Wizard foretells worldwide drama

Where will you be in 14 years?

What will you be doing?

After a 2,000-year gestation period, including some particularly difficult years immediately ahead of us, those of us still hanging around the Earth in the year 2012 will enjoy a renaissance the likes of which we’ve never known.

We’ll be filled with a higher spirit and inner awareness that, right now, people only talk about. We won’t waste a dime on Mars probes when we’ve got children starving in the streets. We’ll have a stronger collective awareness of what really matters.

At least, that’s how cholq wizard McMillan Taylor tells it.

After we take the next evolutionary step, “You can forget wars,” Taylor declares. And from that point forward, we’ll stop overusing nonrenewable resources and take better care of our planet, he predicts. “I would think Exxon executives would have to get a real job.”

You see, every two millennia or so, those of us on Earth take a major step forward in the evolution of our human consciousness. Taylor quotes the Bible as describing how the Israelites introduced the first code of law, about 2,000 years before Christ. This code boiled down to two basic rules:

• “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

• “Love thy deity with all your heart and soul and mind.”

Then along came a man named Jesus, who has had all sorts of meanings and baggage attached to him through the centuries, Taylor says. People drew lines in the sand to segregate themselves into separate religious denominations.

But “after you’ve worn out a body … all those limited perceptions are going to be gone,” Taylor promises. Who cares what church or spiritual group you may have decided to join? The important point, he says, is this: Jesus was a teacher who introduced people to the concept of the holy spirit, or inner guidance.

All living beings were born with that inner guidance — a natural, instinctual love and a knowing of what’s right — but humans have managed to bury it, Taylor explains. Trees and animals never lost it, he says: “We lost it.

“It’s now come to a point where we’ll be taking another step,” the wizard predicts. “We’re about to see the fulfillment of what Jesus introduced.”

This new enlightenment is not a New Age thing, or a Christian thing, or a Buddhist thing, or anyone’s thing, according to Taylor. “It’s a homo sapien thing. Nobody’s got an exclusive on it.”

Congratulations, Asheville

As the wizard sees it, Asheville is a great place to learn your spiritual lessons. He says Edgar Cayce prophesized about Asheville, mentioning it as a future hub of spiritual activity.

“And here we are, decades later, and that’s just exactly what’s happening here,” Taylor says. “I think it all started when they built an obelisk in the middle of town.”

The Vance Monument was erected in 1898. Taylor sees that as the hub of a wheel, with a Wiccan spoke, a New Age spoke, a Druid spoke and an Earth-centered fairy spoke. And yet, although Asheville is a hot spot of consciousness and ascending, “it’s much more grounded here than [New Age mecca] Sedona, [Ariz.,]” Taylor says.

Being involved in the physical, workaday reality is important, Taylor explains. Sometimes eager seekers of enlightenment try so hard to hold onto an image of a white light that they never really mature and grow, he says.

Despite all the people trying to expand their consciousness here, however, Taylor doesn’t see Asheville as affecting the nation, let alone the world. Asheville “can’t reach out as far as Waynesville and Canton,” he says. “And forget Woodfin.”

Instead, Asheville is a place for individual, personal development.

And that, he says, is plenty.

“Society as itself does not exist,” proclaims Taylor. “Society is a product of the individual.”

There are so many unique people in Asheville — Taylor says he’s met three others who are from the moon, just like him — that a wizard can feel as comfortable in Asheville as just about anywhere.

“I like this town,” Taylor declares. “I came here because Mother [Kali, the goddess of transformation] sent me here … and because I knew I would be accepted.”

Well, maybe not accepted by everybody, but accepted as much as a cholq wizard could realistically expect to be.

The storm before the calm

Before humans reach a higher plane in 2012, however, we’ve got a bunch of trauma to muddle through.

Terrorism. Mass destruction. Increasingly destructive weapons. Overpopulation. Environmental filth. The effects of humans who know only greed and a desire to control.

“We’re creating our own labor pains” before the enlightenment, Taylor says. “I haven’t seen Kali down here advising any weapons. … It’s not like God or Goddess are behind this. We’re doing it.”

Life on Earth will become more difficult before it becomes easier, he predicts. “We have definitely not seen the fullness of it.

“It’ll be kind of like having a splinter in your finger,” as he puts it. The turmoil will be like the pus festering and creating pressure around a sliver in the skin. That pressure helps work the sliver out of the skin, and then, within 24 hours, it’s like that sliver was never there.

In the end, all our problems will help draw people together, Taylor asserts. “It’s going to come down to what really matters.”

In the meantime, individuals can work toward that new spirituality, so they’ll be better prepared for things to come.

“This might sound a little campy and old to some people,” Taylor admits. But the best way to evolve, he advises, is this: “Treat other people like you want to be treated. You’ll feel better about yourself, and about life.”

Plus, if something is hammering on your personal space — if it’s too invasive or imprisoning — cut the cord, he counsels. “Get it out of your life, or you aren’t free.”