PORTAL
The same creative vortex that disgorges the rocks and mountains shapes the human heart. The spiral called “our grandmother” that gives birth to “the southern stars” carves your fingerprints. The evolutionary and inclusive destiny of the mineral kingdom and ourselves, the warrior’s path and the flames which lick at, surround and energize the penitent follow the same swirling trajectory. The heart has long been considered the seat of the spirit in human form. Is it coincidence that the “heart mystery in the mineral kingdom” is the same promise that Guadalupe represents and embodies. In these hearts of stone, we can see the larger ventricle on the left and the way the spiral wraps around from left to right sometimes leaving a ridge or swelling in the lower right quadrant moving left. (In human anatomy this swelling of tissue is created by the pulmonary artery & valve overlying the aorta and aortic valve) This is the shape the human heart takes.
Another evolutionary possibility out of the spiral dance of creation is the star or pentagram considered a good luck charm and symbol of regenerative activity. In ancient Egypt, the “duat” is a five pointed star within a circle which signifies our human ability to rise up and cast off our illusions. It is a symbol for the underworld and the promise and inherent way foreward in terms of strategy and destiny. In the manifest world of crosscurrents, agendas and inertia the star pattern sometimes manifests as a balanced energetic five part pattern. Stephanie Mines, a student of curandera in Mexico, was told by her teacher, “You are a star…your legs and arms are four points of the star, and the fifth is here, in your center, in your umbilicus, where everything begins. The body is a star and the sobradora (masseuse) must make the star shine.”
Sometimes the star is evolving toward the star form but appears unbalanced or imperfect or has been obstructed by circumstances and is temporarily apparently in stasis. Sometimes we are seeing this form from a point of view which does not acknowledge its multidimensional reality as described by modern physics or in indigenous cosmologies. These are the drunken stars. 
The drunken stars sway and weave, they play at the game of life, first going over here, then suddenly veering off.
Sometimes they become falling stars and burn out in flashes. Coyote, who lives in the arroyo, talks to them.
FLAMES WHICH EAT OUR WORLD
The spirallic pattern and undulating coils of “Snake” and Coatlicue’s snake skirts embrace and embody the manifest world of crystals, birds, wind and human emotions. Another of these spirallic forms are the flames that appear from time to time engulfing everything in their sacrificial “burning” which purifies creation whenever inertia has slowed the vibrational rate of some particular organizational unit or “soul”. These flames that burn our world purify the heart and the duat or underworld as well. When the flames cool down some, they move more slowly and may move toward the center of the spiral in the quiet eye of the vortex and take refuge there, where the nectar is at the center of the flower, and slowly whirl and become a star or perhaps a heart. In many ancient cultures, after the hero or warrior passes through various buffeting affronts, trials and whirlpools he finds him/herself and rises into the heavens and becomes a star or constellation.
In Guadalupe’s manifestation these flames consume the heart and all apparent separate phenomena burning away the dross to reveal you are included in her protection and sustenance.
