The Janus Effect—Riding into the New on an Old Horse

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

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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

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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 aka book 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.

©2021 Marian Youngblood

2020 Backward Take on 2012: Stargate Portal to Final Quarter

Approaching another #Stargate has us reflecting on 2012. Then we thought the world as we knew it was ending.

Thoth, Ibis god of writing & learning; god of the Moon; sacred scribe

A decade later we confront ourselves again now—humans becoming superhuman—Egyptians, Assyrians, Scythians knew this would happen—we are their gods.

Ancient texts, such as (much-maligned) Hebrew/Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls, and Egyptian ‘Knowledge of Thoth’, insist that we humans are destined to become gods; that from their Zep Tepi—Dawn of Time—literally First Time—we were programmed to evolve beyond our present terrestrial form.

The Egyptian god spoke of the Star Walkers—individuals who, like Enoch, traveled beyond the Great Eye of Orion [out of the program] and returned—to walk like gods amongst men. Such evolved humans are comparable with the ‘Lords of Light’ of the Maya, Sumerian Nephilim or Anunnaki—”those who from Heaven to Earth came”—and the Tibetan Dakini—Shining Ones.

Siderealview's Blog

Inca portal of Amaru Muru at Hayu Marca, which is believe to give access to the world of serpent wisdom and interdimensional travel Last weekend the sun stood, as it does on both equinoxes—March 21st, September 22nd—directly overhead on earth’s equator, before making its (apparent) journey southward towards the tropic of Capricorn, where it will stand on winter solstice—S.hemisphere midsummer—on December 21st, 2012. For one day and night, everyone on planet earth experienced a twelve-hour day* and twelve-hour night, with sunrise due east and sunset due west. From now on, days in the northern hemisphere will appear dramatically shorter. If that were not enough to make the most avid outdoorsman turn inwards for consolation, the end of the British crop circle season would appear to be a done deal.

*allowance is made for sunrays appearing before ‘dawn’, giving longer daylight at some latitudes.

Sacred Tzolkin, ritual calendar of the ancient…

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Canticle for a Lost Nation—Unlocking Ancient Interlace Woven into Cultural Myth

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.

Ogham served as (Christian) stopgap until the art of [class II] cross slabs appeared in the next century. These cross-carved monoliths heralded nationwide conversion under King Nechtan who was to drag his kingdom out of the Dark Age and shine the light of revelation into early medieval Europe.
©2019 Marian Youngblood

Warlord Centres of Pictland: a Glimpse into the Lost History of the Scots

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.

Derilea's Dream: Memoirs of a Pictish Queen

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.

Pictish kings and sub-kings ruled a nation which grew from a loose confederation of tribal groups in the third century to become a major political and land-owning force at the time of their takeover by the Scots in the ninth.

To describe them as a lost society…

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Hallowe’en was Always Weird—A Look at Wynton’s 1420 Chronykil

MACBETH & THE THREE WEIRD SISTERS

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.

He and Margaret are credited with pulling Scotland out of the Dark Ages and into Medieval Europe.
©2018 Siderealview

Equinoctial Ascension Guide—Enter Eternity up the Servant’s Staircase

EQUINOCTIAL ASCENSION GUIDE: Set Worldly Cares aside; Enter Eternity with a Serving of Grace

Heavenly Maiden with Flowers in her Hair—Equinox 2017 cluster of planets in Virgo & Leo

If you’re going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear flowers in your hair
If you’re going to San Francisco
You’re gonna meet some gentle people there
Scott McKenzie, Forrest Gump

Woodstock wound up the summer of flower power fifty years ago this month, cementing musical friendships and crashing through new sound barriers which are audible today. Many of those groundbreaking musicians continue to perform the circuit. David Crosby, James Taylor, Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell come to mind…they/we thought then we were creating a New World…

RECIPE FOR SURVIVAL IN THE END TIMES

Now a great sign appeared in heaven:
A woman clothed with the Sun, with the Moon under her feet,
And on her head a garland of twelve stars.
Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth.
REVELATION 12:1-2

On September 23, 2017 an alignment which has been forming in the heavens all summer comes into sharp focus alongside the prediction of Revelation 12. As far as can be determined from computer models, this is the only time such a celestial sign will occur in history.

Strong solar wind and extra-large sunspots have brought early aurora borealis

It literally marks the Great Sign of Revelation prophesied to appear in the heavens. The woman clothed in stars is Virgo–the Virgin. The Sun appears to be ‘clothing Virgo’ and the Moon will lie under her feet on Equinox. The garland of twelve stars are the nine stars of Leo—including Regulus—plus three wandering ‘stars’ which have been approaching conjunction within Leo at this time—to make twelve. Those wandering ‘stars’ are planets Mercury, Venus and Mars. The last element of the Biblical sign is that the Virgin is with child. That planet—’star of the Messiah’—is Jupiter.

The Hajj—Saudi Arabia’s millions circling the Prophet’s sacred tomb in Mecca—in 2017 fell 3 weeks before Ramadan

During the months of August and September 2017, Jupiter rested in the womb of Virgo. Again, no replication of this sign has yet been found by researcher Mark Chiswell who scoured astronomical records for the last 7000 years.

