Click of photograph for larger view.
In a world where death and destruction seem so common place, and where prison riots and over crowding are signs of a justice system incarcerating more people than ever before, it may never occur to anyone that perhaps a few unsung heros of this great land called America, may be lost and discarded in the shadows of oblivion.
Star Sparks, was one of those millions who on March 15th 1999, took his life. Star Sparks was an American/Mayan Scout who followed in the foot steps of the great indian chief, Sun Bear, and who embraced the natural cycles of the 13 moons brought into contemporary awareness by Jose Arguelles. It was Star Sparks who erected a sacred ceremonial ground to pay homage to mother nature, and the great spirit. It was Star Sparks who traveled all over America, touching communities with his bountiful expression of love and renewal. Star Sparks, a name that suits his person, as he was always quick to share his excitement about the grand times we are now living in.
In the Mayan belief system, Star Spark's name was Yellow Galactic Human, and a kin to all members of the 20 tribes of time. In 1994, Star Sparks, along with his wife Star Root, journeyed to the N. California hills of Lake County, home of the Pomo indians, and home to the great healing springs from mother earth. It was here that Star Sparks, and myself, Willard, kin White Crystal Dog, were able to pass the peace pipe, and be renewed by his galactic human wisdom.
Click on photo for larger view
Sparky left behind two beautiful children. The picture shows Sparky in 1984 in Vermont with India age 7 (mother Constance McQuoid), and his son Zachoriah age 1 (mother Sea Jay). It is hard to believe that such a bright flame has been extinguished by the pressures imposed upon him by a judicial system that pays little attention to luminaries who use plants of nature as a sacrament to the great spirit.
This page is to give thanks, and pay homage to a modern American scout, who now walks with the spirit of Sun Bear, and all the other great elders who walk next to us, as our guides, in bringing the great spirit to Earth. In the noon day sun, if you look hard into the blue sky, you will find Star Sparks shinning forth along with father sun and sister moon.
Another pilgrim on the road, that Star Sparks met, and held in very high esteem, was Jose Arguelles. Jose was saddened deeply, and composed a reflective life path eulogy for Star Sparks that I add here, after a news clip from the Roanoke Times, for all to read.
If any of you, who read this, and who were fortunate enough to meet this American/Mayan Scout, who always shared his wisdom and knowledge, please forward the story or pictures to me, and I will re-create his tale for others to see.
Last letters Star Sparks wrote from Roanoke City Jail.
Sunday, April 04, 1999
A 'mystical' life remembered Steven Brick was known for his artistry, activism and mystic studies. He was facing drug charges when he cut his veins in a Roanoke jail cell.
By MICHAEL HEMPHILL THE ROANOKE TIMES
Poet, artist and peace activist Steven Brick, known to most as Starsparks, was "in a very lucid state and a very mystically exalted state," says one friend, that March night he put a disposable razor to his wrists and throat inside a Roanoke jail cell. But his soul is in shock from the suddenness of his suicide, believe his friends, who are holding a memorial service for Brick on Friday evening at Unity Church of the Valley in Northwest Roanoke.
"The shock to us is he took his own life and now we're faced with that and we're trying to forgive him so that his soul doesn't get trapped in what Catholics call purgatory," said Roanoke singer-songwriter LeRoy Lowe. It won't be the first memorial for the small, quiet, bespectacled man, a respected teacher of mystical beliefs among Western Virginia's alternative crowd. Friends recently met in Riner to celebrate his life. In New Mexico, 20 to 30 attended a service. Others gathered in Massachusetts and in Oregon.
"The message I'd like to see gotten out in all this is there are people in the world trying to make this a better place," said his father, Jules Brick of Livingston, N.J. "Now they may not fit in to regular society." After graduating with an archaeology degree from Bard College in upstate New York, Brick worked as an artist in New York City, lived with American Indians in New Mexico, followed the shaman Sun Bear, studied jewelry-making, and traveled to Central and South America.
In 1982, at a Buddhist meditation in Vermont, he met Jose Arguelles, then a university scholar in art and aesthetics and an Earth Day founder. Brick became a follower of Arguelles, whose decoding of the Mayan calendar (he's the author of "The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology") led to the Harmonic Convergence in 1987, a global meditation and peace event.
