From Sixties to Ascension: an Existential Chronology

CHRONOLOGY of the NEW AGE: a Countercultural Diary of Celebration
A work in progress

Icon of an Era: Jimi Hendrix November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970

He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here, and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.
Douglas Adams

When we began this blog—the Siderealview of Life, the Universe and Everything—in 2009, we posted a retrospective look at the New Age in personal terms, as a little accompaniment to fellow beings walking along the Road Less Traveled. Now, a few years down the road, interestingly it seems the world IS awakening, and more of us are traveling.

The chronology that follows of that much-romanticized Era of the ’Sixties Until The Now is not complete, but an ongoing compilation of many people’s work, involving a myriad hazy memories, or lack of them…

If you remember, you weren’t there’

with a musical underground, rock, R&B edge.

As a salute to all those amazing souls who didn’t make it, but who gave the journey meaning for the rest of us, it’s probably best read while completely submerged within earphones of your favorite surround-sound. And for those of us still here, wasn’t it a blast? And won’t it get even better now that the younger generation indigoes and star children are waking up their elders!

From Neanderthal to Ascended Being in one Lifetime…or
where were you when it all began…?
As a prelude to the ’Sixties, deference is here paid to living legend, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 94, who founded City Lights Bookstore in 1953—prescient indeed—and to those who

Voyager’s golden record sent to the stars explains human culture/sounds

“threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot with eternity outside of time…”
Howl, Allen Ginsberg: dedicated to and inspired by Jack Kerouac

but it is also a celebration of the survivors… B.B. King, Chuck Berry, Cher, Clapton, David Crosby, Ram Dass, Doris Day, Bruce Dern, Emmy Lou Harris, John Hurt, Dorothy Maclean, Joni Mitchell, Robert Plant, Linda Ronstadt, Sting, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jimmys Carter, Page and Webb, Carly Simon, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Neil Young…and the beat goes on…

Sensational Sixties1960

Icon of an era: Marilyn said goodbye in the sixties

January Bob Dylan, 19, plays Greenwich Village; visits Woody Guthrie in hospital
— Civil rights demonstrations, Atlanta, GA
January 7 First Polaris nuclear-armed ballistic missile launched Cape Canaveral, FL, missile test base on Jupiter rocket, precursor to US Space Program, launched Cape Canaveral Sept.20, 1956 as Jupiter-C oxygen-fueled booster which would power embryo space vehicles
February 13 France becomes fourth nuclear power
March 15 Lunch-counter sit-ins spread 15 cities in five southern U.S. states
May 6 Civil Rights Act of 1960 signed by President Eisenhower
July 20 First live nuclear-armed Polaris missile (SSBN) launched ‘successfully’ from submerged submarine, USS George Washington [Forty further SSBNs with nuclear warheads launched between 1960-1966]
July Sidney Cohen survey: 5000 individuals administered LSD 25,000 times concluded ‘safe’
August 9 Timothy Leary, 39, program of psilocybin mushrooms in Cuernavaca
August 10 Antarctic Treaty creates peaceful international ‘scientific preserve’
November 6 John F. Kennedy elected president
Eisenhower warns U.S. about ‘Military Industrial Complex’ power
November 9 Brian Epstein meets the Beatles
December Birth control pills go on sale in USA

Internationally recognized, except in war zones…

1961
January 17 Eisenhower warns of increasing power of military industrial complex
February Four black students arrested at whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, SC
February 18 Bertrand Russell, 89, leads march of 20,000 sit-down of 5000 anti-nuke outside British Defense Ministry, London. Jailed for seven days
March – Richard Alpert [Ram Dass] takes psilocybin as part of the Harvard Project
March 1 John Kennedy initiates $17 billion dollar nuclear missile program, increasing military aid to Indochina; announces creation of Peace Corps
March Polaris missiles (SSBNs/Brit ICBNs) manufactured by Lockheed, sold to British Navy, installed Holy Loch, Scotland
April 11 Bob Dylan’s first billed performance at Gerde’s Folk City, New York
April 12 Yuri Gagarin, first man in space USSR

Berlin Wall, c.1980

April 25 Bay of Pigs, Cuba: U.S.-planned invasion, defeated by Fidel Castro
May 4 Freedom Riders DC-southern tour to test integration bus stations
May 28 Amnesty International founded
June Robert Heinlein‘s Stranger in a Strange Land published
July Ban-the-Bomb demonstrations start worldwide
July 19 Telstar satellite live televised transmission across Atlantic
August 13 East German border guards begin constructiom of Berliner Mauer BERLIN WALL (opened 19 years later)
September 11 WWF (World Wildlife Fund, US & Canada, World Wide Fund for Nature, Switzerland, GB) open offices in Geneva, Switzerland, inspired by Julian Huxley, Victor Stolan, Godfrey A. Rockefeller
September 15 U.S. starts underground nuclear testing
October 6 President Kennedy advises Americans to build fallout shelters

“If the words ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.”
― Terence McKenna, 1999

Psychedelic Review, ©1971

1962
February 2 (Candlemas) French Liner SS France, 66,000-tons, maiden voyage to New York; last (sole) steam liner on transatlantic route, see 1963; cost (then) $80-million; sold 1974 to Norwegian Line, q.v. as losing French govt $35-million annually
February 16 Boston SANE, fledgling SDS first anti-nuclear march on Washington with 4000-8000 protesters
April 25 U.S. resumes atmospheric nuclear testing after three-year moratorium
August 5 Marilyn Munroe—Norma Jeane Mortenson—b.June 1, 1926, died, age 36
September Timothy Leary founds International Foundation for International Freedom [IFIF] to promote LSD research; publishes the Physchedelic Review
October 22 Cuban Missile Crisis Soviet missile bases in Cuba, President Kennedy orders naval blockade
November 17 Findhorn Bay Community (later Findhorn Foundation) established Moray, Scotland by Eileen/Peter Caddy + Dorothy MacLean
December 25 Oscar-winning movie ‘To Kill a Mockingbird‘, based on Harper Lee novel, released, makes careers of Robert Duval, Brock Peters

Recognizing that there is intelligence in Nature that goes beyond our concept of the survival of the fittest and ecological diversity is not yet commonplace in our western culture.
Dorothy Maclean

1963
January Alabama Governor George Wallace Segregation Forever speech at inauguration
April 3 SCLC volunteers stage sit-in Birmingham, AL
June 11 JFK proposes Civil Rights Bill
June 12 Mississippi Civil rights leader Medgar Evers assassinated
June 26 John F. Kennedy “Ick bin ein Berliner” speech, Berlin
July Timothy Leary hosts Freedom House groups in Zihuatanejo Mexico, Dominica, Antigua
July 26-28 Newport Folk Festival includes Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger
August 5 First Nuclear Test Treaty signed
August 28 Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream speech, Washington, D.C. civil rights 2-million march
August 30 U.S.-Soviet hotline installed
September Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and other Harvard alumni LSD researchers move to Hitchcock estate Millbrook, NY

Last Atlantic steamship SS France, 66,000-tons, sold 1974 became SS Norway, scrapped 2006-8

September 24 Nuclear Test Ban treaty ratified by U.S. Senate
October 10 Nuclear Treaty takes effect
October 13 Beatles televised London Palladium, 15 million audience She Loves You, Twist and Shout
November 22 SS France 1st commercial voyage Southampton-New York; communications freeze 6-days JFK death until November 29th; Old World Order plays deck quoits, skittles, cabin roulette, drinkiepoos with Capt.Christian Pettre
November 22 Sidereal sails Atlantic for America; JFK assassinated in Dallas, TX, LBJ sworn in
November 22 Aldous Huxley dies on deliberate self-administered LSD; his dying intention
November 29 Beatles I Want to Hold your Hand released

‘What’s wrong with using biotechnology to get rid of mental pain altogether?’
Aldous Huxley

1964
January 8 LBJ declares ‘War on Poverty’ in State of the Union address
January 11 U.S. Surgeon General declares cigarettes cause lung disease
January 30 New military junta takes over in South Vietnam
February 7 Beatles arrive in New York to 10,000 screaming fans
February 9 Beatles appear on Ed Sullivan Show, 74 million largest audience in history of television
April 23 Beatles at Hollywood Bowl; Rolling Stones, turn the Beatles on to marijuana
July Millbrook LSD sessions with Timothy Leary
July Ken Kesey’s First Magic Bus Trip to New York
July 23 Senate passes $947 million anti-poverty bill
August Ken Kesey, his Merry Pranksters visit Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert at Millbrook
August Beatles first U.S. tour: 25 North American cities
August 4 Three missing civil rights workers found dead in Mississippi
August 11 Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night movie released

My people await PAHANA, the lost White Brother—from the stars—as do all our brothers in the land. He will not be like the White Men we know now, who are cruel and greedy. We were told of their coming long ago. But still we await Pahana—
He will bring with him the symbols, and the missing piece of that sacred tablet now kept by the Elders, given to him when he left, that shall identify him as our True White Brother—
The Fourth World shall end soon, and the Fifth World will begin. This the Elders everywhere know. The Signs over many years have been fulfilled, and so few are left—
HOPI Update 2012

symbol of a generation: awakening consciousness

August 20 LBJ signs anti-poverty program
August 23 Beatles Hollywood Bowl concert
August 28 Race riots in Philadelphia
August 31 LBJ signs food stamp bill
October 14 Martin Luther King Jr wins Nobel Peace prize

1965
Time Magazine calls youth a ‘generation of conformists’
January 4 President Johnson outlines ‘Great Society’
February Martin Luther King Jr, 770 protesters arrested Selma, AL picket county courthouse to end discrimination in vote
February 8 U.S. starts bombing North Vietnam
February 18 Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara calls for U.S-wide network of bomb shelters
February 21 Malcolm X shot and killed, New York
March 3 Owsley starts LSD factory making large units of acid publicly available for first time
March 6 first American soldier sets foot on Vietnam soil
March 7 Alabama state troopers attack 525 civil rights workers before march
March 8 3,500 Marines land to protect Da Nang air base
March 16 Quaker Alice Herz, 82, immolates herself in Detroit in protest of Vietnam war
March 16 Police break up demonstration of 600 Montgomery, AL
March 17 1600 demonstrate at courthouse Montgomery, AL

Jefferson Airplane, Janis and Big Brother at the Fillmore 1966

March 21 Martin Luther King Jr leads march from Selma to Montgomery, AL joined by 25,000 marchers
March 24 SDS organizes first Vietnam War teach-in, University of Michigan, 3000 attend
March 25 Civil rights worker shot, killed by Ku Klux Klan in Alabama
March 28 Martin Luther King calls for boycott of Alabama on television
April 25 25,000 U.S. troops stationed in Vietnam
April 2 Ken Kesey arrested for marijuana possession
Apri1 7 SDA leads first anti-Vietnam march in Washington, D.C. 25,000 attend, including Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Judy Collins
June 11 Beatles awarded MBE by HM the Queen
July 8 Chicago school integration protests
July 10 Rolling Stones I Can’t Get No Satisfaction #1
July 24 Bob Dylan Like a Rolling Stone enters chartsJuly 25 Dylan goes Rock at Newport Folk Festival
July 30 LBJ signs Medicare bill
August – Ken Kesey meets Hunter S. Thompson: introduces Hells Angels to Merry Pranksters; Alan Ginsberg, Richard Alpert at party
August 11 Major race riot—6 days—in Watts, Los Angeles, CA leaves 35 dead
August 13 National Guard enter Watts riots in Los Angeles
August 14 Sonny and Cher release I Got You, Babe, #1 Britain-worldwide ‘R+R Hall of Fame’s ‘greatest pop-rock song of the ’Sixties’

Biscayne Boulevard, Miami amid hurricane Betsy, August 1965

August 23 Première of Beatles’ Help!
August 27-September 14 Hurricane Betsy hits Bahamas, Florida Keys, Louisiana and southern U.S. states—first tropical storm to cause in excess of $1billion damage, c.f. Katrina 2005
August 31 Burning draft cards becomes illegal
September 5 San Francisco author Michael Fallon uses hippie in San Francisco counterculture article: Blue Unicorn coffee house; LEMAR [Legalize Marijuana] and Sexual Freedom League meet in hippie houses
September 25 Eve of Destruction sung by Barry McGuire top of the charts
October 1 Anti-pollution bill sets emission standards for cars
October 16 100,000 anti-war protesters U.S-nationwide in 80 cities
November Unsafe at Any Speed published by Ralph Nader: re automobile industry’s disregard for safety
November 22 Bob Dylan marries Sarah Lowndes; moves to Woodstock, NY
December 25 Timothy Leary arrested for el poto at Mexican border

1966
January 3 The Psychedelic Shop head shop opens Haight Street, San Francisco
January 14 March on Atlanta, GA to protest oust of Julian Bond
January 17 B-52 collides, drops four 10-megaton H-bombs over Spain, none explodes, cover-up follows
January 20 Ken Kesey arrested with Mountain Girl on the roof
January 21 First light show, Grateful Dead, 10,000 attend in San Francisco
February 19 Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin perform at the Fillmore

Dead Rock Stars: Janis received posthumous Grammy, Lifetime Awards

March 3 GI Bill grants veterans rights to education, housing, health and jobs
March 11 Timothy Leary sentenced Texas to 30 years in jail trying to cross into Mexico with personal marijuana
March 25 Anti-Vietnam war protests in NYC bring out 25,000 on Fifth Avenue. Other protests 7-U.S. cities, 7 internationally
April FBI releases file on LSD, ‘drug’ bad press
April 30 Mississippi blacks build tent city under President Johnson’s window to protest housing conditions
April Discothèques are the rage in New York and Los Angeles; Andy Warhol produces light shows
April 7 Sandoz stops supplying LSD to researchers
April 12 New York Stock Exchange hit with anti-war leaflets
April 16 Timothy Leary arrest at Millbrook by G.Gordon Liddy FBI for marijuana possession
May 15 Anti-war demonstration Washington D.C, 10,000 assemble
June Star Trek tv series by Gene Roddenberry débût; series ran three summers on NBC
July 29 Bob Dylan: motorcycle accident
July 10-year anniversary Cutty Sark Tall Ships youth race North Sea international ports–Bergen, Aberdeen, Hamburg, Copenhagen, patron HRH Prince Philip
August 5 John Lennon pronounces ‘Beatles more popular than Jesus’
August 18 Red Guard begins to remove western influence in China
September George Harrison to India:six weeks study sitar with Ravi Shankar

