Novices in the Noosphere find Answers in the Corn

Entering the Noosphere as a Newbie

Merkabah, spirit vehicle in its second phase, when inner triangles of previously standing grain were layered to create the green extradimensional effect, July 21st, 2012 Wanborough Plain, photo Philippe Ullens

The best way for us to participate in the global awakening is to pay close attention to the little details in our own lives day-to-day. For the extent of our ability to bring love to the whole is in direct proportion to how much we are currently motivated by and expressing Love in our own lives. The greater we love, the greater our power to change the world.
Ken Carey, Timekeepers of the Human Experiment, 2012

Awakening-awakened collective of human consciousness
Teilhard de Chardin, in his Cosmogenesis, 1922, initiated a study of the planetary thought field, which he called the ‘Noosphere’—from Gk. nous, mind: his legacy continues in the ongoing research of this condition in the University of Princeton‘s Global Consciousness Project.

Within this sphere’s true nature is that ever-growing portion of the earth’s aura which is awakened-awakening collectively in human consciousness. Freud and Carl Jung made us all aware of our collective subconscious, but it is our long-dormant collective conscious which is now surfacing.

孙彦 graphic design based on the 2nd phase at Wanborough Plain, July 2012

According to Carey, “Already awakening, this field of collective human consciousness will soon know itself for what it is, even as we realize that each of us is like an individual leaf on a tree, or an individual cell in a body. Even after this happens I expect that in order to minimize any disorientation this event will bring, the Star Maker will only gradually reveal its conscious Presence within us, slowly allowing humankind to awaken to the realization that people are not only One, but that we have a rôle as the Star Maker’s physical organ of consciousness—an organ similar to a brain—but more clearly understood in our new capacity as the guidance system for this particular planetary garden.”

Spectacular sundogs, visible at high latitudes when the Sun is low in the sky; Greenland photo by Jay Johnson

The West is not the only culture preoccupied with the imminent appearance of the Other—Carey’s Starmaker, Terence McKenna’s Eschaton, Nevada UFO-spotters’ ET. In the southern half of the continent, the Aztecs await Quetzalcoatl, feathered serpent, Kukulcan returns to the Maya, and the Inca reunite with their Mother Pachamama‘s breast.

Ramayana & other Vedic texts describe ‘Vimana’ flying vehicles for the gods

In the East, the Persians/Assyrians visualized their sky-king-god Anu would reveal himself in a fiery chariot; Babylonian and Vedic gods had from of old flown the heavens in their Vimana flying ships, and so their frequent visits to earth were commonplace in the subcontinental consciousness.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
G.K. Chesterton

In Kundalini, the Merkabah transports the body-mind-spirit through seven light-color-differentiated chakras-centers towards ultimate enlightenment-awareness; Stanton St.Bernard fairytale bauble, stage-1 Vimana vehicle; stage-2 Angel; stage-3 sundogs add sparkle, see above

Egyptian kings drew divine right through direct communing/worship of the Sun’s disk, giving them superhuman powers, which reinforced their people’s devotion. It was their belief that the afterlife—for which their psyche was prepared and their bodies mummified—was one with the gods, of eternal light, abundance, bliss and joy.

While Egypt and Sumeria gave us writing; and Arabia gave us number, none of the eastern civilizations—Roman, Greek, Judaic—can compete with the Maya for their ability to calculate human cycles of time. Their Tzolkin and LongCount cycles run with regularity and precision from a ‘time of origin’ in the Bronze Age [3114 B.C.], through their own recorded heyday and decline, into the present massively-predicted year of 2012; and continuing to a date of conjecture some one thousand years in the future. The calendar’s ability to make remarkable predictions, usually associated with the highpoints of the cycles of Venus, have added to its mystique; and the 2012 cycle timechange—when one ancient circuit completes and another begins—has led to a huge following of extremes, from doomsayers to revelationists.

We are already more than halfway through this apocalyptic year, and so public consciousness is alert to ‘signs in the skies’, eclipses, the Venus transit, and recent weeks’ massive and continuous solar flare assemblage from sunspot-1520 directed at Earth. Symbolism provided by the heavens has always had mass appeal. So, when the Earth seems willing to join in the party—hey, it’s 2012, isn’t it?—we all plunge in.