The Sign of Revelation can be seen to represent the birth of Messiah from the Virgin of Israel, but Chiswell insists it be taken as an actual sign to be visible, seen by the masses as a way to understand the context of (post-Historic) times in which this significant event occurs.

“It happens within the timeline of the End of Days,” he says. That, too, was catalogued in Judaic scripture: Biblical prophecy says it will occur in correlation with the 70th Week of Daniel–the final period of seven years before Messiah comes to rule the planet.

Another solution may lie within Micah 5.

Mermaid or Sea Maiden with Unicorn wave-riders

The proximity of this year’s August 21st total solar eclipse over North America relates closely to the Saudi Arabian Hajj, ten days later, above right, as well as the Revelation-12 Sign one month later, on September 23rd, 2017, Equinox. Rosh Hoshanah synchronously ends at dusk the night before.

The metaphor of an eclipsed America is not lost on world critics. But more significantly, the equinox date marks a coming together of three major world religions, as well as the culmination of an astronomical event which began nine months ago on November 20th, 2016, when Jupiter—the King planet—entered (retrograde) into the body of constellation Virgo.

Because of its retrograde motion, Jupiter spent 9-1/2 months in the womb of Virgo, until Equinox, September 23rd, 2017, when it will be ‘delivered’ by exiting—going direct—with the Sun rising directly behind the Virgo constellation—the Moon at her feet and a crown of twelve stars—nine of Leo constellation, including Regulus—with planets Mercury, Venus and Mars—in her ‘hair’.

SIGNS IN THE SKIES
Galactic Seed Reflected in the Heavens and in the Corn

Crop circle August 17 ’17 at Sutton Hall, Essex, proclaiming a message we may not be able to hear

Quietly, on August 17th, 2017 a crop circle appeared in a harvest field at Sutton Hall, Essex declaring to all who view it a blared message in the corn. Few have been able to decipher it, though it touches the inner soul and we have an itch to scratch it.

At the time, there were still four more days to go, and the northern hemisphere was gearing up for the total solar eclipse across middle America. Now, in retrospect, the design appears to use the eclipse as sending point—origin—of an important message.

Feathered Serpent Kukulkan descends staircase at sunset on Equinox at Chichen Itza

While humanity is gazing at the skies, why not grab their attention and tell them what’s in store…

One scholar of Mayan Calendar detail is Maya (sic) Todorova who gives this interpretation:
On the left side of the formation is the circle ‘S’, which symbolizes the Source. Within this circle a lunar crescent ‘М’ is depicted and a smaller circle, that symbolize the First Moon with Tone 1.

Magnetic Moon Descends Staircase with Equinoctial Sun
On the right side of the formation can be seen 22 closed squares, which represent the first 22 days of the 1st Magnetic Moon, which on 17 August are already ‘closed’—they are already past. 

The symbol ‘G’ is a sign for Goal. With this sign the formation reminds us, that we have few days left until the end of the 1st Magnetic Moon (26 July—22 August), in which we can identify our Goals (our Purpose) for the Yellow Crystal Seed Year.

 Symbol ‘K’ depicts a Key. Tone 1 is the Magnetic Gate of the New Galactic Year. The Key symbolizes the opening of this Magnetic Gate.
Maya Todorova CropCircleConnector, Wiltshire, England
Ms. Todorova was not to know that the August 17th crop circle was to be the LAST of the 2017 season—a blared message indeed.

Daykeeper Hunbatz Men, modern Elder of the Guatemalan Maya, foresees no apocalypse

“According to the prophecy in the year 2013 the first stage of higher understanding will begin. If we are willing to work with our subconscious, we will then be able to reclaim the information that has been impregnated in the deepest parts of our being. In this way, the ancient knowledge will rise again.”
Hunbatz Men, Daykeeper and Mayan Elder

Meanwhile—one month later—in Chichen Itza, heartland of the Maya, visitors and tribal devotees prepare for the annual dance of the sun—in the body of feathered serpent Kukulkan—down the sacrificial staircase of El Castillo at equinoctial sundown.

Signs of the [End] Times or Birth of a New Age?
Judaic scripture uses sacred numerology and dramatic descriptions of the Rapture and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—war, pestilence, famine and death which symbolize the End of Days. Arab sacred texts repeat the need for constant prayer by the devoted in order to be saved. The Maya believe that sharing their higher understanding—handed down by their elders from the time of the Ancients—will save the human race from itself. Maya wisdom says the New Age began four years ago!

Will a once-in-7000 years’ stellar happening be dramatic enough to wake up three-quarters of the world’s major religious groups three days from now and get six million people out of bed before dawn to scan the eastern horizon? Will it change the way we look at the sky? view our amazing universe with more awe? more respect?