In the late 1980s, Brick drifted to Southwest Virginia, where he made jewelry while planning a school in Floyd County called DreamSpell, which would be rooted in American Indian philosophy and Arguelles' beliefs. But his drug use -- which friends say was for religious reasons -- led federal authorities to indict him in 1996 on charges of possessing and distributing LSD, marijuana, hallucinogenic mushrooms and the mood-altering drug "Ecstasy." He was allowed free on bond pending his June 1997 trial and went to Colorado. About a month before trial, though, he disappeared. "He was so frightened about what they would do [considering] the stringent drug laws that he didn't come back," said Jules Brick, noting his son faced years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. The FBI found him in January. Back in Virginia, he was charged with failing to appear, and ordered held without bond. With an eye always affixed on celestial numerals, he noted aloud in court a convergence of his own. The docket number for his drug charges was 96-83, meaning his was the 83rd felony case for 1996. For his flight charge, his case was 97-83. He sat in the Roanoke City Jail for six weeks. Then on March 17, he sent a package of writings and paintings to Arguelles, who described their creator as lucid and at peace. That night, he lay down in his cot, slashed his wrists and jugular, and silently bled to death.
His friends and family are united in their criticism of the system that put a peace-loving man behind bars. "Steven is being lionized all over the world," said his father, a military veteran, former school teacher and businessman, "because his death is like a symbol of the unfairness of our civilization, the unfairness of our judicial system." Said Lowe, "Yes, he violated the law. I just think we need more religious liberty for someone like Starsparks. There was no toleration for his activities." "There are no victims" in Brick's crime, argued Arguelles, who called his friend "legendary" for his artistry and Mayan studies. Less clear among his supporters is why he killed himself. In an anonymous letter to The Roanoke Times, a "concerned group of inmates," who claimed Brick had made many converts in jail, wrote that March 16 was a Galactic Activation Portal Day: "A believer could go to a higher plain [sic] if he died or was killed on that day." But according to Lowe's Mayan calendar, the 16th was not such a day. Brick killed himself, he believes, "for the shame he brought upon himself and the community for his drug bust. So we can't help but love and forgive him. The thing he is known for now is being a criminal, instead of his teachings, and there's shame in that." Harking back to Mayan mythology, Arguelles says that Brick in February reached the age of his Solar Galactic Return, 52, the most important moment in one's life journey after birth. Though court records show Brick wouldn't turn 52 until November, Arguelles said, "It was clear that his mission here was over." Considering the turmoil of his world, and the prison term he faced, Arguelles said, "He felt he could do a lot more good on the other side."
In lake'ch,
Zan Tewksbury
Tewksbury
Eulogy by Jose Arguelles:
Steven Brick, aka Star Sparks
Yellow Galactic Human
1947-1999
Ancient mother, I hear you calling
Ancient mother, I hear your song
Ancient mother, I hear your laughter
Ancient mother, I feel your tears
(Traditional Native American song)
"Steven is no longer with us," The voice on the answering machine was that of Jules Brick, 85-year old father of Steven Brick, aka Star Sparks, Yellow Galactic Human. "Please call as soon as you can." That message awaited us early Tuesday afternoon, Solar Moon 10, White Overtone Wind, March 16, 1999 on the Gregorian Calendar. My breath was taken away. A fleeting thought entered my head that Jules meant that Sparks had escaped jail. But I knew that wasn't quite what he meant. I knew it meant that Star Sparks was dead, but how? Stunned and shocked, we learned that Sparks was found in his jail cell that morning. He had taken his life the night before by cutting a tubular vein in his wrist. Why? What were the circumstances?
Before my reason could piece it all together, my emotional body was swept up in grief and mystery. Jules told me that for several days Steven had spoken to his fellow inmates about galactic portals and the importance of the day March 15 on the Mayan Calendar. It was on the night of that day when he went to his jail-cell bed, that Star Sparks found his galactic portal, and departed from what appeared to be a totally hopeless situation. What was the significance of that day? Jules, wanted to know.