In crop circles, the messages have been hotting up: 2012 has been a year of a few choice locations, see my earlier posts, attracting multiple phases which have returned to stylize/enhance a formation or open up unseen aspects. Stanton St. Bernard’s bauble, above, is a prime example. Wanborough’s latest development—freshly-laid green interlacing and highlighting previously laid-down dimensional design, top—shows a classic star tetrahedron of interlocking triangles reminiscent of the Merkabah, or ‘Chariot of the Gods’.

Star tetrahedron, sacred geometrical shape of the spirit vehicle, Merkabah

It is the vehicle used by Ascended Masters and those advanced in the discipline of meditation and self-mastery to ascend to the next vibrational level of consciousness. The Merkabah, right, is itself a symbol of the Ascension process, which humankind is presently beginning to experience. This ‘chariot’ or device used by the gods is a metaphor for one’s own ability to activate within the human mind and energy body a synthesis of mind-body-spirit which transports the soul to higher vibrational states and ‘another’ dimension.

It is consistent with crop circles–particularly those of 2012–that designs also present multiple interpretations.

Through a language that’s possible for most of us to understand the crop circles, with apparent ease, carry trains of thought over thousands of years that are both transformative and liberating. They seem to serve the function of seer, sage and mantra. We prosaic new millennium types have no priesthood to guide us, no Delphic Oracle; so pictures in the corn do it for us. It worked for the Egyptian/Sumerian priesthood, who spared no effort in using every available surface to proclaim the existence and draw pictures of another dimension (their ‘after’- or future-life), so the people might understand.

ET makes an appearance Hinton Parva CC July 25th

Now, millennia later, we so-called evolved mortals are being given similar instruction—a picture language with recurring specific symbols—from our ‘priesthood of light’, our own ET, superconsciousness communicating from a higher frequency.

It seems we are being shown a series of objects which exist in a higher dimension, so that our vision and perception may become clearer. Each summer, via an ephemeral canvas of wheat, barley and maize, we’re being taught telepathically: and each year-end we’ve learned more than we knew before. And the learning curve is rising…

New shining crop circle below the Wrekin (on the Wroxeter side), July 21st seems intent on calling our attention to the planetary configuration for August 4th, 2012 when Saturn (ringed), Mars and the Moon are conjunct Spica, brightest star in Virgo constellation, starchart courtesy Aluna-Joy

Meanwhile back at the Wrekin—that ephemerally-balanced strip of sacred mountain and green getaway for the Midlands [Wolverhampton literally 35-minutes away, 24 miles along the M54], a remarkably sun-drenched crop design appeared July 21st—three spheres on a tridecagon background—a-13-sided polygon—to mark the fifth appearance in Shropshire in a month. While at first glance it appeared to be yet another solar flare, decoders were quick to point out that the circular ‘planets’, ringed Saturn, Mars and Moon, are conjunct Spica in constellation Virgo in exactly this configuration in the night sky on August 4th, 2012. It is the second crop circle to alert us to this date—see ‘polar clock’ CC at Manton Drove, June 2nd. Astrologically, the Moon also aligns with Neptune on that day: Roman equivalent of Greek god Prometheus who ruled Oceans and Earthquakes!

Light saber in the corn: Windmill Hill crop circle July 25th: ten orbs may predict ten days until August 4th, when we break through all traditional barriers and become one continuous beam of light? photo Philippe Ullens

Then today, a miraculous transformation of a field near Windmill Hill, Avebury, points to the same date: ten days from now when all eyes (perhaps) are focused on the Olympics Men’s Athletics, it might just be possible that our world may be transformed by a similar light-enhanced saber, slicing through our consciousness—as light pierces everything; even darkness—to bring our embryo Noosphere into reality: so we can see it for what it really can show us: a way forward through the prosaic daily drudge that many people call life, and remind us that we are capable, within our hearts, minds, and bodies, of seeing the greater picture; of rising to the expectation of our ancestors, who predicted that this year—nay, this very day—would come to transform our world.

Too Distracted to Notice?
Ken Carey feels it is likely that disruption by solar flare will be the mechanism by which the general populace is distracted when world communications go down.

