VigilanceVoice

VigilanceVoice.com
Sunday--November 3, 2002—Ground Zero Plus 417
___________________________________________________________
3000-Year-Old Vigilance Dancers
Celebrate Death Over Life
___________________________________________________________
by
Cliff McKenzie
   Editor, New York City Combat Correspondent News
 

       GROUND ZERO, New York City, Nov. 3 --Last night I danced with life over death.   I celebrated the end of a dream and the beginning of reality in a 3000-year-old ceremony where the dead are honored.

     We danced in front of Engine 33 in New York City's East Village to honor over 348 firemen who died in September 11 Terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.   We danced for all those who died that day, police, fire, emergency workers, and hundreds of innocent people caught in the holocaust.   We danced especially for all the unnamed who died on Nine Eleven, the immigrant workers who were not officially recorded, who were anonymous because they had no paper trail, no evidence of their existence in this country.

      Then we headed to the New York's famous Marble Cemetery on 2nd Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenue where some of the most famous people in New York City history are buried beneath ancient tombstones and danced for all the dead--especially the women and children, and those who have struggled for their freedom and died in the process, some not so famous as others.   We danced for the revolution of human spirit.
      The event started at 6p.m. last night in front of the Indian Cultural Center on Lafayette.   My wife had pinpointed the event in our weekly copy of Time Out New York, a magazine listing the countless events that happen in this city of more than eight million culturally diverse beings.
      It was the final night of the Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos.  It was time for death to come to life.

      We arrived a few minutes early.   A small group of people waited in the chill.   A young man named Joe stood with a candle and his face slightly painted to represent death.  His mother had recently died.  He was there to dance for her death, to honor her by remembering her spirit lives, and according to ancient Aztec beliefs, that life is but a dream and death is the reality of life.   Joe's hobby he said is fire juggling.   He had marched in a number of Dia de los Muertos parades from San Francisco to Brooklyn, juggling fire.  Tonight, however, he held a candle and white lilies to honor his mother's passing.

  Then there was Senor Caballero.  He looked like a great grandson of Poncho Villa.  He boasted his heritage just as loudly.  He wore a hat laden with silver icons, weighing over 20 pounds.   They glistened on his head as he extolled the plight of Mexicans struggling for their freedoms, and the oppression of both the Church and state upon his culture.   In the middle of his hat's crown was a black widow spider, embraced on either side by sacred jaguars--ancient guardians of Aztec mythology.   The feathered serpent's head rested on a ring of gold as he explained his hat was an altar to the living and the dead--a ceremonial example of his belief that the struggle for justice in life was far from complete.
      As he bent my wife's ear, I took a host of pictures, trying to capture the life and meaning of his icons studded into his hat, reminding all who viewed it he was walking history.

       Then the dancers appeared.  They were dressed in ancient Aztec garb of 3000 years ago--replete with elegantly long pheasant feathers forming the spires of the sun above their heads.  Their faces were painted with black and white, representing the dividing line between life and death, the yin and yang of existence.

 Around their ankles were strapped leggings laced with nut shells that chattered when they moved, making all aware they were coming and providing a symphonic harmony when they danced as one to honor the afterlife.    A clay pot of incense was lighted to purify the air, and the beat of a drum echoed as though a great heart was throbbing in the chilled night, reminding all that they were but a heartbeat away from being a celebrant.

       We marched.   The sounds of taxi horns blared.   Fire engine sirens wailed in the distance.  Car alarms joined in.  Crowds of people weaving up and down the streets stopped to gawk as the procession made its way through the Bowery--once a place where the near-dead went to die, now an upscale playground for the young and mobile.

        Our first stop was FDNY Engine 33, a few blocks from the Indian Cultural Center.   Ten  firefighters from the station had died on Nine Eleven.   The Aztec costumed ancestors of history, young indigenous men and women, began the ceremony. 

      They faced the station and prayed, then began to dance to the beat of the drum, the sounds of the nut shells chattering around their ankles.   A young woman invoked a number of prayers both in Spanish and English, to allow us the privilege of knowing what the ceremony meant.
       A deep chill rushed through me as I watched them honor the dead.   They were not only dancing for the heroes whose names made the list of Nine Eleven victims, but also for the nameless, the undocumented victims who had made their way from Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala to work in the United States.  They danced for the anonymous, bringing their faces to life, celebrating their unsung heroism that factual history had no way of memorializing.   At least 200 undocumented people are alleged to have died that day, and their families still struggle for recognition.  One man, a Hispanic shoe shine worker, was finally given recognition for being in the World Trade Center after countless witnesses cited his presence on September 11.  But no one knew who he was, or where he came from.   The dancers danced for him among others.