Cream, Airplane, Big Brother, CSN: those were the years

September Timothy Leary holds press conference in New York Press Club announcing formation of a psychedelic religion of Spiritual Discovery ‘Turn on, tune in, drop out’, and starts nightly presentations at Village Theater
November 5 Walk for Love and Peace and Freedom: 10,0000 attend in New York City
December Cream first album released by Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker
November 5 Mariner-3 sent to Mars: first fly by

1967 Summer of Love
January 14 Gathering of the Tribes, First Human Be-In, 20,000 San Francisco
January 27 US-USSR-GB sign treaty banning nuclear weapons in space
February 25,000 U.S. troops sent to Cambodian border
February Beatles release Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, Michelle, Yesterday
March US Scientists’ report LSD causes chromosome damage: not validated
March Berkeley Barb starts ‘smokable banana’ rumor, based on Donovan’s song Mellow Yellow
March 3 Alice B. Toklas dies
March 18 First U.S. supertanker wreck: Torrey Canyon spills 90,000-tons oil, English coast
March 26 Be-In Central Park, NY, 10,000 attend
April 5 Grayline starts hippie tours of Haight-Ashbury
April 10 Vietnam Week begins Draft card burnings and anti-draft deomonstrations
April 15 Anti-Vietnam War protest 400,000 march from Central Park to UN, Speeches by Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Dr Benjamin Spock
May Paul McCartney announces all Beatles have ‘dropped acid’
May 19 First U.S. air strike on Hanoi
May 20 Flower Power day in New York City
June 2 Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album released
June 16 Monterey Pop Festival, Monterey Bay, CA
June 21 Summer solstice party, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
June 25 Beatles sing All You Need is Love on worldwide television
June 30 448,400 U.S troops total in Vietnam
July Summer of Love in San Francisco

Fabled ‘summer of love’, 1967 came midway thru cultural change

– Summer of rioting in U.S. streets: Chicago, Brooklyn, Cleveland, Baltimore
July 1 Sgt Pepper hits #1
July 11 Newark riots start ‘long hot summer’, 43 die Detroit ‘worst in U.S. history’
July 26 H Rap Brown arrested for inciting riot in Maryland
July 29 The Doors‘ Light my Fire and Procol Harem’s Whiter Shade of Pale at #1
August 26 Jimi Hendrix’s Are you Experienced? hits charts
August 27 Beatles in India with Maharishi; informed of Brian Epstein’s death
September Richard Alpert meets Bhagwan Dass, Blue Tibetan Katmandu, stays in India; follows until he meets his guru
September 15 Donovan performs at the Hollywood Bowl
October 3 Woody Guthrie dies, age 55
October 8 Che Guevarra killed in Bolivia by U.S-trained troops
October 12 Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills with Janis Joplin at top of LP charts
October 21-22 Anti-war protesters storm the Pentagon
October 26 Draft deferments eliminated for those who violate draft laws or interfere with recruitment
November 9 Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner, San Francisco
November 14 Air Quality Act provides $428 million to fight air pollution
November 20 National commission on Product Safety established
December Beatles release Magical Mystery Tour
December 486,000 American troops in Vietnam [of total 15,000 killed, 60% died in 1967]
December ‘Stop the Draft’ movement organized by 40 anti-war groups U.S. nationwide protests
December 5 1000 anti-war protesters New York induction center, 585 arrested: Allen Ginsberg, Dr Benjamin Spock
December 5 Beatles open Apple Shop, London
December 8 Otis Redding records Dock of the Bay
December 10 Otis Redding, 26 (b. September 9, 1941) dies plane crash
December 22 Owsley arrested, stops making acid
December 31 Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner, Dick Gregory pronounce themselves ‘yippies’

1968
January 16 Youth International Party —Yippies— founded
January 18 Eartha Kitt visit LBJ at White House speaks against Viet war
January 22 B-52 carrying H-bomb crashes in Greenland
January 23 USS Pueblo seized by Korea
January 31 Viet Cong launch Tet Offensive
February Timothy Leary evicted from Millbrook House
February Beatles visit Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at Rishikesh-on-Ganges; Mia Farrow, Donovan follow
February 8 George Wallace announces candidacy for President on law and order platform
February 28 Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India founded
March 12 Eugene McCarthy wins 42% of New Hampshire vote in presidential primary
March 16 My Lai massacre: 200-500 Vietnamese villagers killed
March 16 Robert F. Kennedy announces candidacy for President
March 31 LBJ announces decision not to run again; offers partial Vietnam bombing halt
April 4 Martin Luther King shot, killed Memphis, TN
April Week following Martin Luther King’s murder: black uprisings 125 U.S.cities
April 6 Oakland police ambush Black Panthers. Eldridge Cleaver arrested with bullet-shattered leg. Bobby Hutton shot/killed
April 8 Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs established [DEA]
April 11 LBJ signs Civil Rights bill banning housing discrimination
April 11 Major reserve call-up for Vietnam duty

Monday Night Class with Stephen Gaskin ©1971

April 14 Love-in at Malibu Canyon, CA
April 15 Start of Spring Mobilization against Vietnam war
April 23 SDS-led students take over five buildings Columbia University, one week, 700 arrested
April 24 300 black students occupy admin. building Boston University, demand black studies, financial aid
April 25 Paul Horn records in Taj Mahal
April 29 Rock musical HAIR opens Biltmore Theater, Broadway
May ‘The Weight‘ single released by The Band—Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 songs that shaped rock and roll. Rolling Stone‘s song that ‘most influenced American popular music’entered U.S. British, European and Oriental charts
May 10 Vietnam peace talks begin, Paris
June 3 Andy Warhol shot by unknown woman
June 5 Robert F. Kennedy assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan after winning California primary
June 14 Dr Benjamin Spock convicted of conspiracy to abet draft evasion
July 1 Nuclear non-proliferation treaty signed by 61 nations
August 1 541,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam
August 3 First Newport Pop Festival Costa Mesa, CA to 100,000+ audience. Performers included Steppenwolf Jefferson Aiplane, Sonny and Cher, Tiny Tim, the Byrds, Iron Butterfly, the Grateful Dead and Eric Burdon and the Animals

Seminal literature: Ram Dass published BE HERE NOW 1971, changed a generation

August 8 Nixon and Agnew nominated during Miami riots
August 20 Soviets invade Czechoslovakia
August 25-29 Democratic convention Chicago police riot 10,000 demonstrators vs 11,000 Chicago police; 6,000 National Guard 7,500 US army troops and 1,000 FBI, CIA and other services agents. Humphrey nominated on platform supporting war
August 28 Humphrey-Muskie nominated amid violent Chicago anti-war protest. Bystanders/press beaten by police
October 18 John Lennon; Yoko Ono arrested
October 30 ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’ released by Marvin Gaye; Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, 2004
November First ‘Whole Earth Catalog‘ publshed by Stewart Brand
November 5 Nixon elected Prsident, Spiro Agnew VP
November 6 Student Strike San Francisco State U

1969
January 28 Santa Barbara, CA oil well blowout
February Massive strike UC Berkeley for Ethnic Studies
February 11 200 students smash computers with axes, set computer center on fire during sit-in protest racism at St George Williams College, Montreal
February 13 33 students arrested at admin bldg sit-in University of Massachusetts
February 18 Students seize building, begin boycott Howard University
February 24 Students occupy admin building at Penn State
February 27 Police charge student picket lines, club and arrest two Chicano leaders at UC Berkeley
February 27 Thousands rampage thru nine buildings at U Wisconsin Madison over black enrollments

Jim Morrison in 1969

March 1 Doors concert, Dinner Key Auditorium, Coconut Grove, FL; Jim Morrison peaceful débacle; used by media/city officials to arrest Morrison; trials/pardon/pending sentence +$50,000 bail bond remained unresolved at his death in Paris two years later
March 2 Concorde maiden flight of SuperSonicTransport planned to take London Heathrow-New York JFK in three hours; achieves 1350-mph
March 12 Paul McCarney marries Linda Eastman
March 20 John-Yoko fly Gibraltar, marry, fly Amsterdam for week ‘lie-in’ for peace
March 20 James Earl Ray sentenced 99 years for murder Martin Luther King
April 543,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam
April 4 Smothers Brothers TV show canceled ‘too controversial’
April 9 300 Harvard students led by SDS Seize University Hall, evict eight deans
April 10 police called into Harvard, 37 injured, 200 arrested
April 11 start of 3-day student strike Harvard
April 22 Harvard faculty votes to create black studies program, give student vote to select faculty
April 22 City College NY closed after black/Puerto Rican students self-lock re higher minority enrollment
April 23 Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death for murder of Robt.F. Kennedy
April 24 US B-52s launch biggest attack on N Vietnam, protests in 40 cities
May 15 Hippies in People’s Park, Berkeley attacked by police/National Guard
July Movie ‘Easy Rider’ released: Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, music stardom for The Band: The Weight
July Stephen Gaskin starts the Farm commune, Tennessee
July 3 Brian Jones of Rolling Stones dies
July 14 Easy Rider premières
July 20 Men walk on the Moon
July 27 Police raid on gay bar, Greenwich Village NYC results in Stonewall Uprising 2000 protesters battle 400 police, start of Gay Liberation movement
August Blind Faith forms, with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker from Cream and Steve Winwood from Traffic

Albion Doo-Wah 1969 post-Woodstock sounds from Cat Mother’s country cabin in Mendocino wilds

August 9 Sharon Tate LaBiancas found murdered by Charles Manson
August 15-17 WOODSTOCK Festival; 500,000 people gather for three days of music and peace that changed the world
August 24 Movie Alice’s Restaurant released with Arlo Guthrie
August 26 FBI reports 98% increase in marijuana arrests from 1966-1968
September 3 Ho Chi Min, North Vietnam dies
September 13-14 Big Sur Folk Festival
September 24 Chicago Eight trial begins Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin charged with conspiracy to incite riots
October 8-11 The Weatherman ‘Days of Rage’
October 15 Peace Day 5000,000 protestors U.S. nationwide. First Vietnam moratorium
October 21 Jack Kerouac, b. March 12, 1922, beat author of On the Road dies
October 30 Supreme Court orders desegregation nationwide

CSN hit San Francisco, Altamont with Wooden Ships, Guinevere

November 15 500,000 march Washington, DC for peace-largest anti-war rally in U.S. history; speakers- McCarthy, McGovern, Coretta King, Dick Gregory, Leonard Bernstein; Singers; Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul and Mary, John Denver, Mich Miller, cast of Hair
November 17 First round of SALT talks, Helsinki
November 20 78 Native Americans (AIM) seize Alcatraz Island, demand its return
November 20 DDT use banned in residential areas, USA
November 24 Lt William Calley charged with murder 102 S. Vietnamese civilians at My Lai
November 25 President Nixon orders all US germ warfare stockpiles destroyed
December over 100,000 U.S. troops dead or injured in Vietnam
December First draft lottery since WWII held NYC
December 6 Altamont Free Concert, Altamont Speedway, CA Hells Angels incident; one death Performers: CSN, Rolling Stones, Santana, Grateful Dead (did not perform)
December 8 Raid on Black Panther headquarters Los Angeles shoot-out
December 24 Rolling Stones Altamont free concert erupts in violence, one spectator killed (Sidereal in attendance)

Ken Carey’s Return of the Bird Tribes, HarperCollins, see 1991

The Awesome Seventies
1970
January 1 Nixon signs National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA]
February Timothy Leary sentenced to ten years for Tex/Mex marijuana arrest
February 4 Riot in Isla Vista, CA protesting Chicago verdicts
February 18 Chicago Seven acquitted of consipiracy charges
February 19 Explosions in three office buildings in New York, California, Washington, Maryland; Michigan; Weathermen suspected
February 25 Isla Vista Riots, Santa Barbara Bank of America bombed
February 26 U.S. Army discontinues surveillance of civilian demonstrators’ files
March 6 Three Weathermen blow themselves up in Greenwich Village New York
April 1 Cigarette commercials banned on U.S.radio, television
April 7 Referring to student unrest Gov. Ronald Reagan of California: ‘If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with’
April 10 Paul McCartney announces breakup of Beatles

Greek letter theta: symbol of Earth Day, of back-to-Earth movement

April 22 First Earth Day Millions participate [former Arbor Day, now transferred to April 26!?!]; John Muir birthday, April 21, 1838]
– Nixon sends troops into Cambodia
May 4 Four College Students killed by National Guard at Kent State University, OH
May 5 Nuclear non-proliferation treaty takes effect
May 8 Construction workers attacked anti-war demonstrators, Wall Street, NYC
May 9 100,000 attend anti-war rally Washington, DC
May 14 Police kill two Jackson State during violent student demonstrations
June 15 Supreme Court approves conscientious objector status on moral grounds
June 18 U.S. voting age lowered to 18; now old enough to kill and vote
June 11 Daniel Berrigan arrested by FBI for kidnapping/bombing conspiracy
September 12 Timothy Leary escapes prison, San Luis Obispo helped by Weather Underground, joins Eldridge Cleaver, Algiers
September 18 Jimi Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) dies, age 27
October 4 Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) dies, age 27
October 13 Angela Davis arrested on kidnapping, murder amd conspiracy charges
December Paul McCartney sues to dissolve Beatles
December 2 Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] activated

