My friend K and I both like unusual, New Age sorts of activities.

Tonight, we attended a Mayan Fire Ceremony out in the country at a private estate. It was intended to essentially pray for humanity to find its way and for peace in the world -- that sort of thing. The Mayan calendar ends in 2012, and some folks have placed the Winter's Solstice (Dec 21) of that year as being very significant.

Anyways, besides the Fire Ceremony, the Max crystal skull was there. I don't know much about it -- but you can read more here. At one point, you were supposed to present Max with one of your candles and then throw the candle into one of the bonfires. As I was presenting my candle, I touched Max -- others were doing it as well -- and it caused me the only unusual physical sensation I had for the night -- my hand hurt for a while afterwards!

At one point, Don Carlos, the event leader, placed the skull on your head and said a prayer (incantation?). Max weighs 18 pounds, so you could definitely feel the weight.

It was a long night. They got started something like 45 minutes late, and it went on for something like 3.5 hours. There were about 70 people there.

All the pictures below were with the iPhone -- I didn't feel like having the Canon strapped around me.

We ate dinner at Ellwood Thompson before hand. This was a bird begging for dinner --


While we were waiting for the show to get on the road, K played with a dog.


The setting --


Prepping to start the first fire. The guy with the red shirt and do rag is Don Carlos. He used Bacardi Rum as part of the starter for the fire, lol!


K, getting the skull placed atop her head --


Each time the crowd was instructed to throw candles into the fires, sparks would fly up --

Tonight, a friend and I went to Aquarian for a past life regression. There was a group of about 8 people plus the hypnotist.

Once before, I did a past life regression -- it was years and years ago at a Halloween party thrown by the predecessor to Equality Virginia (I think 'Virginians for Justice' or something like that). During that one, even though I went into it very skeptically, I actually had a couple of strong images that have stuck with me.

Tonight though, it just didn't happen. The hypnotist (who was family, I believe) was very nice, but something just didn't gel. I certainly got very relaxed, but I never went under. I almost did -- I felt myself going at one point, and then his tone of voice changed or something, and it snapped me out of it. So, I was a little disappointed.

Afterwards, we walked over to Ellwood, where I picked up a few things. One item was some macaroni and cheese -- but I didn't read the label -- it was VEGAN. I have to say...there is NO SUCH THING as vegan cheese. I don't know what exactly it is, but cheese it is not. I never buy anything vegan that is supposed to have cheese in it, because I know I won't like it. And so it was tonight, bleh...