      The Indian spokesperson delighted onlookers with folklore of the revolutionist God of Agriculture also known as the Corn God, Xipe Totec.  To stimulate the growth of nature and mankind, Xipe Totes flays himself to offer food to humans (such corn (maize) loses the outer skin to enable shoots to grow).  After he sheds his skin, he appears as a shining gold God.  She likened him to all those revolutionaries who strove for the betterment of the indigenous Hispanic people -  like corn they grew in sweeter and stronger - ready for the next battle.
      In Aztec belief systems, the journey to what the Western World calls Heaven--Omeyocan for the Aztecs-- was not dictated by how you lived, but how you died.  If a person died a normal death, his or her soul had to pass through nine levels of the underworld before reaching Mictlan, the realm of the death god.
      The journey for a wandering soul takes four years.   Many pitfalls had to be overcome to reach the ninth level or Mictlan (the place of the fleshless). These include jaguars, mountains, vast rivers and icy winds.  Often a dog was buried with the dead, to help guide them on the journey.  Families prayed and performed funeral rites periodically in order to assist the wandering soul in finding Mictlan.  Reaching the ninth level, your soul was released to the universe, to become one with Ometeotl.

       Celestial deaths, the Aztecs believe, were sacred deaths.   If one were killed by lightning, drowning or water related diseases, they were taken by Tlaloc to Tlalocan, an "earthly paradise" where there are plentiful gardens of nourishment.
      Those who died in battle or by sacrifice or women who died in childbirth were chosen by Tonatiuh, the sun, to live in Tonatiuhilhuicac.   Female and male warriors, after four years of accompanying the sun would be reincarnated to celestial hummingbirds where "they would sip of all the flowers of heaven as well as of earth."  Women who died during childbirth were deified as the Cihuaeteteo (divine women.)  Children dying before reaching the age of reason would go to Chichihuauheo--the wet nurse tree.   There, they would be nourished by milk which fell in drops from the tree.
     I was sure that all those who died in the World Trade Center were chosen by Tonatiuh, the sun god, and were now celestial hummingbirds, sipping the flowers of heaven and earth.
     And I was impressed that the woman translating the ancient ritual for us included all those who died in their struggle for freedom, those who braved the icy winds and mountains and "beasts of Terror," to find their way to America to start a new life.
     Hundreds of years ago the Spanish had tried to quash the Aztecs belief in life was a dream and death was reality for it was in major conflict with Christian belief that once one dies that is the end.   For the Aztecs, it was only the beginning of an infinite journey.  
     I was pleased the ritual had survived, for it was rich in respect for those who died, and didn't wash their deaths away with tears and sadness, but instead, offered their deaths as joyous events of celebration and remembrance.
     It helped me reinforce my personal belief that the Sentinels of Vigilance live, that they hover over Ground Zero in constant vigil to remind us to be Semper Vigilantes--Always Vigilant.
     On September 11, when I was at Ground Zero as the buildings collapsed around me, I sat in the ash and swore I saw the spirits of those who had died rising from the ash, forming a Sacred Circle of Vigilance.  I saw them become one body, reminding us to replace Fear with Courage, to restore Conviction where Intimidation crept, and to energize our ability to take the Right Actions in the face of Complacency.   

      Last night's ceremony reminded me that the Spirits of Vigilance were sacred hummingbirds, sipping the nectar of Vigilance.   They were darting around both Heaven and Earth, alert, ready to remind the living that the dead were not gone, but standing watch guard.   Dogs are believed to have a special connection to Mictlan and they are cremated with the deceased person in order to guide them through their journey.  In the end, all are reunited with the creator signifying the return to the sacred circle.  I thought of Sirius, the only dog to die in the World Trade Center disaster.   He belonged to a handler in the Port Authority, sniffing vehicles for bombs, and was trapped in the crush of the building.   I thought of Sirius up with the warriors--the men and women who sacrificed their life to death so that others might live.   I thought of Sirius rooting out the Beast of Terror, keeping the Sentinels of Vigilance on guard, ever watchful for the signs of Fear, Intimidation, and Complacency that feeds the Beast of Terror.
      I thought of the unborn children in the wombs of the women who died on Nine Eleven--those innocent ones who sat under the "wet nurse tree" as it dripped nourishment into their mouths.   I thought of the divine women who had died, the mothers of children left on earth, and their deification.

 It was an honor to be present last night, on the final night of the Day of the Dead--the Day of the Vigilant!

click here to go to special photo page for
 Day Of The Dead