence a mirror of a much larger intent that motivates and moves the universe as a whole. The makers didn't want to get trapped in dead ends. They wanted an open ended practice that was able to evolve within any culture it found itself and continue on down through time. So as we look at their cosmology, I have tried for decades to break it down, find the flaw in their perception and all I keep finding is more understanding of how right they were.

So everything that exists, can exist, on any level, anywhere, at any time, past present or future is represented in their cosmology, yet it is specific in action and intent. The cosmology itself is useless without action. It's a big 'so what', unless people are willing and talented enough to step off into the action of the path itself. So to the makers there is no 'evil' no 'good', those are only representations of a mental/emotional construct, what there is, is anything that builds life, or anything that stops life from building. Those were their good and evil. If you look around you and change your perspective to look at it that way, you find that there is a 'natural' morality within their framework. You aren't mean to people, it harms, you treat people with compassion, it builds. By getting rid of all the thous and thines, they boiled it down to a simple way of living that I think turned out what we might normally refer to as some pretty decent human beings. So when we go on in this class with healing, with talking about intent, will, dreaming, etc, it's important to understand that this is the basis upon which it all is built. I'm certainly no expert in life; many things have fallen away from me over the years, but never this. That is a basic overview, I know you must have questions, I've presented the 'huge' picture, but we still have to live it on a daily basis and that's the confusing part sometimes.

Creation or agreements, weaving and unweaving time and how that permeates everything… Everything. Time is just a concept - it isn't linear. It does tend to keep everything from happening at once though :).

There's a 'rightness' to the vastness of blackness and it's not nearly as cold as people think it should be :). It's the thrumming of life through the world and beyond.

See if you can find a flaw, is it wrong; apply it to your own life, to what you see around you, to all the things you know, does their cosmology break down? It will create an opening; you'll find it, even if you don't find a flaw. You'll gain a new perspective; it's good for us to measure ourselves against things so much larger than us. Sometimes you have to believe something before you can see it. I know it doesn't sound like much, but give it a try, I think you'll be amused.

HISTORY OF THE MAKERS

Scholarly types assume this tradition is dead, which is what those that lived it wanted, they were tired of being persecuted. It never went away though, only faded into the background and while in the background it continued to grow and evolve. These were some serious shamans; I call them shamans because they fit the traditional model we have developed anthropologically.

The makers were real people. There was one group of who dressed in dark animal hides and used stones with an arrow and spiral on them to locate things and see. Thinking back - whether the stones were different colors too. The old guy with a beard was their leader. Well they can look a little harsh I admit, and were a little harsh. But then, what do you expect from people that have to wear animal hides all the time, I'd be ill tempered too. If it's the ones I'm thinking of they'll do more than tell you, they'll show you. I realize a lot of this can be disturbing sometimes, but you can learn a lot too.

When I talk about them I usually think of the tradition from about 700 a.d. on. At their peak, between seven hundred and eleven hundred years ago, there were probably twenty or thirty thousand practicing in different parts of Europe. In the 700’s I would say there were probably several thousand spread around Europe, that was reduced severely by the church in about 1100. After that there have been thousands more, but not so many at any one time.

The maker tradition comes out of a European history. I think the most recent and strongest cultural influence was in Europe but given the amount of time it has been around you really have to look at those genes as getting pretty well spread around. In my family tree there are Melungeons, Native Americans, possibly Asians, it all gets very cosmopolitan after a while :). I don't think you can limit it to any racial group based on that, I certainly wouldn't. It would be like saying it should be male or female, it's just beyond irrelevant. Others can be configured (so to speak) to this type. I look for a peculiar mix of energy in a person, at that level pigmentation isn't an issue.

Right now, there are probably fifty to a hundred depending on who you want to count. (I’m referring now, or in the present, to those people who could or do practice.) How many? Well counting them will help you to understand things. Because that way you will have to meet them face to face, on your own. There are living makers, not many, but enough.

