“While the outrigger Hokole’a was created from fragments of sacred trees, logs, boards, custom fabric for sails, hawsers, ropes, Home is wherever she is made welcome, whichever port her crew succeeds in reaching throughout the voyage.
Bringing with them fresh supplies (gathered/donated at each port-of-call) to last them two weeks, the multi-aged crew will have to catch their own fish & other food en route. Little deviation from this routine allows them to eat fresh fruit & veg indigenous to each island on their journey circling the Pacific.
In addition to 150 indigenous islands, they will visit Japan,Taiwan, Indonesia, S.Korea,Vietnam, Guam, Burma, Borneo, Marshall Is., before return to Hawai’i.
Ocean Consciousness Teaches Environmental Awareness & Evidence of Change
A mid-16thC European, by the name of Ferdinand Magellan would enter the Pacific and the Pacific embraced him, with relatively calm weather, and so he would call it ‘Pacific’ because it was relatively peaceful. The Ocean was gentle.
“Trust me, says Master Navigator Nainoa Thompson, the Pacific is far from gentle. So we call it by another name—one from our ancestors-thousands of years old. It is Moana Kia the Great—the Ocean of the Great expanse. We embrace both names.”
Thompson an his crew of combined new recruits and old-timers will begin their arduous journey in June, after their beloved canoe is shipped to its starting port in Alaska. Then, over the next 42 weeks she will circumnavigate the Pacific, visiting 36 countries and archipelagos, 150 indigenous islands.
“If you look at a nautical map of the Earth, it is divided into political territories & exclusive economic sub-divisions, marked by lines, international borders and boundaries. The Ocean has no lines. It covers one-third of the Earth’s surface and it’s all water. That’s what we want to protect, not just for environmental reasons, but for the sake of our children and grandchildren. It’s our responsibility.”*
Thompson says he wants to sail as little as possible, to allow the crew-the younger generation-to handle the legwork in order to develop an environmental awareness of the importance of life-giving water first-hand.
“Forty-seven years ago Pianu was launched & she and her crew of 17 would pull Tahiti out of the Sea, rescue those islanders in distress.
“It’s easy to look backwards, to what has been. What we’re about today is ‘What will we look for in the next 50 years?’ Hawai’i today is part of a global civilization, a financial/media driven world where we’re uncertain whether the future is good enough for our children. What’s its Kuleana?*
*Kuleana = Hawai’ian responsibility, which comes from privilege
Thompson says where they’re going there are no lines. There are no economic sub-divisions. “It’s a myth—It’s only one ocean and we are all one people on this island-the Earth.”
Inspired by Space flight Astronauts to see Earth as Single Island
One of Capt. Thompson’s gurus was space voyager Lt. Colonel Lacy Beach who compared the sailing in the Pacific to seeing Earth from Space. In the early 1990s, he summoned Thompson to his home when he was dying to share a few thoughts with his (then) pupil.
“I can go in the craft and it can fly me out of the atmosphere into Space, so I can turn around and look down at the whole Earth because what we need to figure is how to protect this Earth – our only home.
Thompson listened.
“He was a great navigator and a great teacher. He told me ‘we can’t protect what we don’t understand’.” We need to understand the systems. And we can’t do that if we don’t care. He made me keep three promises that he couldn’t. He said: you can’t do this alone.”
“He said ‘pay attention to the new language—’Climate change. Sustainability. Hypoxia, dead zones; acidification – a lot of words we don’t know because we weren’t taught. Sail round the world, touch it; feel each place. It’s the only way you can be part of it.’
“And the last promise he made me make was to build a school for the Earth by the Earth.”
Starting from Alaska in June 2023, canoe Hokole’a’s journey—Moana Nui Akea—Great voyage for Earth of Thompson and his crew will visit 36 countries and archipelagos and at least 150 indigenous territories. As President of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, Nainoa Thompson affirms: “It’s our responsibility to connect, explore, discover.”
He admits he is already grateful for the reception he knows he and his crew will receive at each port of call. Indigenous people are always welcoming, friendly, as they understand the enormity & rigours of an ocean voyage, especially by canoe.
Thompson says the only way for the future is to build schools where the younger generation can be inspired to be part of the Earth by learning to experience her waters first-hand.
1762-85 Industrial Revolution-250yrLoom/Weaving ‘Progress’ can be Reversed
A British entrepreneur Edmund Cartwright between 1762-85 changed history by replacing hand-woven fabric, weaving looms and tapestry work by men and women (+many children) & introducing first machines capable of spinning yarn into cloth, thus creating the Industrial Revolution which has lasted so long that nobody remembers any other way.
Thompson is convinced this adaptation of human ingenuity can be reversed, but only with a change in the way our children & grandchildren are taught.
University of Hawai’i @Hilo Agrees to Change Curriculum to Offer Navigation
University CEO Dr. David Lassner of the University of Hawai’i at Hilo (Big Island, HI) has volunteered to add navigation skills and teaching Ocean canoeing to the curriculum, starting this autumn. Many Hawai’ian youngsters already have a taste for canoe group learning and have taken part in (small) canoe races at elementary level. By making ocean navigation & observation part of their degree, or even as an adjunct to sports lessons, Dr. Lassner hopes to create/inspire the next generation of navigators and provide them with the tools for a lifetime of sharing their beloved Ocean with others.
He hosted a recent press conference offered by CBS-Hawai’i to broadcast Capt. Thompson’s voyage starting June this year; and, along with others in the media with a love of ocean-going & support for Hawai’ians’ sharing/caring attitude to the importance of the Seas for the future of a healthy planet
University CEO Lassner agrees with PVS Navigator President Thompson that there are two paths. The first path is to stick to this path—the one that leads nowhere except to extinction —Science agrees and presents conclusive evidence. The second path is to change the path to one of caring and loving our island Earth. Love, he agrees with his colleague, is not an option.
“It is a way of life for Hawai’ians. We are all part of the same Ohana—one large family”
Many indigenous islanders throughout Polynesia have a similar ‘Aloha’ (loving/welcoming) attitude to their own Pacific home. And equally want to share the love with others—native & newcomers alike.
Hokulea will be in Polynesia from March to December 2024 and then make its way to New Zealand, Melanesia, and the West Pacific. With a voyage of 43,000 miles and visits to 345 ports in the bag, it will start the homeward journey.
The voyage will end in Japan, at which point the Hokule’a will be shipped back to Los Angeles and then sailed home to Hawaii.
Ancestral Navigation by the Stars: Nature Prevails, Removes Fear of Unknown
Both Lassner and Thompson have had to face inevitable “modern thinkers’ fear”; constantly being asked “Well what if…” citing a list of ailments or possible world cataclysms which might endanger the voyage. These always include World War III, death by shark-bite, nuclear weapons testing on nearby islands, another pandemic, influenza on board, running out of food. The list is endless—and representative of modern society’s attitude to any new enterprise. Fear first; trust later.
All Polynesian islanders and neighbouring seafaring countries like Japan, S.Korea and Taiwan have an intimate relationship with the ocean on their doorstep—remarkably similar to Out-Islanders of the Bahamas; Jamaica & Trinidad in the Caribbean, parts of Mexico & Guatemala in Central America, and Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, Skye and Shetland. They are the first to admit that they couldn’t live without its constantly changing temperament; that it affects their lives more than some care to admit, while watching news on TV, reading a newspaper (if they can obtain one) or going to the supermarket on a shopping spree.
Not All Doom & Gloom:Some European Countries take Responsibility for Future
After shock waves from WWII subsided in early ‘sixties, certain nations—like Germany and Japan made strong anti-war alliances, joined United Nations, promoted Peace Corps or local equivalent to make amends. Even now U.S. president Biden seems unable to unthink his war mentality, and continues to send military aid in $$millions to Ukraine on pretext of ‘helping’ them defend tank manoeuvres by Russians. The White House continues to foster fear in younger generation as an excuse for not channeling similar funds to help his own poor and needy—recent hurricane & tornado victims in disastrous Deep South. He seems unaware that Russian tank force is a seriously outdated repurposed squad of ex-WWII disused equipment which even Ukrainians laugh off. They accept U.S. aid nonetheless. Who wouldn’t?
French Frigate Shoals, above, is part of group of outlying islands in the Hawai’ian island chain (NWHI). Formed by remnant atolls around a submerged (extinct) volcano, the reef system associated with French Frigate Shoals supports the greatest variety of coral species in NWHI with forty one species of stony corals documented.
A steep-sided basalt pinnacle juts out of the water in the middle of the atoll. This is the last remnant of the original prehistoric volcano. The pinnacle was named “La Pérouse Pinnacle” after Compte de la Pérouse, who visited the atoll in 1786. In the moonlight the pinnacle so resembled a full-rigged sailing ship that it lured more than one vessel to her doom on the Shoals.
While there is still a U.S. military presence in the form of a runway atop immediate neighbor Tern Island, (formerly used as a refuelling stop en route to Midway Island, see top far right 1942 Pacific Nuclear bomb dropped by Enola Gay), the Shoals are an international refuge for Pacific Green Turtle, who lay their eggs in exposed dug-outs, above rt. while sun-basking, fishing, or travelling to mainland Hawai’i, but are devoted parents who return once the offspring hatch. The string of islets also provide refuge for the largest sub-population of endangered Hawai’ian monk seals and preservation of this atoll is critical to their survival.
Local temperatures never fall much below 79ºF in the islands, and so Hawai’ian Pacific activity continues at a frantic level, year-round. Meanwhile, there are many heroic deeds happening on shores of the ‘other’ Ocean, where temperatures are still slow to rise.
Holland aka Netherlands, severely strapped by Nazi domination in WWII, has blossomed in peace-time and is now second-largest #sustainable world nation to grow and export (organic) food. Their tulip fields are legendary; but so now are their organic farms, fed & powered by near-90% solar & wind-power energy, with distribution capability second to none-a Euro-bloc icon of sustainability.
Another-tiny-country known for sustainability is Morocco. 100% oil-dependent at the turn of the Century, now 23 years later 43% alternative.
Back in the Pacific, coastal Costa Rica is recovering from its previous bad habits.
