Sudden snowstorm in Denver focuses our seasonal senses—photo Andy Cross
Christmas Full Moon
Eight foot tides will run at their highest for Solstice. This year, as a bright waxing moon leads up to Christmas Night, from Monday through Wednesday December 21-23, 2015, tides along the Northern California coastline will reach near-‘maximum tidal range’, beyond which local fishermen and surfers abandon ports of Eureka and Shelter Cove and retreat behind the sandbags.
Full “Cold Moon” at sunset on Christmas Day—first to return to that configuration in our skies since 1977—will add to the frivolity and human goodwill generated en masse at this time of year. Happy Hanukkah, Eid, and of course Siderealview’s greatest pagan celebration, end of the old year—Hogmanay yay!
As northern Pacific waters begin to freeze around the edges, the Southern Ocean revs up for the 2015 El Niño season. Prelude this year has been massive heat ceilings, causing water to become warmer for longer than the norm. September 2015 Equinox water temperatures in Humboldt Bay, Northern California, were 68ºF. Coastal Land temperature same day was 58ºF.
This autumn, however, the tropical storm system has had cosmic assistance.
Primeval fear of the Kraken kept medieval sailors watchful on the Deep—
Musical system known as the Circle of Fifths matches perfectly with Buckminster Fuller’s “vector equilibrium”: the Cuboctahedron. This same geometry is theorized in the Resonance Project, as a way we measure Space itself as an almost infinite supply of energy (in the form of quantum vacuum fluctuations), even though we perceive it to be completely empty. This is because it is in a perfectly balanced state, where all Vectors in the geometry are of equal length—
—Twelve around One—
Nassim Haramein, The Resonance Project
Sudden land temperature change is not the Ocean’s way. Slow to heat up, this watery stage holds its warm baby longer—until El Niño enters from the wings.
Solar (sunspot) activity has increased in recent weeks and Christmas weekend, Earthlings are targeted for more Coronal Mass Ejection—CME—effects: solar panel damage, electronic blackout, countered by spectacular (North) Polar Aurora Borealis. NOAA and SOHO label is ‘incoming STORM’, sidebar below right.
Meantime the equatorial ‘Volcanic Belt’ which few people pay attention to—just happens to run parallel from coastal-Mexico South to coastal-Peru and in mid-Pacific, through the Mariana Trench, the deepest ocean on Earth, through Fiji, Tonga. The so-called Carnegie Ridge is a huge submerged volcanic plate that runs through Cocos Ridges and the Galapagos tectonic plate, or Platform. There it heads for the coast of Peru, becoming sub-ducted under the South American continent where it collides—approximately—with the Andes.
In East-Central Equatorial Pacific, El Niño feeds off this interaction between ocean and atmosphere, producing cyclical peaks, like any other natural phenomenon. Geneva’s World Meteorological Center predicts end-2015-2016 season to run neck-and-neck with three greatest historical surges. The strengthening 2015-2016 season is forecast to hit New Year’s Eve, with current ocean temperatures two degrees Centigrade—2ºC—above normal.
Strongest previous El Niños were in 1972-73, 1982-83 and 1997-98.
‘This naturally occurring El Niño event and human-induced climate change may interact and modify each other in ways which we have never before experienced’
Secretary-General, World Meteorological Center, Geneva EU
Where Tropical Cyclones and Hurricanes meet
El Niño has already sparked an active tropical cyclone season in the Northern Pacific. Closer to U.S. in eastern North Pacific basin, Hurricane Patricia made landfall in Mexico October 24, 2015 and was reportedly (NOAA) the most intense tropical cyclone in the western hemisphere. Coastal Peru, Ecuador and Chile usually bear the brunt of warming waters and concomitant extra rainfall.
Peru declared a pre-emptive state of emergency in July 2015 for fourteen of its 25 states, setting aside $70 million, to prepare for the coming winter rains. Local authorities have been clearing river beds of debris, reinforcing river banks with rocks, sandbags and fortifying reservoir walls.
Yet it may not be enough.
El Nino tropical Pacific anomaly
The two deadliest floods in Ecuador’s history occurred during strong El Niño events: in November 1982—307 deaths—and October 1997—218 died. Peru’s deadliest flood (518 fatalities) occurred during the 1997 El Niño event. A United Nations-backed study said that the 1997-1998 El Niño cost Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela approximately $11 billion.
One aspect of the El Niño effect is to reduce rainfall in drought-prone regions. Australia, India and Bangladesh have already been suffering with near-desert conditions prevailing through summer-autumn 2015
Ocean Warming
Increasing water temperatures in the central-eastern Pacific create more fertile conditions for tropical rain and clouds. Seasonal heavy rainfall that usually hits north Australia at this time, abandons its southern tropical band and heads for the central-eastern Pacific basin.
Also prevailing trade winds, traditionally blowing east to west over the Pacific, weaken—or, worse, reverse.
Fueling more extremes.
HIGHEST & LOWEST Tides Herald Solstice and Christmas Full Moon
Warm water funneling through ocean trenches, exaggerated by a full moon’s return in its 38-year cycle, coupled with CMEs for Christmas Day? Look out!
Highest tides for a decade combine with solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs, sidebar right)—incoming—to give the human race a little more to think about over the Festive Season than just buying trinkets, decorating trees or lighting sequential candles on the Menorah.
Haven for Humankind
For those who watch the skies, the Full Cold Moon [‘when deer shed their antlers’ in Native American Pacific Northwest] blesses us by rising ENE—Azimuth= 69.6°—at dusk on December 25th, opposite the sun setting WSW—Azimuth=239.1°—in constellation Sagittarius. The fickle Moon rises first in opposite astro sign Taurus; then moves one hour later into challenging Gemini. If humankind needs to be stimulated any more than we already are, this year-end astronomical/astrological cycle returning after thirty-eight years, promises innovative solutions.*
*Lunar 18.6-year cycle x2: for explanation, see Lunar Standstill-Returning to the Cradle of Civilization, here.
Northern Pacific Fishing Season on Hold
Snow-wracked northern hemisphere—with its rainy coastal counterparts (Naples, Florida experienced 87ºF on Solstice) may bring a better outcome for fishing fleets on both shores—California crab fishing has been on hold throughout December, while authorities assess potential risk of ‘bottom-feeders’ transmitting domoic acid-packed meat through the food chain.
While coastal control agencies continue to monitor the crab disease, fishing boats lie idle in Humboldt Bay. Some say they’re glad of the break. Others look to January and the start of the 2016 sport fishing season for new beginnings.
Hogmanay/Saturnalia
This time of year we loosen Kronos/Saturn’s bonds.
The ancient God awakens from His sleep,
and rules the Earth as in the Golden Age.
Meanwhile, with the joyful sound of merrymaking—even Saturnalian singing—on our lips and ears, perhaps the human race may find a place where we, as simple vibratory beings withinin the Great Vibration may find a bolt hole—Resonance Project quote by Nassim Haramein, above.