Distraction is what it’s all about, you know—the worrisome scenarios of the “Doomsday Preppers,” fears of a global financial collapse, periods of time without mass communication, inoperable military satellites that will (along with the absence of field communication) bring wars to a standstill. Not all of these things will occur of course, but those that do will do so merely to distract people while God’s real work is taking place.
Ken Carey, 2012

If Ken Carey is right, and his intuitive communications have been remarkably accurate so far—Return of the Bird Tribes, Starseed: the Third Millennium, Vision—then let’s pray that any solar cataclysm which presents its earth-facing power towards us in ten days’ time, will bring with it the long-presaged Saturnia Regna, the Golden Age, when humankind may begin anew to behave as was always intended: with liberty and justice for all: certainly; but also with kindness and compassion. We have it in our genes. It’s in the all the histories. Are we so ‘distracted’ that we are unable to see the real thing when it starts happening before our eyes?
©2012 Siderealview

Dimensional Shift: Take the 5D Elevator

Archaic hieroglyph inscribed on circumference of newest dimensional crop circle at Cherhill, Wiltshire

“Miracles start to happen when another unseen world intersects with our own.”
—C. S. Lewis, 1947

The Fabric of Space
Ever since Einstein, mathematicians, sacred geometers, astrophysicists and scientists of all disciplines have struggled to explain the fabric of space.

Lisi's Theory of Everything (ToE)--note similarity to Jubilee Plantation form

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
— Albert Einstein

One of the latest in a long line of contenders (including charismatic Nassim Haramein, whose theory of ‘Resonance’ is constantly expanding) is the E8 Group. Garrett Lisi‘s E8 ‘Theory of Everything’ (subatomic) strives to explain –on the back of Einstein’s relativity, and assuming gravity as the dominant force — how all things fit together. It is a nice idea. But many quantum physicists and mathematicians disagree. “…[E8]’s biggest flaw is probably its starting point, because gravity is not a fundamental force, but an emergent one, as postulated by Dutch theoretical physicist Erik Verlinde.” David Deutsch, author of The Fabric of Reality: towards a Theory of Everything (1998) and The Beginning of Infinity (2011) says ‘one of the most valuable, significant and useful attributes of human thought is its ability to reveal and explain the fabric of reality.’

Cherhill 5D cube --'penteract'-- at Jubilee Plantation: connections made by physicists to E8 theory; or is it Max Planck's 'Divine Matrix'?

Milo Wolff’s Wave Structure of Matter, describes how waves in quantum space form all the matter of the Universe. His simple, elegant explanation of how matter forms at a point/node, answers some of the basic questions in physics, e.g. WHY gravity exists. Previously physics taught that particles were the “stuff,” and the rest is empty space. It seems the opposite may be true. Space now looks like a multidimensional fabric with nodes where particles of reality form and reform where waves cross, as they move through this fabric. Wave patterns, vibration and sound play a huge role in the illusion we call matter.

Deutsch disagrees with Stephen Hawking that the human race is ‘typical’ in the Universe, merely ‘chemical scum’ on the surface of a ‘typical’ planet. He thinks we are an exceptional species, our knowledge accelerating at a phenomenal rate. He agrees with Nobel prizewinning physicist Richard Feynmann that the ‘Multiverse’ is our quantum medium and we sentient beings are the most important entities in it. His work in the field of quantum computers makes him an optimist. Like Terence McKenna, he believes, all (human) knowledge is without boundaries, constantly evolving. McKenna said in 2000 before he died that humanity is headed for a world made out of Mind:

‘Mind instead of “stuff”…a hologrammatic disk, part bio, part machine, part think tank, part Mind’
Terence McKenna

Deutsch, working in 2011 to create the ultimate quantum computer environment, is making McKenna’s prophecy a reality.

Other physicists, Quantum or otherwise, converse in terms of the Multiverse. Sabine Hossenfelder and Rob Bryanton, author of Imagining the Tenth Dimension say we have only scratched the surface. In this realm of multiple dimensions and parallel universes, gravity seems to have taken a back seat to a simpler field of energy where waves interlock and form ‘nodes’ of matter. Just like crop circles do!