The Central American nation had cut down over half of its forests last century. Now, with reforestation grants, and a lot of encouragement, they have restored over half the country’s trees. And their youngsters are enthused, involved in the new jungle.
Japan—while paying attention to its global impact on other nations after changing from a warlike nation to a peaceful one, is now known for slowing everything down in its overpopulated country. Whilst continuing to welcome newcomers who want to learn its ancient customs, traffic lanes have been diverted, pedestrians given right of way. Large slowing-down water boat and candlelight festivals are promoted. And all done with grace—with respect for their elders who kept traditions going, but emphasis on showing the young how to emulate such gentle cultural elegance in dress, tradition, food and other ceremonies. Japanese kimono & other costumes, tea ceremony, porcelain kiln & outdoor firing have been raised to a new level to allow the young to appreciate thousands of years of tradition. It goes without saying that Sumo Wrestling continues to play a big part in cultural exchange.
Quietly, when nobody was looking, the Pacific Diesel Company in Maui, HI began growing sunflowers on its 200-acre farm in 1998. Now, 25 years later it has opened fuel stations dockside in Honolulu and Maui to provide processed biodiesel for motorboats, biodiesel-capable cars. It recycles used oil from various outlets.
A separate purification system manufactures cooking oil for local restaurants. Mainland support was quick to fund the enterprise, as PDC, Hawai’i was first of its kind in the United States.
The company will feature in Earth Day celebrations April 22, 2023 throughout the Hawai’ian islands.
With a Little Help from His Friends…
We all extend our sincerest good wishes Bon Voyage/ Gute Reise & indigenous blessings to Navigator Thompson and crew. May fishing be abundant on lean days; and local pineapples, guava, coconut fruit & veg sustain them throughout their mammoth four-year pilgrimage. What a team!
Saddle Bags full of Old Stuff, Camping Out in the New
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Janus Effect— Riding into the New on an Old Horse
Janus, an Etruscan god, borrowed by Romans for their first month of reformed Julian calendar, which previously began March—equinox. The god is pictured, right, as a young man looking forward, old man looking back.
Angels, far right, were invoked to guide the army through battle, horses blessed as bearers of essential supplies
Emperor Trajan, A.D.98-117, seen left, creator of Trajan’s Column in the Roman Forum, used his power as Optimus Princeps to erect a 1st-century video documentary in STONE of his successful campaigns in subduing barbarians throughout the Empire, being offered beheaded captives
Trajan’s column in Rome, erected after successful Dacian campaign, portrays Rome’s omnipotence in all things martial—barbarians always defeated by superior Roman knowhow/weaponry/transportation
Saddle bags full of Old Stuff, Camping out in the New
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Emerging from what feels like a deep dark cloud of a year—2020—into the light of a new one which has potential to wake us all up and catapult us right out of bed, it is tempting to blanket all of the bad with the old, and look to the new year to solve all our problems.
But it’s a little more complicated than that.
If I’m honest, solitary confinement aka lockdown aka quarantine aka Tier 4 [for Brits], has had a remarkable effect on my writing regimen. Many blog authors and fiction wannabes will agree, we need a writing routine to help get ourselves organized, or we’d never produce a single word—bless our Muses, may it never happen.
Angelic Potpourri of Offerings from the Stars & Social Media as Humanity Wakes up to Responsibility
Creative people have found time in isolation rewarding in unexpected ways: more self-time allows honest re-assessment of our capacity for change, our output—both volume and quality—and enjoyment of what we do. With no distractions to interrupt our daily entry to the Writer’s Cave—painting boudoir, or garden plot [unless it becomes a criminal act to do so]—new books get written, music composed and broadcast, gardens and parks flourish. Nature likes to show off her growth.
Having nobody else to talk to, or hug daily—some elderly have had no phone connection or physical touch for months—has an effect of allowing us to spiral inward to where our Muse usually sits at her own computah waiting for us to ask! That isolation opens inner doors to our mind—and its myriad compartments—usually unheard in the (former) hurly burly of day-to-day existence—what we used to call the Nine-to-Five.
The new Nine-to-Five might be called more appropriately the Dawn-to-Dusk, or Sleep-no-More. Reaction to having only oneself in charge of one’s day—plus social media— has made superstars out of teenagers and octogenarians alike.
Drive-thru Virtual Graduation for U.S. Students, Remote Viewing A-levels in Britain
A virtual world for Education premiered in British A-level exam results, and U.S. Virtual Graduation ceremonies, with drive-in access to ‘graduates’ on a giant public screen, and cars suitably six feet apart. Zoom and Facetime no longer domain of teenagers, hosts home vids from newbies thru to experts. Tweets and Instagram posts get a million followers, 12-year olds become ‘social media influencers.’ Even the Mother Road, beloved of Kerouac and the Beat Gen, has shown (very cool, hip) example by maintaining nightly shows at its Route 66 Drive-In Movie theater in Jaspar, MO, with Miami Dolphins converting their stadium for film shows and Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Drive-Ins operating in many states.
Our entertainment antennae are being tweaked. We lap up visual, virtual televised or electronically-generated media like babes to the bottle. Royal audiences have become a television moment of a tap on the virtual shoulder by a non-corporeal monarch with a (light saber) sword.
Angelic Intervention and Messages from the Stars
Our senses have become heightened by this aloneness. Plus an automatic human response to being caged—escape—to get out into Nature and do more walking, planting, appreciating. World movements have appeared, to plant rescue forests, create community veg and fruit gardens, rewilding abandoned plots and city parks. Cairngorms National Park, largest park in Britain, has committed to revitalising biodiversity and to restoring (near-extinct) Caledonian Pine Forest (rewilding and exclosure plantings) and to Scotland’s looted and damaged peat bogs. Some highland estates have initiated a reduced seasonal game shoot, with fewer acres of heather burn (cover for the grouse), allowing local wildlife to return in natural numbers.
Messages from aloft include December highlight Saturn/Jupiter Great Conjunction, when every planet and asteroid that we know of—plus a few we didn’t imagine—came into alignment in a small quadrant of our (Earth-view) sky, over winter Solstice. While the two giants are separating now, they continue to dominate January skies. Astrologers predict cataclysmic change. Seismic scientists believe this alignment of planetary bodies produces earth-directed energy, similar to the effect of a sunspot maximum when the solar face aims directly at earth: it produces increased volcanic eruption and earthquake movement.
Something like that is happening now—which started on Solstice—in the Halema’uma’u Caldera, a collapsed crater atop Hawai’i’s Kilauea volcano, 4,000ft. Quiet for three decades, goddess Pele chose earth’s shortest day to reawaken a two-year old collapsed shield volcano that had filled with water (60ft deep). Blasting through rock, old petrified magma, and evaporating the water lake in process, Halema’uma’u (and Pele) created a lava lake that is currently changing the local landscape. Watch this space.
Volcano National Park USGS webcam and drone footage of December eruption update to Epiphany, January 6, 2021
Writerly Conclusions—When Life Brings you Lemons, er, Lava—make Lava-ade?
Meanwhile an Epiphany in the (smokey but breathable) writers’ cave, wassup, Doc? Is a new year resolution to keep on keeping on when all around are losing theirs, still valid if the ground we walk on is shifting beneath our feet? In our newfound zeal for restoring the wild, reducing CO2, becoming more in tune with Mother Nature, do we turn the clock back aka horse-drawn-plough? or forward akabook a seat on Space-X?
Roman ingenuity would have known. Ancient advice to the fallen, the wounded, the lost—and the found? Get back on the horse.
CANTICLE FOR A LOST NATION
Unlocking the Ancient Interlace woven into Cultural Myth
Neolithic Carved Stone Ball, found at Towie, Aberdeenshire 3000BC, in Museum of Scotland Edinburgh
For a nation proud of its heritage, its oral tradition and roots–supported by faithful descendants in all corners of the globe–we Brittonic Scots are remarkably careless with it. In part this stems from a history of being conquered. But suppressed belief and myth have a way of being treasured: a precious relic to be hidden from secular eyes.
Twenty-first century culture today celebrates fifth-century Brittonic peripatetic monk, Patrick who ‘brought the Church’ to Ireland. They wave shamrocks, hold parades and declare green themes in diverse locales through New York, L.A., Dublin and Hounslow. Rio de Janeiro and Boston, too.
A little background may be in order.
Britannia was an island of subdued people, glad to be abandoned in AD420 when the Romans walked out, left to themselves in a rich land with its own ancient culture.
Many great historical documents have been lost in intervening centuries of ‘acquisition’ or political manipulation by other races since Patrick’s time. He preached when sacred secret knowledge of the Dark Age was kept dark–maintained in recesses of the cultural mind, secrets rehearsed in saga and song–known in the historic Pictish era–to all.
Brittonic Patrick sent as a Slave to Ireland
Illuminated Chi Rho Gk. first letters of name of Christ in A.D. 8thC Celtic gospel Book of Kells, held Trinity College, Dublin
Ninth-century church annals, the Book of Armagh, includes a work by Patrick, his Confessio, in which he describes his life at a Roman villa in Britain, his capture by Irish raiders, and his seven years of slavery in Ireland.
Recovering his freedom, he returned to Roman Britain, recording that he was educated and ordained into the priesthood. He eventually succeeded in being sent as a missionary back to Ireland. He concentrated on the north and west of the country, achieving strong connections.
Patrick never claimed to have converted all of Ireland. But tradition has it that his mission began around A.D. 432. It was C.7th biographers Tirechán and Muirchú who credited him with converting ‘all the Irish to Christianity’ and won for him the status of national apostle.
Confused chronology in Patrick’s life came about when tradition merged the work of two monks—continental Palladius and (‘Irish’) Patrick of the Confessio.
There is not enough evidence to support traditional date, A.D.432, for the start of his mission, but a date of 492/493 is given for his death in Annals and biographies.
Little is known of the first impact of Christianity in Ireland. Traditions in the south and southeast refer to early saints who allegedly preceded St. Patrick, whose missions may have come through trading within the Roman Empire. The earliest date is A.D.431, when St. Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre in Gaul, with the approval of Pope Celestine I, proposed to send ‘Palladius to the Scots believing in Christ.’
After that, missionary history in Ireland is dominated by St. Patrick.