There are some of the other maker groups - families mostly still in the Carolina’s. They're aware of us and I'm aware of them. I'm not approved of very well though for teaching this outwardly. Things are calm right now though. The different lines are held apart, basically they don't associate, but they're out there. I don't have any way to put you in touch with them :). The direct connections I had are all dead. I was introduced to different ones as a child, but they were dead old then, they would have to be gone by now. And I wasn't familiar with the people in their families.

Some have moved more into the “outside world” than others, but really, no, not too open to it. In other words if the religious right takes over and starts burning us at the stake again, more have a chance to survive. It was passed down through families. You might hear some different terms than mine, but they are all pointed the same direction. For instance as a healer, you might be referred to as having 'the gift', a seer 'the sight' a full blown maker, 'the knack', means ability to affect things in the real world.

The connection you are making, have been making, isn’t with those however, it is with the intent and will of the ones that have come before. You are coming into contact with a living legacy.

Some of them did manage to keep all their energy together, out of the collective pool. Over time their genetic energy has pushed out into the population in some strange ways, but I can usually see if there is a connection in the person's energy with their genetic configuration of energy. I also see other traditional lines that way too, the jaguar women, etc. That doesn't mean there are only a few people, there are a lot, millions actually. And there have been female makers, many, and some very powerful ones.

There are essentially two focal, or turning points, in their history, the first was about twelve hundred years or so ago, give or take a week. Prior to that they would have been hard to recognize to us today as being any different than a lot of weird traditions running around. That was the point they reinvented their cosmology, became more basic and began evolving a set of practices that worked for them in practical terms. Unfortunately, they also became rigid in those, creating a closed system with an identifiable trademark essentially. This was a bad thing, it made them an easy target for the church. The ones that survived, it appears, about six hundred years ago, totally rewrote the way in which it was taught and the way it was transmitted down their lines. It became much more open ended, much less confrontational in terms of vying with other belief systems, became almost like a spiritual retrovirus.

The makers all worked pretty much individually in their own ways, although families had their specific specialties. But the over all intent, the one outside the normal personal intents, was to do with unraveling time. Bend it, by unweaving certain threads in strategic places, so that its structure bends from the path it's traveling to a different direction. They weren't stupid, standing up in the face of that intent would be like charging a speeding freight train with a soda straw. they were nothing if not subtle, as you might have noticed :). Although they also seemed to be able to whack you on the head when need be too :).

They held an over intent, one that seemed to push through time to an event, a point in it, where a crucial nexus for the entire species lay - human beings creating the circumstances through behavior that caused a natural event cycle to manifest in a highly destructive way. Their intent was to unweave time around that in a way that prevented an inevitability. It has dragged a lot of the makers with it. I don't think the makers saw it as one event, I think they saw it as a series of movements towards an inevitability. The unweaving would have to be done before any huge event was on the plate, otherwise it would be too late to turn it. The intent will run until it's energy is spent, but that won't happen until the possibilities spread out to the point it can't cover them all and when that happens those events are so remote it's not a major concern.

There was a point, early in their history when someone made a mistake, a costly mistake, which scattered them as a group, sometimes I see it almost as existing between time, but I can see it very clearly. Too much ego. It was partially gender, a male leader, female leader issue, over something that went terribly wrong. It was an error of power, a miscalculation which killed a lot of people, destroyed their situation. It involved natural energy which they had learned to read and use to great benefit, but someone screwed up, there was a disaster and they were forced to scatter.

The second mistake, later on really can't be blamed on an individual, it was just the times and the insulation they tried to draw around themselves and yet still affect the world - and a lot of ego as well, feeling – assuming they were invulnerable, they separated themselves too much from people and yet wanted to work on people, it caused their downfall.

I still feel the ramifications of those mistakes in my energy, I don't claim to feel it for anyone else though. There is a fear of powers, yes. No leading, no structure, no place I can make decisions which affect people's lives.

The makers were interesting – and powerful. But you shouldn't mistake their system for something highly structured in a 'right or wrong' sort of way, they ended up with an incredibly open ended tradition. The old ones were not as patient, or certainly, not as open, but then they couldn't afford to be. But I have not found any of them to be cruel, or violent. So that's a brief outline.