1971

First Mars Rovers ‘lost’ in 1971 ‘found’ again April 2013 on Martian soil

January 7 DDT use outlawed by U.S. Court of Appeals
January 12 Rev. Philip Berrigan + 6 others indicted for conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger; bomb federal buildings
January 12 Ralph Nader forms Earth Act group
January 25 Chas. Manson and followers found guilty of murder
January 25 Supreme Court first ruling against sexual discrimination in workplace
February 2 [Candlemas] Ramsar Convention on World Wetlands adopted in Iran shores of Caspian Sea. Convention now celebrated internationally with water-conservation/awareness projects
March 1 Bomb explodes in Capitol men’s room. Weather Underground claims repsponsibility ‘in retaliation for Laos’
March 1 U.S. stops licensing commercial whale hunters

Whaling in California, c,1924

March 8 U.S. Supreme Court rules objection to war not grounds for conscientious objection
March 23 U.S.Congress votes to lower voting age to 18
March 29 Lt. Calley convicted for My Lai massacre
March 29 Chas. Manson et al sentenced to death after longest trial in California history
April 5 Friends of the Earth founded in Britain; International Dawn Chorus Day
April 19 1000+ Veterans demonstrate against Vietnam war Washington, DC
April 20 Supreme Court upholds school busing to end segregation
April 23 Vietnam vets return medals, ribbons in antiwar protest
April 24 350,000+ veterans march on Washington DC and San Francisco to protest war
April 26 50,000 demonstrators in Washington DC set up Algonquin Peace city
May 3 May Day anti-war protest Washington DC
May 11 Native American (AIM) occupation of Alcatraz ends after 19 months
May 28 First Russian Mars Landers launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, USSR, see December fail
June 13 Pentagon Papers published by New York Times
July 3 Jim Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971) voice of The Doors dies in Paris, age 27 (Joplin, Hendrix identical age at death)
July 6 Louis Armstrong, tour-de-force jazz trumpeter-bandleader-musician Satchmo, b.August 4, 1901 New Orleans, dies New York in seventieth year
August Earthwatch Institute earth environment charitable org founded Cambridge, Mass.
November – Nixon starts withdrawing troops from Vietnam
December Greenpeace founded in Vancouver, BC
December 2 Russian Mars Landers 2 and 3 “lost” minutes after soft landing

1972

Native American peaceful occupation of Alcatraz island, San Francisco Bay 1971

January 25 Shirley Chisholm first black woman to run for president
February Life Magazine ‘high school generation interests security stability, comfort’
February 24 Angela Davis is released after 16 months in prison
March Equal Rights amendment (ERA) passes US Congress
March 22 13-member National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse recommends legalization of Cannabis
March 22 Equal Rights Amendment prohibiting sex discrimination passes Senate
March 30 N Vietnamese launch attack thru DMZ into S Vietnam; U.S. resumes bombing
April 10 Biological Warfare treaty signed by US and 120 nations
April 15 President Nixon Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau sign pact to clean up Great Lakes
May FBI director J Edgar Hoover dies
May 9 President Nixon orders mining of North Vietnam’s ports
May 15 Gov. George Wallace shot during primary campaign Maryland
May 18 Margaret Kuhn start Gray Panthers to protest discrimiantion against elderly
May 22 Nixon makes first US presidential trip to Moscow
May 26 US and USSR freeze nuclear weapons at current level
June 5-16 First UN Conference on Human Environment: created World Environment Day [and World Oceans Day≠]

Global warming 1950-2012, with El Niño-La Niña years

June 8 ≠World Oceans Day El Niño-La Niña live data shown here
June 14 EPA bans DDT in the USA
June 17 Watergate Break-In
June 29 Supreme Court rules death penalties unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment
July First Rainbow Gathering, Colorado
July 1 Gloria Steinem launches feminist magazine Ms
July 10 Democratic Convention nominates George McGovern for President of U.S.
July 30 Deliverance, screenplay by elusive James Dickie, directed by John Boorman, cements careers of Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox, and Ned Beatty; strikes fear into American moviegoers
August 11 Last U.S. military unit withdraws from Veitnam
August 18 Water Pollution Control Act passed by Congress over Nixon’s veto
August 21 Republican National Convention renominates Nixon and Agnew
August 23 1100 antiwar protest arrested outside Republican National Convention Center
August 28 Consumer Product Safety Commision established
September 5 Arabs kill Israeli athletes at Munich Olympic Games, Bavaria
October Canadian director Douglas Trumbull’s Saturn special effects set—still under wraps in 2001:A Space Odyssey—released Silent Running with Bruce Dern; environmental script has worldwide impact during decade of war
November 13 U.S. + 90 countries sign International Oceanic Pollution act
December 18 full scale bombing of North Vietnam resumes

1973
January 27 Vietnam ceasefire agreement signed after 58,000 U.S. casualties: miltary draft ends

Carl Sagan changes worldview, 1973

January 30 McCord + Liddy found guilty of Watergate burglary, wiretap attempt
February 28 250 American Indians [AIM] occupy Wounded Knee
March 29 Last American troops withdrawn from Vietnam
April 16 U.S.A bombs Laos
April 30 Nixon accepts resignations of HR Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, releases John Dean; denies knowledge of break-in or cover-up
June U.S. Dept of Defense (DoD) invents GPS for worldwide military surveillance, see 1998
July 20 U.S. Senate subpoenas Watergate tapes
August 8 Nixon resigns amid Watergate scandal
September Carl Sagan publishes The Cosmic Connection: an Extraterrestrial Perspective to world acclaim, bringing concept of Higher Intelligent Lifeforms—Kardashev Civilizations levels I, II, II into public domain; television series, his academic influence in NASA/military circles softens blow for billions
October 10 Spiro Agnew resigns
October 16 Henry Kissinger awarded Nobel Peace Prize
October 23 Nixon Impeachment begins
November Congress passes Freedom of Information Act
November 7 War Powers Act passed over Nixon’s veto: gives Congress approval for military actions over 60 days
November 9 Six Watergate defendants sentenced

1974
February 4 Patty Hearst, 19, kidnapped by the SLA [Symbionese Liberation Army]

Inner Space meets Outer Space—Astrophysicist Sagan visits Tim Leary in jail

February 12 SLA demands Randolph Hearst begin food distribution to poor
February-March Carl Sagan visits Timothy Leary in jail, Vacaville, CA—Inner Space meets Outer Space
April 1 Jane Fonda arrives in Vietnam on second visit
April 15 Patricia Hearst participates in bank robbery with SLA members
May 17 SLA shoot-out in LA
September 1974-December 1975 Britain’s Three-Day-Week: government attempt to create Socialist Commonwealth (rescued by Margaret Thatcher, see 1979 below)
July 30 Two articles of impeachment voted against President Nixon
September 4 Nixon pardoned by President Ford
September 7 CIA operation against Chile’s Marxist government disclosed
September 16 President Ford announces conditional pardon for draft evaders and deserters
November 16 SETI sends Message to ET from Arecibo PR World’s Largest Radio Telescope
November 21 Freedom of Information act passed over presidential veto
December 21 New York Times reports CIA illegal domestic activites in Viet war

1975
March 8 United Nations initiated International Women’s Day
April 17 Khmer Rouge reclaims Cambodia
April 30 Fall of Saigon—North Vietnamese troops enter city

Lineup of the century: The Last Waltz ‘farewell’ concert

September 18 Patty Hearst kidnapped, San Francisco
October New York Radio City Music Hall UNESCO African Literacy Drive sponsored by Marvin Gaye
November 20 COA and FBI charged with illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens; planning foreign assassinations

1976
January 21 Concorde enters service [Aérospatiale—BAC French-British consortium] flying London-Dakar and Paris-Rio de Janeiro routes
February 12 Production of Monsanto Red Cye #2 banned
April BBC ‘most successful drama series of all time’: I, Claudius, Robert Graves-scriptwriter Jack Pulman launched careers of Siân Phillips, Derek Jacobi, Patrick Stewart (future Star Trek), John Rhys-Davies and John Hurt (Alien series)
August 15 Apocalypse Now world première, ends career of Marlo Brando; makes Robert Duval, Martin Sheen
August “hottest summer since records began“, Europe *see millennium decade
November 25 Thanksgiving: The Last Waltz ‘farewell concert’ by The Band, Winterland, San Francisco special guests Paul Butterfield, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Ringo Starr, Ronnie Hawkins, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, Neil Diamond, Bobby Charles, Eric Clapton. Filmed as Martin Scorsese’s Last Waltz released 1978

Icon for a generation of space-age children boldly going…

Hottest summers Northern hemisphere, mean world temperatures
2010
2005
1998
2003
2002
2006
2009
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2004
2012
1976
1959
1949
1936

1977
May 2 2000 Clamshell Alliance occupy site of nuclear reactor Seabrook, NH, 1400 arrested
June 6 Washington Post reports U.S. developing neutron bomb
July Star Wars movie released; Harrison Ford becomes idol of youth generation overnight
August 16 Elvis Presley (b.January 8, 1935)—the King— dies, age 42
August 20 – Voyager II and
September 5 Voyager I launched from Cape Canaveral, FL by NASA to outer solar system, aboard Titan-Centaur rocket [for official crossing the heliopause, see 2012-2013]. Aboard is ‘golden disk’ inspired by Carl Sagan, q.v. 1996

1978
June 15 Tellico Dam project, Tennessee halted by snail darter per Endangered Species Act
July 18 American Indian Movement [AIM] leads march from Alcatraz to Washington, DC to protest legislation depriving Native American land rights
August Close Encounters of the Third Kind released by Steven Spielberg; humanity enchanted by ET
September Martin Scorsese releases The Last Waltz movie of The Band’s Winterland ‘farewell concert’, see 1976

1979

Margaret Thatcher, new female Prime Minister of Britain launches Conservative manifesto. Isle of Wight May 1983

February 1 Patty Hearst released from jail
March 28 Three Mile Island Pennsylvania radiation accident, partial meltdown; plant to be dismantled in 2044
April SS France, longest passenger ship ever built, record unchallenged until 345-metre RMS Queen Mary-II in 2004, sold to Norwegian Line; sails as SS Norway, increased to 76,000tons, until scrapped 2006
May 4 Margaret Thatcher accepts positon as Great Britain’s first female Prime Minister; serves three consecutive terms; brings Britain out of recession
July U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission orders Three-Mile Island’s undamaged Unit-1 reactor remain shut down until accident is studied
September 23 200,000 in NYC for nuclear weapons protest

Robert Wise directing actors on set of Star Trek: the Motion Picture, USS Enterprise bridge, 1979

December 7 Saturn Award for Best Director Robert Wise‘s Star Trek: the Motion Picture premieres worldwide; Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films Best Ever Film

The Eventful Eighties
1980
May 18 Mount St. Helens, WA ±8364ft(!!) collapses; ash builds in jet stream, falls in TX, AZ, OK 2-year worldwide weather depression; c.f. Yellowstone—3500-miles—blows, 2millionBC, 640,000BC, 1360BC where ash fell in LA, FL, Africa, Asia, precipitated global cooling
July Montreux Jazz Festival: Marvin Gaye among other black performers celebrated in Europe
September 25 John Bonham, (b. May 31, 1948) musician, songwriter, drummer for Led Zeppelin, dies, age 32; Led Zeppelin disbanded, see 2012
December 8 John Lennon b. 9 October 1940, murdered outside apartment New York, age 40

1981
April 12 First Space Shuttle STS-1 Columbia launched from Cape Canaveral, 20-yr anniversary Yuri Gagarin space capsule USSR

International Peace symbol since 1981

May 11 Bob Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981), 36, dies brain cancer
September 21 Equinox UN General Assembly ratified first International Day of Peace; specifically encouraging ceasefire and absence of violence/war for one day

1983
April 4 First ex-vehicular space walk from shuttle Challenger-4
June 18 First U.S. woman in space Sally Ride helps deploy and retrieve comms satellite aboard shuttle Challenger-5
November 28 First Spacelab launch shuttle Columbia-6

1984-1985 One million dead in Ethiopian famine; see Bob Geldof Live-Aid, below
Live-Aid London:
Live-Aid Philadelphia:

1985

LiveAid largest benefit concert in history

July 13 Wembley Stadium, London: First Live-Aid Concert opened by HRH Prince/Princess of Wales (Diana and Charles) arranged by Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats); with simultaneous concert Philadelphia: British, US international acts with Genesis drummer, Phil Collins playing both locations (Sting in London—74,000—Led Zeppelin in JFK Stadium, Philadelphia—90,000) flies Concorde between to catch both shows.