While difficult to pinpoint with the naked eye against the backdrop of dawn, 7a.m., binoculars will help immensely: Mercury and Mars rise at 5:27 and 5:37a.m respectively. Venus shines superbly, rising ahead of them at 4:40a.m., all three lighting up Virgo’s ‘hair’ (in the constellation Leo). It takes a little extra imagination to picture her giving birth to Jupiter, whose light is eclipsed at sunrise, but who will miraculously appear that same evening in the west immediately after sunset, 7p.m., alongside the newest of new moons! reclining within the body of Virgo.

We ask for heavenly signs to show us the way forward?
Voilà.
©2017 Siderealview

Hogmanay—Time for Seeing Both Past and our Future

HOGMANAY—Prelude to New Year the Old Way

Here’s a wee dochan doris
Jist a wee drap, that’s aa’
A wee dochan doris
Afore ye ging awa’                    

There’s a wee wifie waitin’
At a wee but-‘n’-ben
But, if ye can say ‘it’s a braw bricht meenlichty nicht’
Ye’re aa’ richt, ye ken

Winter sun enhances frost crystals from high cirrus cloud, to create light mirages

We just passed winter’s shortest day.
The solstice: solar ‘standstill’, the point when the Sun appears to come to rest at the center of the galactic plane. It seems to stand on celestial equator, pausing in time, moving neither north nor south.

Four winter solstices ago, we planetary travelers collided with Galactic Center on December 21st, 2012, when the Great Cycle Calendar of the Maya comes to full rest; pause; restart.

Time and Light or Bread and Circuses
The Romans—a civilization we liken ourselves to more as time elapses—became so tired of their outdated Julian calendar, adding days, subtracting nights, that they elaborated on the earlier pagan rekindling of Saturnalia—extending a Hallowe’en thru Christmas holiday period into ten days of non-time in the run-up to January 1st and the New Year.

Khronos, Father Time—in his human persona Aeon—holds zodiac wheel in balance for human race

This respected period of utter chaos, drunken festivities, carnival and masqued balls was known as Saturnalia.

Not to be confused with current Hogmanay in Scotland.
While the Scots may already feel repercussions, there are certainly more to come—in the Empire and in now-disintegrated Scotland, Hogmanay will live forever, whatever the climate. Rhyme at top is traditional toast in broad Scots to test if you could outdrink them. Translation for dummies in comment section, below.

This year’s solstitial preparation for the New is a good time for pausing.
For all of us:

To contemplate how much we shall change in the coming year—because the Human Race is changing fast and we have changed radically in the past year—
To give thanks for the road that brought us here to this point in space and time and for this moment—before plunging into the maelstrom once more—
To bless all those immediately around us NOW—as well as our loved ones far afield—absent friends—and family gone to fresher fields—
A time to remember and a time to look forward—

Time and Light are on our side.

Time Warp and the Magic of Seventeen

Perfect bowl-shaped crucible zodiac chart for Hogmanay eve—with Uranus outmaneuvering Saturn—presages a receptive year for 2017

Χρονος Kronos was God of and out of Time, Father Time

Κρονος A Titan who killed his father Ouranos—Uranus, Roman creator god
Both confused within Roman god Saturn.

KRONOS (Roman Saturn) was the primordial Greek god of time. In the Orphic cosmogony he emerged self-formed at the dawn of creation. He was seen as discorporeal, serpentine in form, with three heads—of a man, a bull, and a lion. He and his consort, serpentine goddess Ananke—Inevitability—enveloped the primordial world-egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea and sky. After this act of creation the couple circled the cosmos driving the rotation of heaven and the eternal passage of time

Kronos was depicted in Greco-Roman mosaic as Aeon—Eternity personified. He holds a wheel inscribed with signs of the zodiac and Gaia—Mother Earth—reclines at his feet, right. A.D.5thC. poet Nonnus of Panopolis described Aeon as an old man with long, white hair and a beard, below, but mosaic-art presents a youthful figure—above.

The figure of Kronos was essentially a cosmological double of the Titan Kronos/Cronus—Father Time. Confusing the heirarchy, Hellenist culture sometimes merged Kronos with creator-god Phanes, and occasionally with the Titan Ophion.

Χρονος /Kronos self-created master of Time

No wonder we in the 21stC are confused. Drawn irrevocably to the madness of twelve days out of Time—just enough to feed our inner spirit, before we have to step back into the so-called real world when January hits.

ThunderSnow four inches on the Coast Range; chains required. Freezing hail in Mexico, battling a weak tropical front.

Thundersnow! Even the weather forecasters have given up; while in California, agriculture and home farmers are grateful for any seasonal precipitation, to allow the parched earth some semblance of moisture catchup, before the growing season starts all over again.

Hope for the Human Race to begin again with new resolution?

There is no Planet-B

Coal-fired industrial smog shuts down Chinese cities Beijing and Hangzhou

Even resolutions can be broken. Two years ago the Western nations agreed to a climate resolution. There are many who are doing their utmost to stick to clear healthy living, with clean healthy energy.
And there are those who are not. Marrakesh Climate Talks notwithstanding, United Airlines, one of the last American flight providers to operate within United States, as well as internationally, has closed its service to northern University town Eureka/Arcata, but has opened two new flight services to mainland China.