I knew all too well the significance of that day. March 15, 1999, on the Gregorian calendar, Solar Jaguar Moon 9 on the Thirteen Moon Calendar, on the Tzolkin or Mayan Calendar Dreamspell count, was Kin 121, Red Self-existing Dragon. All that day I had been acutely aware that it had been exactly 780 days, one Martian synodic cycle since my 58th birthday, January 24th 1997, Resonant Moon 15. On that day, Kin 121 ( = 112) over two years ago, I had a profound mystical revelation that my self-realized identity was that of a mysterious entity, Valum Votan, the Closer of the Cycle. As Closer of the Cycle my purpose was now irrevocably defined as a bringer of that knowledge necessary for the successful completion of the Mayan Great Cycle which ends on the winter solstice, 2012, and the launching of Timeship Earth 2013.
So it was on Monday, Solar Moon 9, Red Self-existing Dragon, exactly three galactic spins or 780 days later, the Martian Synodic Cycle, that I observed this date. I had not experienced a day of such high energy for many, many years. It seemed that great floodgates of energy had burst open. I sat at my desk during periods of time that day, colorizing a graphic of the "Biosphere-Noosphere Transition." On my desk was a document entitled "Time and Morality, a Correlation of Mayan-Babylonian Chronological Cycles." It was opened to a page that correlated the thirteen Baktuns of the Great Cycle, BC 3113-AD 2012-13. Next to the date BC 747, the beginning of the seventh Baktun, long count, 6.0.0.0.0, years before, I had penned the glyph Red Self-existing Dragon. All day long I glanced at that glyph, knowing that today it was also Red-Self-existing Dragon.
I had placed that glyph next to the date BC 747, the beginning of the seventh Baktun, long count, 6.0.0.0.0, because in the fractal Tzolkin correlation, the seventh Baktun corresponds to the seventh or mystic column of the Tzolkin. The top of the mystic column is Kin 121, Red Self-Existing Dragon. The mystic column is so called because it is the only sequence of 20 Kin that is not marked by a galactic activation portal. On the other hand, the mystical power of the seventh column is that it is the whole sequence of 20 Kin that distinguishes the time-space between the two major galactic activation cycles, the ten-day sequence between Kin 106 and Kin 115 in the sixth column, and the ten-day sequence between Kin 146 and Kin 155 of the eighth column. Kin 106 and Kin 146, 2 World-Bridger (key to the tomb of Pacal Votan) and 3 World-Bridger, in the Dreamspell are signs that carry the Martian power of Death.
Since the days when I had written Earth Ascending, I knew the power of the sequence of 20 Kin from Kin 121, 4 Dragon to Kin 140, 10 Sun. The sum of the tones of the 20 Kin in the mystic column add up to 140, the same as the Kin number of the last Kin in the mystic column. This number 140 (7 x 20 = 5 x 28) was the key number to the discovery of the Tomb of Pacal Votan, as the "Earth Spirit Speaking Tube" is found exactly beneath the central wall of the Temple of the Inscriptions which contains exactly 140 hieroglyphs. It w as my correlation of the 140 hieroglyphs of this wall with the seventh mystic column of the Tzolkin and the seventh Baktun which led to my decoding of the prophecy, Telektonon, Earth Spirit Speaking Tube. And, in addition to marking my 58th birthday as the first of the 20 kin at the top of the column, my son Josh had been killed on the first day of the 33rd Harmonic, in the very middle of the mystic column, Kin 129, Red Crystal Moon, October 29th, 1987.
Yes, my son Josh-Joshua Maitreya Argelles. At the end of this momentous day, Red Self-Existing Dragon, Solar Moon 9, March 15, 1999, after I had written a press release entitled "Time and Morality," I received a phone call. It was my daughter Tara, in Tucson, with an unusual request. She wanted to read me an assignment she had just completed for her college literature class. The assignment was to write about the ten most catalytic minutes in her life. "Yes, of course," I said, "Read me your assignment." In vivid, brilliant prose, Tara read to me a description of those fateful ten minutes on the morning of October 29th, 1987, when, just as she was preparing to go to school, and I was preparing to drive her, we answered a knock at the door. It was a police officer and a "grief counselor," who summarily informed us that her brother and my son, Josh, had been killed the night before at 2:35 AM driving South on I-25 outside of Fort Collins, Colorado. In stark language describing her response, Tara ended her profound little essay with the words, "That was day that I met death."