A murmuration of starlings, thousands celebrating strangely warm weather, late November, NE Scotland
A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. Lou Holtz
Starlings are some of the most ubiquitous birds on the planet: seen in Asia and Europe as all-black, in north Africa and western USA, bespeckled with silver. They are also the most adaptable. They are equally at home in open Scandinavian farmland, the mountains of Scotland and over the ocean bays of the Northwest Pacific coast. They flock in ‘murmurations’, dancing at dusk before they swoop to their pre-roost. Then, just as suddenly, as if on a signal by a starling commander, they flip upwards to the sky once more, perform a reprise and –communally, as one — head for bed. Sometimes there is a twitter, a single juvenile not quite in tune with the rest, but mostly their flight is silent, except for its enormous “swoosh” as a thousand birds murmurate overhead. For a mere human, rooted to the ground, it is a seminal experience; a writer-friend says “gotta put this on my bucket list: see a murmuration before I kick it”. For the starling, it is an exercise in group consciousness. A pre-nap flex of those compact little bodies, as if to celebrate the last of the light.
As with many animals — the cetaceans, the wolves — the starling’s group consciousness shows how far we humans have strayed from our own instincts, our intuitive ability to sense the emotions, the loves and fears of our fellows.
Do starlings have a deeper connection to ocean life? or are they just teasing us? Murmuration over Gretna, Borders in Scotland's warmest Autumn 2011
A wolf knows the difference between an inconvenience and a catastrophe Clarissa Pinkola-Estes Women Who Run with the Wolves
It is our instinct, says Dr Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, American poet, author of ‘Women Who Run with the Wolves’, 1995, and Jungian psychotherapist, which women are reasserting, re-educating their families to recognize, allowing the long-hidden feminine ‘knowing’ to come back into its own. She likens parental instinct (often in both parents — not just restricted to the female source) to radar.
“A mama’s, papa’s heart tracks the presence, speed, direction, and distance of the swift-flying hearts of kidlettes… where those beloved flying objects are positioned, at what altitude, in what condition they are traveling. This is a normal state in nature, for the older to keep track of the young.” She believes that the mother-father-radar can track other objects of like kind. That this same radar can “map the surfaces of other ‘objects’ in the same sky… including their density and intents, whether near or far away, so as to sense ‘what else’ is ‘out there’ in the universe their lovelings travel day and night.” She is convinced human instinct just needs to be fostered for it to return alive and well to the human heart; that fear — exaggerated by Culture, bombarded by Media — dents and dulls instinct, damages its natural flow. But intuition can be repaired. She tells a sweet story to illustrate how.
THE WOLF OF GUBBIO
“There is a little story in our family told about the wolf of the village named Gubbio. In our highly unconventional Schwäbisher version of the Gubbio Wolf, St Francis of Assisi who could speak to the animals, spoke to a Wolf the villagers madly feared for all its growling and staightlegged and ears-forward postures in the roads and behind the homes.
“Gentle Francis praised Wolf for her many attributes, but also whispered to Wolf, ‘Dont act quite so scary with the villagers, you know, keep some of the things you know and see to yourself… instead of always growling or barking them out over every little thing. That way the villagers will not fear you. And you can still see what you see, know what you know, and if need be, react accordingly.’
Women and wolves: tuned into their instincts; Pinkola-Estes' wolf archetype
“And Wolf agreed to do thusly, and loved St. Francis because Francis was gentle with her, and did not chastise her… but instead, taught her to remember her best self again.
“And thus, in our family the old people told the story that the Wolf from that day forward to whomever asked, would share her thoughts and ideas with whichever human being thought to ask Her about her far sight, her keen sense of smell and hearing, and her ‘tasting the air’.” Women who run with the Wolves, 1992, 1995 C. Pinkola-Estes, American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychotherapist.
….Like an alert and healthy wolf, many a mother’s heart, a father’s heart carries a radar system in order to herd, teach, protect the vulnerable and the young…**
So, it happens that we, the human race have been gearing up to 2012, sensing with greater or lesser instinctual knowing, that something is afoot. It’s not just that solar radar is shooting flares at us in gay abandon — the current ‘radiation storm‘ causing anomalous weather, high-latitude aurora borealis and electrical blackouts — but deep in our cultural memory, our Oversoul anticipates and prophecies foretell something earth-shifting to take place as one World Age grinds to a halt and a New World Age starts up its engines.
Return to Source: realignment with the Center of the Milky Way December solstice 2012
What this new world will be, we still do not know — and unknowing has traditionally been the death of the logical mind. But there have been and continue to be many signs: from the Occupy movement statement of zero tolerance by our Youth, now two months down the line; to the much-vaunted-and-analyzed Long CountCalendar of the Maya, spiraling to a close in just over one year from now, December solstice, 2012, when coincidentally the Earth, Sun and Solar System will come into close alignment with Galactic Center. It is the moment the Maya foretold that we come into alignment with the Sacred World Tree, that deep chasm in space at the center of the Milky Way where we shall re-enter our Cosmic birth canal.
Windmill Hill July 26th, 2011 Ouroboros, mythical serpent consuming its own tail: return to our own birth canal
Looking back over the crop circle season of 2011 in England – and not forgetting a number of surprise Southern hemisphere appearances in Brazil end-October/early November, it seems we have been prompted many times to trigger our cultural folk memory, our Group consciousness, into desire to return to our ancestral roots: not just in terms of retuning into our Earth Mother — to care for and nurture her — but to our celestial roots where we rendezvous in December 2012 with the birth canal from which the solar system sprang: symbolized by the classic Ouroboros, serpent of wisdom and all knowledge, consuming his own tail.
New Man reborn from the mouth of the Serpent, Kukulkan
In Central American legend, when the serpent swallows his beginnings, New Man emerges from the serpent’s throat, reborn, rejuvenated, re-instructed in the wisdom of the spheres.
Unlike the internet system of ‘artificial intelligence’ of just one decade ago, the network most of us call our alternate home is burgeoning with spiritual advice, distance healing, consciousness-raising exercises and support groups. It is as if, in a few years we are being groomed to elevate our consciousness, ourselves, our Group Mind and hone our new knowledge and our Instinct in any way we can, in order to prepare ourselves for a meeting with our Greater Selves: it is as if the Attractor at the End of Time is calling us to become one with All that Is. And, unlike a few years ago, the concept is now less daunting. We are becoming accustomed to the idea that we ARE, as Carl Sagan once said, Children of the Stars, and that we are returning Home.