The mind boggles.

As does our inner spirit—watching and waiting for us to catch up with our human selves in a real grasp of what we are doing to our Pale Blue Dot—our only home—until they colonize Mars.

May we—at least some of us—wake up before that. They say seventeen is a good number.
Happy New Year.
©2017 Siderealview

Old Endings New Beginnings—Death and Regeneration in the Age of Scorpio

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 Hindu Kush 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.

If we are all spared~~and allowed to Return from the Dead on Sunday~~ 😉
©2015 Siderealview

Solstitial Stillness : Prelude to Midsummer Madness?

Rare lightning storm over Chile’s VLT array (very large telescope) at 8,500ft Cerro Paranal, Atacama desert

Solstice, they say, should be a time of stillness. Ancient civilizations—however primitive our society views them—were aware of the sun’s influence on their lives and its ability apparently to ‘stand still’ twice each year, when it reaches its greatest distance from the celestial equator. Now, in the Enlightened Aquarian Age, we hold festival over winter to celebrate that time of change. What do we do in summer? Go on vacation? Study crop circles? Some continue to work right through this special time, not realizing our connection to its ancient traditions, rooted in the earth.

Party Time!
Some cultures continue to make offerings, like the Ayamara in Peru. English do Maypole dance, Cornish have their Green Man bonfires, Nevada its Burning Man Festival, August 26-September 2nd this year, and California its music. So perhaps the consciousness behind celebrating in the fields is not totally lost to urbanites, if we can drink in the stillness offered by nature and make an effort to incorporate calm communion with the Earth in our everyday lives.

Classical civilization certainly knew how to do that—and party. And if they didn’t have gods of their own to offer obeisance and reverence to, they imported others. Saturnalia was known throughout the Roman world as the epitome of winter revelry, debauchery, excess, as the only time the old rigid god Saturn let down his hair. Equally, in summertime, they pulled out all the stops, liberally borrowing gods and goddesses from other cultures as themes suited.

Cybele adopted as Mother-protectrix of Rome’s ‘city and fields’ wore the Phrygian helmet-crown of warrior goddess

Cybele, right, the original pre-classical (Bronze Age, c.8thC BC) Indo-European Earth Mother warrior goddess from Phrygia-Anatolia, Turkey—symbol of fertility, earth’s swelling summer cornucopia of growth and abundance—was converted for her ‘psychic powers’ to take a place in the Greek and Roman pantheon. The Sybil who issued prophetic knowledge, like the Delphic Oracle, was her Roman adaptation. She was guardian of Rome. Her Egyptian equivalent was revered as Earth Mother figure Hathor; but the later Greeks, succumbing to male-dominant cultural needs, altered her concept of ‘love’ to one embodied by Aphrodite—losing the earth connection.

The Earth Mother of prehistoric cultures—whose neolithic carved dolls date to pre-Ice Age Europe—survives in vestigial worship of Inca Pachamama in Bolivia, but had turned volte-face in the Aegean by the time of the Trojan wars, when male physical prowess and warlike behavior on all fronts were supreme in Greek eyes. It is curious to note that hero of the Trojan wars, Paris, embodying male physical beauty, pure in mind, focused in war and manly pursuits like discus and javelin dexterity, was an imported ‘alien'(suppressed culture) superhero who wore the prehistoric Phrygian helmet (like Cybele), denoting his more ancient origins. The Roman army dedicated its legions’ souls to the care of Mithras—another import from Phrygia, complete with godly war-helmet.

Where the primeval mother-warrior had battled time and the elements for the good of the Earth, bringing fruits in season, male culture—in taking over the role of earth-caretaker—may have gone a little overboard on the warrior front.

Delphic Oracle—Eta Delphinids, Cetacean Commiunications

The locked grid for Solstice June 21st 2013 9pm EST, progressed chart, courtesy Astrotheme

In astrological circles this solstitial time is seen as one of huge change—in context of life, personal vision, and clearing away old debris, solstitial chart by Astrotheme, left.

Astronomically, NASA/NOAA’s solstitial prediction for ‘few’ aurorae over the midsummer period, includes a mention by the space agency of meteor showers, Eta Delphinids, M-class solar flares ongoing, with resulting storms hitting earth through June and July. Earth’s magnetosphere activity is listed as ‘unsettled’ during this period, see changes sidebar right. We are, after all, midway through solar maximum, 2013.