Of the planet’s five billion people, 1.4 billion stopped and watched Geldof’s “global jukebox,” and were treated to one of the biggest, most ambitious concerts ever staged. At one point, according to a stage announcement, 95 percent of the world’s television sets were tuned in to Live Aid

April 1 Marvin Gaye, b.April 2, 1939, voice of Motown, murdered by his father, age 44; posthumous Grammy Achievement Award and Rock and Roll House of Fame
May: Three-Mile-Island: NRC allows GPU, successor to Metropolitan-Edison as plant’s post-accident operating company, to restart Unit-1.
July 31 First successful breeding/reintroduction of sea eagles to Scotland

1986

Return of sea eagles, osprey, snowy owl to Scotland

April 5 Chernobyl Nuclear accident in Soviet Union; cloud spreads N. Europe; newly-planted crops die
May 26 Michael Jackson’s huge benefit chain of Hands Across America, 6.5-million people joined hands from Battery Park, NY to RMS Queen Mary docked Long Beach, CA
June 20-30 First Burning Man prelude to annual festival, see 2010, burned by Larry Harvey and friends, Baker Beach, San Francisco
November 26 Star Trek: The Voyage Home, directed by Leonard Nimoy smashed attendance records; human-space-whale theme popular worldwide

1987
July World Population Day: world population passed seven billion, 1987
August 16-17 First global synchronized Harmonic Convergence group meditation-prayer; celestial Grand Trine of major planets Jupiter-Saturn-Moon-Neptune-Uranus-Mars-Venus, see 2003
September 16 International protocol agreed to protect Earth’s ozone layer
October 19 Black Monday world stock market crash
October 1 San Andreas fault (Whittier) tremor Richter-6.1, $100million damage to freeways L.A, San Francisco

1988
May 8 Robert Heinlein, ‘dean of science fiction’, fantasy author ‘Stranger in a Strange Land‘ dies age 88 Carmel, CA
July 15 Bruce Willis’s Hollywood blockbuster “Die Hard‘premières, ‘largest grossing movie of decade’

1989
May 20: Memorial Day weekend: GaiaFest worldwide celebrations of the Earth

May 21 Universal release Kevin Costner, Burt Lancaster ‘Field of Dreams‘ inspire millions; see 2012

Berlin Wall, c. 1991 courtesy Autobahn Hamburg-Berlin

October 3 Berlin Wall opens; DDR and West Germany unofficially reunited, Berlin Wall souvenirs proliferate Europe-wide
December 23 Leonard Bernstein conducts orchestra comprising musicians of ‘occupying’ nations: French, British, US, Soviet, in his reworked Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Schiller’s Ode to Joy becomes Ode to Freiheit/Freedom; concerts repeated either side of Wall East and West
December 25 on both sides of Wall, supported but E/W Berlin choirs, signals official reunification underway

Leonard Bernstein heals the breach: December concerts East and West Berlin

The Spending Nineties
1990
Margaret Thatcher replaced as Leader of Conservative party retires in face of laborite derision. Great Britain becomes financial power again —Thatcherite economics
October 14 Leonard Bernstein, composer, conductor, see Berlin Wall, above, dies age 72 New York
October 15 Apple Macintosh Classic computer launched on unsuspecting world

1991
June 24 Reforesting Scotland founded
June 28 Ken Carey‘s ‘Return of the Bird Tribes‘published by HarperCollins, establishes Carey as spiritual guru—Starseed Transmissions, Third Millennium series
September 28 Miles Dewey Davis, (b. May 26, 1926) genius jazz trumpet/musician dies Santa Monica, age 65

1992
Collapse of Soviet Union. Russia reemerges
Holy Loch US Nuclear Submarine base, Scotland closed. Excess of 200 redundant ICBMs/ISSMs Trident missiles ‘redistributed’
September 28 Mars Observer launch
October 4 Taiga Rescue Network—Boreal Forest Network founded specifically to protect Arctic forests from exploitation/shale oil drilling etc.
November 21-30 International Buy-Nothing Day, founded Mexico to combat overconsumption; becomes US ‘Black Friday’ “NO-SHOP-DROP” day

1993
March 22 [spring equinox N.hemishere] United Nations declared World Day for Water

1994
January 17 Northridge 6.7-Richter earthquake, San Fernando, CA: costliest quake in history $20billion, 57 dead
July Comet Shoemaker-Levy crashes into Jupiter; billions watch televised impact

Plant for the Planet

August 9 International Day of World’s Indigenous Peoples established by U.N.General Assembly
September GPS begun 1973 by DoD offered to US/Europe as fully functioning satellite directional navigation aid—free

1995
June 17 World Day to Combat Desertification established by UN (UNCCD)
August 9 Jerry Garcia (August 1, 1942–August 9, 1995) lead guitar Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, dies age 53
December 2 SOHO—SOlar Heliospheric Observatory—launched into heliocentric orbit to study gas and magnetic fields, see 2012

1996
May 31 Timothy Leary (1920-1996) dies aged 76, or so it seems
September 21, 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA) initiated discrimination against same-sex marriages in some U.S. states
October Cradleboard Teaching Project founded by Buffy Sainte-Marie to improve Native American Indian ‘participation in learning’ educational non-profit org
December 4 Mars Pathfinder launch
December 20 Carl Sagan (b. November 9, 1934), prophetic astronomer, author of Cosmos, Contact television presenter of Cosmos dies, age 62

mingling musical modes. iDead for the 21stC

1997
April 5 Allen Ginsberg (3 June 1926-5 April 1997) dies, age 71
July 4 Mars Pathfinder Sojourner Rover lands successfully; comms lost Sept.27, same year
August 31 HRH Diana, Princess of Wales, dies Paris (Lady Diana Frances née Spencer b.1 July 1961), age 36
October 15 NASA launch Cassini-Huygens Saturn-orbiter spacecraft from Cape Canaveral on Titan IVB/ rocket
1997-1998 Aerosmith‘s Steven Tyler ‘Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing’ all time high single, featured backing daughter Liv Tyler in Bruce Willis’s Armageddon, blockbuster 1998; see video above

1998
January 5 Sonny Bono dies in ski accident
July Deep Impact and Armageddon; cement Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis’s careers as artist-cinematographer-producer-actor-benefactor – highest grossing world-wide space sci-fi action fantasies set world alight
June VP Al Gore initiates upgrade of planetary GPS—freely provided American gift to world
August 25 World List of Threatened Trees published, detailing 8753 endangered planetary species
September 6-28 Aerosmith #1 Billboard’s Hot 100 greatest hit I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing after band’s 28 years together; success of blockbuster Armageddon
Dec 11 Mars Climate Orbiter launch

1999
July 16 JFK jr (b. Nov. 25, 1960) and wife Carolyn die in Atlantic ocean private plane crash
October 12 Human population passes six billion mark

30- years of Space Shuttle: Challenger, Columbia, Endeavor— symbol of freedom

“To me, the chance of surviving with dignity on this planet hinges on the acquisition of a new mind. This new mind must be wrought, among other things, from a radically different epistemology which will inform relevant actions.”
French neuroscientist Francisco Varela

The Naughty Noughties
2000
January 1 Millennium Bug did not strike–damp squib; rise of internet for everyman
April 3 Terence McKenna, (b. 16 November 1946) psychonaut, author, lecturer in metaphysics, entheogens, shamanism, dies of brain tumor, age 53
December 30 Cassini Orbiter on way to Saturn, does close fly-by of Jupiter

Golden Lizzie ‘GoldElse’ icon of Berlin’s victory over 3 centuries of war

“We have to create culture; not watch TV, read magazines, not even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe. What is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. If you’re giving it all away to icons, you’re not empowering yourself. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron, consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”
― Terence McKenna

2001

HHGttG: DON’T PANIC

May 11 Douglas Adams, author of ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy‘, dies age 49
November 30 George Harrison (25 February 1943–29 November 2001) dies, age 54

2002
Hubble Space Telescope deployed by NASA-controlled space shuttle program

2003
January 16-February 1 Space Shuttle Columbia micro-gravity/earthscience research flight, all seven astronauts killed on failed re-entry
July Tesla Motor Company, CA first lithium battery electric car in service
September Concorde’s last flight; SST retired from service after 27 years
November 3 Harmonic Concordance millions meditate worldwide under heavenly grand sextile-star tetrahedron; 16 years after astrological Convergence Grand Trine, q.v. August 1987

2004
January 31 Mars Rover Opportunity/Spirit lands on Mars

2005
January 14 NASA’s Huygens Titan-lander component of Cassini orbiter, lands on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan
February 16 Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases implemented
February 20 Hunter S.Thompson, (b.July 1937) American author ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas‘, ‘Gonzo Papers‘, journalist dies, age 67

Hurricane Katrina, greatest —unprepared-for—natural disaster in US history until 2013

April Cher completes 2003-2005 three-year 325-venue Farewell Tour highest grossing female tour ever
August 23-30 Hurricane Katrina hits southern USA:FEMA,emergency & rescue services collapse; water shortage Memorial Medical Center chaos; media coverup;2000 die needlessly. Highest winds 174mph; Costliest natural disaster in history of USA
September 14 Robert Wise, b. 10 Sept 1914, Saturn-Oscar-award-winning director Star Trek, Andromeda Strain, West Side Story, Day the Earth Stood Still, dies age 91 Los Angeles

2006
January 16 International centennial birthday Symposium ‘LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug’, for Albert Hofmann, Swiss chemist discoverer of LSD, Santa Cruz, CA
September SS France, see 1963, synonym SS Norway, see 1979, scrapped

2007
January 1 Romania and Bulgaria join European Union—27 nations
February 7 U.S. sends 30,000 troops to Iraq

2008

Milk Hill Astrolabe alien code came in 3 phases solstice week 2009

March 19 Arthur C. Clarke, sci-fi guru author 2001: A Space Odyssey, b.16 December 1917,
July 24 Barack Obama addresses Berliners at Siegesäule/Victory statue ‘Golden Lizzie‘ pre-election campaign
July-August California wildfires claim 1.6million acres; largest loss on record, mismanaged for inadequate resources focused on So.CA property to detriment of No.CA forests; Yosemite fire started by target-shooters; majority lightning-Santa Ana-induced

2009
March European beaver reintroduced in eastern Scotland
April Actor Morgan Freeman wins Oscar award for his role as Nelson Mandela in Clint Eastwood directed ‘Invictus‘
June 25 Michael Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) dies cardiac arrest Los Angeles, age 50
June 21-30 Triple-phase Crop Circle Milk Hill sextant/astrolabe alien script defies translation-interpretation

2010
January 4 World’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa, 2722ft (Burj Dubai until Dubai bankcrupt, borrow from Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President UAR, Ruler Abu Dhabi, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority who bale out in time for New Year’s opening
May 29 Dennis Hopper, b May 17, 1936 Dodge, KS movie actor, director, revolutionary, dies, age 74

2010-2011

Burning Man in Nevada desert has become annual Labor week event

August last week- Labor Day weekend September
Annual Burning Man Festival and intentional community, Black Rock, Nevada desert
HOPI SAY:

‘There is a river flowing now very fast. Some will be afraid and try to hold on 
to the shore. Feeling torn apart, they will suffer
 greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let
 go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes 
open and our heads above the water.
And I say, look around and see who is in there with you and celebrate’
Hopi Elder Prophecy, Oraibi, Arizona 2000

2011
March 11 Fukushima nuclear plant Daiichi, Japan crippled in mag.8-9 earthquake, world response to greatest nuclear leak since Chernobyl, 1986; pollution circles Pacific, see Philippines 2013
June 28 B.B.King, 88, Blues musician extraordinaire celebrated in sold-out ‘LIVE’ concert , Royal Albert Hall London
November 11—11:11:11— Fire the Grid, Spark in the Park, World Grid Meditations affect ‘coherent consciousness’, see PrincetonU’s Global Consciousness Dot

2012
Voyagers I and II hit heliopause, exit solar system, begin journey into ‘outer’ space
Mars Project Disclosure

Shuttle Endeavour lifta off NASA Boeing-747 transport for last sentimental journey LAX through downtown Los Angeles, September 2012

“Fourteen Americans are known to have taken a jump room to visit Mars. They are: Andrew D. Basiago, Raymond F. Basiago, Major Ed Dames, Regina E. Dugan, Mary J. Eisenhower, Courtney M. Hunt, Linda Hunt, William C. McCool, Bernard Mendez, Arthur Neumann, Barack H. Obama, Michael C. Relfe, William B. Stillings, and Admiral Stansfield T. Turner. In addition, three other Americans are known to have served as support personnel for the Mars project. They are: Stanley Ann Dunham, Thomas J. Stillings, and Michael Strickland. That a secret US colony exists on Mars has been established by the testimony of Laura M. Eisenhower.” — Andrew D. Basiago

January 12 70th birthday celebration for ‘Dead Rock Stars’—Janis Joplin would have been seventy
April 19 Levon Helm, drummer, vocalist, rock-wayshower for The Band, dies age 71 of throat cancer
May 20 Trees for Life Scotland’s millionth native species planted [pine and birch]; regeneration thriving
September 19 Last Space Shuttle Endeavour lands LAX atop NASA 747 transport; parade downtown Los Angeles
October 17 Save the Field of Dreams initiated by Los Angeles film editor David Blanchard, see FB page
November 6 Colorado-Washington first states to legalize sale/possession cannabis sativa for recreational use since Marijuana Tax Act 1937
December 5 Jazz composer-pianist musicianDave Brubeck, b. December 6, 1920, dies age 92 years, minus one day; Grammy Award-winner for Greatest ‘Classical-Crossover’ Album, TakeFive, Rondo à la Turc, TimeOut, etc.
December 26 Led Zeppelin honored at Kennedy Center by President Obama
December 31 SOHO solar satellites complete 360º monitoring orbit of sun: full solar surface revealed

2013

Eugene, OR top hipster city on latest poll of cool US cities

February 5 ‘Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act’ calls on the federal government to regulate marijuana as it does alcohol; bill amended September 2013
March 28 Maya Sun-Venus Calendar ends fifty-two-year Venus cycle which began April 10, 1961 and marks start of new 5000-year cycle of the Sixth Sun.
April 8 Baroness Thatcher, first female Prime Minister of Great Britain—1979-1990, Leader of Conservative Party 1975-—1990 (Margaret Thatcher, née Roberts, 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013) died just after she moved Britain into the new tax year!
April 20 4/20 Festivities openly held to celebrate relaxed medical marijuana laws in 22 US states
May 9 Ascension Day —coincidentally Roman catholic festival
May 20 Dr John, blues musician singer dubbed Dr Dr John by Tulane U honorary degree
May 28 James Taylor and Carly Simon receive Library of Congress Gerschwin Prize at White House
June 18 Luminato Arts Festival birthday tribute concert to Joni Mitchell, Toronto, Canada