Emotionally moved and proud of her for having been able to so beautifully objectify the experience of that tragic moment, I eventually went to bed. Tara's reading over the phone had completed an already powerful day for me, Red Self-existing Dragon. Sometime in the night I awoke startled from a dream. In the dream, I had just learned of the death of someone who had piloted a plane deliberately into a brick wall. All I knew in the dream was that this man was the father of two children. I assumed I had had the dream because of Tara's recounting of Josh's death, and went back to sleep. The next morning, White Overtone Wind, my wife, Lloydine-Bolon Ik, and I were both experiencing a certain disquietude. Upon going out for some errands, she did something unexpected, and purchased the newspaper, USA Today. The Saturday before, thinking about Star Sparks, we had read an article in the Oregonian about the American Prison System. Yes, the prison population had doubled in the last twelve years, and yes, the only other country with as many prisoners in jail as the bastion of democracy, is Russia. Now in the USA Today for March 16, was an editorial entitled "Packed Jailhouses," verifying our suspicions about Star Sparks being a victim of the "Drug wars," the editorial noted that 23% of the American jail population is incarcerated for non-violent drug related crimes, crimes which are not even included in the FBI's list of declining crime rates. Regarding the 23% drug offenders, the editorial concludes with the words, "...there must be room for discretion to avoid wasting money on lock'em-up overkill."
Driving back up the mountain pondering these words and thinking of Sparky, I punched the car radio button. Suddenly it was the chorus from Pink Floyd's "The Wall," "All we are is just another brick in the wall..." Pulling up to the mail box was a letter from Jules Brick dated March 8, somehow delayed in getting to us because now it was March 16. Again Jules wrote of how much poetry and art work Steven was doing in jail " as well as instructing fellow prisoners in your philosophy including Mayan calendar..." and his letter ended with a reference to an article on the "inhumane prison complex in our country," citing an article about the many prisons in the USA which appeared in the New York Times, Sunday, February 7, 1999. I commented to my wife, that we had to write to Star Sparks again and send him the Crystal Day Report.
But it was too late. There was the news. "Steven is no longer with us." Suddenly the words of the USA today editorial came ringing back, "lock'em-up overkill." I asked Jules if he had received the Crystal Day Report which I had faxed him last week. Yes, he had. He had sent it to the judge as evidence on Steven's behalf. But, in Jules' words, the only thing that really talks is MONEY. Without money, there was nothing that could be done to help Star Sparks case. The FBI wanted Steven to turn in his former wife so that they could confiscate the Dreamspell College land. This Steven could not do. I now understood that my dream of the night before was Steven Brick, Star Sparks, Yellow Galactic Human, piloting himself into the brick wall of justice. So Steven Brick-another Brick in the Wall-in full knowledge of the timing of the mystic column decided to make a Message out of his life.
"God promises to guide His messengers and prophets. No one kills. The time comes and God takes." These are the words the brilliant Quranic scholar Rashad Khalifa, uttered shortly before his assassins broke into his mosque in Tucson, Arizona January 31, 1990. I think about these words as well as I think about Star Sparks. I knew Star Sparks since 1982 when my wife and I first met him at the Karme Choling Buddhist meditation center in Vermont. He introduced us to Dhyani Ywahoo, the Cherokee crystal worker and spiritual elder. He had a strong link with Sun Bear as well, something which we shared in common. It was Star Sparks who called us up in 1991 and told us of Sun Bear's passing. During our two pilgrimages of 1995, Star Sparks was of great service in getting our message to the United Nations, and, later with his son Zack, driving us through New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland during our "Fall of America Tour." When I think about the controversy he created over his relationship to psychedelic substances, and which finally put him behind bars, I think about Jesus Christ's response to the pharisees regarding the adulteress. "He who is without sin shall cast the first stone."