Somewhere between the two star camps there appears in the northern sky one of our least-known yet most massive constellations, only visible in summer: Ophiuchus. Both astro sides agree: this giant (dim) group of stars stretching from the head of Scorpio across Libra and Virgo, to touch the (upside-down) head of Hercules at zenith, brings into the summer sky images—and concepts from the ancient mind—most appropriate to this silly season. Because of the cosmic quirk of precession of the equinoxes—earth’s ‘wobble’ on its axis bringing it successively through each of the zodiac signs, backwards—we in the Aquarian Age in Earth’s subtropical, tropical and temperate zones are seeing—many for the first time—two gigantic constellations which were familiar to the Ancients, who anthropomorphized them as expressions of their own conflicting ideals.

backwards thru Zodiac~~ Aquarius: water-bearer, far-sighted visionary, troubled by burdens—symbol of the Age
Capricorn: seagoat, god of cardinal order, old (outworn? Saturnian) mechanisms, consistently appears at midsummer full moon to put cat among pigeons…
Sagittarius: archer, ruled by Jupiter: Jovian happy-spirited lover of nature, trying to hold balance between the above and…
Scorpio: scorpion, fixed water=ice symbolic of birth, death and rebirth, transfiguration; overcoming impediments, its sting-in-tail never allows others to relax

enter~~ Ophiuchus, serpent bearer holding both ends of constellation Serpens in his hands: Serpens Cauda, tail in his right; Serpens Caput, head in his left.

Constellation Ophiuchus, Flamsteed Celestial Atlas, 1776

Ophiuchus: Ὀφιοῦχος “Serpent-bearer”, serpent-wielding handler of snakes, transitioned from his ancient image of enlightened Man wrestling-with-conscience through medieval image of unbridled male sexual power, to Georgian image of protective fatherly person-of-age and wisdom and healing, to Victorian preoccupation with—mostly male—medical profession—caduceus, or *thyrsus a symbol of healing derived from a rod (bamboo, fennel, or the male member) wrapped in a vine, ivy or flower garlands.

Unusually, both ‘scientific’ and ‘psychic’ astros agree, constellation Ophiuchus will dominate the July 2013 sky, rising higher than it has in the last two thousand years. Some extreme astrologers have suggested rearranging the traditional/tropical zodiac, to make room for another constellation (because his feet actually stand on the ecliptic, between Scorpio and Sagittarius). Current western astrology, however, is a convention developed from zodiac signs visible in Roman/Greek skies, using attributes associated with cultural gods/seasons/beliefs of that time, and these which would lose meaning if arbitrarily rearranged.

As Ophiuchus makes its first appearance since the “EndTimes of 2012″—brighter and more dominant than at any time in human memory—there may be another message for us in its new guise.

“Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu!

Greco-Roman god Priapus, rescued fresco from Pompeii c.AD79, Archaeological Museum of Naples

PRIAPOS was the rustic god of the Ancient world, responsible through his unbridled fertility for the bounty of the vegetable garden. Later stylized as a dwarfish entity with a huge penis, which symbolized garden fertility, originally his head was crowned with a peaked Phrygian cap, belying his origin as a god, native to the Hellespont, ancient Phrygia. His cult was introduced into Greece and Italy, where his mythology was reinterpreted in Greek terms. Greeks naturally named him a son of one of their phallic gods: either Hermes/Mercury or, more often Dionysos. His mother was Aphrodite. They were accompanied by satyrs Orthanes and Tykhon.

Priapos/Priapus was honored by Greeks, Romans, Mysians, Hittites, Egyptians (their Apis, bull of fertility) as protector of sheep, goats, bees, the vine and of all garden produce. In formative cultures, the phallus was the ancient emblem of creation. It represented gods Bacchus, Priapus, Hermaphroditus, Hercules, Shiva, Osiris, Baal and Asher, who were all Phallic deities. Roman Priapus, a stylized symbol of Rome’s mastery of the then world, had odes written to him and poems pinned on patio phalluses in gardens of aristocratic ladies who wished to keep their arboreal spirits potent.

The most famous extant depiction of Priapus is the Pompeiian fresco, above. He is crowned with peaked Phrygian cap, shown weighing his enormous member on a set of scales against the produce of the fields. He wears Phrygian war-boots, and has a Bacchic, cone-tipped thyrsus* resting by his side.
Photo of Pompeiian fresco, courtesy Andargor

Burning Man annual late summer festival in Black Rock Nevada desert

In festive summer frolics, Priapus was depicted accompanied by garden nymphs, dyads and maenads, each waving a flower-wreathed *thyrsus—a wand made from fennel or bamboo, with a pierced pine-cone at its tip, which nymphs used as mini-phalluses to poke at the unitiated or to ward off satyrs and unwanted suitors.

In Celtic mythology he is the god of spring, Greenman, vestigial Druid prince-king-god who invoked fertility for his land through dance in sacred groves where tree and nature-spirits dwell.

Primitive statues of the god were traditionally set up in vegetable plots to promote fertility, with the added benefit of functioning as a type of scarecrow for scaring away birds. But when garden gnomes became a late 19thC fashion, their priapic member was eliminated in the mass-produced version, as Victorian sensibilities dictated that such garden gnomes NOT display their ‘private parts’, in case ladies in passing carriages should succumb to the ‘vapors’ and require medical assistance.

Priapic Preoccupation in Crop Circles
Victorian humor aside, Priapos was genuinely revered as patron of the garden, guardian of growth for all crops, and it is a relief to see this multi-faceted countryside god showing his (at least symbolic) head above ground—as a sign of bounty to come?—in the first two-phase crop circle appearance at Stanton St Bernard, Wiltshire, June 21st.