** Dr Pinkola-Estes is a miracle woman/wolf in Jungian clothing. When she authored the first edition of WWRWTW in 1995, certain pages were edited out (who could edit out such wonders?). Be that as it may, she is now offering access to these missing gems and posting them on her Facebook page. Do visit and *like. You will be glad you did. MCY
Vortex, maelström, whirlpool: Nature's basic mechanism for transporting mass and energy effectively
“Nature seems to be a Book written in the Language of Mathematics” Galileo (1564-1642)
As communicators, we bloggers may sometimes feel we have been speaking but the words are not coming from inside our bodies. The words have been coming from somewhere else…
“For several months, we have been moving forward and are being released in small increments. We are in the birth canal –the tunnel– and in that space it is near impossible to ‘see’ anything. We feel we are not connected to anything. Alone in the tunnel, we have been traveling on a raft with no wind behind us, no oars and in still waters, with no-one to left or right. But now we are moving forward and this new movement is creating the strange feeling of being in two places at once.” Karen Bishop Emerging Earth Angels
Lightworker Karen Bishop suggests that the sensation of being lost, disconnected and alone will pass as humanity moves through this intermediary stage and into the great mass awakening to follow. This new sensation of bliss and purpose comes as soon as we “are enmeshed in our new spaces in a higher dimension.”
Schrödinger's Cat: quantum uncertainty principle (1935) reduced to the absurd
Higher dimensions, Alternate Reality, parallel Universes; the quantum paradox of ‘many worlds’: an unending conundrum of being in two places at the same time. Particle physicists pursuing the ‘God’ particle, Higgs-Boson, endlessly around circular underground tunnels on two continents. What do these concepts have in common?
Uncertainty principle: math simplifies quantum reality
Higher dimensions –or alternate ones– are presently the preoccupation of particle physicists, quantum cosmologists and proponents of the holographic universe in our search for the meaning of Reality. Physics, cosmology and mathematics are crossing the boundaries between science and philosophy.
New Age lightworkers are becoming more assured and vocal in their prediction of a mass awakening in human consciousness. And it looks as if science is beginning to agree.
Max Tegmark, astrophysicist, cosmologist and professor in the physics faculty at MIT in Cambridge, Mass likes the idea of parallel universes: the quantum mechanics (QM) paradox of a particle’s ability to be in two places at the same time. He sees mathematics as our ultimate connection to reality. “Math is not something we invented, but something we are continually rediscovering.”
“We now have equations that describe how light behaves, how gravity behaves, how atoms behave. We can express the speed of light in mathematical terms. It is beautiful. In math we capture the essence of a very complicated Universe out there.”
“What if we were to see the Universe not as an entity that exists inside space and time, but that space and time exist inside it?” Max Tegmark, Prof. of Physics, MIT
Anton Zeilinger, author of Dance of the Photons 2005, translated into German asEinsteins Spuk, ‘Einstein’s Spook’ or ‘Ghost’, has a different view. He currently heads a team at the University of Vienna who have ‘teleported’ light photons 600 meters under the river Danube. He and his Austrian team of photon-busters have proved (in their ‘double-slit’ particle experiment) a basic quantum theory that we change the nature of reality simply by observing it.
“(Quantum Theory of Reality) is exciting, it is extremely precise, it is mathematically beautiful; and it describes everything. It just doesn’t make sense.” Anton Zeilinger
Quantum cosmologist, Leonard Susskind, professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University since 1979, says the beauty of math’s connection to reality is its simplicity. It becomes easier to describe reality with mathematics. “As you probe deeper, mathematics becomes the ONLY reality.”
But in sounding the depths of the cosmos, he uncovered many unanswered questions, e.g., the popular assignment of black holes as the bad guys of the Universe. He and Stephen Hawking discussed the black hole theory in 1988 when Hawking first published his Brief History of Time. “It changed my life.”
” I believed he was wrong. I spent the next 20 years working through the evidence to prove lt.”
Hawking suggested black holes were places in the cosmos which swallowed everything. Nothing escapes after it has breached the rim — event horizon — of a black hole. All light, matter, energy, information is sucked in by its (theoretical) huge gravitational pull and is lost. Nothing comes back out.
“Hawking had to be wrong. I refused to believe everything could disappear. We can’t allow information to be ‘lost’. Instead, how about if the horizon of a back hole is 3D like a hologram capturing 3D reality of everything that falls into it?”
In 1993 he and his graduate students announced their holographic principle of the Universe: that if all reality were indeed a hologram — a 3D model of everything captured as an image of our reality — maybe black holes were images of events taking place very far away: back in time; that our reality is a projection of a holographic record stored at the outer reaches of the Universe. The team became bold. They called a consortium of the world’s top physicists to a conference at Stanford in November 2009 and Susskind invited Stephen Hawking to speak. By then, Hawking was talking about ‘sideways’ or lateral time. But he was interested in Susskind’s holographic theory. And Susskind’s team was about to put it to the test.
“He didn’t get it. You don’t get it. Nobody gets it. But we may be about to prove that the whole of creation is a hologram.”
If the Stanford team is right, their model brings quantum cosmology, the ‘Many Worlds’ interpretation and New Age spiritualism into the same arena: We are what we believe, what we think and how we see our own Reality.
Or even more spiritual in concept, that Susskind’s ‘something stored at the outer reaches of the Universe’ might be the Intelligent Being/Source from whom mystics and devotees seek enlightenment.
Does this mean that the Cosmos is coming full circle?
We are having an intelligent conversation with the Universe.
The Universe may be providing its own answer to the question.
The Sun and solar system gravitate each year to and from Galactic center (of the Milky Way), coming closest in mid-December. It is a point on the ecliptic roughly in the constellation of Sagittarius from which (in the view of many esoteric disciplines and world religions) we emerged in the dark recesses at the beginning of time. In the view of some (physicists, cosmologists) Galactic Center is a black hole. To others (esoteric/New Age science), it is the source of a massive emission of photons, beaming information towards us, a ‘photon belt’ affecting Earth and human DNA. And we are circling in an irrevocable spiral back towards the point where on December 21, 2012 Earth’s orbit in the Solar System, the Sun’s position on the ecliptic and the center of our Galaxy will line up as one.
We may reach this galactic vortex unscathed. In the mythology of the Maya, this is Hunab Ku, our galactic heart; a sign that the Mayan Long Count Calendar is complete and that Mankind will start a new Count of Time.
In world mythology, earth was ground out from the mill of the Vortex, the great Maelström, the cosmic whirlpool. And so, in the eyes of the Maya at least, we are returning to that vortex, that pool of creation.
According to some Mayan scholars, we entered the last Underworld (phase of human evolutionary Consciousness), the Universal Underworld yesterday.
In the eyes of Karen Bishop and other New Age lightworkers who have been working tirelessly to prepare for the ‘Shift’ (in human consciousness), the runup to our rendezvous with the heart of our Galaxy is a sign of our Ascension, ‘coming home’, maturing as a species. To the fearful, solstice 2012 could mean chaos, collapse of Earth systems, erratic solar and stellar behavior; even a physical shift in earth’s poles.
The Sun, our partner up there in the immediate galactic neighborhood, has indeed been leading us a dance lately. Solar activity is on the increase.
Tiny solar burst crop circle in rice at Magelang, Java January 29th, 2011
We are currently headed for solar maximum, but it’s not sunspots –traditionally seen as the barometer for solar minima and maxima— that have featured, but strong warnings of solar flares disturbing our geomagnetic field.