…Don’t Panic…

‘There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.’ Douglas Adams

July Section-3 DoMA considered unconstitutional. Federal Government acknowledges/supports rights for gay couples
August 21 Norwegian study ‘Psychedelic supplements improve mental health’
August 22 Oregon and Washington legalize personal use of marijuana
August 25 Crosby and Nash benefit concert, Pasadena, CA
September Some U.S. states legalize cannabis for medical or personal use; press celebrate 17 ‘Hipster’ US cities

“My children and I use music the way all people should use music: to help you process your feelings and to help you get on with your life”
Linda Ronstadt, 2013, Parkinson’s Disease sufferer, rock-jazz musician

September 27 Linda Ronstadt belatedly awarded Rock Hall of Fame, book-launch ‘Simple Dreams’
October U. S. Government shutdown
October 5 BMW-all-electric car launches International Auto Show, Orange Co, CA
October 8 New York Film Festival premieres Bruce Dern’s Nebraska
October 19 Fukushima human chain Ocean Beach, San Francisco hold hands against oncoming pollution from Daiichi (March 2011) fracture—nuclear cleanup operation halted; rods & effluent flow unabated into Pacific Ocean
October 27 Lou Reed, seminal rock musician, songwriter, Velvet Underground, dies New York, age 71
October 27 Neil Young, Elvis Costello et al perform Lou Reed tribute concert Bridge School benefit, Mountain View, CA
November 2 Comet Ison appears to naked eye in Earth skies—heralded as Hopi blue-star Kachina, above
November 7 Solar Radiation Storms accelerate Category-5 tropical cyclone ‘super’-Typhoon Yolanda-Haiyan (winds 195-205mph) destroys much of Philippines; deaths in hundreds of thousands; survivors unreachable ‘burying’ dead at sea, pollution cloud follows Fukushima-2 to US West Coast, landfall San Diego, CA
November 11 11:11 11/11/13 Comet Ison morphs into Blue Star Kachina twin tailed blue visible thru backyard binoculars
11/11 Solar X-class and M-class flares continue CME bombardment via earth-facing solar wind; Saturn eclipses Sun; Pacific storms aggravate pollution in North Pacific Gyre

November 23 Full moon/solar X-class flares; seven volcanoes erupt in six countries worldwide,: Daiichi subterranean fault-line re-fractures; cooling rods “lost”, clean-up abandoned, new island=Niijima 新島 formed, off coast of Nishinojima, west island= 西ノ島
November 29 Comet ISON’s awaited reemergences from perihelion ‘slingshot round the sun’ as naked eye evening spectacle in western skies stymied by solar elves who swallowed her and spat out planetary awakening ascendance code instead
December 5, 2013 Nelson Mandela,—xhosa [xoˈliːɬaɬa manˈdeːla] member of Thembu royal family, & South Africa’s first black President (1994-1999), Nobel Peace Prize recipient 1993, dies at peace in Johannesburg, age 95
December 7, 2013 Shirley MacLaine, Martina Arroyo, Billy Joel, Carlos Santana, and Herbie Hancock honored at Kennedy Center Award Dinner Washington, DC

As we said at the beginning, this is a work in progress and if you have read to the end, you may be inspired to add something that’s missing. Any and all contributions via our comments page will be considered.
Thanks for being part of it.

©1960-2013 Siderealview, with angelic assistance

Galactic Underworld and Venus Rising

Venus's Heliacal Rising, November 2010: her return from the Underworld

Something in between dreaming and doing
Something arching down from there to here
We are the arching
We are neither here nor there
We are the hope that lives between
The continual blooming outward and upward
of something we want
but cannot see
– Author unknown

On winter solstice this year, December 21st, the longest night in the northern hemisphere will be graced not only by a full moon but a total lunar eclipse at 8:14am GMT — 00:14am Pacific time.

It is a cosmic sign, a prelude to our annual rendezvous with Galactic Center — that dark patch in the Milky Way — when the Sun, including us, microscopic specks of energy clinging on to the plane of the ecliptic, all nine planets of our system as one, align with our Motherboard, the Creator-black-hole, call it what you will, in the middle of our Galaxy. Then, spiralling away one more time, we shall head off for another year of peripatetic searching through infinite realms of space until, two years from now, we return for that Great Meeting with Source prior to winter solstice 2012.

The Ancients always took note of appearances like this solstitial eclipse as they occurred at the cardinal points of the year (later on the same day, the Sun enters zodiac sign of Capricorn). In our 21st century world, I am not alone in thinking this heavenly sign — the apparent total annihilation of the moon’s disc — will probably go relatively unnoticed. Western minds filled with Christmas concerns, getting the car to start or catching the commute to work in snowy conditions, tend not to be looking skywards.

For the Maya, on the other hand, Mesoamerican life in the 9th century and later was an ongoing succession of cosmic appearances. They came in time cycles, each with a predictable quality. And their fascination with the night sky, like many prehistoric and classical cultures, allowed them to develop a deep knowledge of time which dwarfs our numerical western (Gregorian) system.

Time was seen as an evolution of human consciousness, split into Great Ages through which society would evolve. The Maya developed separate calendars for mathematical, ritual and functional purposes, but the great Long Count calendar which began in 3114BC and which comes full circle on winter solstice year-after-next is the one which has caught hold in our collective imagination as presaging the ‘End of Days‘.

For the Maya as well as for many other Ancients, celestial movement was at the root of astrology, theology, cosmology, history and social change. For them, the purpose of life was to understand sky rhythms that created time and to reflect in their culture the beauty and cosmic order seen in cyclical heavenly repetition.

‘It becomes clear….that the Maya always expected history to repeat itself’
Bruce Scofield, Signs of Time (1997)

Kukulkan, feathered serpent god of the Maya, Toltec and Aztec (Quetzalcoatl)

The Tzolkin, which is the oldest Mayan Calendar, repeats itself every nine months. The Long Count calendar’s 5124-year cycle with its so-callled end date of December 21, 2012 actually measures the precession of the equinoxes, the sun’s apparent motion through each of the twelve zodiac signs once in 25,920 years, but theoretically stretches to infinity. To give an idea of this precession cycle’s massive scale, it takes the Earth 72 years to move through one degree (1º/360º) of one zodiac sign.

West Acropolis of Yaxchilan (Maya: 'Green Stones') in Mexican state of Chiapas

There are carvings on the walls of a ruin at Palenque that give dates beyond AD4000. It is our modern short-sightedness that assumes, based on only one of the several Mayan calendars, that time stops at winter solstice, December 21st 2012. It is specifically this ending and new beginning chronicled in the Long Count Calendar which in New Age parlance is called the ‘dawning of the Age of Aquarius‘.

Documentation of this extremely long cycle was an amazing achievement for a culture whose belief in cycles of time had them keep astronomical records for 6000 generations, projecting forward and (20,000 years back) into a distant past. It is evident in the placement of some of their most sacred buildings that they saw purpose in heavenly movement.

Cosmology and religious icons were intimately intertwined.

While several pyramids and ballcourts at Tikal, Palenque and Chichen Itza are sited on extreme sun positions (solstices, equinoxes), the Governor’s Palace at Uxmal is precisely aligned to view the heliacal rising of Venus at its southernmost point in an 8-year cycle.

Whereas Megalithic and Egyptian complexes can sometimes be obscure or difficult to understand from our modern non-sky-viewing cultural perspective, (Newgrange and Stonehenge heelstone aligned on solstice sunrise, Aberdeenshire recumbent stone circles aligned on midwinter sunrise and midsummer moonset), the writings and hieroglyphs of the Maya are more easily understood as they can be compared easily with recent calculations of the same recorded astronomical cycles.

The ancient Maya left codices, systems of hieroglyphic recordings devised to include celestial sightings and predict events. The complexity with which these sightings and predictions are woven seamlessly into their entire culture is almost surreal.

Dresden Codex fragment, water-damaged in WWII, restored: shows Lunar series and Venus tables

One of these codices, the ‘Dresden Codex’ details an elaborate recreation of a cosmic environment which the ancient Maya believed regulated life. It contains an illuminated calendar recording observations of the planet Venus. Working with their solar Haab calendar and the separate sacred ritual Tzolkin, the Maya saw the heliacal rising of Venus, (Venus rising before the sun, visible in the east as a ‘morning star’) as a sign of resurrection of Light after Darkness, rebirth of a New Age. But its resurrection might also be seen as presaging evil, invoking wars, sparking conflict.

In Mayan mythology, the planet/goddess was inextricably linked with the sun and power of serpent god Kukulkan –his name means ‘one who emerges from the serpent-spirit’ or cosmic kundalini force. To the Maya the two bodies seemed conjoined, stand close to each other in the sky, never stray more than 47º apart.

Lamat: glyph for Venus as 'evening star'

Venus either follows the sun (when she appears as evening ‘star’, Lamat), hides behind the sun, descending into the Underworld, or reappears before the sun — her heliacal rising as a ‘morning star’, Ah-Chicum-Ek’. Seen in mythological context, their joining symbolized at times his masculine domination over female-desire-sexuality producing cultural balance, art and architectural beauty; at others (when she rides into the Underworld — below the horizon) her ability to wreak havoc on society. This warrior-goddess aspect of her femininity is not easily understood in our modern rush for ‘male’ pursuits in business, military dominion and political power. But it is this aspect of Venus which lingers in mythology and which is the natural, intuitive deep feminine of the mother consciousness which early patrilineal cultures (Hellenist Greece, Latin Rome, Judaism, pharaonic Egypt) wished to suppress. In examining the Venus cycles — particularly as they relate to upcoming 2012 date — we may be delightfully surprised to learn something ‘new’ which is very old.

According to observations made by the Maya, episodes of upheaval linked to the cyclical motion of the planet Venus play out as life-changing events.

Venus’s astronomical cycles are legendary.

Fascinated with sequences, periodicity and numbers, the Maya must have adored Venus. Not only does she disappear and reappear with amazing regularity, her luminescence is also measurable, on some clear nights actually capable of casting a shadow. They noticed that Venus travels faster round the sun than Earth, orbiting 2.6 times to Earth’s 1.6 orbits. Venus orbits the Sun 13 times in 8 years, passing between Earth and Sun 5 times until they return to that meeting point in the synodic cycle (synod = meeting place). Point of closest ‘meeting’ is called ‘inferior conjunction’, taken as the start of the cycle.

It is also when Venus cannot be seen from Earth because of the sun’s brilliance, but as she continues to orbit, not only does she appear to go into ‘retrograde’ motion — a phenomenon caused by both bodies in orbit passing each other at different speeds — but she suddenly becomes visible again at greatest brilliance. Five Venus cycles of 548 days exactly equals 8 Earth cycles of 365 days — 8 Earth years — to bring both planets back in line to synodic point. When Venus is on the opposite side of the Sun its position is called ‘superior conjunction’ and has weakest brilliance. In between Venus appears to stretch to ‘extreme elongation’ to either side of Earth. The Maya also noticed Venus’s ‘stages’ took exactly 36 days, or multiples of 36.

So, Venus reaches maximum brightness 36 days after inferior conjunction, traveling direct and in the morning sky; maximum elongation (Venus’s farthest distance from the Sun) occurs 36 days later; then at superior conjunction, 216 days after that (6 x 36 days) Venus is on the far side of the Sun and traveling at its fastest speed, about 1º15′ per day, but obscured by the Sun from Earth eyes. Thirty-six days after superior conjunction, when the Sun and Venus are about 10º zodiac degrees apart, Venus first appears in the evening sky, setting after the Sun. In evening star phase, maximum elongation happens 216 days after superior conjunction, with maximum brightness reached 36 days following maximum elongation; 36 days more bring her back to inferior conjunction (and retrograde motion). This calculable sky embrace between Venus and the Sun, their apparent duel for supremacy in brilliance, disappearing into the ‘Underworld’ and reappearance in reborn brilliance, must have delighted the Maya.

Venus's orbit and Earth's over an eight year cycle

Not only did they know every nuance of Venus’s synchronicty with Earth, but they figured that in a complete cycle of 8 years the two planets did a dance round the zodiac (and the Sun) which resembled a sacred pentagram. Some of their written motifs reflect this knowledge. It is no surprise, then, that they also knew when Venus made a double transit of the Sun, a phenomenon that occurs less than once per century.

To bring their supreme, detailed and laborious calculations into modern context, it is synchronous that in 2012, there will be two profound solar eclipses and a rare ‘transit of Venus’ on June 6th, when Venus will pass directly in front of the Sun from our Earth perspective. It forms a perfect alignment of Earth, Venus and Sun. Transits come in 8-year pairs, with the precursor to this transit seen in June 2004. Transits of Venus happen on average only twice every 121 years. The last transit of Venus occurred in 1874 and 1882, around the time of rediscovery of ancient Mayan sacred sites. The 2012 Venus transit completes the pair and the phenomenon will not recur until 2117 and 2125.

Their solar calculations are renowned, too, with a system of years split to reflect numbers 13 and 20 still used by present-day Maya and many devotees.

A prophecy is attached to each of the twenty year Katun cycles. Each cycle starts on the day of the Ancestors, Ajpu or Ahau as Ancestors are known to the Yucatec Maya. The first 20-year cycle starts with 11 Ahau.

The present cycle (see Underworlds, below) starting on a 4 Ahau date began in 1999 and completes in 2012.

The Maya thought this katun brought scarcity and the arrival of great leaders. It is also the katun of remembering knowledge and writing it down.

4 Ahau: Food scarcities. Half the katun good, half bad. The return of Kukulkan

Kukulkan, depicted in the ancient Classical period as Divine Serpent, at Maya city Yaxchilan, modern Mexico

Legend of Kukulkan, Plumed Serpent god of the Maya, shares prophecy with the Aztec legend of Quetzalcoatl, known as Feathered Serpent, god of intelligence and self-reflection.