Caledonians Unsubjugated, Rome Withdraws
By A.D.368, just thirty years before Roman withdrawal from Britain, Ammianus Marcellinus describes tribes of the Priteni [Picts] split into two by the Mounth: northern Dicalydones and Verturiones in the south. To Roman authors, Priteni-Britanni were linguistically just another people of Prydein. By the post-Roman Dark Age, Caledonians had re-possessed their northern forests, the Fortriu people their rich lands of Perth and Fife.
Although Scots history is still untaught in schools, few deny knowing that Kenneth mac Alpin, c.AD843, united the kingdoms of Picts and Scots. Fewer seem aware that his dynasty–so bold and so desperate for fertile plains–carefully perpetuated the title of those he deposed, calling themselves Kings of Picts for another sixty years.
Alongside Pictish lands they annexed Pictish Law–a remarkable piece of diplomacy which survives in the basis of Scots law today.
Between the fifth and seventh centuries, the great forests of the Northeast were the domain of kings–Stocket, Kintore, Deer–a resource which ensured royal entertainment [the boar hunt] and feasts [deer and lesser animals] for warriors and entire communities, as well as wealth of timber and grain.
While none but the lordly burned wood in the fireplace of the great hall–most people cast peat for fuel–bounty of the forest—kindling—was available to all. This convention remains today in the understanding between tenant farmer and landowner/laird that while he may not cut down the laird’s trees, all windfall is his.
At least two royal strongholds survive.
These are not small domains like those confirmed in later medieval charters to royal burghs, but whole estates crowned by forests, nourished by rivers and centered round the ‘castle-hill’ [Brit.caer] of a noble family: in the south the Kingdom of Fife points to the king’s mound–Cinrimonaid, St.Andrews—made famous by Constantin king of Picts [789-820]; in the north the Kingdom of Forgue has its Place of Ferendracht–‘place’ in old Scots indicating a ‘peel’ or fortified mound of the heroic age.
There are others.
A.D.5th century pre-Christian Pictish carved stones in Aberdeenshire heartland Romans couldn’t sudue
In the North, earliest placenames give fairly good timelines, where the castle-hill [Brit/Pict. caer, castell] usually denotes early-historic occupation of the pre-Scotic Pictish period, like Kintore, Inverurie, with attendant royal chapels [Lat. capella, Welsh/Brit. eglys]-in the Northeast often seen in telltale ‘chapelton’ within ancient church boundaries, but separate from the later parish church. Compare rath/roth element at Rathmurriel, Rothney in Insch, which derive from 12th century settlements, like Flemings [Flinders] at Leslie.
Second early element Brit. eglys, easily identified south of the Mounth like Ecclesgreig in Mearns, ‘church of Giric’, is more elusive farther north, but does occur. There is one on the Banff coast–conveniently close to Pictish stronghold Dundarg–Strahanglis Point, ‘point of the valley of the church’.
Another clue to Pictish Christian foundations is the presence of a circular enclosed burial ground, like the one at Deskford within the precinct of the medieval laird’s Tower. At Fordyce on the North (Banff) Coast where remains of a Pictish tower dedicated to St. Talorcan stand, there is another. At Tullich-Aboyne one remains where the former church was dedicated to St. Nathalan, [d.679].
Language survival of Pictish Doric in Aberdeen
There are delightfully archaic, short, stubby single-syllable names in the language too, to satisfy our yearning for earliest beginnings.
It helps to remember that the parish system, discarded by modern mapmakers, transmits a clear layout of medieval churchlands, themselves descended from earlier chapels attached to Pictish strongholds.
By the seventh century, Pictish kings were fully Christian, educated from youth in the cultural milieu of a monastery. In the centuries before Gaelic became a court language, it was the language of the Northern Irish Scot [Americans have a convenient term for these Ulstermen: Scots-Irish]. More significantly, it was the language of Irish monastics, keepers of annals, copiers of sacred texts, educators of the nobility.
It is no accident that Iona came into prominence following the ministries of saints like Columba [d.597] and Adamnán [d.704].
The Church was common education for young nobles of ‘all four peoples’ of Britain, according to Northumbrian cleric Bede, writing at the end of the seventh century–Angles, Britons, Picts and Scots. By 690, there was a long tradition of wandering British monks, educated in the Irish church, returning to convert the peoples of their homeland.
Patrick, interestingly, is one of the few Britons who took the Christian message to Ireland [mid-fifth century].
Four apostles in simple illuminated manuscript endpages of Book of Deer, Aberdeenshire, c.f. Book of Kells below
British Ninian, d. c.432, founder of Whithorn in Galloway, is credited with inspiring several Pictish clerics of Northeast tradition. Drostan, Medan and Colm are sixth century saints, giving their names to foundations at Deer/Insch, Pitmedden/Fintray on Donside and St.Coombs in Banff.
Finnian and Brendan, both mid-sixth-century travelers, spread the word and their names to churches planted throughout Pictland; Brendan, known as the wanderer, did his conversions by sea; his name in Banffshire is Brandan or Brangan where his dedications run along the North Coast.
Ethernan patron of Rathen in Buchan died, according to Irish annals, in 669 ‘among the Picts’. He is patron of Kinnernie (Donside) and Banchory-Ternan (Deeside) [contra Brev.Ab where he is called St.Ternanus].
Illuminated apostles: 10thC Iona Book of Kells, now in Trinity College, Dublin shows Matthew as Man, Mark winged Lion, Luke the surgeon as winged Bull and John as Eagle
A contemporary Briton celebrated in southern Pictavia was St. Serf whose dedication at Culsalmond is rare north of the Mounth. St.Sair’s Fair was held here near Colpy until well after the Reformation. His other foundation was at Monkeigy [Keithhall], now Inverurie.
Marnan, 7thC patron of Aberchirder-Marnoch and Leochel, Lumphanan was celebrated long after his death with Marnoch Fair, held traditionally on second Tuesday in March.
Recent research suggests that portable crosses–roughly circular stones like pillows carved with a simple cross and pre-dating the eighth century [class II] Pictish cross slabs were the hallmark of these holy men. They reach far and wide.
Fish-shape ogham carved on rear of Pictish stone at St Fergus Chapel, Dyce-Aberdeen hidden in mortar for 12 centuries
Such compact Christian amulets surface in Aberdeenshire, temptingly close to early foundations. Cross-inscribed stones—with no other ornament—appear at Aboyne, Afforsk, Banchory, Barra, Botriphnie, Bourtie, Clatt, Crathes, Culsalmond, Deer, Dyce, Ellon, Fintray, Inverurie, Kinnernie, Logie-Coldstone, Logie-Elphinstone, Monymusk, Ruthven and Tullich.
A saint’s well where converts were baptized invariably lies close to these foundations. After the patron died, their relics—ranging from pillows of stone to crozier and bell—were treasured by the community.
A Fintray legend persists that St. Medan’s head was kept—wrapped in beaten silver—until melted down to make a communion cup for the (reformed) kirk. The head of the saint was kept at Banchory where t’Ernan’s bell, the ‘Ronnecht’ did not survive the Reformation; t’Ernan was patron of Findon, Arbuthnot and Slains.
One further legacy is the former pagan alphabet—ogham—carved in stone, reintroduced by early pilgrims as means of explaining Christian doctrine to the illiterate. Few remain in the north [Newton, top and Dyce, left] but their clear fish-tail shape had meaning to a populace venerating the salmon, carved locally on pre-Christian Pictish [class I] symbol stones. To new converts it simultaneously represented the fish symbol of Christ, Gk. Ikthos.
Renewed interest in Britain centers on outlying rural (pagan) carved stones & sacred Pictish strongholds/objects left by the Romans when they withdrew in A.D.420. Aberdeenshire heartland holds greatest treasures: Bronze Age beakers in museums; Roman pavements leading to C.5th Pictish carved stones of 12 sacred creatures & symbols; early-Xtian ‘Fite Kirks’ made of stone, when England was living in Dark Age straw huts.
The bard was asked who of the kings of Prydein
is most generous of all
‘And I declared boldly
That it was Owain’ The Gorhoffedd, 12thC heroic poem
The subject of royal lineage brings out the romantic in the scholar and the scholar in the romantic.
Lordship and kingship in a Pictish context has been given both treatments over centuries of scholarship, each with its version of history. Lately tolerance between disciplines allows students of literature, language and art history to communicate with archaeologists and pre-historians in a renewed attempt to investigate the rôle of royal centres in the Pictish kingdom.
WINTER ENDS with NEW BEGINNINGS Emerging from the Longest Night into a New Year
It is Solstice—the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. This year—2018—it is also the night of the Full Moon—a cosmic coincidence which will not happen again until 2094.
Hogmanay now a World-Scots Celebration
Traditional Christmas pudding, oozing flaming brandy, courtesy Delia Smith
Meanwhile festivities are revving up for a week of celebrations in all corners of the globe—more glitzy in countries with the Santa Claus connection: the USA welcomes his reindeer to school halls and shopping malls. Yule logs burn in grates from Scandinavia to Scotland.
While New Year’s Eve is still a week away, around the globe Scots are preparing. They have their own name and a long rich heritage associated with the last night of the Old Year—Hogmanay.
Theories abound on the derivation of Hogmanay. While I favor the translation given by the Scots Dictionary—aguillaneuf=gift for a new year, below—there are others. The Scandinavian word for a feast preceding Yule was “Hoggo-nott” while the Flemish words (many have come into Scots) hoog min dag=’great love day’. Hogmanay can be traced back to Anglo-Saxon, Haleg monath, Holy Month, or the Gaelic, oge maidne, new morning.
Remembering that Mary, Queen of Scots grew up as child bride at the French court, the most likely source seems to be the French translated bodily to Scotland with her when she became Queen. ‘Homme est né’ (‘Man is born’) in France is the last day of the year when gifts were exchanged. Aguillaneuf is still celebrated in Normandy, and presents given at that time are hoguignetes.