NOAA’s solar X-ray alert system [view sidebar at right] has been signaling ‘major storm’, ‘active’. Twin crop circles* in Java in late January were followed by a third small design reminiscent of last season’s Wiltshire solar flare warnings.
Spaceweather alert.
And last weekend the Sun itself joined the 3D holographic universe.
Last Sunday, dubbed Superbowl SUNday by NASA and the media, February 6th 2011 marked the day when the space agency’s twin STEREO satellites locked into orbit round the sun and started projecting 3D pictures of both sides of the sun back to Earth.
Affectionately known as STEREOAhead and STEREOBehind, the craft were launched in 2006 on a mission to study solar flares [coronal mass ejections, CMEs] to predict solar storms headed towards earth. The two craft reached their final position [in ‘opposition’ to each other, 180ºdegrees apart] so NASA, SOHO, and SDA are now combined to beam a wholistic continuous view of the sun back to earthbound systems.
“We expect great advances in theoretical solar physics and space weather forecasting.”
Heliophiles are jumping for joy. The 3D stereo images arrived just in time to document new coronal holes forming on the sun’s far side, which are heading to face towards us.
STEREO went into orbit round the SUN last Superbowl SUNday
STEREO is an acronym for Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory. The two satellites now join forces with SOHO [NASA’s Solar & Heliospheric Observatory] which has carried the load of solar projections to date.
“In the past an active sunspot could emerge on the far side of the sun completely hidden from Earth. Then, the sun’s rotation would turn that region towards our planet, spitting flares and clouds of plasma, with little warning.”
Now, in the runup to solar maximum, 2012, these first 3D stereo images bring into focus our need to prepare for possible solar disruption to the geomagnetic field and earth’s electromagnetically-powered systems.
Coronal Holes, imaged from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory
Coronal holes on the sun’s surface are the source of open magnetic field lines from which high-speed solar wind particles stream out into space. This fast solar wind travels at approximately 800 km/s [about 1.8 million mph].
When this surge reaches Earth’s magnetosphere, predictably three or four days later, some spectacular fireworks can occur. Usually the spaceweather team tries not to alarm earth populations more than they really have to. So electromagnetic disruptions to power supplies and weather systems are downplayed. Aurora borealis –northern lights– are emphasized instead.
UV image of same solar holes: coronal flares heading earthwards
“After traveling through space for a few days the particles will impact the Earth and may spark the formation of some auroral activity for lucky spectators” NASA
In NASA’s study ‘of the nature of coronal mass ejections’ the agency is not responsible for reporting on physical repercussions strong emissions [M-class flares] may have on communications, logistical and transportation systems. There are three categories of flares, X-class, M-class and C-class. C-class flares are small, with few noticeable consequences in the geomagnetic field. M-class flares are medium-sized, capable of causing brief radio blackouts, affecting Earth’s polar regions. Minor radiation storms sometimes follow an M-class flare. The largest, X-class, flares are ‘Superstorms’, major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms. Earth’s last major Superstorm blackout was the Carrington Event of 1859 when telegraph systems behaved erratically. But at the time the electric light had not yet been invented. **
150 years later our systems are massively dependent on NOT having magnetic surges play havoc with our electrical supply. Not to mention our telephone, television, cells, blackberries, macBooks, iPods, iPads… you get the picture.
So, is our Universe shaking its quantum hologram fist in our faces and saying ‘shape up or else…’? [In that context, we, reflections of the Intelligent Source, may be setting ourselves the test to see if we are ‘intelligent’/evolved enough to pass it].
Maelström, vortex of the Norwegian Sea
Or, is the vortex going to win? Is the black hole going to pull us in? Are we navigating the cosmic whirlpool alone with no-one to save us from drowning?
Mythology and spiritual belief predict Mankind has enough presence of mind to make a quantum leap in consciousness, to save itself. History says it’s never too late to start anew. Native American and Maya traditions say now is a good time.
*more on the January Java crop circleshere.
**Two days after this blog was posted, the Sun issued a “Valentine’s Day” X-class flare. There have been several large flares since then, along with some disturbing volcanic eruptions. Siderealview apologies for any suggestive content within this blog. No harm was intended.
MY 03/10/11
Gods wielding Thunderbolts: not imaginary mythological tales but formative Earth's memory of her violent past
Plasma braids:
“Thunderbolt that steers the Universe”
Heraclitus, 5th Century B.C.
Our galaxy is not void.
For years we were taught traditional theory of our Universe as ‘space’, a vacuum, inert, orderly with few surprises. It was forever expanding outward from a point of primeval Big Bang, controlled and geared by gravity (the weakest celestial force), full of black holes, with anomalous behavior in comets, meteorites and exploding galaxies explained as the work of anti-matter, ‘dark’ matter or, as in nuclear physics, attributed to ‘unknown’ factors such as quarks, charm, CERN‘s conjectural Higgs-Boson particle or the existence of the ‘weak force’, anti-gravity or String Theory’s multiple dimensions. While physicists had trouble proving their theories (many of the ‘forces’ and particles were hypothetical and had theoreticians predicting ‘mass-less’ entities and the ‘graviton’) they are now swinging to a view of the operation of the Universe via another mode of Being:
As electrically-charged plasma.
Plasma is looked upon as the ‘fourth state of matter’, different from solid, liquid, gas. And as plasma is almost exclusively electromagnetic –a cluster of ionized particles– electrical theory is being unwrapped from the closet and given another airing.
NASA, JPL, CERN and the Los Alamos National Laboratory all give explanations for their switch from traditional space theory to a more generally accepted (and more familiar electromagnetically-driven) plasma physics, whose founding father, Swedish Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén (1908-1995) coined the phrase ‘Plasma Universe’. Originally trained as an electrical power engineer, he researched and taught many years in the field. His plasma theories describe behavior of aurorae, Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts, effect of magnetic storms on Earth’s magnetic field, magnetic and electric fields in cosmic plasmas, the terrestrial magnetosphere and dynamics of plasmas within our galaxy.
Because of its unique behavior, (unlike solids, liquids, gas) plasma is seen as the dominant form of matter in the universe. It has been called the ‘fundamental state of matter.’
When a material is heated from solid to liquid to gas phase, and then even hotter, it starts to become ionized, i.e. one or more electrons of an atom become liberated. Plasma is essentially a collection of ionized particles and while in its simplest form it behaves according to basic electromagnetic laws, at its most complex it continues to astonish specialists in its ability to self-organize into cells with different electrical characteristics.
Plasma comes in many forms, all electromagnetically active
Plasmas are not routinely encountered on the Earth’s surface. Natural plasmas, however, do form lightning and aurora, with the cool, man-made version most commonly seen in fluorescent light bulbs. Solar corona and solar flares are good examples of hot plasma. Earth’s magnetosphere contains plasma generated by particles of solar wind interacting with Earth’s own electromagnetic field, liberating ions into the Ionosphere (upper atmosphere).