Solstitial crop circles have traditionally sent some of the clearest messages as the theme of a season; it is tempting to believe that the paucity of designs in Wiltshire—twelve during June; British total for season—is one of those. Meanwhile, crop circle anticipation remains high: manfully upheld by the Italian contingent, as the fields of Rome, Tuscany and northern Italy have had a relatively ‘normal’ growing season—that in itself may suggest we show a little deference to our classical heritage.

Stanton St Bernard dual-phase phallic crop circle points to ancestral Milk Hill, photo courtesy Paul Jacobs

So it is riveting to see that the season’s first ‘complex’ symbol should appear right on schedule—over solstice—in the Wiltshire ‘hub‘, in the same fields which created all the uproar last year, see Siderealview archives.

*Seen as a thyrsus, (typically, English has no translation for a wand wreathed in flowers sporting a bristle like a dildo), its pinecone-like business end pointed straight at Milk Hill—representative of ancient Earth Mother-milk-and-honey-bounty—the first meaningful crop circle of the season may once more be pulling at us with multiple strands. Targeting the Mother hill (the highest in Wiltshire) goes partway to awakening dormant English respect for ancient ways. By incorporating the dildo-pinecone in a sword- (or thyrsus-like) javelin cut straight through the barley and aimed at Milk Hill’s symbol of male strength—the horse riding the Mother—this crop design rekindles memories of pineal gland/third eye crop formations of summer 2011.

Messages then were that we/’Society’ release our male left-brain stranglehold on our fragile 21stC world, allow the female intuitive right-brain heart-centered side to come out of dormancy and express more freely. And that the pleasure zone: endorphins, melatonin and the pineal gland, function together as a means to synthesize and synchronize this new awareness in us humans by connecting our mind-body-spirit back to our terrestrial home.

Now, in post-Omega-Point reflection through a slow growing season, we are reminded to temper our left hemisphere destruction of habitat, and instead to devote time to more reverent and respectful treatment of our earthly environment.

To add to this summer madness, Ophiuchus rises to full stature in the northern July night, unseen until now in such grandeur by 21stC eyes. He stands diametrically opposite Orion, filling the southern arc of the night sky, his feet astride the ecliptic, between Sagittarius and Scorpio, his head grazed by the upside-down head of Hercules at zenith. Grasping with both hands he wields the Serpent: Serpens Caput in his left; Serpens Cauda in his right, the dual twisting constellation locked between his outstretched legs, as if caught in flagrante delicto, not a god, but a man wrestling his (inner and) outer demons.

Summer’s greatest blessing is that we northerners can relax, feel warm, surrounded by earth’s cornucopia of beauty, vegetative growth at its height—lulled into enjoying the brief season without thought to winter, responsibility, cold… the grasshopper and ant scenario. Or, with American Independence Day July 4th just around the corner, could consciousness of the ‘Silly Season’ already be taking hold? Celebrate now for tomorrow we die?
Te morituri salutamus!

We know our Earthmother’s answer.
©2013 Siderealview

New Beginnings: 2012 Hinges open Doorway to Consciousness

CONSCIOUSNESS: Great Gatherer toward Ascension

Princeton’s Global Consciousness Project recorded 12/12/12

The Great Cycle of the Maya has been sliding quietly shut. December 21st, 2012, foretold as long ago as 3114BC to be a cosmic door closing on ‘historic’ humanity, was said within the Maya themselves to herald the threshold of a new form of Man: the revealing of the knowledge of the Ancestors, or ‘return of ancient wisdom’, and the ‘gathering together of tribes’.

The Great Long Count Calendar of the Maya is not the only calendar to herald this moment, but it is certainly the most evocative and topical headline-hitter of all ancient calendars which come to a finale at this crucial crossroads in time. Similar sacred systems studied by early priesthoods [5000+BC] in both old and new world religions from the Assyrian ‘fertile crescent’ to the Siberian steppes, based their supreme knowledge and annual information of secret wisdom ‘given by’ the stars. It was common in all cultures, held sacred, and its ongoing calculation was handed down as sacrosanct.

Seen from the perspective of the NewAge self-awareness movement, many such ancient prophecies would appear to allude to man’s growth in spiritual knowledge, practice and frequency.

So when group meditations started happening worldwide on 12/12/12, the resulting reverberation, measured on the University of Princeton’s Global Consciousness Project, passed any previous measurement on their global consciousness scale which registers world consciousness fluctuations as a dot-graph chart.

This result has astounded Princeton Noosphere Project monitors; but contributing to this event has been a decade’s worth of mega-growth in world computer function/distribution, ensuring that more people now have access to a ‘network’ [television or computer] during December 2012 than ever before in human history.

This special solstice 12/21/12-end cycle event has had a larger [eastern] audience too, as the last full moon of the year occurs tomorrow, December 28th, see astro chart below for its potent Cancerian influences.

And this extended portal, related in consciousness to the thoughts we have continued throughout the year on this blog, comes now at a time when remarkably, the human race may just be ready for it. Certainly questions about human potential, personal growth, creating alternate realities are on many lips.