Serpent god Kukulkan in more recent Maya tradition

In the Mayan version of the legend the king and his court had descended into weakness and debauchery. He decided to redeem himself by sailing out into the ocean alone on a flaming boat. The gods forgave him and he was reborn. He came back to the Maya on a vessel from ‘across the waters’.

This Katun prediction implies that a great hero will come from across the waters to heal the problems of the people. It was during one of the 4 Ahau time periods, between 1480 and 1500 that Christopher Columbus came to the continent of the Americas from across the waters.

Chichen Itza
Although Kukulkan was mentioned as an historical person by Maya writers of the 16th century, earlier 9th century texts at Chichen Itza do not identify him as human and instead artistic representations depict him as a Vision Serpent entwined around figures of presiding priests. Chichen Itza’s famous step pyramid, El Castillo, shows Kukulkan depicted presiding over sacrifice, but the magnificent pyramid

Serpent god seen undulating down the staircase on fall Equinox at Chichen Itza

is most famous for his serpentine ‘appearance’ via the sun, which on the equinoxes (March 21, September 23) casts a serpent shadow that descends the steps of the famous pyramid’s north side in the late afternoon before fall equinoctial sunset and ascends its serpentine undulation prior to spring equinox sunset.

The living Maya still hold ceremony to celebrate equinox.

At autumn equinox this year Carl Johan Calleman called for a convergence to prepare ourselves for Unity Consciousness, our renewal as a species.

‘As the seventh day of the Galactic Underworld is activated we will actually finally come to a point when it is time to celebrate the end to male, western and rational dominance and to create a balance between the different aspects of the human mind associated with the left and right brain halves‘
Carl Johan Calleman

He suggested that, beginning November 3-7, 2010 (‘Yellow Galactic Seed’ Tzolkin date) careful contemplation of the Shift of the Ages and an awareness of our position in affecting the way we move forward will facilitate the dawning of the last step in our evolution. Seeing all of Creation from 3114BC divided into nine ‘Underworlds’ of ever-decreasing length, Dr Calleman (and others) agree with Mayan calculation that in that week in November we emerged from the last ‘night’ of the penultimate phase –the eighth Galactic Underworld which began January 1999, consisting of a wave-cycle of six fluctuating ‘days’ and ‘nights’– and that we now stand in the seventh ‘day’ of that wave, preparing to enter the final Universal Underworld, the Ninth Wave, in February next year. That is only two months from now. In that final cycle of existence, according to the Maya — and to thousands of believers of other faiths around the world — we are capable of manifesting ‘one thousand years of peace and harmony’ on our shared planet.

On that weekend of Yellow Galactic Seed in November — coincidentally when Venus’s heliacal rising returned her to our skies as an ‘morning star’, the leaders of nations representing East and West on Earth held separate but spiritually-cohesive celebrations and ceremonies to invoke peace on earth and a joining of minds. In the West, Don Alejandro Oxlaj, 13th Generation Quiche Mayan High Priest — ‘Wandering Wolf’ — and Buddhist spiritual leader of the Orient, Seiyu Kiriyama, joined their flocks in mutual meditation, flooding the airwaves and ethers with positive affirmation. Calleman saw this not only as the meeting of West and East but a mingling of the feminine, intuitive right-brain half of humanity with the masculine, rational left-brain side.

Unity Consciousness. Our ‘Awakening’.

New Age philosophy and astrology support a path to ascension required of its vision-keepers, lightworkers (through meditation and right living) as a process of uniting these two conflicting polarities, emphasizing the need to bring harmony to the male-female yin-yang, left and right brain hemispheres which must operate before the Earth may return to a balanced state of wholeness and oneness.

As a small postscript, or just to keep us on our toes, Mayan Elder Don Alejandro has suggested that shortly after the solar system’s 2012 re-alignment with Galactic Center — when our sun and all planets are conjunct the dark ridge in the middle of our Galaxy, the Milky Way —

Earth will “pass inside the center of a magnetic axis and that it may be darkened with a great cloud for 60 to 70 hours”
Don Alejandro Oxlaj

To some Mayan scholars, in a continuing calendar the doom-and-gloom scenario is far more likely to play itself out, not in 2012, but around the year 2032.

Several other events are in the lineup for 2012:
May 4 partial lunar eclipse off Mexico
May 14 1st standstill Venus during retrograde loop
May 20 annular eclipse of Sun
June 6 transit of Venus (above) and Inferior Conjunction
November 13 2012 total solar eclipse in which sun and moon align with head of the Serpent (constellation Serpens)
November 18 Solar system conjunct dark ridge Galactic Center
Nov 28 partial (penumbral) lunar eclipse

We know our future is in our own hands. This is seen by believers with faith in Man’s ability to transcend his inglorious past as positive, glorious rebirth, awakening, resurrection of our soul, our apotheosis, potential to become one with the gods. The opposite is also true –especially if we continue to contribute to the misuse of energy, pollute and dissipate earthly gifts.

As we know, cycles exist to show choices in the Path: overall the future is golden. Venus’s malevolence may only be a wayshower to direct us away from a mistaken ‘Way’. The future, in the form of the Ninth Wave, is upon us — all the heavenly signs say so — and it’s up to us to embrace it.

Equinox Ascension Button:Depress to Activate

Ascension button, Whitefield Hill. Like most cropcircles, the Mandala invites us in with its energy. In focusing on the beauty, we transform ourselves

Equinox is only days away. The leaves are turning. A storm is brewing. The Earth prepares as the hinges on the door of another season swing shut. This doorway to autumn in the northern hemisphere is heralded by a whole slew of heavenly bodies lined up and waiting to shepherd us through. After all, as one door swings shut, another opens and we have little more than 800 days to go before the Calendar of the Ancients — embodied in the Tzolkin Long Count of the Maya — says we reach Transfiguration.

Is it possible, we ask, to create our own Apotheosis? are we capable of reaching out from the depths of the mire in which we have entrenched ourselves on Earth to hold hands with the Divine? become gods ourselves? All the prophesies say yes. We are told to watch the heavens for signs. So, watchers we have become.

There have been warnings: a couple of planetary tight corners — 2010’s T-squares and Full Moon in June’s Grand Cross — squeezing our world and our communal psyche into a place of no retreat.

But if you thought you were just going to puddle along over the next couple of months, couple of years, and it would all fall into place? That ‘somebody else’ had it in hand and we’d muddle through somehow? Then, there’s more thinking to be done.

Some people still question why we should even listen at all to the voice of the Ancestors: those revered traditions handed down over millennia on all continents through civilization’s records and archives and oral tradition. What did they know of 21st century life? How could they possibly help us rise from a world of racial, religious, financial and nutritional inequality — not to mention bombardment by media-manipulated fears — and become one tight-knit community, one homogeneous being? These are high concepts; tough hurdles for humankind to leap.

It’s probably for that reason that the ancestors have been hanging around lately, giving us a little more immediate help and encouragement, sending us little signs… like those in summer fields of shining corn.

All ancient wisdom declares we are not alone; that we have only to ask for help and it will come. There must have been a lot of people asking lately, because the messages have been coming in thicker and faster! 2010 season’s crop circles have proved to be our most challenging yet.

They brought us dimensions beyond those we’re accustomed to thinking in, sacred geometry and energy vortices and power places known to all previous civilizations, but somehow ‘lost’ to our own; magical light orbs and mysterious high-pitched sound accompanying the formation of a circle or even group meditative ‘requests’ for such a crop appearance. 2010 has consolidated and convinced a far-reaching cult of believers who now no longer care to look back at the world we left only yesterday.

2010 has also created — outside the crop circle sphere — a coming-together of Earth-loving communities all round the world. No longer do the meek hover unheard while business corporations haggle over responsibility for destruction. The Gulf of Mexico event took care of that. Depleting earth’s precious species and resources is neither politically correct nor tolerated. Even the Rich List themselves have taken to the waters to redress the balance.

There is indeed an awakening of the world mind — a tangible creative move to choose life over death, kindness over greed, healing over repression, and compassion over power. We just have to look carefully to find it: not on smog-ridden highways or in high-rise metal offices perhaps, but in the miraculous and ever-evolving daily life of small villages, volunteer children’s creches and around organic farmers’ market stalls.

Ric O'Barry's EarthIsland has done much to highlight humanity's vital connection with the dolphin world

Huge pressure is now being put on so-called ‘fish’ marketing interests in Japan and the Solomon Islands by dolphin and whale support groups like GreenPeace and EarthIsland, to bring to world awareness the crucial connection between Man and the Cetacean. They believe not only should the barbaric slaughter of such mammalians stop, but that this highly intelligent species might have something in their great communicative awareness to teach us humans.

American Gray Wolf returned to protected status in the Northern Rockies

In San Luis Valley in Colorado the whole community participates in an energy collective derived from solar generators which make the commuity self sufficient. It’s also home to Shaman and Sioux-Salish Elder Kiesha Crowther who founded its SRV Wildlife & Endangered Species Rescue Center which now has a strong voice within the USA on the protection of animals on the endangered list.

A flawed piece of legislation initiated during the Bush administration allowing Northern Rockies (endangered) wolves to be slaughtered wholesale, has recently been revoked, restoring the American Gray Wolf to protected status. Mother Earth is starting to smile again.

Longcount dates in 2011 and 2012

Like Kiesha Crowther, Barbara Hand Clow is a shaman, gifted teacher of the intuitive arts, an Elder of the Maya, Cherokee Record Keeper, and she shares wisdom from a wide range of researchers and Medicine People. Like one of her mentors, Swedish biologist Carl Johan Calleman, she sees the Great Underworlds of the Tzolkin calculus as a means to understanding human evolution — towards our ultimate reconnection through our intuitive senses with the Divine. Evolution rapidly nears its zenith: ascension/transcendance at our final gate. As each Age is ten times briefer than its predecessor, time appears to speed up, learning accelerates, human beings evolve at an unprecedented rate. Both she and Calleman place enormous importance on the August 1987 Harmonic Convergence whose spectacular planetary alignments presaged the final 25 years of the Tzolkin Count. We entered the Sixth Night of the Galactic Wave Cycle on 09/09/09 and will emerge from it on November 2nd this year.

Extreme pressure for deep change came to the surface during the cardinal T-squares of the major planets in June and August and a final flurry of this configuration commands human attention now, as we near Autumn Equinox. While the pressure may be easing, it’s not over yet. We are about to experience the final throes of the technological age of the Galactic Underworld when Day Seven opens November 2nd 2010 —Yellow Galactic Seed — and it becomes apparent that nothing will stop the rollercoaster of change now spinning ordinary life out of control. Fall Equinox requires our trust and belief that there is cosmic Design behind such change.

Clow borrows Calleman’s elaborate reconstruction of the intricate Mayan calendar to discern an interweaving of patterns, frequencies, tones that build upon themselves like a fractal symphonic chord which reaches crescendo in 2011/2012.

She suggests that time acceleration is occurring and that we have already begun to feel a quickening of the energy around us.

‘You’ve been recreating yourself since 1999 when the Galactic Underworld opened,’ she says, ‘and now you are ready to become a Cosmic Being on Earth.’

Both believe we shall reach this ultimate goal in consciousness a year early — on October 28th 2011, to be exact. That’s only 405 days from now.

Heavenly bodies are appearing in our skies which seem to confirm the ancient prediction of nine ‘appearances’ or energies which accompany the End Times. The first of these — the dramatic return of sacred serpent god Quetzalcoatl — happened at the final moment of ceremony as 40,000 people welcomed spring equinox 1989 at Chichen Itza. At the exact instant of sunset and full moonrise, asteroid 1989-A zoomed over the crowd and plunged into the ocean off the Yucatan peninsula. Astronomers were unprepared for the happening, but the Maya were not!

Now we begin to see further signs — the light spiral over Tromsø, Norway last December during the Obama Nobel Peace Prize presentation may be another. The heavens have their own way of sigaling changes in energy, influence and human events.

Immanuel Velikovsky, in his posthumously published (1982) book Mankind in Amnesia, wrote that mankind has suppressed memories of cosmic catastrophes, Noah’s flood, possibly even the extinction of the dinosaurs: essentially we were wounded in our separation from Source. And until we clear our ‘injury’ and heal ourselves, we are doomed to play out with wars, genocides and mass murders much like a mental patient plays out suppressed rape or abuse trauma with anti-social behavior.

Calleman believes western concept of time cannot accommodate the phenomenon of evolution or creation. That our linear (Gregorian) view sees time as an endless repetition of cycles with no beginning and no end. With such limited perspective, humanity seems not to be going anywhere, life has little purpose. He sees the consequences of such an attitude in the environmental rape of our planet. The Tzolkin itself is a pattern for the unfolding of creative energy rather than a numerical calendar.

‘I believe through study and use of the Tun-based calendrical system [of the Maya] we may develop an awareness of consciousness, a meta-consciousness, which will allow us to understand factors underlying the evolution of our spiritual process and evolution of the universe.’

Kiesha Crowther believes Enlightenment comes as we express love in word and deed; rejoin in oneness with Nature. And to evolve to the next level, our species must reach enlightenment. Calleman, Clow and Crowther all agree it is time to end our separation from Nature.

Chart for Equinox

This is the chart for NOW. In five days, at midnight on equinox (September 22/23, 2010), the Sun will stand at the top of the chart at cusp Virgo/0ºLibra with the full Moon moving to stand directly opposite at 0ºAries: Grand Cross elements resurface

The fall equinox chart is potent with symbolism. First, and most powerful, the 0º00 Libra Sun squares Pluto in Capricorn at 0º41. A Sun-Pluto square packs punch. The full moon phase at this dying of the year — our climaxes and harvest — with Pluto in the mix — gives potential for destruction, disintegration, elimination on the world stage. While Pluto’s destructive power is for good — symbolic death leading to rebirth — this destruction opens the door to regeneration and transformation. Power play between patriarchal rule (Pluto in Capricorn) and the people, and between masculine and feminine archetypes everywhere will be noticeable.