Tar barrel flaming at Burghead on Auld ‘Eel ends with burning the Clavie at the ‘Doorie’ on the ribs of Pictish promontory beach fort
In Scotland a practice similar to Normandy was recorded, disapprovingly, by the Church:
It is ordinary among some Plebeians in the South of Scotland, to go about from door to door upon New Year`s Eve, crying Hagmane
Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, 1693
Christmas was not celebrated as a festival and virtually banned in Scotland for 400 years, from Protestant Reformation c.end of C.17th until around 1950s. The reformed Kirk portrayed Christmas as a Popish or Roman Catholic feast and it was forbidden. Many Scots had to work over Christmas and their winter solstice holiday was taken at New Year, when family and friends gathered for a party and to exchange presents—especially for children.
Earliest known Gaulish Coligny ‘moon’ calendar of 13 months dates to A.D. 150
In the earliest known Celtic calendar, the Coligny Calendar of 13 moons (months), now in the Palais des Arts, Lyon, the year began at Samhain, November 1st Fire-Festival of the Dead. At this time the veil between this world and the Otherworld was believed so thin that the dead could return to warm themselves at the hearths of the living. And some living—especially poets, artists, clairvoyants and shaman/healers—were able to enter the Otherworld through the doorways of the sidhe, fairyfolk, like the stone-lined entrance to passage graves in Scotland and Ireland
When the Julian calendar was in place in Rome, the Coligny caledar was seen as the Gaulish equivalent of a 10-month/13moon year, beginning November.
Traditions before midnight on Samhain perpetuated in rural communities when the calendar changed to Gregorian (at the Reformation) such as cleaning the house on 31st December—including taking outside ashes from the fire, when coal fires were in vogue. There was a superstition to clear all debts before “the bells” at midnight.
On the stroke of midnight it is traditional to sing Auld Lang Syne. Robert Burns claimed his verse was based on an earlier fragment, and the melody was in print eighty years before he published in 1788.
Partying from Hallowe’en through Hogmanay
An integral part of Hogmanay partying which continues today is to welcome friends and strangers alike with warm hospitality; and to wish everyone a Guid New Year. The underlying belief is to clear out any vestiges of the old year—ancient tradition included literally sweeping the house clean—and preparing to welcome in a young, fresh New Year on a happy and positive note.
“First footing”—i.e. the first step over the threshold into the house after midnight—is less common now in cities, but continues in rural Scotland. To ensure good luck for the house, the First Foot should be male, dark-haired (believed to be a throwback from Viking days when blond strangers arriving on your doorstep meant trouble) and should bring symbolic coal, shortbread, salt, black bun and/or whisky. These days, however, whisky and perhaps shortbread are the only items still prevalent—and available.
“Handselling” was a custom of gift-giving on the first Monday of the New Year, but this may also have died out.
Magical fireworks displays and torchlight processions through Edinburgh, Elgin and many cities in Scotland are reminiscent of ancient custom at pagan Hogmanay parties which persevered until the late C.20th.
Traditionally one New Year ceremony more reminiscent of American Hallowe’en involved dressing up in cattle hides and running around the village being hit by sticks. The festivities included lighting bonfires, rolling blazing tar barrels down the hill—as is still practised in Burning the Clavie at Burghead, Morayshire—and tossing torches. Animal hide was wrapped around sticks and set on fire. This dense smoke fended off evil spirits. The smoking stick was also known as a Hogmanay.
Giant fireballs hefted by strongarm celebrants swing through Stonehaven harbor near Aberdeen on ‘auld ‘Eel’, old Yule
Some customs continue, especially in small, rural communities in the Highlands and Islands where tradition—along with language and dialect—are kept alive. On Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, young boys form rival bands, the leader of each wearing a sheepskin, while another member carries a sack. The gangs move through the village from house to house reciting a Gaelic rhyme. On being invited inside, the leader walks clockwise around the fire, while everyone hits the skin with sticks. Formerly, the boys would be given bannocks (fruit buns, similar to focaccia) for their sack before moving on to the next house. This tradition is reflected in American Hallowe’en, two months earlier.
Scotland’s Legacy of Ancient Customs
One of the most spectacular fire ceremonies to take place is in Stonehaven, just south of Aberdeen on the Northeast coast. Giant fireballs, weighing up to 20 pounds are lit and swung around on five foot-long metal poles that need sixty men to carry them, as they march up and down the High Street. The origin of this pre-Christian custom is linked to Winter Solstice December 21st, with giant fireballs signifying the power of the sun’s return. The fireballs were believed to purify the world by consuming evil spirits in the New Year.
Confusing Samhain/Hallowe’en with Hogmanay is understandable. Longtime tradition holds them inter-dependent. Only the numbers have changed.
Eagle Nebula Pillars of Creation, NASA Space telescope
A theory of gravity is also a theory of space and time — Albert Einstein
According to current thinking, we have gone beyond conventional spacetime and are now floating somewhere in a ‘construct’ of our own imagination.
One hundred years ago Albert Einstein had his great insight.
A decade afterwards he revised his general relativity to include quantum theory. And yet a century later physicists are still beating the quantum drum, trying to figure how to work outside theoretical time, when physicists have always formulated their theories within a space-time framework.
The three witches—current version—in forecourt of Glamis Castle, ancient thanage in Angus, Scotland
Andrew Wyntoun, known as Andrew of Wyntoun (c.1350-c.1425), was a Scots poet, canon and prior of Lochleven & St Serf’s Insch, Aberdeenshire, where he is thought to have written this poem to his hero, Macbeth—11thC King of Scots, who died at Lumphanan fifteen miles distant. Wyntoun then became canon at St. Andrews, a most hallowed position for a cleric of his time. His greatest work (1420) is his Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland
‘All night he thought in his dreaming
That sitting he was beside the King
At a seat in hunting where his sire
Unto his leash had greyhounds two
He thought while he was seated thus
He saw three women going by
And those women then thought he
Three weird sisters most likely be
MacBeth cairn, Lumphanan, where the King of Scots was slain by Malcolm in 1057
A nycht he thowcht in hys dreamyng,
That syttand he wes besyd the kyng
At a sete in hwntyng; swa
Intil his leisch had grewhundys; twa
He thowcht, quhile he wes swa syttand,
He sawe threw wemen by gangand;
And thai wemen than thowct he
Thre werd systrys mast lyk to be.
*The first he hard say, gangang by,
‘Lo, yhondyr the Thane of Crumbawchety!’
The tothir woman sayd agane,
‘Of Morave yhondyre I se the thane!’
The thryd than sayd, ‘I se the kyng!’
All this he herd in his dreamyng…
Sone eftyre that, in his yhowthad,
Of thyr thanydoms he thane wes made;
Queen/St. Margaret’s arms—Lion Rampant & sacred Martlets around Christian cross
The fantasy of his dream
Moved him most to slay his overlord
…And Dame Gruoch, his sovereign’s wife
He took and left with her his lands
And held her both as his wife and queen
Which, before then, she had been
To his sovereign—queen living Queen
—who was Kyng with Queen Regnant
For few honours then had he (Macbeth)
Only the grace of lineage affinity
Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor
Shakespeare’s stirring predictions by the three witches to a dreaming king reaching for the throne describe the cauldron scene magnificently. Macbeth will not only become thane (mormaer) of Glamis (Forfar, seat of current Earl of Strathmore), thane of Cawdor (Cawdor Castle is Nairn seat of Campbell Thanes of Cawdor since 1320), but King of Scots—whose royal court in MacBeth’s time was the Palace of Scone, Perthshire.
Dupplin 6thC Pictish Cross Forteviot before removal to museum names Constantin son of Fergus King of Picts
Syne neyst he thowcht to be king,
Fra Dunkanyis dayis had tane endying.
The fantasy thus of his dreme
Movyd hym mast to sla his eme;
As he dyd all furth in-dede,
As before yhe herd one rede,
And Dame Growky, his emys wyf,
Tuk, and lef wyth hyr hys ly,
And held hyr bathe hys wyf and queyne,
As befor than scho had beyne
Till hys eme qwene, lyvand
Quhen he was kyng with crone rygnend
For lytil in honowre than had he
The greys of affynyte.
*Wyntoun’s Cronykil refers to Cawdor in Morayshire, as Moravia, but the closest the first witch comes to Glamis? is the Thanage of Glenbuchat? in nearby Donside as his Crumbuchaty. The second sees him as Thane of Moray, leading to the third witch’s prediction: ‘I see the King’.
Wyntoun clarifies: “Soon after that, still in his youth,
“Of those thanedoms he Thane was made.”
All this when his Lord was dead
He succeeded in his stead;
And seventeen full years he reigned
As King, as he was then, of Scotland.
During his reign were times of plenty
Abounding both on land and sea.
He was in justice right lawful
His laws fair to all.
When Leo X was Pope of Rome
As pilgrim to his court he came
And in his alms he gave silver
To all poor folk who had none
And always tried he to work
Profitably for Holy Kirk
Illuminated apostles: 10thC Iona Book of Kells, now in Trinity College, Dublin show Matthew as Man, Mark winged Lion, Luke surgeon winged Bull, John as Eagle
All thus quhen his eme was dede,
He succeedyt in his stede;
And sevyntene syntyr full rygnand
As kyng-he wes than in-til Scotland.
Corgarff Castle on the Lecht pass military route between Braemar Castle, Ft.George and Cawdor
All hys tyme wes gret plente
Abowndand, bath on land and se.
He was in justice rycht lawchful,
And till hys legis all awful.
Quhen Leo the tend was Pape of Rome,
As pylgryne to the court he come;
And in his almus he sew sylver
Till all pure folk that had myster;
And all tyme oysyd he to wyrk
Profitably for haly kyrke.
Wyntoun extols the virtues of his hero, Macbeth, who claimed the throne of Scotland through his mother’s kinship with Duncan—whom he killed in Elgin (Moravia, Moray). Rival Malcolm also claimed the throne through the female line. In Lumphanan, he succeeded in killing the wounded Macbeth and, (after stepson Lulach’s pitiful six months as king), took the crown to become Malcolm III (Canmore) of Scots in 1058. He married Saint Margaret of Scotland (1070-1093), bringing peace and prosperity to northern lands during his (long) reign of 35 years.