Aurora borealis, Aurora australis
Aurora on Jupiter, photo courtesy John T Clarke (U.Mich)
Aurora borealis/australis is the result of charged solar wind particles clashing with and becoming trapped within the Van Allen radiation belts, where they hit the ionosphere and fluoresce. Every planet with a magnetic field generates its own plasma, like that around Jupiter and its moon Io. Beyond the solar system, in interstellar space, ions and electrons proliferate everywhere.
Fire in the Sky
A plasma discharge (spontaneous flash of light) is familiar to students of electromagnetism. To our ancestors, however, who must have witnessed many such plasma discharges in the ancient skies and recorded these (frightening) occurrences, they were seen as battles of the gods, sky heroes and god-kings clashing with sky monsters, serpents, ‘smoke-stars’, fire-dragons which, against apparently insuperable odds, they succeeded in overcoming.
As comets enter the inner solar system, a plasma tail often develops (in addition to a non-charged tail of dust), like Shoemaker-Levy 9 (1993-4) and Hale-Bopp (1995, 1997). NASA’s most famous comet-rendezvous program, Deep Impact, confirmed cometary composition (‘dirty snowball’ plus ionized particle tails) in its hit on comet Tempel 1 in July 2005 and flyby of comet Hartley 2 November last year.
Several ancient cultures name fearful comets as ‘smoking stars’ and lightning, with its thunderbolt — often in the shape of axe, jagged staff or flashing sword — was seen as the divine weapon of gods and king-heroes wielded against ‘fiery dragons’ curled inside the earth (volcanoes?) which threatened the populace.
Castor and Pollux —Alpha and Beta Geminorum, the ‘heavenly’ or ‘thunder’ twins — were revered by the Aztec as the first ‘fire sticks’, from which Mankind learned to drill fire. And, interestingly, when the Peruvian Indians became Christian, they chose to call one of those twins Santiago because their missionaries taught them that Christ named James (Santiago) and John the ‘Sons of Thunder’.
In Mesopotamia 4,500 years earlier (4000 BC), Gemini* served as pointers to mark the beginning of the new year by setting with the first new moon of spring, just as Egyptian astronomy’s pointer Dog star Sirius, Sothis signaled annual flooding of the Nile. Classical Greece called them the Dioscuri, the ‘thunder boys’, sons of Zeus.
In the opinion of seminal scholar of world mythology Prof. J. Rendel Harris:
‘Great commentators of the Christian church had missed the meaning. In demythologizing the Bible, they threw out vast sections of primitive culture’s connection to the stars.’ (Boanerges 1913)
Authors Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend of (IMHO) one of the greatest compilations of world mythology, (Hamlet’s Mill 1969, 1977, 2002) call the Bible ‘that most unscientific of records.’
Viewing cosmology in an electromagnetic context, the Mill of the title begins to make sudden sense of millennia of myth. Hamlet is a translation of Finnish/Norse/Icelandic proto-hero Amlodhi whose staff (Yggdrasil, ‘world tree’) spun the mill of the maelstrom, the whirlpool of the cosmos, the vortex, axis mundi — the Earth’s magnetic polar shaft. The Finnish quern/mill Sampo (vault of heaven, from Sanskrit skambha, pillar, pole, axis) ground out Mankind’s deep origins: it was this mill which created ocean, earth, Man. In good times it ground out ‘peace and plenty’, in bad times, salt. And, according to the Finns whose mythology is alive in recitation, it grinds still. It lingers in Vedic tradition in a hymn —Atharva Veda— to the world pillar (skambha):
A great monster in the midst of creation strode in penance on the back of the sea. In it are set what gods there are, like branches of a tree roundabout the trunk. AV 10.7.38
From such fragments of antiquity embedded in folk memory indicating a preoccupation with earth’s magnetic axis, it is tempting to believe that a polar shift, such as predicted by some for our ‘End Times’, may have occurred at least once before.
There seem to have been other cosmic cataclysmic occurrences.
Heliospheric current generates its own electromagnetic field
In an electromagnetic context within interstellar space, plasma spontaneously generates filaments which, like magnetic poles, attract each other at long distances and repel each other at short range. These filaments often braid themselves into ‘ropes’ that act like power transmission lines through space, with virtually unlimited scope in the distances and speeds they can travel.
Following precise magnetic field lines, these braids and ropes are known as Birkeland currents, after Norwegian explorer and physicist Kristian Birkeland who predicted them in 1903 after years of study of aurora in the Arctic.
Space plasma moving through a magnetic field generates its own electric current, and conducts electricity better than metals. Professor Emeritus of the Swedish Alfvén Laboratory, Carl-Gunne Fälthammar wrote (1986):
“A reason why Birkeland currents are particularly interesting is that, in the plasma forced to carry them, they cause a number of physical processes to occur (waves, instabilities, fine structure formation). These in turn lead to consequences such as accelerated charged particles, both positive and negative, and element separation (like preferential ejection of oxygen ions). Both classes of phenomena should be of general astrophysical interest far beyond that of understanding the space environment of our own Earth.”
In the medium of space, strong radial magnetic fields can make a plasma pinch like the hourglass-shaped Ant nebula, left, produce characteristic filaments like the plasma ball (top), and particle beams, as in its dense plasma center.
Filaments leave a magnetic field signature that is recognizable in the observable universe. Astronomers have been aware of these electromagnetic fields, but have historically paid them little attention.
At a most basic level, magnetic fields are produced only by electricity. So with new eyes we observe our Universe as electrically charged, electrically based and electrically-operated.
If stories transmitted through myth in all ancient cultures are taken as genuine records of visual phenomena –plasma bursts in the heavens– we begin to see formative earth peoples experiencing life on a volatile planet among cataclysmic prehistoric events happening in their skies. Our recent past, by comparison, has been a peaceful one. We can imagine how such events must have instilled fear, but faith and belief that their leaders (god-kings in ancient Egypt, China, Babylon) could and did overcome such monsters is not in our makeup. By ignoring the heavens, we have become complacent: we are no longer skywatchers. Because our history relates few cosmic incidents, we are lulled into ignoring our unique connection to our star, its orbiting companions, the Milky Way galaxy which drives us and the great space of infinity beyond.
Yet this is a running theme through all primitive earth culture, myth and art. And while science is beginning to access the bigger picture, we may be seeing a greater whole just in time: as the predicted solar maximum (increased sunspot activity, below) has the potential to return us to such tempestuous celestial activity as our ancestors experienced. Fire in our skies… perhaps eliciting earth’s (volcanic) response…
Astronomers and astrophysicists are beginning to accept that every energetic object in the universe has a plasma associated with it. Plasmas are detected by trace electromagnetic radiation (light, x-rays, radio waves), or in some cases, by the interaction of their ions and electrons with other objects.