This is powerful stuff. We reap what we sow, so anything sown that smells of corruption, power/over, power/under dynamics can and will come to light in this cycle!

A significant aspect in the chart is Mercury conjunct Saturn in Virgo — only 33 minutes apart. Actual conjunction occurs earlier that day at 2:08am, so at equinoctial point it is very potent. Mercury symbolizes the conscious mind and has just moved from retrograde (where action is internal, introverted and intuitive) to direct. In Virgo, one of the two signs Mercury rules, his review process covers the territory of self-mastery, service, and mind/body connection.

Saturn's stunning south pole aurora; the giant planet itself glows red, while the rings reflect blue sunlight, courtesy NASA's Cassini orbiter

And because Saturn and Mercury are conjunct, Father Time, Lord of Karma and the celestial messenger act to bring into our consciousness all the tools we need to solidify, restructure, ground us and birth this new awareness into reality. Pluto also turned direct on September 13th. Its influence now has great strength.

This Full Moon in Aries with Sun in last degree of Virgo signals the beginning of the final phase of our emergence into Nature. With Neptune holding us in divine embrace in Aquarius, this lunation is the seed that plants us as vessels of cosmic light, in a spiritual alchemy.

This alchemical seed bears wild fruit during the Aries Full Moon on September 23, a few hours after the moment of Equinox, when the Full Moon stands conjunct Jupiter and Uranus in Aries opposite the Sun and Saturn in Libra, while T-squaring Pluto in Capricorn! The Full Moon actually detonates the T-square. These aspects will germinate our species into the Cosmos. Pluto is powerful and the god of the Underworld will, in the words of astrologer Robert Wilkinson show us how to use the polarities of Will and Love, Mind and Heart, in an alternating manner to achieve a form of mastery.

‘If we can confront what needs to be uncaged, we can find an enormous power and wisdom which our inner Elder can teach our inner Child.’

Shaman Kiesha Crowther in her own beautiful Nature-connected way — while accepting that the end of the Mayan Calendar looms — agrees that it’s more about each person moving back into proportional relationship with Nature and our role as EarthKeepers.

‘Specifically, how do the people of Mother Earth join together their hearts and minds to create a change?

‘The answer lies with each and every one of us doing our part, with our own hearts, moving forward as individuals in our own abilities — to grow our hearts larger and love and live with kindness and consciousness.

‘When we live from our hearts our consciousness grows and we become the true loving beings we are meant to be.

‘We all have an ability to share our love with others and to gather our friends and family together to meditate, to pray, to learn how to run energy, how to listen and feel what Mother Earth is saying and feeling.

‘The council is asking us to share what we know from our hearts and be the best we can be as loving human beings — this is what will change our realities.

‘Go inside yourself and live and love and remember what a great being you really are and that Mother Earth is alive and loves you, and that whatever you do to her you do to yourselves.’

Little Grandmother‘s message is one of love and enlightenment and a belief that we can all do this together. There are no structures to set up, no teachers guiding others, no hierarchy. The Tribe of Many Colors is not an organization. Rather it embodies a group of people with a single goal: to live from the heart and to love our Mother Earth and each other. Her Tribe of Many Colors can change the world.

In the summer of 2010 Kiesha Crowther visited Scandinavia where she embedded a special crystal to anchor earth’s electromagnetic grid. She and the Elders have been re-energizing the Earth Grid by placing crystals at strategic Power points where Earth’s electromagnetic energy focuses.

‘The Tribe of Many Colors has been prophesied to come for a very long time and now the time is upon us. All we need to do is to go to Nature, to the Source, and fill ourselves up with that tremendous love that is out there for us, just as we are. It does not matter if you are ever recognized by the world for what you are doing—you are a divine spark, the Great I AM, here to kindle your light, recognize the brilliance that you are, just as you are.’

Inkeeping with this sentiment, but within a complex array of symbolism that unites light, sound, the Golden Mean spiral and quantum physics, Clow explains in her Alchemy of the Nine Dimensions (2004) the phenomenon we call crop circles is advancing in complexity as we as a species advance. She calls the energy — ‘great tubes of light’ — which creates formations ‘benign’, but one which keeps us on our toes, keeps us learning, stays always just one step ahead of us.

‘Since the same geometry can easily be seen in shells and in skeletons, no one should be surprised. The visibility of these tubes of light and the numerous spirals in crop circles are analogs to the visibility of spirals in nature. Materialization occurs by the spin or motion of spirals, and the crop circles are material things. Once the great force is drawn down to Earth, tubes of light imprint a crop circle where it enters a plane — the field crop — where 2D interfaces with the curvature of the surface. The actual circle is made in seconds. Scientists are penetrating the deeper mysteries of the Golden Mean these days, as the Circlemakers are constructing ever-more complex expressions of it.’

At its simplest level of perception, this crop circle says: 'communication'

The story of our awakening to Galactic Mind is complex and is perhaps best understood by studying crop circles b

but it may be a warning that communications we take for granted are about to be disrupted by the Sun

ecause the symbols appear to integrate many worlds, many Ages of Man, many cultures.

One might ask, since so much emphasis is placed on End Times fixed by the Tzolkin calendar, why are crop circles not appearing in Mexico?

Clow answers that, too. Shockingly, she says ‘the central vortex of patriarchal ignorance is located in England, while the Mexican people already know what is coming.’

On a geomantic level, Wessex — that great chalk aquifer of Salisbury Plain — is one of the largest on earth. It has a very low magnetic field and is therefore the world’s best conductor of electricity. In an electromagnetic dimension, it was ideal for constructing stone circles (whose great neolithic rock-crystals still stand embedded in the earth) and it is therefore perfect for weaving electrical current in waves of grain.

We are being fine-tuned for our return to Source. And the Ancestors are shouting encouragement from the grandstand. Perhaps it’s time to speed up the activation process ourselves: to tune ourselves in to the Great Spirit with conscious intent. For this, Blossom Goodchild, who channels instruction from the Federation of Light, has this to say:

Royal Throne and coronation chair in the Palace of Westminster, London

Imagine yourself sitting in a large ornate chair with armrests. Visualise yourself firmly within this ‘throne’. Feel comfortable. Any anxiety you may experience is simply the heart’s preparation for what’s to come.

Imagine that on the armrests where your hands are placed are metallic finger plates for each digit of each hand. Lay your fingertips gently on the activation plates.

Resume position. You feel these plates are magnetised to energy points within your fingers and at the back of your neck. You can feel the tingling. As you watch, you see we are adding plates down through the back of the chair, aligning with your chakras. Yet you only see four, evenly spaced. This is correct.

You are being activated. You are tuning into the power of the Cosmos.

Blossom Goodchild’s Instruction from the Lightbeings

Equinox can be used as a trigger, but however you want to do it, now would be a good time to start. Rather than pressing the channel button on your television set, how about activating the ascension button instead?

2010: Year of the Metal Tiger

Victor Kahn's magical tiger in female clothing

2010 is predicted to be a tumultuous year on many fronts. And, as of Valentine’s Day, it becomes the Year of the Metal Tiger. The Tiger in oriental astrology returns – along with the planet Jupiter – every twelve years. So we are about to have our Jupiter Return. The Tiger is the symbol of courage, inviting bold actions and risk taking. The Metal element will provide steely resolve, fortitude and determination to accomplish goals.

That’s a bold combination for a year which begins, in this era of multi-cultural clashes, with a day of cultural harmony. In terms of celebration at least, half the world will be out making whoopee on Sunday.

Preparations for Sunday's parade in Rio

It is the day of the New Moon (in refined and forward-looking Aquarius, alongside Sun and Mercury); at the center of the Inca world, a solemn dedication to light and Pachamama is held in the Temple of the Priestesses on Titicaca’s Island of the Moon; it is the beginning of Creole and Latin Carnival and Roman Catholic German ‘Fasching’, which lasts until Ash Wednesday next week.

The Tiger ushers in a year of inscrutable Chinese philosophy (possibly even an upsurge in Tai Chi classes); it signals the first day of Tibetan Buddhist Losar and, almost forgotten in the melée and rush to grab a bargain, to feast before the fast of Lent, it is the celebration of the Roman Valentinus who was persecuted for his belief in Christian love: St. Valentine, a politically-incorrect Christian in the last years of pre-Christian emperor Claudius II’s reign, was executed outside Rome’s Flaminian Gate on February 14th AD270. He was brought to trial for aiding Christians who were being persecuted in Claudian Rome; and when he attempted to convert the emperor himself to Christianity, his execution was ordered. The lovers whom he had joined in Christian wedded bliss in earlier illegal ceremonies brought him gifts of flowers while he awaited his fate.

Valentine’s Day floral gifts are today given with little or no knowledge of their original place in the legend of Valentinus. It is not surprising. While Pope Gelasius in AD496 recognized his martyrdom and designated February 14th to honor him, he was never officially canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.

Once more, the act of celebrating on the first day of the first New Moon in February is much more heavily laced with pre-Christian countryman (‘pagan’) belief than with any superimposed Church festival. At this time of year, along with the return of the Light – longer hours of sunlight and the movement of the sun’s disk rising higher daily in northern skies, it was a time to celebrate the rising of sap in trees, the first signs of birds pairing and beginning to mate; the appearance of first growth in the Earth. Snowdrops and aconites open; first shoots of daffodil and bluebell leaves appear; the Earth awakens.

This year the Sun appears to be awakening again, too.

THEMIS Satellite group measures auroral activity from orbit

Until December we Earth residents were affected by a trickle of solar wind: the last vestiges of a solar minimum – an eleven-year cycle of minimal solar activity. Apart from a coronal mass ejection (CME) predicted in a couple of Wiltshire crop circles in June last year for the early part of July 2009, we were blessed with no power outages caused by magnetic storms, our annual display of aurora borealis has been relatively undramatic and NASA has had plenty time to observe activity of their THEMIS satellite group (there are five), launched from Cape Canaveral in February 2007 to orbit the earth and study aurora and the planet’s magnetosphere.

Solar magnetic field drapes against Earth's magnetosphere as it drifts by

THEMIS stands for Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms: the study of Aurora, for short.

They’ve had a few surprises.

The magnetosphere is a bubble of magnetism that surrounds the Earth and protects us from the Solar Wind.

Earth’s magnetic field carves out a cavity in the sun’s onrushing field. The Earth’s magnetosphere is thus ‘buffeted like a wind sock in gale force winds, fluttering back and forth in the solar wind,’ according to David Sibeck of the THEMIS project at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Solar particles by themselves don’t cause severe space weather, but they get energized when the solar magnetic field becomes oppositely-directed to Earth’s own field and reconnects, rather like a load of iron filings in the proximity of a magnet.

These energized sun particles have a combined force equal in some cases to a CME. They can cause magnetic storms of such magnitude that they overload power lines with excess current, and cause widespread blackouts. One of these events happened in September 1859 when a solar flare lasted nearly a week. Most of Middle America was without power for that period. It is remembered in astronomical and meteorological circles as the Superstorm or the Carrington Event.

Charged solar particles can also cause radiation storms that present hazards to spacecraft in high orbits or to the Space Shuttle with its crew of astronauts passing through a storm on its way to the moon, the ISS or other destinations in the solar system.

But, like Met. Office warnings of bad weather, these Space Weather forecasts can be predicted.

‘The more particles, the more severe the storm,’ says Joachim (Jimmy) Raeder of the University of New Hampshire, who collaborates with NASA. ‘If the solar (magnetic) field has been aligned with the Earth’s for a while, we know Earth’s field is heavily loaded with solar particles and primed for a strong storm. This discovery gives us a basic predictive capability for the severity of solar storms, similar to a hurricane forecaster’s realization that warmer oceans set the stage for more intense hurricanes.’

So far, so good. But Jimmy has a prognostication: He says calmly:

‘In fact, we expect stronger storms in the upcoming solar cycle.’

The solar magnetic field changes direction every cycle, that is, every eleven years, and we have had eleven years of a minimum: relatively calm Space Weather. Not a lot happening in the magnetosphere. Also, with the Sun’s non-alignment with Earth’s magnetic field, the shield is up; fewer particles can get in.

Streams of plasma jet out from the Sun in a recent CME

However, we just entered the doorway to a new cycle. Two new sunspots appeared on the sun’s disk last week, one (1045) described by SOHO as ‘awesome’ and ‘complex’ and the other (1046) – which just appeared around the edge – seems set to outdo its neighbor. Because of the Sun’s altered magnetic orientation in the new cycle, SOHO and THEMIS are expecting fireworks.

Not immediately at first, perhaps. These sunspot occlusions take time to build. Yet, when a sustained CME of plasma bursts from the solar prominences, we should expect something a little different to hit our placid earth shores. The expected clouds of particles ejected from the sun will have a magnetic field which is at first not aligned with Earth’s, but by the time the CME hits, (it takes about three days to travel 93,000,000 miles to us) the solar magnetic field is programmed to react and turn the other cheek. Its magnetic polarity switches to its opposite as the cloud passes by. And our magnetosphere opens its doors to welcome it.

It’s rather like sending a solar invitation to dinner: the earth is at first the reluctant host, but when the package is delivered, the host welcomes the new guest with open arms.

Coronal Mass Ejection crop circle which predicted July 2009 CME

THEMIS is currently pondering a new series of data which suggests that when the two magnetic fields line up, together they create a ‘huge breach, and there’s lots and lots of particles coming in’- David Sibeck’s words.

As they orbited Earth, THEMIS’s five spacecraft were able to estimate the thickness of the band of solar particles getting in through the breach when the fields were aligned — it turned out to be about 20 times the number that got in when the fields were counter-aligned. They measured meticulously as they orbited through the band.

Like one of Saturn’s rings, the band turns out to be one Earth radius thick, or about 4,000 miles (6,437 kilometers).