HUNTER’S MOON HERALDS CELTIC NEW YEAR Fireworks in the Sky for Hallowe’en/Guy Fawkes
Ancient custom SoCal style—Ghostbusters-inspired Hallowe’en frivolity in the glitz capital
Orionids began the whole celestial fireworks show by scattering fragments of leftover comet Halley (orbit period 76 years) last Tuesday night, October 20th, as we hovered at Scorpio’s door. Ostensibly meteors came from the head and spear of Orion. The Hunter, however, forever pursuing the Pleiades through the northern sky, lies 1,344-Light-Years distant from us, while Halley’s cometary fragments skidded past within a skittish 50-miles overhead.
Brit Guy Fawkes mask, traditional headwear for Bonfire Night mingled with Hallowe’en, is banned in English Ex-pat Reserves in Persian Gulf as anarchist
Halloween 2015 approaches, and with it British Guy Fawkes’s revolutionary—but foiled—attempt to blow up Parliament in 1605 Gunpowder Plot, celebrated throughout the English-speaking world. It is hard not to feel a revving up of cultural unrest, mirrored in grand scale on the celestial tapestry overhead. Following recent eclipses, planet conjunctions and lunar standstill moments to light up the sky, the Heavens continue to give us a box-office show right through our transition into autumnal Scorpio restriction, Saturnine beating our not-so-savage breast, and our cultural winding down of the Creational Clock—to primordial death.
And regeneration.
Earth’s Crustal Plates in state of Flux
It is horrific to learn of devastation caused by last weekend’s two massive 7.5-magnitude and 7.1-mag. Richter scale earthquakes, interrupting an unusual lull in quakes worldwide. Both are causing havoc and tragic loss in HinduKush and Vanuatu.
Earth’s tectonic crustal plates: Himalayan upthrust mirrored by Pacific plate displacement in Sunday’s shock in Vanuatu
While in Afghanistan, fears surface that such ferocity will open subterranean faults to the Ganges and Bangladesh, Pacific plate movement in Fiji shows equivalent turmoil only 50 miles deep. Both tremors were forecast.
Algol as Demon Star
Media traditionally tries to displace or make light of world tragedy by focusing attention on the cultural caricature. The current fave demon star is Beta Persei, otherwise known as Algol in the constellation Perseus. The star’s archaic name comes from the Arabic for ‘head of the ghoul’, or ‘head of the Demon’, because it appears to die and come back to life.
Why did early stargazers name this dual star for a ghoul—demon? Beta Persei, otherwise Algol or the Ghoul Star* was known to flicker. Ghoulishly, it was also seen in folktale as Medusa’s hair. Entwined within a legend of a star that fades and returns mysteriously from the Realm of the Dead.
Sound familiar?
Ancient astronomers calculated its rhythm and guessed—rightly—that its twin star system, with the dimmer of the two bodies passing in front of the brighter, has a regular beat. It causes Algol to shine in spurts—to pulsate. So, throughout the ancient world, Algol was seen as a demon or monster, who, as we know, is the Devil’s familiar. Centuries of observation have proved Arab astronomers’ calculations. 2015 Astronomy forecast is for Algol to reach minimum brightness late Friday night, October 30th 2015 at 11:52 p.m. in central U.S.A. (October 31st 04:52 Universal Time).
*To find the Ghoul Star: look for constellation Perseus—cuddling Andromeda—in the northern evening sky. Perseus lords over the northeast sky, above the bright star group Capella and The Kids (lower left of Perseus) and the Pleiades star cluster (lower right).
Greek and Roman culture associated the star with the Head of Medusa, monster-woman, whose fearful countenance struck a man to stone. Snakes in place of her hair were additional encouragement not to stare.
When the dimmer of the two stars passes in front of the brighter, Algol shines at minimum brightness. Astro forecast calls for Algol to reach minimum brightness late Saturday, October 30th, at 11:52p.m. Central time, U.S.A. (October 31st 4:52UTC).
Ancient astronomers were fully aware of the influence the heavenly bodies’ movements had on their population. Greek and Roman culture controlled their populace by providing—not only bread and circuses—but also seer-oracles with miraculous predictions to affect their worlds.
Meteorite held as sacred fire from Heaven in sanctuary of Hellenic Oracle at Delphi, and in Saudi Mecca’s Inner Sanctum
A meteorite, a “Zeus-fallen thing,” was kept in the Temple of Venus on Cyprus, and another in the pre-Hellenic Temple of Apollo at Delphi, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus in Greece. In Rome, a piece of sky iron, regarded as a heavenly shield upon which the tenuous security of the state depended, was cared for and guarded by a special order of priests.
Most famous holy meteorite is called the Black Stone, Hadshar al Aswad. Mounted in silver, it sits in a place of honor in the Ka’aba, the sacred shrine at Mecca, and is circumambulated by all Muslim devotees who make the Hadj, the requisite holy pilgrimage. The sacred stone has a vulvic-shaped cleft which suggests ancient pre-Islamic goddess worship. It is attended by a phalanx of men called the Sons of the Old Woman.
Arabic and Arab culture dominated the sky: star names still bear their mystical Arabian names—their connotations striking fear in believers’ breasts. It may even put goose bumps in ours.
Algol is one of these.
TRIPLE PLANETARY CONJUNCTION SHINES BETHLEHEM BRILLIANCE Jupiter Venus and Mars triangle in pre-Dawn Eastern sky
Saturn moves out as Sun moves into Scorpio. Get started on the Grand Plan: all signs in 1st/2nd house
To counteract all the willies, hoolies and ooeys, there is contrast—thank the Angels—in the morning sky.
If we have learned anything from last month’s astounding sky tapestry, it is that celestial cycles are never-ending. And there is a rhythm which we normally-oblivious humans can attune to—if we take the time to do that.
Lunar standstill provided the springboard for repeat eclipses, close encounters of heavenly bodies with Earth, and an awareness
that galactic fireworks can be to us—as they were to our ancestors—a source of gratitude and awe for the Great Beyond. Now—tonight—one month farther into this miraculous heavenly cycle of an amazing year—three cycles later than Mayan predictions—we prepare for Hunters’-Harvest full Moon: closest tightest brightest full moon combination of highest tides, lowest rainfall, highest land temperatures and greatest earth movement and tectonic mayhem since the last cycle.
Pacific plate movement is merely a reflection of crustal displacement along the Himalayan upthrust, according to NOAA and USGS. It helps to remember, however, As Above So Below. And it was independently forecast.
Azimuth, angle and rising times coincide miraculously to give us a pre-dawn display all week until Ghoul Hour
Ancient astronomers, students of celestial expansion and collapse, would have been amused by our (modern) human frailty and lack of vision, in midst of clear cosmic signs that all is well in Star Worlds.
All this week—prior to and immediately after Tuesday (tonight’s) full moon, where our cultural sight should be set is perhaps less on poor old Sol, led by Saturn into Scorpio’s western clutches over the Pacific.
Brilliant Venus, in conjunction with Jupiter above, and dimmer Mars below, 4:45a.m. October 25, 2015 looking East
Rather should we look East: Shake our culture shackles and set the alarm to get up before dawn—with Daylight Saving Time imminent—November 1st—this is an easy 6a.m.event. Then feast our eyes on three miraculous planets—Jupiter, Venus and Mars—rising in conjunction within minutes of the Sun’s brightening rays. Each dawn they can be seen, dancing a jig: vying a little each morning for position, getting closer and yet closer into a conjunction mazurka, which will separate and scatter in early November.
Two thousand years ago, such a spectacle would have inspired pilgrims. If we suspend 21stC. disbelief, their heavenly beauty might also inspire us to pause briefly in our headlong millennial crawl over the edge.
“6.6mag. Taiwan S.Japan location 24º129'N 122º335E 01a.m. UTC April 20. 2015
Four hours ago, a massive 6.6 magnitude Richter earthquake hit coastal Taiwan and Southern Japan. Local agencies, already overburdened with ongoing (nuclear) clean-up, continue to report. Minimal U.S. press coverage—slow to extract reports from the world arena in (western) night-time, unless specifically targeted—may find that differences in international dateline/time-zones may not result in this event’s being buried, It may not fit into a neat, orderly media-orchestrated political schedule.
There are ramifications, however—especially for western U.S.A.
EarthCrisis or Early Warning?
Minimum ‘safe’ height: 146ft—most of Tsunami Alley: sea-level
MAGNITUDE 6.6 mwp
Location / uncertainty 24.129°N 122.335°E± 5.4 km
Depth / uncertainty 28.9 km± 4.4
Origin time 2015-04-20 01:42:58.470 UTC
Source: USGS
Two groups of Native American elders have summoned their communities, in preparation for uprooting and a move inland, away from their traditional ocean-listening posts. In San Luis Obispo county, a small nucleus of Chumash, originally ‘whale-whisperer sea-shell people’from Morro Bay to Malibu—their traditional lodges and burial grounds long-since displaced by ex-pat. Ventura- and Topanga Canyon-ites—have returned to hear “repeated warnings from our cetacean siblings” that we are endangering our homeland.
Washington Tribe prepare for Move to High Ground
The Quileute tribe of La Push, Washington holds a ritual each year, where every woman, man and child in the reservation summons local whales, dolphins, sharks, seals and other marine species to the community’s beach by playing drums. The tribe’s chief then wades among the animals and interprets their sounds.
Cetacean whisperers help us tune in—use it before we lose it
In 2014, tribal leaders were “summoned” by Pacific Ocean whales, to alert them to a tsunami, ‘soon’ to engulf their community. La Push is located at the intersection of three tectonic plates, prone to earthquakes of nine-point magnitude. The tribe immediately started to make plans to move their community to higher ground. It applied for and received money from both the State of Washington and the federal government, to fund the relocation. Synchronously, assistance has been offered to Quileute elders by Finland’s University of Aalto, in designing their new settlement. In Finland’s Baltic and Arctic Oceans, they are also brother-whale-whisperers.
Wilderness no Longer Wild
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness” John Muir
John Muir—progenitor and founder of first U.S. National Park—would be proud of us, his descendants. While he was born in lowland Scotland and thus learned how precious is wild forest floor—Scotland’s indigenous trees mostly eaten by commercial sheep enterprises— un-mangled [by humans] tangled growth. Yet we seem oblivious of our continuing and unrelenting pollution of our only home.