Sabine (Bee) is, like fellow physicist Bryanton, besotted with additional dimensions. They are true disciples of Max Planck, known as the ‘father of quantum physics’. He believed all reality was contained within a Matrix, which he called divine because it displayed a field of energy which appears intelligent. Planck shocked contemporaries in 1947 by confirming what the Ancients believed — on all continents — that the Universe is being run by a Divine Being with our interests at heart. He also said ‘Mind is the Matrix of all Matter.’

“All matter (from the birth of stars, to human DNA and everything in between) originates and exists by virtue of a Force. We must assume behind this force a conscious, intelligent Matrix.” Max Planck, 1947

Gregg Braden, a former aerospace computer systems designer, transitioned into his life’s work of trying to understand this matrix. He sees this ‘container of the Universe’ as the bridge between our imagination and reality, as well as being the mirror in our world for what we believe: a reciprocal process. ‘To unleash the power of this matrix in our lives we must understand how it works and speak the language that it recognizes.’

Perhaps the Jubilee crop circle is saying just that: getting us to read the code; opening our minds to interpreting symbols other than words on a page.

So, if Space has the underlying predetermined form of the ‘golden decagon’ which the Jubilee Plantation crop circle portrays — with specific lines absent so that it looks like a 5D cube (penteract) — its internal structure seems based on the Golden Mean/Ratio, Phi (Greek letter uppercase Φ, lowercase φ, or written mathematically ϕ); that magical balance of beauty, harmony and form that gives us shivers to contemplate.

Just as previous crop circles have given us clues, little coincidences, double entendre allusions to inside knowledge, names, nearby features, and particularly sacred form and meaning, this season’s finale seems filled with meaning. It is simultaneously seen in the physics community as ToE (above), to sacred geometers it is a 5D hypercube, and a spider web. (Native American mother arachnid warns us to be mindful of the web we weave in our lives; to focus on our choices). The crop circle’s perimeter webbing is indeed masterful — a tapestry of careful precision, photo below. Looks as if we’re being given some good advice.

A tesseract looks simple when conceived from fifth dimensional perspective, courtesy Rob Bryanton

Once again ET/our human-Oversoul reminds us we are part of something divine and, even more exciting, communally about to transition into — the Fifth Dimension.

Carl Sagan, in describing a Tesseract (4D cube), carefully talked us through an understanding of seeing the fourth dimension as ‘another form of measure at right angles to the ones we are familiar with’ or, more simply, to look at its shadow. Many of last year’s (2010) crop circles presented hypercubes and allusions to the fourth dimension. Now we are being presented with a progression into the fifth.

How does our imagination picture a further dimension at right angles to time?

In the fields of Wiltshire, harvest is almost over. Only a few acres remain to be cut and stored. Another season has come and gone.

Cherhill Pentaract, a hypercube in 5D, resolves into form once your eyes accustom you to the illusion of movement,
image courtesy Steve Alexander

But our dimensional brothers from another time-space-reality have been sending us messages nonetheless. They continue contact with our subliminal consciousness so that, if we allow the communication to root, it will add another notch to that strand of human DNA that is consistently expanding, upgrading, enlightening us to understand a newer, all-encompassing reality — one we’ve never encountered before.

The crop circle at Jubilee Plantation may be the last of the season. It is ostensibly a simple decagon surrounded by woven grain and etched in the center with slim lines of apparent intricacy — only one footprint wide on the ground — and probably the most important crop circle which has been imprinted this year. Like last season’s finale, when seen from above *as with all designs inspired by our Oversoul [*see Nazca lines], it serves to click an unbidden trigger in our synapses and unleash our dimensional observer: the one who sees multiple cubes rising and descending in the elevator of our mind.

The Pentaract is, in animation, a constantly imploding and exploding hypercube extruding itself from its own cone of squares like a rectangular telescope. In shadow in the field, its 2D shape is merely a mass of thin lines. But this field imprint is a masterpiece of dimensionality that only our human consciousness [in its expanded version] could devise to send back to us through time/space and via the elevator of understanding which we croppies hope we project in our willingness to receive, before the season is out.