Scientists think solar wind has been turned sideways by pressure from interstellar wind from distant stars
Distilling plasma theory down to its simplest form, and with great leaps in astronomical technology (space vehicles like Cassini and Voyager, telescopes like Hubble and SOHO), we can view and photograph from earth beautiful plasma nebulae which, excited by light from nearby stars, display precisely the same formations and explosive patterns seen in electromagnetism produced in the laboratory. It is also synchronous that Voyager is only now hurtling toward interstellar space approximately 10.8 billion miles (17.4 billion kilometers) from the sun on the outer edge of the solar system. Voyager 1 has crossed into an area of deep space where the velocity of hot ionized gas, (plasma) emanating directly outward from the sun as solar wind has slowed to zero.
Voyager 2 confirmed the existence of Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Uranus and Neptune.
As with Earth, the outer planets are affected by solar storms, but Earth’s proximity to her star (93 million miles, 1AU) makes her more susceptible.
Van Allen radiation belts surround Earth's magnetosphere
Energetic particle fluxes (radiation) can increase and decrease dramatically as a consequence of geomagnetic storms, themselves triggered by magnetic field and plasma disturbances produced by the Sun. We moved out of an unusually extended solar minimum last year. It may be in our interest to be (cautiously) more aware of the possibility of increasing solar disturbances during this next eleven-year cycle which will crown at solar maximum, thought to occur 2012.
While solar disruption on the scale of 1859’s Carrington Event may not happen, with our present dependence on electronic media for almost all human activity, we would be wise to have backup systems available, should such a CME-derived blackout occur.
Nobody in living memory knows what to do should a pole reversal occur. Angelic assistance is preferable.
Westbury crop circle July 2010 'Van Allen radiation belts'?
As we know (or rather, as some of us on this weblog community are following), 2009/2010 crop circle seasons were significant in their display of designs and consciousness-triggers alerting us to astrophysical phenomena and Earth’s fragility in its electromagnetic cocoon. Solar flares, plasma ejections (coronal mass ejections, CMEs), sunspot activity have all featured in Wiltshire wheatfields and are on the increase –see blog entries February through October 2010— alongside dimensional and spiritual instruction to prepare us for what may be around the corner.
Earth’s Mythological Past
Meantime, interdisciplinary researchers have not been idle. Given such a wealth of new information from astronomers, mythologists (following the trail begun by Hamlet’s Mill authors) have been working alongside scientists to make sense of thousands of years of transmitted lore, art, ancestral wisdom and belief which attest to hugely violent episodes in our planet’s past related to the heavens. Mythological and cultural archetypes worldwide share language, symbols and a timeframe which suggest a less-than-tranquil formative period in Earth’s evolution than the one traditionally held by astronomers.
Under the umbrella of the Thunderbolts Project of Portland, OR, scientists, authors, mythologists and historians led by Wallace Thornhill, David Talbott and electrical engineer Prof. Donald E. Scott, are cooperating with plasma physicist Dr. Anthony Peratt to interpret petroglyph symbolism used by almost every ancient civilization to depict mythological heroes and events. Peratt has for 30 years run a laboratory using computer-generated electrical activity to predict plasma bursts in celestial forms. Together they are finding remarkable resonance between plasma forms in the lab, those produced in the cosmos, and the rock art of ancient man who drew what he saw in the sky.
On a spiritual and cosmic level, an ‘electric Universe’ — via our planetary umbilical cord to our star; its energetic tie to Galactic Center and through it the galaxy’s electromagnetic relationship with all other galaxies and the most distant stars — can be viewed as a purposeful whole, held together by plasma ropes, braids of light and power transmission lines which do indeed transmit information.
We are only just learning the language of the stars.
*According to pre-Hellenic myth, the Age of Gemini (approx 6000 BC) was considered the ‘Golden Age’, Saturnia regna when Saturn/Kronos ruled. Following the Precession of the Equinoxes, each celestial Age lasts around 2200 years. More detail on successive ages here. In Mongolian myth the Age of Gemini signaled a time when ‘heaven and earth separated’ and fire was born. In other words, before the ecliptic and celestial equator fell apart (and the equinoxes started to precess), there was no fire. It was ‘given by heaven’ in the Golden Age of the Twins. 8000 years on, we entered the Age of Aquarius on February 14, 2009.
Any technology beyond our own would seem like magic to us Arthur C. Clarke
Recent discoveries emerging from Egypt suggest the existence in prehistory of a world-wide pyramid/sacred temple system, mounted like antennae on key earth energy meridians which were used by ancient priest-scientists as an electrical system; as a network to produce healing sound frequencies; or even in times of emergency, to stabilize the tectonic plates of the planet by means of harmonics.
Modern engineers are familiar with the properties of quartz (oscillating frequencies in electronics; timepieces all rely on quartz crystal) and that the flow of water through chalk (limestone, calcium carbonate) can replicate the flow of electricity like current from a battery.
Magnetometer reading inside Rollright Stones, Oxon, courtesy Don Robins, the Dragon Project
It is well known that the chalk aquifer of the Wiltshire basin and neighboring Oxfordshire acts as one of the world’s best conductors of electricity, and that megalithic sites like Stonehenge, Avebury, Rollright and Silbury Hill show detectable rises in electromagnetic radiation within their precincts, when compared with much lower ‘background’ radiation outside. Quartz inclusions in stone circles allowed them to act as energy storage devices.
Silbury Hill itself is a giant chalk pyramid, the highest manmade mound in Europe. Under certain conditions it acts as a huge quartz crystal radiating energy outwards from its core.
Both limestone and granite have electrical qualities. Granite is slightly radioactive and has the ability to ionize or electrify the air. It releases radon gas which has a radioactive charge. In Wiltshire the underlying limestone — holding water or allowing it to flow — floods during summer thunderstorms and then dwindles as it drains into rivers. Silbury Hill, which has a measureable charge, and stone circles like Rollright, Stonehenge and Avebury all produce radiation — particularly at sunrise — when sunlight acts on the electrical energy stored in the stones and converts it to ultrasound.
Midsummer 2010 at Savernake Forest
And over the last thirty years or so — more concentrated in the last twenty — we have noticed this unique electromagnetic landscape being used for some other remarkable transmissions through space and time, using a technology which is far beyond anything we have today in common usage, and it’s been happening approximately fifty times each summer across southern England, continental Europe and sporadically in other locations where there is proximity to a sacred ancestral place of ritual/worship: the crop circle phenomenon.
White Sleet Hill crop circle 25th June 2010
Physicists, engineers and other scientists agree that telluric energy is a natural consequence of certain combinations of geology and water flow. It seems our ancestors knew this and were much more advanced than we give them credit for — that perhaps we modern souls with access to almost limitless technological resources may have a few lessons to learn in order to catch up.
For instance between 1977-83 Dr Don Robins and the Dragon Projectvia London’s Institute of Archaeology, with support from the Getty Institute, measured electrical and ultrasound emissions at Rollright, Oxon. Robins’s results, compiled in a hasty publication, Circles of Silence (1985 )* were remarkable. The sun had a clear effect on electromagnetic stimulation and resonance within the circle.