Radioactive Slush
Gallons of slush and ice melt flood Great Lakes and Chicago hinterland.
Combination of Fracking, waste water recycling, human negligence, cause man-made quakes in U.S. central states
Sudden floods in New England, the Carolinas-coastal Virginia cause concern over contaminated drinking water supply. Marinas in Coral Gables, Everglades and Gulf states, Alabama, Louisiana and eastern Texas are revamping water towers last used in Hurricane Katrina, to cope with extra demand. Meanwhile Four Corners, Gila Bend, Arizona, Utah, Nevada—don’t even think of temperatures in Death Valley—and in a geographical spread as far east as Idaho, Kansas and Minnesota, high winds bring risk of grass fires.
Half the country is burning up, while the other half flounders in rising sea levels.
Do we still deny we have a hand in this? Are we pretending we don’t know what’s going on?
Competing for Cleanliest
Last week California Governor Jerry Brown scoffed at Florida governor’s amorous advances for a tourism “exchange”. While organic Californians greatly outnumber Brooklyn retirees in the balmy Everglades and Fort Lauderdale, in ecological terms, neither state can boast a totally clean city.
Echoes from Earth’s Chasms—Ring of Fire Rumbles into Activity
X-Class Solar flares emerging from the ‘hidden’ side of the Sun, add a frisson to so-called normal spring weather. Global extremes have caused great loss of life, however.
There’s more to come.
Triggered by solar CMEs incoming—bombarding Earth’s heat shield to stretching point, dormant volcanoes along subterranean ridges and lava reservoirs of the Ring of Fire are exploding.
Ring of Fire—Seismic Deeps and Ridges of the Pacific Ocean: festering to blow
Sewage and polluted water are high-profile questions that affect the whole human Earth-population.
When the dice are rolled, who gets the blame for leading humanity over the edge of the world——?
Unfortunately for Governor Brown—and for all his supporters south of Sacramento—the WWII-aircraft carrier U.S. Independence has been rediscovered on the ocean floor, in San Diego’s back yard. However supposedly :safely: out of sight, according to U.S. National Ocean and Atmospheric Administrqtion (NOAA) Chief Science officer, James Delgado, the hulk, used for monitoring hydrogen bomb tests on Bikini Atoll in South Pacific’s Marshall Islands was deliberately sunk off San Diego’s beaches, carrying one hundred barrels of nuclear waste in its hold.
Bikini Atoll: no Place for Bikinis Now
NOAA make light of the rediscovery:
WWII. aircraft carrier, U.S. Independence, scarred in Pacific battle theater
“After 64 years on the seafloor, Independence sits on the bottom as if ready to launch its planes”
J.Delgado, Chief NOAA Science officer
Damaged in WWII, aircraft carrier US Independence found intact April 2015 in Pacific waters carrying nuclear waste
A half-buried metal ship full of discarded nuclear waste is not what U.S.Navy residential retirement community of Coronado needs. Not to mention its hold, stuffed with radioactive bricks, concrete and mortar—’in case of leakage’—lies now exposed to every little rattle emanating from the San Andreas fault and its tributaries stretching south into Baja California. Los Angeles’ Baldwin Hills experienced two middle-range quakes last week. Pasadena and San Marino residents live constantly with shaking mantels.
Sentient Earth
In cyclone-hit Philippines, residents live their lives in the shadow of a stratovolcano.
Pinatubo still fuming a century later
Fifty years to the day, volcanic activity around the planet regurgitates ash, debris and detritus from its dormant cone, as if marking the event in EARTH’s calendar, Earth‘s schedule, Earth’s Grand Plan.
Residents of Pinatubo‘s local island Luzon—unlike the cancer-prone residents of Bikini—still recount stories their grandfathers told of wildlife death toll, relocation and readjustment to life under a stratovolcano’s gaze.
Shooting Stars on Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Five years on: NorthAtlantic ridge giant, Eyjafjallajökull, used pyroclastic flows to delay SpaceShuttle Discovery’s reentry to Earth
It is also five years since Iceland’s volcanic-field-cum-ice flow blasted ash and pyroclastic mush into the North Atlantic, delaying the return of NASA’s last space shuttle, Discovery.
Their favorite volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, standing proud in a 33-mile wide lava field, is still smoldering, shooting reminders up into the stratosphere along the fault held loosely by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In case anyone farther afield is listening, Herta, Surtsey are telling us Earth has its own idea of marking anniversaries.
Perhaps we should go along with the conclusion drawn by an old veteran WWII Lancaster bomber navigator friend, who only last week decided to slough off this mortal coil at the youthful age of 95:
Combination of Earth’s silicate core, presence of Iridium and solar flares gives us our weather. It’s the CORIOLIS EFFECT.
Commander (retd.) Sandy (Gogo) Constable, RAF
Sun-grazing comet Ison’s head fans open as it makes closest approach to Mercury 11/19— before slingshot round the Sun 11/22-12/22
Comet ISON, or Comet Nevski–Novichonok, currently the darling of NASA and Russian space agency whose Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok discovered it in September 2012—using the International Scientific Optical Network in Kislovodsk, Russia, reaches its closest point to the Sun: PERIHELION: tonight, after its journey through the SolarSystem from the Oort Cloud on the edge of the heliospere fourteen months ago.
Thanksgiving comes in all forms
For over a year, international agencies have followed Comet ISON’s heady entry into our neighborhood, heralding its last naked-eye visibility in our eastern dawn skies this weekend, before perihelion—now—its ‘slingshot round the Sun’. When it reemerges next week—despite media/entertainment industry’s drama-crisis Doomsday scenario of planetary mayhem, disintegration or worse—it becomes a more-easily visible evening sky object, setting along with Mercury and Venus after the Sun in the west December 4th.
Harking back to beautiful swallow crop circle of June 2009 with sparkling “coded” tails, courtesy CCC
Increased brightness caused by its encounter with the solar electromagnetic forcefield—in its face, so to speak—will add to holiday glitz and excitement, as the fireball gradually retreats back whence it came. December 4th-5th Northern hemisphere skies will be dominated by the glitter of twinkly wishing stars; it will do a fly-past of Earth on Hogmanay/New Year’s Eve. What more could a movie-fantasy/retail-therapy culture want for the ‘holiday season’?
On a (less Western) more philosophical soul-level: if Humanity’s Oversoul wished to indulge us in a little fireworks display to herald the phenomenal rise in spiritual consciousness-awareness of kin spirits reconnecting on earth, within what has for some been a waiting game since the ’Sixties, wouldn’t “It” choose to entertain, rather than chastise us?
Aren’t most of us tired of having to cope in that ‘stranger-in-strange-land’ environment? desire with body-mind-spirit to reach out of our fish tank-box and allow the Great Work of the Medicine Wheel to gather us up in its healing motion?
Perspective of the Ancients
Newly-formed Niijima Island, courtesy NipponCoastGuard, during simultaneous eruptions Java, Mexico, Guatemala & Sicily, November 23, 2013
Comets in the mind of ancient peoples were signs of the wheeling of the Ages; heralds of the end of the old and the beginning of the new. On an electromagnetic level, we are naïve to believe that recent fierce elemental storms have not happened many times in the history of planet Earth. This year alone, as well as Solar sunspot maximum storms, accelerated weather patterns and volcanic activity have increased on Earth as well as on major ‘outer’ planets, Jupiter, Saturn+moon Titan, Uranus and Neptune. So adding a newcomer from the Oort Cloud into the heliospheric mix, it is little wonder all heads turn to the skies.
Labyrinth: a solo path
You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is in danger by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. And so to whatever degree any one of us can bring back a small piece of the picture and contribute it to the building of the new paradigm, then we participate in the redemption of the human spirit, and that after all is what it’s really all about
Terence McKenna
Terence McKenna‘s prophetic statement that ‘Man would make it with Machines’ has arrived in the real world. Bluetooth and iPods accompany street rap, break dancing and shopping carts. Man is more making it with his machine than his neighbor; more aware of his inner soul than the ‘real’ world around him. Altogether not such a bad thing in consciousness terms…
The Body is the umbilical cord to the Soul—Terence McKenna
NORSE Thor, GOD of Thunder Lightning & the ethers struck bolts of fear in Viking hearts
Western civilization has been denied the concept of ‘Soul’ for fifteen hundred years while the establishment church/temple controlled the means—ritual pathway—umbilical cord which leads there. By denying their followers, whether Roman catholic, Anglican, Islamic, Hasidic, Coptic, Mormon or southern Baptist, they are all entangling their followers in unentanglable strands of dogma which obscure the Soul they profess to teach connectivity to.
Integrity requires listening to loving parts of your personality and honoring them. Conscience takes you where others want you to go. Integrity takes you where your soul wants you to go.
Gary Zukav
Spiritual Partnership: the Journey to Authentic Power
Mind-Body Labyrinth:Umbilical Cord to the Soul
Silbury Hill “time-attractor”, or Eschaton: is time running out? crop circle June 25th, 2013
We are in the grip of some kind of an attractor, and when we look back at History, we can have a sense, I think, that we have never been here before. But we are so accustomed to causal thought, that we assume we have been pushed here, pushed here by historical necessity, by bad political decisions, by the vicissitudes of evolution—cultural and otherwise. I don’t think so. I think we have been pulled here, that we are under the aegis of a kind of attractor. Some people would call it a “destiny”, but what it is is a dream that is pulling us deeper and deeper into the adventure of existential becoming. And faster and faster—that’s the other thing. Deeper and deeper, faster and faster, so that the rate of change that people were accustomed to before the Industrial Revolution, for example—we can barely conceive of such slow-moving, stately, meta-stable societies. On the other hand, within the 20th Century, the acceleration has been even more intense, and will continue to accelerate in the 21st. Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival
McKenna was convinced of the aloneness of Nature; he saw it critically as responsible for the current need to construct the UFO-Alien scenario—as the ‘most acceptable form to the ego presenting itself—alienation—disguising itself as an ET being’.
Many within the crop circle community have waxed eloquent this year on classical weaponry, ancient legendary ‘seeding’ from the stars, etc., and the UFO element has been given full rein.
