Harvest or Virgin Consciousness

Harvesting a crop circle in Wiltshire

In the ancient world, long before Man’s civilized overlay and 5,000-year male-dominion, there were the Sun, the Moon and the Earth and the Earth was the Mother.

Seasons guided formative cultures who measured time by movement of the moon, sun and constellations, creating permanent power places at energetic nodes in the landscape. In ancient Britain neolithic farmers, most remarkably within the Wiltshire magnetic basin, rolled and erected giant monoliths in difficult terrain to mark changes in the calendar (and solar energy) with a series of fire festivals: hinges of the seasons were celebrated with fire like doorways into dying or rebirth.

When farming was in its infancy, Harvest time – ancient Lammas, Lughnasad, August’s festival-of-Light (Lugh) – went on for weeks, celebrating the Mother’s generous provision of food, sustaining and nurturing vulnerable embryo farming communities. The Sun’s power was waning, but the Earth was at her peak, her most abundant. Harvest was a sacred rite of bounty: first sheaf cut, the Maiden or Virgin, was blessed, honored, paraded in the fields and then kept over winter indoors until planted – again ritually – in the first tilled furrow of spring.

Along with harvest and farming generally, the Maiden sheaf has been trivialized: she is now the ‘Corn Dolly’. Scythes have become combine harvesters, man-made behemoths which decimate hectares in half an hour; spewing grain into giant dryers whose contents turn up on Tesco shelves a week later as bin-end ‘specials’.

Gone are the female earth-mothering images: Halstatt figurines of pregnant femininity now reside in museums, carved stone balls inspired by the spiral of creation gather dust in archives along with Man’s ancient knowledge.

Return of Saturnia Regna

Carved stone ball Aberdeenshire 3000BC

Celebrations reenacted in our digital age for tourists and late-summer ‘revenue’, are pale shadows of a time when community meant working together to bring in the harvest and throwing a party afterwards. Harvest thanksgiving has now no meaning.

All, however, is not lost.

Virgil, the Roman poet (70-19BC) wrote of a time when ‘the Virgin and the Golden Age (age of Saturn) will return’ (iam redit et Virgo redeunt Saturnia Regna). We may now live in those ‘End Times’ on a planet ravaged by war, famine and pestilence; a male-manipulated pendulum of food mountains and shortages, of deadlines and death-defying daily forays on the freeway; but the feminine may yet have ways of filtering through consciousness into the most hardened of masculine endeavors. The right hemisphere of the brain is rising again, demanding we look in places long hidden.

In one corner of our consciousness we are seeing signs in the heavens which astrologers predict as a coming together of the Virgin and Saturn; the sun and ringed giant are presently in the zodiac sign of Virgo: with upheaval and change seen as major factors. But it can also be seen as archetypal male and female convergence. In another corner we are receiving reminders to appreciate the earth; from matriarchal cultures, like the Maya who have not forgotten their past, shaman leaders are speaking again. In a recent message, breaking a silence of 10 generations, their Elders, keepers of the Mayan ‘word’, suggest a melding of hemispheres – both mental and worldly – as a way forward for the human race.

And in an unexpected corner, from within the sacred precinct of England’s most famous prehistoric stones, harvest has taken on a deeper meaning. Since June this year a staggering 70 new crop-circles have appeared in fields of ripening wheat and barley in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire near neolithic sacred sites like Avebury and Sillbury Hill, renowned for ancient goddess worship. Once the domain of fringe UFOlogists, increasingly complex designs forming within a highly erratic magnetic area have triggered discussion from some of the world’s greatest scientific and mathematical minds. A code sequence emerges alternately suggesting an imminent human epiphany or activation of planetary DNA. And they and the fields where they lie are getting a lot more attention.

Numerologists were minimal when an ‘Om’ design appeared in a crop in July 7, 2007 – 07-07-07; by 2008, sophisticated symbols were increasing and by August 8 – 08-08-08 – an infinity symbol caused a stir. Whether subliminal or actual, crop circle messages were beginning to trigger a change in human consciousness. People flocked to the sacred sites of Wiltshire and Hampshire as soon as summer began.

Crop-circles, writing in the corn, back to the earth: human awakening; Native American belief that the way forward is in the melding of ancient knowledge with modern capabilities: All point toward a vision of the New Age: that through respect for the Earth as giver of life and by cherishing our own female intuitive powers (both men and women), we regain insight into our purpose here and simultaneously arrive at the long-awaited Golden Age.

The year 2009 brings mounting excitement, instant coverage from aerial photography, world media attention. Designs appear in June more complicated and beautiful than the world’s greatest minds might devise. A plethora of new crop circles throughout July have followers on the edge of their seats, waiting for what will happen next. August starts well: designs and embedded code more complex than ever.

Thing is: there have been no new crop circles since August 16th. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Major disappointment in croppiedom; huge let-down for consciousness collectives. Harvest is well advanced in the fields of Wiltshire. What are we waiting for?

The answer may lie in our collective unconscious: the New Age unfolds; Saturn returns to stand with the Sun in Virgo. Around about September 9th this year – 09-09-09 – if there are any fields left unharvested in the countryside around Avebury, Sillbury Hill or West Kennet Long Barrow we may be witness to something none of us can remotely imagine.

We shall have to wait and see.