What has been surprising is the number of young people who had heard of the Maya Cycle Close, had listened to but not necessarily believed the associated doomsayer apocalypse scenario; because they themselves genuinely believed in the less-broadcast-more internet-wide alternative for hope-for-humanity.

We are saddened that our supposedly intelligent media should invade their youthful peripheral world, scoop up and serve vampires, blood-and-gore, fireballs at the end of a comet tail, in order to create a massive fear plot.

… and what a let-down to find no axis-reversal, no polar shift; but instead a wondersome star-show as spectacular as the December Geminid meteor shower and a stunning night sky full of anciently-grinding- and wheeling stars, galaxies, planets and satellites predicted by ancestral calculation and all draped in divine splendour of a black winter sky, for our delectation.

Hope for 2013 and the New Cycle
Instead of succumbing to a stupor of virtual/screen terror, or a mock-millennium-bug-rave-till-the-grave, many have found personal reason to use this season to go within. There has been in internet circles as well as sacred centers round the world an emphasis on attaining newfound knowledge, newdreamt dreams; remembering our connections instead of our separateness.

Much of the new consciousness is simple: a child could do it. That’s what all the ancient texts say ‘with the eyes of a child… you will but see…’ ‘…and a child shall lead them…’

The first hinge of the Great Doorway of Consciousness has opened. Mankind steps tentatively forward, knowing intuitively how to proceed but still not sure if it can really be true: that love is the answer; that we are all brothers and sisters. Then, seeing others do the same, our steps become bolder. By letting go fear of ‘others’, we find more ‘like’ minds/spirits gathering round, coming into our lives.

Astrological chart, courtesy Christina Adolphsson, full moon in Cancer December 28th, 2012

Several million people worldwide met together in consciousness during the twenty-four-hour standing-still of this particular solstice 2012, in order to pull in the stillness through meditation: and another estimated million will continue a Vedic tradition in celebrating the full moon tomorrow. These groups consist not only of Central and South American, indigenous North American, Inuit and Aleutian/Alaskan heritage; along with thousands of southern hemisphere celebrants in Vedic ceremonies of the Indian subcontinent alongside private sun- and moon-worship celebrations on Bondi Beach. More significantly, in the heavily-populated northern hemisphere, hundreds of thousands of non-denominational spiritual groups internationally combined their loving intent, pooling spiritual resources for world peace and loving brotherhood.

Flower of Life: at root of all growth from cell to consciousness

Meditation ceremonies for December solstice, Christmas, full moon and year-end [Hogmanay] will continue in many cases through New Year, according to private calendars-timing-invitation. These ceremonies include but are not limited to events associated with established spiritual communities worldwide [e.g. Esalen, CA, Scotland’s Findhorn Foundation, Jean Hudon’s (Canadian) Planetary Light Network; Drunvalo Melchizedek’s ongoing Hawaiian, New Mexican and Central American ‘flower-of-life’ mer-ka-ba visualization for Ascension [his advice on a possible “earth-shift” in an electromagnetic sense can be read here]; the Meeting of the Thirteen Grandmothers in Arizona; and even more prolific, thanks to the internet: another uncountable number of individual workshop/meditation initiatives continue to be conducted online, courtesy of Keisha Crowther, Gregg Braden, Caroline Myss, Baba Ram Dass, Humanity Healing Network, Eckhart Tolle, and David Wilcock; with other proactive media influences [like Daniel Pinchbeck, Evolver and Reality Sandwich continue to encourage from the sidelines…
with assistance from sacred L.A group events e.g. Dee Wallace, Sandra Bullock, Brad Pitt environmental foundations.

From the perspective of the great serpent-hole at the center of the [Milky Way] spiral arm, the Earth is a precious planet. Teeming with millions of intelligent lifeforms, all potential cells of its supreme guidance system holding the planet in orbit as it passes through the gate. Its species are equipped with every last form of technology, spiritual, dimensional, physical and material: all the tools and toys of the imagination to play with and a perfect planet to perform on. And Mother Universe stands back for a few billion years [remember, time and space are relative, so this is an arbitrary number] and allows the species to have free choice.

Well, the Universe has left us to our devices now for something like five thousand years, give or take a Maya-contrived Baktun or two. And our consciousness has begun to hone itself: Ascension is a word on more lips now in 2012 than in, say, the post-war Eisenhower-era (where more common words might have been ‘duplex’, ‘superhighway’ and ‘warloan’).

And if not Ascension, then almost everyone [reading this blog] has spoken of or contemplated raising their own consciousness.

Where there is a meeting of consciousness, particularly with a a communal intent, a goal in view, Group Mind creeps in, allowing right-hemisphere/female-related sensations which the body knows intimately, like intuition, emotions, feelings, to take over.

During 2012 throughout the world, with so many spiritual groups holding conferences, earth-festivals, sacred ceremonials, to celebrate this exceptional milestone of time in our combined earth culture, it has become bigger than merely marking year Twelve-Twelve Gregorian; Hebrew year-5773; Maya 13.0.0.0.0.

