More about Rick Holmer


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the Aztec Sacred Calendar in full color return to The Aztec Book of Destiny the ethnographic context of The Aztec Book of Destiny more about The Aztec Book of Destiny future books by Rick Holmer Purchase The Aztec Book of Destiny: return to Rick Holmer's homepage return to HolmerArts.com	More about the author: Rick Holmer’s interest and expertise in ancient cultures is founded is his life history. His earliest years in grade school were in Montevideo in South America where his father was employed by the Uruguayan government to survey the country for exploitable mineral resources. His father, also a Dr. Holmer, was an inveterate tourist and through the few years living there much of South American was explored. Visits to the spectacular Inca sites of Machu Picchu and Sacsahuaman in Peru, and barbeques with gauchos on the pampas of Argentina instilled a fascination with indigenous people, both past and present. After returning to the States there were annual visits to Mexico and the American Southwest, and archaeological sites were always on the itinerary. After graduation from high school and a couple of years in college, Rick’s wanderlust overpowered his better judgment and he dropped out of school. President Kennedy had just been assassinated and there was the perceived threat of Communism growing around the world. Rick enlisted in the military and graduated the top of his class in Special Forces Training School (the Green Berets). Because of his language background his first assignment was in Central America training indigenous military units to counter rebel insurgencies. He then volunteered for Vietnam and spent the year of 1968 there working mostly with the indigenous tribal people of the mountainous country. These military experiences fully cemented his fascination with indigenous cultures. With his discharge from the military he returned to college and discovered the field of anthropology. A bachelor’s degree only whet his appetite and he subsequently pursued a doctorate. Although early in his graduate program he planned to develop The Aztec Book of Destiny as a dissertation topic he was invited (and enticed with salary) to participate in various archaeological projects in the South Pacific and the American Desert West, upon which he ultimately based his Ph.D. work (receiving his doctorate in 1978 from the University of Utah). Throughout his youth, Dr. Holmer learned first hand, and he still firmly believes, that all the world’s cultures are of equal value (although some individuals and sub-groups make this difficult to argue sometimes). Despite their dramatic cultural differences, everyone seeks a fundamental understanding of themselves and their surroundings. This innately human desire is best known to us through the world’s great philosophies, both religious and scientific. Most of these perspectives are well-documented and accessible to the interested public. However, tonallogy is not - The Aztec Book of Destiny will help make it so. As for the present, Dr. Holmer is a professor of anthropology at Idaho State University having taught there for more than 20 years. During that time he also served for five years as the director of the Idaho Museum of Natural History. He was originally hired at ISU to develop and run a program exploring regional archaeology, which has demanded all of his time and publishing effort. However, his true love since childhood has been the ancient and modern cultures native to Latin America. He teaches at least one course a semester about the civilizations and achievements of indigenous Mexicans and Guatemalans and has traveled there several times in the recent years. The most popular parts of his Mesoamerican courses cover the spiritual dimensions of the calendar and their influences on personality and fate. He does "readings" for students in his classes and many of them request a complete calendar so they can look up their friends and family, a service that this book provides. He has also given numerous invited presentations to school groups and various non-academic organizations receiving enthusiastic receptions. Dr. Holmer has published more than 25 academic papers, book chapters and monographs in various venues; and he has presented a similar number of papers at professional conferences. He is well known regionally for his archaeological research and for his students’ productivity, as well as for his close working relationship with the indigenous people of the region, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. Dr. Holmer is approaching retirement and has decided to dedicate his remaining years to publishing books and articles for the general public instead of for an academic audience. He is well aware that successful commercial publishing makes different demands than academic writing; and he has been preparing for this transition for the last several years. The Aztec Book of Destiny is his first commercial effort. He has two other books planned that build upon the Destiny book. The first, which is well underway, is much like the daily horoscope found in newspapers and web sites, but it is from the perspective of tonallogy. The second book is about the compatibility of potential mates based on the Mesoamerican calendar.