John Burke, a biological engineer from Boston University has measured before and after thunderstorms in Wiltshire, at Silbury, at Tikal in Mexico and on the Giza plateau above the Nile whose annual inundation is legendary. According to him, this aqueous fluctuation process produces a measurable change in the magnetic field.
‘The rising and falling of the Nile at Giza each year produces a constant flowing of water through layers of limestone which generates an electrical charge which generates an electric current which generates a magnetic field. So if you wanted to boost a charge to a monument, it would make sense to have running water nearby.’
At Tikal, the great stone terraces under the pyramid were constructed to allow water to flow down giant steps in two separate streams around the pyramid. Because water flowing in neighboring parallel streams sets up a current, it is likely the Maya used the resulting electrical charge for purposes of ritual celebration.
Current thinking in the archaeo-engineering field suggests that the megalith builders were aware of such electromagnetic currents; how the strength or weakness of solar radiation affected them; and that they built their sacred sites to amplify them.
Burke believes these structures were placed in areas where unusual geology naturally concentrates electromagnetic energy – that EM energy is amplified by geological surroundings. Sometimes — where these lines of energy cross — they generate electrical currents in the land.
When the megalithic builders designed these great structures & then built them, in such a way as to further concentrate those earth energies, it suggests they understood what they were doing and it looks as if they were attempting to control and use this energy for their own purposes. John Burke, Biological Engineer, BU
‘Certain types of geology will magnify that earth energy several-fold. In a
place where one area of ground which has a good ability to conduct electricity meets another area which has a lesser ablity to conduct these currents, it creates a charge — it’s called conductivity discontinuity. Also most dramatic change in magnetic strength per hour happens in the pre-dawn hours and wherever you get a change in magnetic field occurring, it generates electricity. It’s a basic/universal physics principle called induction. In the Egyptian desert temples were often built where these lines intersect. It opens up a whole new area of sacred science. Sacred sites were chosen carefully, and precisely where pyramids were constructed the suspicion arises that they understood much more about this stuff than we do. And they were using it for their engineering.’
Earth’s geomagnetic field is strongest when receiving sunlight during the day, weakest at night, when it’s dark. The Sun’s rays constantly fall on some part of the planet as it spins and this motion itself creates an electromagnetic ‘dynamo’.
Burke explains key times to experience the phenomenon are pre-dawn because the fluctuation of energy originating in daily changes in the Earth’s geomagnetic field are then at their most dramatic. At this time the weaker field lines now come roaring back to close to full strength very quickly over a short period — as the sun rises and brings light/heat to the earth.
Dr Carmen Boulter of University of Calgary says looking through our own cultural eyes blinkers us from seeing the sophistication of megalithic and pyramid function.
‘We don’t have the technology to build a pyramid now – we’re not even close. We don’t move blocks of 300-ton stone. We’re not the most evolved we’ve ever been. That is one of the blinders that stops us from imagining what they (Egyptian technology) were capable of’ Dr Carmen Boulter, Egyptian Archetypes professor, UCalgary
‘Because we’ve been taught the ancient Egyptians had only copper tools and simple pulley systems — that their technology was primitive — we’re not looking there (Giza and pyramid plateaux) for higher level technology.’
The existence of telluric/geomantic energy has long been supported by dowsers and others sensitive to its power. Sometimes known as ley lines, they are seen as bands of energy running between megalithic sites. Most famous in England is the St Michael Ley which runs from Land’s End, Cornwall through Glastonbury Tor, Avebury/Silbury and ends on the Norfolk/Suffolk county border on the east coast. It was traditionally used as a ‘pilgrim’s way’ for Christian devotion, superimposed on a far older sacred pilgrimage route.
John Michell, renowned telluric energy guru, mystic and author of 40 books including New View over Atlantis (Thames and Hudson 1983) died last year. In his busy life (Eton and Trinity, Cambridge, linguist and Russian translator, inspiration for Fortean Times), he was seen as the founding father of the Earth Mysteries movement in England. A recurring theme in Michell’s work, from City of Revelation to The Measure of Albion, is of universal truths codified in nature and continually being rediscovered from ancient times up to the present day.
‘At Glastonbury in the same alignment the pilgrims’ path still runs right along the edge of the tor, and at Avebury the line exactly coincides for over three miles with what is now the main road to Devizes from the southern entrance of the stone circle…’ John Michell
The other (south-north) line intersecting at Glastonbury starts at Carnac in Brittany, cuts through Derbyshire’s all-quartz stone circle Arbor Low in the White Peak District (carboniferous limestone), and continues to Aberdeenshire’s 20-foot high (granite) Memsie Cairn at Fraserburgh and on to Orkney’s famous 26-ft high Maes Howe mound.
Singing Stones
After 27BC earthquake, Luxor's northern Colossus of Memnon sang again at sunrise until AD199 when Roman Emperor Septimius Severus had broken torso replaced. Roman limestone silenced the moan
Greek geographer Strabo, writing in the early years of the 1st century, tells of the 27 BC earthquake that shattered the northern quartz Colossus of Memnon at Thebes, collapsing it from the waist up. Following its rupture, this statue was able to ‘sing’ again as it had every morning at dawn since its original construction by Amenhotep III in 14th centuryBC. The dual colossi were originally created in 1350 BC by this powerful pharaoh to flank the eastern entrance to his devotional temple at ancient Thebes on the west bank of the Nile opposite modern Luxor. In historic times, Roman engineers, thinking to rescue the images from flooding which threatened the ground on which the temple stood, transported the two 60ft statues to their present site and in so doing silenced the singing effigies of the pharaoh. They also tried to patch the broken torso but their engineering attempts failed. The statues now stand out of alignment. They no longer face directly into the sun at dawn, which was Amenhotep’s original intention. At his Theban temple — open to his people to serve their daily devotion to him as a living god, his priestly calculations had the temple portals with these flanking Colossi face due East to capture the moment of sunrise. The Rising of sun-god Ra triggered a devotional sound in the stone, its ringing amplified through the temple which would have caused the whole foundation to vibrate. This would be seen as the Pharaoh’s own superhuman magic, his god-like ability (as Ba-Ra, son of the Sun) to harness the power of the sun.
Colossi of Memnon at Dawn by David Roberts, 1840
Little remains of Amenhotep III‘s temple in Thebes and the quartz torso replaced by substandard sandstone during Roman engineering rescue attempts was never found. Strabo heard it sing when he visited in 20BC. Both Greeks and Romans were drawn to its supposed oracular ability to voice and believed that good fortune attended anyone hearing the tone. The Greeks fondly dubbed them Colossi of Memnon, after their hero of the Trojan war and referred to the entire Theban Necropolis as the Memnonium. It was 14thC BC Egyptian technology, however, that produced the whistling moaning sound from hewn quartzite sandstone quarried at Cairo and transported 420 miles upstream to Thebes to face the sun at the temple entrance, due east, knowing of the sun’s ability to transmute quartzite crystals so that they emit sound as the sun’s disk rose at dawn. Not only did Amenhotep create a portal for the first light of day to penetrate his temple, but in its rising the Sun triggered a sacred hum of healing sound.
