Dia de Los Muertos in pre-Columbian America is at least as old as the vivid 3000 year old recorded art history of Mesoamerica. Its best know symbol, the skull head, represents rebirth as well as death. Life was but a dream or mask, and death was when one would meet the real world. Like its spring counterpart, Carnaval, attempts were made to repress it by the Catholic church authorities, but it was too deeply ingrained in the people. While Spaniards viewed death as the end of life, the natives believed the dead came back and visited. You are connected to your ancestors and they to you.Conscious understanding of the mystery of death cannot happen through word alone; in the Mexican tradition is an incredible palate of symbols and rituals. Underlying the growing popularity is the healthy wholeness found only when we go beyond absolute, either/or thinking to embrace the "dance of opposites," or life and death.Communal expression, is widespread in Native America. It aims to re-create the sacred in the present moment. Communities regularly seek to be restored to their original fertility in cyclic ceremonies of renewal, and thus promote the continuance of life on earth. Throughout the weeks surrounding November 2nd are innumerable altar exhibits and special displays which demonstrate and sell the pieces which mark Day of the Dead.Calaveras, the animated skeletons which remind us that death is best approached as an inevitable greatest life journey are the most popular in both San Francisco and Mexico, either as small sculptures or as prints by the great Mexican artist Jose Posada. Yet the palate is large, with many that serve on personal ancestor altars like sugar skulls, marigolds, candlesticks, incense-burners and images of the Virgin of Guadalupe.For the last millennium, images that represent the Black Madonna, like the Lady of Guadalupe or self-portraits of Frida Khalo, have been among the most numinous of archetypes, often being connected to miracles. The Black Madonna as the empowered feminine principle is harbinger of a new paradigm of inclusiveness, and her rise in the collective consciousness can be interpreted as foretold in the mythical end of the Aztec fifth age. We are living in the uncertain time of an Armageddon, where humanity must tame the patriarchal lust for power and control or see it destroy the human race.According to Aztec thinking, life, so solid, so apparently real, was an illusion. Only by creating art, by imitating the Lord and Lady of the Close and the Near, could they aspire to immortality. Thus the idea that "art made things divine," and only the divine was true.Today we yearn for this different, more metaphysical consciousness that appreciates the non-dual approach of peace with the four directions. To American Indians like the Aztecs, to be at peace within the community is to submit to a communal expression of conscience which functions as intelligence of the heart.