“Where two or more are gathered in My Name”
New Testament, King James edition

If teenagers can feel it; it’s there, on the tip of our tongue, that indescribably elusive taste of freedom-creation-possibility; if the Occupy Movement was last year’s phenomenon in the ongoing cycle of change to bring human interaction back to the human level [rather than being ‘managed’ by its current soul-less bureaucratic one]; then Ascension is this year’s preoccupation, its golden meadow of opportunity.

If we don’t see it right off, does that mean that the consciousness-the meadow-isn’t there? or does our habit of expecting media-manipulated answers to be delivered on a screen overshadow our deep desire and conviction that the great cluster of global consciousness is finally on the move.

We are not the people who were born into this world six, five, four, three decades ago. Not only has our skin, muscle tone, brain function but every cell changed, regrouped and rebirthed. Our consciousness, too, however much we doubt, has altered.

Some of those early movers and shakers have entered another dimension, leaving a few of us to carry the torch. Others, among the early ‘believers/NewAgers have sadly lapsed into the retirement-relapse-ageshock-memorylane comfort zone of never again having to confront ideas of Ascension. Still powering on, though, there are the original NewAge believers, encouraged as each decade passed and another generation joined them to swell their numbers quietly.

Now the long-awaited and much-foretold EndDays are manifesting one by one, hour by hour, minute by minute, and we are being asked as each precious moment of it passes, or as each new thought, new emotion arises, if we are worthy; if we have done enough in this life to merit the honor of still being alive as this time of flowering for us humans begins.

Drunvalo Melchizedek’s spent two years in a solitary cabin in isolated surroundings, attaining a personal state of peace, openness and belief. His description of a personal ‘shift’, a St-Paul on the Road to Damascus moment, Ascension-in-action have been likened to experiences documented by all indigenous shamanic practice. The Leary-Alpert-McKenna team’s 1990s research has never been outclassed as a source of information on the natural ‘alpha’ theta-wave condition. This enhanced state of awareness is one sought by all meditative practitioners from Zen to Tibetan to Sedona to Laos. Independent gurus give the same advice. Allowing the left hemisphere to relax and the right to come through; intuition, awareness of gratitude, feelings over logic, calming the voice of the ego into a submissive role.

Ken Carey was also drawn to spend several seasons in isolated conditions, growing his own food and opening himself to belief that what he needed would be provided for him.

Both emerged from their experiences professing the first step in wrapping oneself in this new blanket of love is silence, and faith that it will go on surrounding us.

As Mayan 13.0.0.0.0/Gregorian 21-December-2012 slips quietly to a close and the stars and planets of the firmament wheel once more out of the central axis of the Milky Way’s Dark Rift and begin again a whole new charting through unventured regions of the Galaxy, we raise our heads humbly to such a magnificent canopy and at the very least wonder how we came to be so blessed to be here at this time, at this change of consciousness.

Because, however tentative and faltering our baby-steps, they are indeed steps we are making, with unfathomably loving spiritual help [call them Angels, Archangels, guides, God, Great Spirit, Jah, JVH or Aunt Maud-channelled-in-heaven] to become our more-loving selves; and as we feel more proficient at our new openness, more brotherly can be felt towards each other and miracles can be projected and start to happen: in energetic and spiritual terms our imagination-creativity-self-field (a pure extension of our self), is made more ‘real’ every time we re-emphasize a loving solution over a non-caring one.

Perhaps no great revelation or white light appeared on solstice 2012; no fiercely threatening alien form of a ‘dark star’ in the Nibiru mold crashed through the heliosheath and stood breathing lethal gas into earth orbit.

But, as Carey said in his latest work
‘when all else are looking the other way, God’s work will be done’.

Shift of the Ages
It probably takes a prescient kind of mind to know just exactly when one went/goes through the shift, if such one does/did, or whether we are among those privileged to live in these times of unique growth for the experience of sensing human psyche-consciousnes-groupmind.

I believe we are indeed the ones chosen to be here for this shift in consciousness-dimension-level of understanding of a Greater Spirit to guide us unerringly through these uncharted waters… we have to let go of the oars, believe we are in good/godly hands, and allow the energies, the aegis of the new to direct and guide us. After all, in a brand new dimension, all directions are valid; and we have pointers to show us the way, if we only watch and listen.

It may be some months before we shall look back on these final moments of December 2012 and be able to say truly: ‘I was there then when the shift…’ or ‘I had a feeling in my bones…’ it may be February before we will feel a change in the air, new birdsong, but, let us believe our star-nurtured electromagnetically-magical circuitry is capable of more than we currently see; more like the gods the Ancients believed were directing our path.

I believe the Ancestors knew of which they spoke when they called this moment the Shift of the Ages. While we may be slower on the uptake than the Masters, I think we mortals made it through the portal and that great dreams are ahead for us, with help from our loved ones, new friends and old, virtual and in the flesh, and that those who continue to help “bring through” the “new reality” will grow in strength and numbers.
©2012 Siderealview