The legend of the voicing Memnon’s oracular powers spread through Aegean, Mediterranean and Roman culture — the length of the then known world — bringing a stream of visitors, followers, Roman Emperors, generals and Greek historians, who came to marvel and hear the statue ‘speak’. But mysterious vocalizations of the broken colossus ceased in AD199, when Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, in an attempt to curry favour with the Oracle, reassembled the two shattered halves, using stone from a different limestone quarry to replace the broken torso. It never spoke again.
Giza pyramids built as a scale model of Orion's belt
It is now scientific probability that similar sonic and electrical qualities were harnessed by earlier pharaohs in deliberate siting of Old Kingdom pyramids: the Giza plateau in particular is singled out for resonance and its dramatic ability to capture solar fluctuations. It is no coincidence that those three quartzite pyramids set on their limestone plateau are built on an exact scale representation of three stars in Orion’s belt, Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. Other pyramid complexes in the riverine Band of Peace mirror star positions: on a celestial ‘landscape’ with Orion’s belt at Giza, Heliopolis (in the south) reflects the constellation Leo (sphinx god) and Abusir in the north represents the Pleiades star cluster over Orion’s head. Scale was calculated with remarkable accuracy. This earthly triangle of energy mirroring three celestial clusters in a heavenly triangle helped keep track of Sothis/Sirius, the Dog Star in the middle and brightest star in the night sky, whose reappearance after 70 days of invisibility below the Egyptian horizon was cause for celebration — coinciding with the annual inundation of the Nile, return of fertility, plentiful water, abundant food supply.
Today's technology outshone by the Ancients'
Indigenous wisdom-keeper and Egyptian Elder Abd’El Hakim Awyan, who died in 2009, firmly believed in his ancestors’ powers to manipulate electromagnetic currents and conduit solar forces to produce technology greater than we have today.
At Saqqara, in Old Kingdom capital Memphis, the House of the Spirit at the base of the Step Pyramid of Djozer (2667-2648 BC) was a place of healing sound. Chambers in this temple were harmonically tuned to different frequencies, creating huge fields of harmonic resonance, just as later Gothic cathedrals filled sacred geometry with sound.
The Giza plateau is solid chalk and all three pyramids, ’15 million tons of quarried stone’ (built by 4th Dynasty rulers Khufu, 2589-2566BC, his son Khefren, 2520-2494, and his grandson Menkhare, 2490-2472) were constructed of limestone, two with a granite casing and pink Aswan granite interior, while the largest/earliest, the Great Pyramid, most significantly consisted of dolomite: carboniferous limestone with a high magnesium content. It also has interior galleries lined with granite. Its final outer layer was coated with limestone dust so smooth that it glistened and gleamed white in the sun. All were sited to witness sunrise at both summer and winter solstices.
John Burke’s electrical analogy expands. He suggests that perhaps the Great Pyramid –maybe all three pyramids on the plateau — were deliberately built for a light show, a demonstration of the work of the gods in action.
The Great Pyramid was constructed of magnesium-rich dolomite with a core of granite-lined galleries or tubes which ran from underground aquifers up through the pyramid to its highest gallery at the peak. Its final outer coating was a thick membrane of calcium carbonate, essentially an insulator. ‘This combination gives you a highly electrical conductive core wrapped in a perfect insulator. I asked myself why granite should be used for the tunnels.
‘Granite is slightly radioactive and it will ionize or electrify the air. So was their purpose to keep the tunnels electrically charged?
‘If you ran a copper wire from limestone layers in the aquifer up through the tunnels in the pyramid to the opening at the top, it would become electrically charged. You could light a lightbulb by it today. So did they use the same mechanism to make the pyramid into a light source?’ he wonders.
‘You get a concentration of negative charge below ground, a concentration of positive charge above it and if they become strong enough you begin to get what’s called a flush discharge – A GLOW’
That’s John Burke’s theory. So, did the Great Pyramid glow in the dark?
He suggests their technology went further. In times of drought or when less water moved through the aquifer, the granite-lined chambers would have acted as conduits to keep the energy flowing — ‘like a car battery at a stop light’, he says.
Sunspot 1117 causing havoc on earth-facing side of the Sun
We clearly have more to learn on the subject. But as it happens we may have help. Our own star is beginning a new cycle of solar activity.
Under ‘normal’ solar conditions, the earth is surrounded by a fluctuating ‘coil’ of energy –an electromagnetic blanket holding all planetary systems stable– with geomagnetism humming like a top. But activity on the sun’s surface also fluctuates, sunspots come and ago and solar flares can interrupt this peaceful flow. The sun has just completed an 11-year ‘minimum’ cycle of fewer-than-normal sunspots. We have entered the runup to solar maximum expected in 2012, during which increased, even dramatic solar activity can occur.
Aurora borealis over Tromsø, Norway last week, photo courtesy Thilo Bubek
An analogy that’s easy to comprehend is our Arctic and Antarctic geomagnetic activity that manifests as Aurora Borealis or Australis. These magnificent spectacles make themselves visible whenever solar flares –coronal mass ejections (CMEs) borne on the solar wind– penetrate the Earth’s geomagnetic shield. The journey from Sun to Earth usually takes 3-4 days and when they reach the poles their interaction with the geomagnetic field creates glorious nighttime light shows.
Aurorae are only some of the side effects of solar activity. Some CMEs are strong enough to disrupt communications systems and close down electronic and electromagnetic operations, traffic lights, power generators and the like. We may have to get used to them, as their frequency is increasing.
Crop Circles
Ephemeral Pewsey Vortex (cut within hours of its appearance):interdimensional tunnel to perception
In crop circle parlance it’s no longer unusual to hear of anomalous ultrasound, hovering light orbs or to find crop stems sculpted by a massive heat source. Visitors use them as spontaneous temples, lighting candles and whispering prayers. We are beginning to see technology greater than our own at work, manifesting in beautiful form in the corn, to capture our imagination, captivate our senses, alter our perception. And crop formations are, without exception, manifesting around nodes of earth’s magnetic energy, just as ancient sacred sites did.
*The Dragon Project Don Robins was a solid state chemist and his book Circles of Silence (1985) is one of a few rare accounts of the Dragon Project. It is now out of print.
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 Weatherforecasts 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.
View from the Stars: whichever way you look at it, we are present in Sidereal time, Space is our growth medium, and stardust and water our constituent particles. When electromagnetically charged, our solar-powered circuitry is capable of Creating Anything We Choose.
Meantime the equatorial ‘Volcanic Belt’ which few people pay attention to—just happens to run parallel from coastal-Mexico South to coastal-Peru and in mid-Pacific, through the Mariana Trench, the deepest ocean on Earth, through Fiji, Tonga. The so-called Carnegie Ridge is a huge submerged volcanic plate that runs through Cocos Ridges and the Galapagos tectonic plate, or Platform. There it heads for the coast of Peru, becoming sub-ducted under the South American continent where it collides—approximately—with the Andes.
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