Javelin-style CC Chute Causeway, Wiltshire 2013
Valid points, however, are being made to a predominantly western-agnostic-disconnected audience, who seem unable to make the quantum leap to an electromagnetic scenario which most enlightened, consciousness-aware, New Age groups now accept as our greater human potential: our current path on the planet either encompasses such greater awareness, or dies.
“Local legends tell of gods in old Mexico armed with Xiuhcoatl, ‘fire snakes’. that emitted rays capable of penetrating and mutilating the human body.”
Graham Hancock on use of ray-launchers among the Aztec-Inca civilizing gods, Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha Fingerprints of the Gods
Australian aboriginal tradition tells that former men were the ‘Brothers of Lightning’.
Electromagnetic spectrum: light, sound, music, all one
So, if the 2013 crop circle hourglass shape, top, is a deceptive electromagnetic trick played by the forcefield around Silbury, Avebury and the Ridgeway, while at the same time reminding us of its alchemical symbol and our wasting (planetary) time, what are we going to do about it ?
July 7th 2013 at first sign of English summer, largest manmade mound in Europe, Silbury Hill attracts Ship of Dreams crop circle
Throughout the much-maligned, many times sabotaged 2013 crop circle season, a subliminal but increasingly powerful element of design, intelligence and desire to communicate appears, showing an overlay of tighter, more specific pointers to trigger those intuitive receptors in the human brain. Previous seasons from the glorious days of 2009-2010-2011 have prepared our consciousness for the appearance of ‘magical’ designs which trigger joy centers and memory receptors in the mind; so that when similar Disneyesque shapes reappear, reshuffled, realigned, we sense them as familiar. Check archives for specific seasons, sidebar right.

Progression of sound and light, electromagnetically transmitted in crop designs 2013 in the Avebury triangle
Circling the hourglass formation are ‘weather-feather’ glyphs which at first glance look similar to June 2012 designs. But edging closer, they reveal Celtic Church ogham, the Dark Age equivalent of Viking runes.
The idea related to Muin, vine, is propheric, open to intuition, truth. Its potency is greatest during Lammas-August and the ancient festival of Fire, of Lugnassadh, Lammas, symbolic of letting go, releasing old habits, clearing the past.
 Ruis, elderflower, beginnings—endings, death/rebirth. Power at time of ‘thinnest veil’ between dimensions, Hallowe’en, Samhain.
 Ioho, ancient yew, symbolizes rebirth, reincarnation, immortality—yew wood never ‘dies’.
 Coll, hazel, intuition; wisdom of the Salmon, pre-Celtic totem of gnosis, potent in July.
Eadad, poplar, birth, healing, prevention of illness; finds spiritual strength-endurance to face harsh life realities.
The Assyrian/Minoan labrys, double-headed axe was symbolic of sacred union between sky-earth; ultimate god/essly power; access to electric current, thunder and lightning; sun; fire. In Minoan Crete, coincidentally destroyed 2500B.C. by volcanic apocalypse, the double-bladed axe meant divine sovereignty, holding sacred power via presence of the deity within.
All are symbols of left-hemisphere-dominant power, prevalent for two millennia, now being questioned from within by some of us in western society. An undercurrent of the resurgent feminine—in all its guises, intuitive through outright male-female conflict—is surfacing to join indigenous wisdom in respect for the mother planet.
Ever-increasing circles of energy
Imagine for a moment, if you will, being our sentient mother Earth, tried beyond her patience with us, her errant children’s ways, enlightened and encouraged by her brightening lover, Sol to communicate in a language long known to our foremothers, but now forgotten: the plant symbols, Pictish creature designs on stone, tree shapes translated into ogham by early Celtic churchmen. Would she not use all the armoury at her disposal—an alkaline-waterfilled-electromagnetic-natural generator to relay her messages as artforms in crop circles—messages in the corn—as in 2013, within the underlying fabric of this magical aquifer? And would she not use multi-phase formations appearing in sequence over consecutive nights, as in 2009,2010, as a means to tempt those who of us who long to reconnect; while reminding us that enlightenment comes in fragmentary-momentary layers.
Sadly in post-modern faith-devoid Britain, these sacred messages, worshipped in pre-Celtic belief as intuitive gifts, seems to be ignored on those now-overpopulated shores, and it may take a miracle for the Brits to wake up and see it for themselves.
…our Pale Blue Dot…
Viewed imaginatively as an overlay in a sequence of several seasons, like long-time crop circle devotee Gerd Estrup, or as an ongoing dialogue between higher consciousness and our prosaic selves, the 2013 season is indeed appealing to our soul to wake up and contribute; to intuit, grow and believe in something greater than the unholy mess we have created.
One of five crop circles in Tlapanaloya, Hidalgo, Mexico last weekend
In the last few years the eyes of the world have been fixed on Crop Circles in the (Northern hemisphere) summer months. The eyes of the world are elsewhere at the moment. So it is not surprising that five crop circles which appeared over last weekend’s Vernal Equinox in two oat fields in Tlapanaloya, 33 miles north of Mexico City were given little media attention. Reuters, the Washington Post and Mexico’s El Universal seemed to be the only news media interested in the phenomenon. They are the first new appearances since the January surprise in Java.
TLAPANALOYA is the old name for this fertile farming region, still tilled and irrigated along indigenous/traditional lines and miraculously spared in Mexico’s headlong drive for industrial ‘revolution’. In its new guise as Tepeji del Rio de Ocampo, Hidalgo, Mexico, it is surrounded by industrial development: several hydro dams, effluent canals, a bauxite-cement works at Cruz Azul, a large military installation, several multi-lane highways (autopista), a national rail line and access roads to feed nationally-supported mineral extraction and mining operations to north and west.
Tlapanaloya lies at latitude 19º52’ N longitude 99º21’W.
Mexican Cordillera L to R: Iztaccíhuatl, Popocatepétl, volcano Malinche, Cofre de Perote and Citlaltépetl
Latitude 19º is significant as the Parallel along which the southern boundary of the North American tectonic plate meets with the Central American plate. Here a line of volcanoes rising to 16,000 feet –the Cordillera de Mexico (or Neovolcanic Ridge)– stretches from the Revillagigedo Islands in the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Seismic activity is frequent here, and the valley is considered an earthquake-prone zone.
Located thirty-three miles north of central Mexico City, Tlapanaloya lies within the closed basin of the ancient Valley of Mexico. At around 7,000 feet, it was the original picturesque Lake District of five lakes, and domain of the people of Teotihuacan, the Toltec and Aztec. The Toltec and Aztec spoke Nahuatl.
The Nahuatl name for the Valley of Mexico was the Anahuac, meaning the plateau or ‘place between the waters’.
Now those waters are crying out for help.
There were originally five great lakes in this stunningly beautiful setting, hemmed in on all sides by mountain peaks that rise to 16,000 feet. But in the last 200 years successive dams and reservoir construction schemes have funneled and tunneled the waters away from their traditional lakebeds and aquifers. Their clear streams were instead diverted to become waste carriers: ‘effluent’–glorified drains for the population of megalopolis Mexico City–now bursting at the seams with a central population in excess of nine million souls (2010 census 8,851,080, see MCMA, below).
Image of Eagle on Cactus in miraculous growth from Stone: Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the Mendoza codex
Mexico City’s ancient name was Mexico-Tenochtitlan after the Nahua-Aztec tribe, Mexica: it means the ‘co-‘ ‘place of the Mexica among stone cactuses’. In symbolic terms, the image (represented in Mexico’s coat-of-arms and flag) is one of an eagle perched on a cactus which grew from a stone (supreme achievement through the greatest of adversity in environment)
The Rio Tula–the Tula River, from which the nearby industrial town of Tula Allende takes its name–is, according to Mexico’s National Water Commission [Comisión Nacional del Agua de México], one of the most polluted rivers in the country. Tula (Tollan) was the Toltec capital, Tollan-Xicocotitlan in its heyday–AD8th-10thCC (Post-Classic period)*–but suffered brutally under Spanish invasions of 16thC, when its society collapsed.
The Toltec called their capital Tollan, surrounded by natural wetlands–a fertile gift from their Sun-and-star god Quetzalcoatl–Xicocotitlan, the ‘place among the reeds near the home of the wasp/bee’.
The Atlanteans of Tula Grande, basalt figures over 12feet high carved from volcanic rock guard the Toltec Tollan temple to Quetzalcoatl (AD10th-12thCC)
The great Atlantean statues which guarded the temple of serpent-god/Venus-morning-star-Queztalcoatl, prior to Tollan‘s destruction by the Spanish, have been reinstated to stand on their original plinths, rescued from the ignominious ditch where they were found buried–hidden by retreating Toltec from Spanish gaze.
Today Tula and Tlapanaloya reflect Toltec civilization in name only. And even that has changed. Tlapanaloya is now called Tepeji del Rio de Ocampo and Tula is Tula Grande or Tula Allende– a far cry from its original endearing Toltec-Oromi name: Tollan-Xicocotitlan: ‘place of the bumble-bee.’ Implication is that bees flourished in a rich hinterland where agriculture, flowers, and fruit trees blossomed. Much has changed since their culture died.
Popocátepetl, Aztec 'smoking mountain' stands at 17,802feet 33miles S of Mexico City
Coincidentally, 33miles SE of Mexico City stands the stratovolcano Popocatépetl. At 17,802 feet, its massif is also contained within the 19th parallel and its location is within one degree of longitude of the Tlapanaloya crop circles–at 19°1’24″N 98°37’20″W. It erupted last year (2010) and its present rumblings are ongoing. Its eruptions were recorded in Aztec codices and its legendary lahars and pyroclastic flows (mud and ash slides) are seen as a constant threat to Mexico City in modern times–since the city’s massive sprawl has gradually spread into the volcano’s sphere of influence.
FIVE LAKES: how many remain?
Although originally flowing through the wide Tula Valley, which could accommodate its wild seasonal fluctuations, the river was guided by an ingenious 17thC drainage system, itself a replacement for indigenous waterworks built with native stone, which for the previous 500 years supplied the local population with much-needed water in the dry season. The Tula works simultaneously provided essential water for agriculture (as the ancestors had done) and allowed excess floodwaters in the rainy season to channel from the Basin of Mexico into the Gulf. Now–thanks to gigantic 19thC dams and, more damaging to culture and ecosystems, massive bureaucratically-driven hydro-related and industrial concrete construction from 1930s onwards, the Tula River is catchment for what is left of the rivers of the Valley of Mexico basin which originally tumbled out of the five lakes: Texcoco, Chalco, Xochimilco, Xaltocan and Zumpango.