So, when the barriers are down, Earth is vulnerable. In 1859, at the time of the Carrington Event, nobody on Earth had a computer, banking systems and air traffic control were a figment in a futurist’s imagination; weather was something you ‘got through’.

If the data which THEMIS and SOHO are now contemplating becomes crystallized – if the beauty seen in a crop circle last summer becomes a reality: if we have a CME or a particle storm equal to or more powerful than that single event of last July 7th, Earth is in for a rocky ride.

We’ll need all our Tiger and Metal attributes to get us through.

In the meantime, happy Fat Tuesday (pancakes & syrup). Happy Mardi Gras.

Galactic Center calling Earth: Blue Moon signal; pick up please

December Full Moon rises exactly at sunset on the opposite (NNE) horizon - latitude 57ºN

New Year’s Eve – the last day of 2009 or Hogmanay, as the Scots call it – will be triply auspicious. Not only is it the eve of a new year, a new decade no less, but it will be graced by a full moon, a partial lunar eclipse, and the Moon will be Blue. In celestial spheres you might say we are being given the royal treatment; or at least being sent a signal.

When a month is graced with two full moons, the second one is called a blue moon. You know, the ‘once in a blue moon’ blue moon? Because our modern calendar calculates by the sun (annual orbit of the Earth round the sun takes 365.25 days), its 30- and 31-day months take us out of synch with our nearest neighbour, whose cycle is 29.53 days. Only the female menstrual cycle and the oceans remain in touch with our lunar companion. The rest of humanity seems to have forgotten what cosmic rhythm is.

Blue moon of May 2007 seen at 40ºN latitude USA

Because of the lunar/solar anomaly, only 41 months in every century can be called true blue moon months, hence a fairly rare occasion. The blue moon cycle of 2.72 years, therefore, makes it something special. December 2009 already had a full moon on the night of December 1st/2nd. The last blue moon month was May 2007 and the next will occur in August 2012.

This New Year’s Eve, because the full moon always rises at the moment of sunset on the opposite horizon and because the moon will not be full this December 31st until 7:13pm GMT, those of us in the Old World will be able to witness the full orb of Luna rise at sunset in the Northeastern skies on Hogmanay night. That’s 4pm GMT in London, home counties, Midlands and Birmingham and about half an hour earlier (3:20pm) in Edinburgh where Hogmanayers will only just be starting their all-night revelry. Four hours later, as Jupiter prepares to set in the southwestern sky, the moon’s disc reaches its fullest and the Earth moves between her and the sun to cast a shadow over her in partial eclipse. This moment of maximum partiality occurs at 19:23 UTC, 7:23pmGMT or 11:23am PST. In astronomical terms it is not a full (total) eclipse because earth’s shadow (eclipse magnitude) will only reach 0.0763, but for us earthlings in the eastern hemisphere it will still be a singular sight.

Solar system planets from outer orbits looking in

At midnight when Hogmanay reaches crisis point in Scotland’s capital, when they shoot off fireworks from the battlements of Edinburgh castle to welcome the new year to the screech of bagpipes, very few, I suspect, will note that the ‘New Year star’, Sirius, reaches its zenith in our northern skies. Sirius will stand behind Orion in the south with the Moon, in Cancer, followed in close proximity by our secondmost close neighbour Mars, the ‘red’ planet, retracing its steps through Leo as we enter 2010. The ringed giant does not arrive on the scene until late when the revellers are wending their weary way home: Saturn is a ‘morning’ planet right now, best seen in the east in the hours before dawn, with its spectacular rings just starting to ‘open’ to our view.

That’s the astronomical picture.

The astrological one is a little different. It reflects a vastly complex array of planetary influences to which our ancestors paid heed, but which Technological Man tends to ignore. However, like the menstrual cycle affecting the female population, it is well, occasionally, to pay attention to heavenly bodies and the way they appear to sway our passage through the cosmos.

At winter solstice the Sun enters the cardinal earth sign of Capricorn, having played and filled us with optimism in late November while in fiery Sagittarius, encouraging us to look to the future, fulfill our dreams. Capricorn Sun and Cancer full Moon bring those dreams and our grasp on reality into sharp focus: both make us examine our ‘outer’ career, capabilities, achievement potential and ‘inner’ love of family, home, need for a peaceful centre: their polarity challenges us to fix our relationships. Cancer may be content to be dependent, Capricorn urges us to be grown-up and responsible. Cancer represents the origin, Capricorn looks to the goal. In this mix stands the astrological giant Saturn in Libra, exerting discipline, demanding that we find balance. Mars, because of retrograde motion in Leo, is teasing us, telling us ego fantasies, diverting our attention from the path of loving acceptance. Our usual mental messenger, our Mercurial helper is currently useless; he is doing a backwards dance through Capricorn and being uncommunicative. It is up to us to review how well we’re using our own natural-financial-mental resources. However, on January 5th, Mercury is joined by loving Venus, so all is not lost. There is hope in the days ahead. The loving, healing solution may show us a way through our planetary difficulties.

Fortunately, we may still call on the largest of the planets: Jupiter, which presently consorts with another friendly giant, Neptune, the bringer of change. Together they stand in forward-looking Aquarius and are guaranteed to bring abundance into our lives, fresh ideas, a new focus, perhaps even a totally unexpected way of solving our problems. Both reflect the potential for the spiritual, the mystical, even a miracle, to bring about the change we cannot perceive ourselves.

This brings us to the spiritual view.

At the time of the December solstice each year the sun approaches the heart of the Milky Way, our Home Galaxy, and conjoins with Galactic Center in the constellation Sagittarius. At this time of year the Earth also gets closest to our own star, Sol. Closest point in our orbit, perihelion, happens annually on January 2nd/3rd.

Through the ages, after solstice when the sun moves northward along the horizon again, each month setting farther and farther north, the period from winter solstice to summer solstice was festival season. In several ancient civilizations winter solstice was associated with the return of a Sun-God to save the world, the bringer of light and fruitfulness to the earth, and hope to humanity.

Spiritual communities too, mindful of ritual handed down from ancestral hierarchies, hold winter solstice sacred, meditating and communing with the silence of winter in a kind of mental hibernation which itself opens up communication with Source. It is at midwinter that many begin preparations for the three major festivals of spring and summer: in the Celtic calendar they are known as Imbolc (February 2nd), spring equinox (Ostara, Easter) and Beltainn (May 1st).

Other indigenous cultures celebrate on these dates, the Hopi, Maya, Chinese, Arab, Vedic and Zulu, but one which has gained world-wide recognition is the May full moon celebration of Wesak, the greatest festival in the Buddhist calendar. All surviving cultures which perpetuate these ancient forms begin with a meditation at winter solstice which culminates in the May celebration.

It is fascinating, then, to discover that in using an ancient technique of knowing when the planet is at its closest to Galactic Center, by aligning with cosmic energy emanating from the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, at the crossing of Galactic Center with celestial ecliptic, at a time when the Earth is herself at her perihelion, closest to her own star, and when the stella maris, the ‘spiritual sun’ Sirius is at her zenith, ancient civilizations and their modern devotees discovered a means to tuning into the cosmic Source of all energy, knowing, and guidance.

In the sacred Long Count calendar of the Maya, one of the most accessible of ancient calculations to modern man, within a period called a Great World Age, an eon, an unimaginably-huge 26,000-year timespan, there are only a few moments when we Earth people come closest to the center of this cosmic cross, the point where the ecliptic crosses the Milky Way, at precise center of our Galaxy.

Galactic Center where stars are born

This nebulous area of the Universe, where stars are born, is our own cosmic womb, from which we, as stardust emerged. It is from this hole in the Cosmos that many spiritual masters and followers believe emanates a divine energy; that the centre of the galaxy is constantly emitting and transmitting a pure energy source which may be utilized in our conscious co-creative process to amplify and transmit new programmes of operation to us, to amplify our awareness and to broadcast light energy directly to enhance human DNA.

Winged serpent sun god Quetzalcoatl of the Maya from Codex Borgia

In the mythology of the Maya, it is to this great birth canal or womb aperture that Creator-sun-god Quetzalcoatl, mythical feathered serpent, one who crawls on Mother Earth but also flies in the heavens will return on winter solstice 2012. This cosmic re-union symbolizes the joining of spirit with matter, in order to be reborn: the Shift of the Ages.

Our alignment with Galactic Center occurs only once in every 25,800 years. We have come close to it several times in the last three decades. During the so-called ‘Galactic alignment period’, or ‘era-2012’ between 1980 and 2016, the closest the Earth came to Galactic Center was on December 21st, 1998.

Galactic center is exactly where the December solstitial sun will stand at noon Universal Time on December 21st, 2012.

Is it any wonder then that we as a species are being given a few reminders of this cosmic date only a couple of years up the stellar turnpike?

If Galactic Center is transmitting messages, is it not logical for us, a technologically advanced civilization, to pick up the spiritual phone?

The Spiritual Route: we used to call it the Road less Travelled

In the ‘sixties, there were a lot of us about.  We called ourselves seekers, but others had less complimentary – yea, derogatory –  names for us: hippie was one of them; living on the land was another.  We didn’t care: we were poets, musicians, philosophers and we were catalysts for Earth Shift.  At the beginning of the ‘seventies, we thought everybody in the Universe was a believer; the world was going to flip overnight, heaven-on-earth was imminent.  We could and would create the World We Chose.

I lived in Northern California at the time and the world was my oyster.  Communes were two a penny; Buckminster Fuller domes proliferated, tree houses, goat shed shacks converted for summer living, tipis abounded, everyone had an organic garden and all kinds of people drifted through, joined and disjoined, contributed (sometimes) and accepted free food, board and lodging.  It was light-hearted, fun and nobody thought it was going to end.  We had come full circle: the Great Spirit was on our side and We Were Invincible.  

In my particular neck of the woods – I kid you not – Cat Mother (& his All-Night News Boys) were neighbors with Gene Clark of The Byrds. The Fifth Dimension sang the song ‘Age of Aquarius’. Fulleresque geniuses came from the Bay Area for an overnight stay and helped  build hyperbolic paraboloid structures in two days.  Fuller’s other shape, the Dome – sixteen plywood boards bent and bolted together – were like the Amish equivalent on the East Coast: erected in a day.  Small villages of these instant creations appeared on The Ridge, the known hangout of the Alternative Lifestyle.  Redwoods nodded wisely as humans found summer shelter in their root boles, bluejays didn’t object to sharing nest sites.  Gray whales waved huge arms in passing as if signaling approval of the human race. 

We all promised to hold the vision forever and as silently as the movement started, it faded into individual dreams as we each followed separate paths and drifted away.

Some, I know for a fact, became convinced on their return to the ‘real world’ that their dream was a fantasy and that they should follow the rest of the human race in amassing great fortunes or becoming famous for their contribution to the corporate world.  In the intervening forty years I often wondered if I should write and remind them of our Pact.  I didn’t, of course.  Others stood firm in their belief in themselves and their dream, but found the 9-to-5 a killer and succumbed to heart disease, self-doubt or disappointment in relationships and love.  It was a difficult time for believers: the age of Thatcherite Britain and Reaganite America.  I retreated to an organic garden of my own making, lost myself in writing about my dreams, having a family and getting on with life: the act of watching one’s genes grow into another being is hard to resist.  The Path (and the Pact) were still there, but tucked away in a subliminal stratum.  Life moved in circles of parenthood, overdrafts, insurance, schooling and subsequently into computers, cell phones and the internet.  Imperceptibly we grew old, let some things go, held on to others and became different people.  They say the body changes all its cells completely every seven years.  In six times that number, it isn’t surprising that the bodies and minds of those dreamers forgot everything they promised themselves in a few brief years at the dawning of the Aquarian Age.

Until February 14th this year.  Then, according to respected and accurate ‘progressed’ chart astrology analysts, Planet Earth did in fact enter the Age of Aquarius.  On that day, lyrics of the song from the Broadway musical ‘Hair’,  made popular by the Fifth Dimension  in 1969, came true:

When the moon is in the Seventh House,  And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets,    And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
The age of Aquarius  Aquarius!    Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding     Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions    Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation       And the mind’s true liberation
Aquarius!   Aquarius!

 It is ironic that those visionaries in 1969 had to wait half a lifetime to watch the rest of the human race reach epiphany:   it took scientific and engineering and electronic miracles like the internet, satellite communications, jet travel and cell phones to bring about an electromagnetic shift in planetary consciousness.  Now, with the miracle of virtual friendships, instant messaging,  spiritual .ning sites – even blogs – the world has begun again on the Road Less Travelled.  

Tomorrow (July 28th, 2009) there will be a planet-wide meditation and spiritual convocation of believers in our common destiny: for one hour we may all, if we wish, visualize, contemplate, dance, sing or ‘Om’ together in celebrating our shared ability to create the World We Choose.

This one-hour appointment with our Higher Self is the initiative of Fire+The+Grid, a group of young people (about the same age as we were in 1969) led by Shelley, musician and lyricist Bradfield and singer-songwriter Anael.  They fired the planetary grid in July 2007 and were surprised that 800,000 other people joined them in a wave of world meditation.  Tomorrow – at 1919 Rio de Janeiro time (conveniently, at 11:19p.m. in your time zone wherever you are) – we shall do it again: fire the planetary grid of light, dream dreams and send beams of potential round the world – another chance for all of us to create the World We Choose.  This time it is expected we will be joined by upwards of one million souls.  Don’t take my word for it – you can check the truth of this at http://www.firethegrid.com and, if your inner child (or cosmic dreamer) is still active, you too can be part of creating the New Heaven and the New Earth.

In 1969 a seed was planted in human consciousness.  Without the internet and instant sharing worldwide, there was only intuition, channeling, a medium frowned on by middle-of-the-road humanity.  In 2009 we’re all in the middle of the road: the Road Less Travelled, and we’re in it together.