Deutsch, an innovator like his gurus, Richard Feynmann and quantum cosmologist Leonard Susskind, likes to simplify. The beauty of a formation (in the field or in mathematical formulae) betrays for him a simple truth. Susskind believes we are having an intelligent conversation with the Universe. Physicist Deutsch, an Oxford don, appears to be honing that into sharp focus, by bringing ecology, natural selection, physics, mathematics and evolution into the conversation via computer technology. He points out the shocking fact that the earth’s natural ecosystem is almost incapable now of supporting human beings, certainly in any numbers. We have created our own life-support system of food, energy, transport, shelter and communications. He is fond of using his own territory of Oxfordshire as an example. Take away the farms and modern infrastructure and, in the woods and downs, little of the vegetation that is left now is edible. He, like Stephen Hawking (but for different reasons) advocates upgrading our planetary exploration capability and getting ‘out there’. His Beginning of Infinity is a great treatise on Life, the Universe and Everything, a book for our time where the answer is not 42: it is infinity.

The Significance of Venus

Woven 'fabric' of Jubilee plantation, image Frank Laumen. The August 15th crop circle is a masterpiece of wordplay, timing, sacred geometry and cultural prompting. Its decagon (double pentagram) appeared on the day planet Venus (pentagonal orbit) reached superior conjunction

This season’s shapes have constantly encouraged us to leave our myopic cultural concerns and look to the heavens. Earlier in the season, crop designs focused on orbits of the solar system’s inner planets, cometary ‘intruders’, reminding us of knowledge known to our ancestors but apparently ‘lost’ to modern civilization. Few knew, for instance, that the day of the Jubilee plantation appearance was astronomically significant (particularly to ancient skywatchers) as the moment Venus reached its farthest elongation from Earth in direct line on the other side of the sun from us — known as superior conjunction — when all three bodies line up, but when Venus becomes ‘invisible’. As the ancient Babylonians described her, Ishtar/Venus the dual-phased (Sumerian double countenanced Inanna) morning star of war and wrath now enters the Underworld, where she transitions from being goddess of war in the Eastern sky and emerges 60 days later as evening star in the West: Ishtar/Aphrodite, goddess of love. What a great pity our modern prosaic preoccupations with money and status no longer allow us to look at love and war with that cosmic perspective.

‘When beggars die there are no comets seen
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes’
Calphurnia, Julius Caesar II ii 30 Wm Shakespeare

Hurricane Irene making landfall on the East coast of the USA, August 28th, 2011

Much of the eastern United States is at present having to contemplate the power of the planet, in a frightening double dose of earthquake and hurricane. This electromagnetically-sealed planetary body is suddenly seen, not merely as the mothership that guides us through those remote reaches of interstellar space, but as herself a biosphere of living, moving, reacting interplay of elements: fire, water, air, earth. Suddenly what the Ancients believed takes on meaning few in formerly powerful Wall Street or choppy Chesapeake could have imagined.

Our place in the Universe is constantly changing and ancestral societies DID know more about this reality than we, shadow people of 21stC society, do. We wake up one morning and everything has changed. Power is for a moment seen, not in the symbolic dollar or in terrestrial exploitation to squeeze every last ounce of energy out of an exhausted source; but in a living, breathing rotating body in the heavens responding to electromagnetic pressures being thrust upon her.

To the Ancients (Maya, Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, Hindu, Aztec and Inca) Venus’s elongation was symbolic of (sacred) periodicity — an amazing calculable phenomenon which ties the two planets forever locked in celestial embrace as they orbit their parent Sun. There is no more potent symbolism seen in the heavens than the exact cyclical rhythm that Venus dances with Earth: Venus travels faster than Earth, orbiting the sun 2.6 times to Earth’s 1.6 orbits. This means that five Venus cycles of 548 days exactly equal eight Earth cycles of 365 days. Five Venus years equal eight Earth years. Exactly. The beauty of that synchronicity was not lost on formative societies. It was the stuff of which their gods were made. The Venus rotational cycle formed a perfect sacred pentagram. This is also contained in the Jubilee crop design.

Ninth Wave of Calendar of Consciousness for 2011: split into seven 'days' and six 'nights'. We entered the fifth 'night' August 18th

Currently the Long Count calendar of the Maya is gaining popularity, thanks to the willingness of Maya Elders to share sacred handed-down knowledge, to scholars who have gone before, like Ian Xel Lungold, José Argüelles, and to current teachers of the 5124-year calendar cycles like Carl Johan Calleman.