I knew Sparky had fled from his arrest two years ago, and knowing the American justice system, I didn't blame him. Last spring, after I had returned from the Whole Earth Festival, where I had first met Sun Bear 28 years before, I knew I should try to find Star Sparks. So I called Jules, and I was soon in touch with him again. Star Sparks was a tireless promoter of the Dreamspell and the Thirteen Moon Calendar, something he continued to do to his last days in jail. I knew that he embraced fully all of the teachings that I have had the responsibility to communicate to this world, and that he was as dedicated a follower of these teachings as there was on this Earth. I am reminded of some verses in the Holy Quran regarding Noah and his followers:
"The leader who disbelieved among his (Noah's) people said, 'We see that you are no more than a human being like us, and we see that that the first people to follow you are the worst among us...'" To which Noah replies, "'O my people, I do not ask you for any money; my wage comes only from God. I am not dismissing those who believed; they will meet their Lord and He alone will judge them. I see that you are ignorant people.'"(Holy Quran, Sura 11: 27-29)
Star Sparks is now in the paradise in which he believed. He left us in full consciousness. His death was the only way that he could communicate his final message to us: "Do not tolerate the 12:60 system; it is unjust to the core. Stand up for your rights." President Clinton can pay $850,000 to Paula Jones, and Monica Lewinsky can make $2,000,000 for her autobiography. The New York Stock Market was in and out of a record high of 10,000 points the day that Star Sparks blood was gathered in a pool on a prison floor. Star Sparks lived and died for the Thirteen Moon Calendar and the Dreamspell Vision. He is free now. He is being cleansed and purified on the Other Side by the true spirit elders. The liberation of his soul is the catalytic agent for me to complete the vision he believed in: get rid of the Gregorian Calendar and establish a society that is the true Rainbow Nation rooted in the calendar of thirteen moons and a time of harmony and peace for all. Do not doubt this, anyone of you who reads this. Star Sparks death is a message of the seriousness of our purpose and mission, and a reflection of the inhumane system that incarcerates and punishes arbitrarily the have-nots while billionaires can buy any form of justice they want. Do not be lulled to sleep now. The Beast of Seven Heads is a phantom that will devour us all if we do not truly understand how important it is to leave this and only 103 billion dollars on education. Why must this continue? Where is the army of the righteous that will vindicate all martyrs? Let us gather now regardless of who we are and champion the great moment of liberation from the time of destruction held in place by the Gregorian Calendar, this coming summer, July 25-26, 1999, before it is too late for all of us!
In concluding this extraordinary message which I am sending to all the world, I must confess that since the death of my son Josh, no death has moved me more than the death of this one brilliant misunderstood human being, Yellow Galactic Human. I champion his cause as he championed my cause. I know why he chose to leave the day and moment he did, and I know that he knows that I know this. Please , those of you who read this, understand the power of the common knowing that Star Sparks and I had about his moment of departure. It is a Sign of the greater mystery and power of the truth and vision it has been and still is my responsibility to communicate. Do not confuse him with your prejudices and fears, nor do the same to me. Yes, I know, Star Sparks was a human and that he made mistakes. He left behind two children, Zack, who is fifteen years old, and India who is 22. And I feel a responsibility to these children, especially to Zack who is still in the late formative stage of his childhood. But let us not obscure the message that Star Sparks communicated to us through his death: Get it together people! Unify the only way you can: In time, through time, as time.
"Spirits flying in the sky
Thunder in the Ground
Fire of the Infinite
Love is all around
Wisdom of the Universe
Old Ones Teaching Me
Nature Spirit Singing in my heart
Opening
Calling me to you
Only you, Only you...."
(Adele Getty, campfire song)
Jose Arguelles-Valum Votan
Solar Jaguar Moon 12,
Yellow Resonant Seed, Kin 124, (Holtun-five year anniversary of the
assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio, Mexican
Presidential Candidate, 1994),
Mystic column,
Sixth Year of Prophecy, Victory Purifies
Truth is Love. Tolerance is Justice. Peace is Forever.
Valum Votan and Bolon Ik