Five Great Lakes of (15thC) Valley of Mexico: only one remains and it is dammed
Tula River is part of the Pánuco Hydrologic Region, which has a long history of exploitation for its fresh artesian ground-water. The Tula itself feeds into the Rio Moctezuma which empties into the Pánuco, one mile outside the industrial ports of Tampico/Altamira and Cuidad Madero on the Gulf Coast. Altamira has major industry-standard docks for container-vessel traffic. It is no longer known for its (previous reputation as a) bird sanctuary. Tourist traffic is usually carefully diverted south to the coastal resorts of Vera Cruz or the Yucatan peninsula.
According to data from the National Water Commission of Mexico, the Tula is one of the most polluted rivers in the country. It ‘generates 409.42 million cubic meters of “wastewater” annually.’ Tula River’s pollution stems from this stream’s manmade adaptation as a channel for solid (untreated) human waste along with industrial effluent from both the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA, sic), and the ‘industrial zones’ around Tula de Allende.
Lake Texcoco was described in 15thC historical records as a huge natural reservoir–a ‘visual masterpiece’ of mountain-fed streams, wildlife-filled marshes and brackish pools. It was home to the Pelican. Agriculturally-adept and innovative, the native Indios harvested salt from the saltlakes and dammed the ‘sweet-water’ lakes for use in their agricultural terraces (traditional Chinampa ‘gardens’ or small fields). Aztec tradition records that the northern lakes were inaccessible by canoe during the dry season between October and May. When the (summer) rainy season came, Texcoco was known to ‘join up’ with its four sister lakes and canoes were again able to navigate within the lake system.
Lake Texcoco is now dry. The other lakes have gone.
Zumpango Lake (Nahuatl=Tzompantli), the northernmost of the historical lakes in the main basin of the Valley of Mexico, between the towns of Zumpango and Teoloyucan, is the only body of water left of the original five. It lies within 12 miles of the five Equinoctial crop circle formations. It is a manmade version of the original whose boundaries were formed when a canal begun in 1605 started the process of drainage in the Valley, North into the Tula River. It is still home to the 10-meter-deep canyon, the sewage-laden Gran Canal. The original lake has been drained. Only the canal and west drainage tunnel system remain.
Zumpango reservoir has suffered a gradual process of degradation by the presence of industrial operations on its shores and the influx of sewage from Mexico City. The ‘West Issuer’ tunnel, which was originally used exclusively for stormwater drainage, now transports wastewater with a high heavy metal content while increasing tonnage of human waste is discharged into Presa tributaries. Currently, state and local government officially designate it a ‘Water Sanctuary’, but there are no active conservation plans to maintain its high ecological value in the Basin for numerous migratory bird species that take refuge in its waters.
Pelican persevere here. But pollution continues by the local population, compounded by motorized tourism (aquaplaning, outboard motors), and water verges are not maintained. Motor boats disturb avian habitat. Few tourists shown the neighboring solid waste effluent make return visits. At this rate, it is a matter of time before both birds and visitors will have no refuge here.
Formerly part of five legendary lakes that made the Valley beautiful, the name Zumpango is also derived from the Nahuatl meaning ‘the place of the row of skulls’. It was a place of sacred prayer and reverence for the Ancestors. That, too, has gone.
Tourist trajineras on the canals of former lake Xochimilco
The remaining three lakes were drained by settlers from the time of Spanish Conquest, accelerated by subsequent labor, military and government initiatives. The old lakebeds are now almost entirely covered by urban development. One remnant canal at (former Lake) Xochimilco is maintained as a tourist attraction where visitors tour in trajineras (gondolas).
The axolotl, a rare salamander endemic to Lake Chalco, moved house when that Lake was drained, to take up fragile residence near the Canals of its neighboring ‘Lake’ Xochimilco, It is now considered a ‘critically endangered species’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Otherwise, the historic Lake Region is now without lakes.
A whole settlement flooded by the Army in 1931 to form Presa Taxhimay
Tlapanoloya is itself ringed by further waterworks–all artificial. They are called Presas=reservoir, dam.
Presa Escondida at the southern end of the Requena Reservoir, is a small dam 3km N of Tlapanaloya; the Presa Requena Tepeji itself, within the town limits, is a reservoir still frequented by wildlife, including pelican; the Presa Escondida, a dam to the west, is polluted and has no wildlife whatsoever; the Presa Encinillas 5miles distant at Jagüeyes is skirted by six-lane Highway 57 at a busy intersection. It no longer attracts fowl and is polluted by industrial effluent from the Cruz Azul plant. It seems ironic that Highway 57 headed 100 miles NW brings pilgrims to the tiny rancho Chahin at Tlacote near Querétaro. There Señor Jesus Chahin gives away samples of spring water from his own ‘miracle’ well, an artesian supply of unrivalled purity believed to cure all ills.
Back in Tlapanaloya, the largest dam, Presa Taxhimay, formerly Laguna Taxhimay, three miles south of town, is the largest man-made Presa of them all. It was flooded by design in 1931 on the order of General Manuel Avila Camacho. In so doing he completely annihilated the Post-classic, colonial and Spanish settlements of Hacienda Catarina and San Luis Rey, whose church towers remain above the waters of Taxhimay dam surface.
Tlapanaloya Crop Circles in Chinampa ‘Gardens’
Farmer Enrique Hernandez in one of 5 crop circles in his oats in Tlapanaloya
Fortuitously, all five of last weekend’s crop circles appeared in oat meadows still farmed in the Chinampa style–planted and lovingly tended in traditional small rectangular-shaped fields by local Tlapanaloya farmer Enrique Hernandez. He was reported to be mystified by their choice of location but delighted that his crop was not spoiled. On the other hand, if he had been assured that his own way of life and his organically-grown porridge oats–now with their hugely enhanced CC/ET-vibration–were teetering on the edge of extinction, he might feel proud.
It is becoming clear that–whatever one feels about the provenance of crop circles the world over–they do occur in locations which require our attention.
Given that the Tlapanaloya crop circles did NOT contain elaborate interior designs–as are now commonplace in sophisticated annual formations on Salisbury Plain and the fields of Wiltshire’s electromagnetic aquifer–it seems a simple intuitive leap from the five Mexican crop circles to a crisis water situation, symbolized by the five extinct Great Lakes of the Basin of Mexico–along with their important historical contribution to this crucial aquifer.
They also occur as part of a triangle of 33: Their point is 33miles N of Mexico City. Also 33 miles NE of the city lies Teotihuacan, where equinox is seriously celebrated each year. And Teotihuacan lies approx.33 miles E of Tlapanaloya.
Equinox sunset over the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Valley of Mexico, March 20, 2011
The crop circles appeared on Equinox weekend when hundreds of thousands of Mexico City residents head for the pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan–to pay their respects to the setting sun as it disappears behind the pyramid. Teotihuacan, Toltec ‘place where men become gods’ lies just 33miles east of Enrique’s field. Its central avenue’s due N-S alignment, on which the pyramid’s shadow casts a precise shadow at the moment of dusk, remains today a fascination for Mexicans who traditionally celebrate the onset of spring on Equinox. This year was no exception. Teotihuacan was mobbed.
It was also the weekend before the world-wide celebration of World Water Day, March 22nd.
Water is becoming scarce in many countries with over-population and rising mean annual temperatures. Water will soon be a commodity more precious than the metals mined in the Mexican hinterland.
The present explosion of shanty towns — barrios — which have sprung up in the last decade around the Mexican megacity have bolstered the population of MCMA (see above) to 21 milion people. While canals and drainage systems channel their human waste North into the Valley of Mexico agricultural region centered on (the crop circles of) Tlapanaloya, a clean drinkable water supply continues to be a problem in the city.
Industrial growth within an enclosed basin has not only produced pollutants in smog, but water quality issues for the Valley. Over-extraction of ground water has caused new flooding problems for the city as it sinks below the historic lake floor. Seasonal flooding was thought to have been historically ‘cured’ by the Spanish and successive Mexican governments by the very act of drainage. Now excessive drainage–and extraction of more water than is being replenished naturally causes subsidence and the need for further infrastructure–more pipes and tunnels.
For a high mesa totally enclosed within mountain ranges, the Valley is completely dependent on its groundwater supply. This has traditionally come from the underlying aquifers, the upwelling of seasonal springs supplemented by (previously unwanted) flooding and rains. These underground springs and wells are now almost exclusively the source of drinking water for the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City. With the rapid addition of shanty barrios around the city’s outer limits, more water is being pumped out of the city’s underground reservoirs than Nature is pouring in–[main aquifer currently pumps 880,000 USgallons/minute while the water table refreshes at around 440,000 gals/min]–that is, water is replenishing at around half the extraction rate.
Much of the city has now sunk below the ancient lakebed level and it continues to sink at around 15 inches per year. Water from the surrounding mountains which always flowed towards the city, now passes through shanty towns where there are no city ‘services’ (water supply or sewage removal), so the rivers become sewers–which contribute to an ongoing health risk in the capital. MCMA is struggling to prevent this contaminated water from entering the drinking supply.
The present dilemma is specific to Mexico. But in the West, clean and clear water is a blessing and a gift we may not have appreciated enough until now.
All this communicated by a chance appearance in two traditionally-planted-and-irrigated Chinampa fields in a rural district of central Mexico? you ask?
Perhaps not explicitly, but we have had a little experience of messages transmitted in the last decade of crop circles in other areas of the world where aquifers–and their underlying electromagnetic mysteries–have contributed enormously to the medium.
This Mexican Wave may indeed be sending us a High Five: a reminder to reconnect with our traditional lifestyles. But it is more likely to be a distress signal–a wakeup call.
View from the Stars: whichever way you look at it, we are present in Sidereal time, Space is our growth medium, and stardust and water our constituent particles. When electromagnetically charged, our solar-powered circuitry is capable of Creating Anything We Choose.
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