What is gradually surfacing — not through television or newspaper reportage, but through that McKenna/Deutsch miracle of quantum computing, the Internet — is that the Ancients knew a thing or two and we would be well-served to pay attention. The Thunderbolts Project, mentioned earlier in our Siderealview blog, a consortium of physicists, mythologists, astronomers, authors and plasma technicians, has now published intriguing proof that ancient mythology, cave and rock art and petroglyphs from Mesopotamia to Russia and Tibet, from North and South America to Northern Europe all described Earth’s volatile beginnings as a planet surrounded by other heavenly bodies — a little too close for comfort. That, before the Age of Reason and the vision of heavenly stability we see in our skies now — nine impeccable planets circling an orderly star — there was an Age of Chaos. And that these unruly planets gave their names to archaic deities: that the gods WERE planets; fiery dragons and thunderbolts were comets, the stuff of the stars.

Saturn/Kronos as Creator
Saturn appears regularly as the oldest god: before the Sun, Saturn ruled [Saturnia Regna = Golden Age].

Ancient belief systems from both Old World and New have often featured in our Siderealview. And, while we continue to extol the virtues of that bible of myth by Giorgio de Santillana and Herta von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill (1969-2002), an ‘Essay investigating Origins of Human Knowledge & its Transmission through Myth’, with its huge databank of archaeoastronomical research on which world myths are founded, the Inca pantheon — the Inca celestial myth has similarities to all world cultural branches — seems to have escaped their notice.

The mythology and chronology of the Maya is currently in vogue and getting a lot of attention. But it helps to look at pre-Columbian belief generally — Inca peoples in particular — as the picture painted there is one of pure untainted primitivism: something lost in other cultures where transmission has been heavily edited, influenced or interpreted.

Chandra telescope image of Saturn's rings emitting X-rays; below 1913 Birkeland lab experiment on electrical 'sun-like' behavior of Saturn

Roman naturalist Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny, AD23-79) wrote erudite work based on scientific observation:
“Heavenly fire is spit forth by the planet as crackling charcoal flies from a burning log.” He was speaking of ‘comet-Venus’ but he recorded interplanetary ‘thunderbolts’, in his time and in Roman history thrown by each of the three ‘upper planets’, Mars, Mercury and Saturn. He actually died during the eruption of Vesuvius, poor man.

Rome may have had its master observers whose documentation is beyond question, but such references are scanty in the Americas.

“The natives of this country say that in the beginning, before the world was created, there was one whom they called Viracocha. And he created the world dark and without the Sun, nor Moon, nor stars.”
Inca (preColumbian) creation myth

INCA EMPIRE: Quechua ‘TAWANTISUYU’
Tawantisuyu stretched from Ecuador in the north through the Andean kingdoms of Peru, west and south-central Bolivia, through northwest Argentina, Chile and southern Pacific coast; the European equivalent of a huge kingdom lying between the coast of Portugal and inland Caucasus.

Altar tablet from Coricancha temple to Viracocha in Cuzco before it was destroyed: 'gods' Sun (l), Moon (r) flank Viracocha's central gold disk with Mars, Venus and thunderbolt below

The language of Quechua survives. It straddles this last millennium, offering insight into their elusive yet strong belief in heavenly deities, rather than –as seen in vestigial effigies dedicated by the Maya to their gods– a religion dominated by statues. The only exception in worship of a planetary pantheon was their use of gold to simulate LIGHT. The Maya, on the other hand, had a fully functional ‘alphabet’ of symbols inherent in their multi-functional Tzolkin calendar and an amazing history, Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel which retold their history (and that of their ancestors, the Olmec) going back at least to 4200BC. Maya culture, while not totally continuous, has survived. The Inca belief system has not.

However, both cultures, along with all the oldest mythologies in the Old World, shared the belief that the original sky god (before the sun) was the equivalent of Greek Kronos (Father Time), Mesopotamian Shamash/Ninurta, Babylonian Sakkuth, Sumerian Anu, Etruscan Satres (from whom the Romans borrowed Saturnus) — the first planet/god who created order out of primeval chaos. This was Saturnia Regna, (trans. rule of Saturn), the ‘Golden Age’.

In the Chilam Balam, Saturn is the nameless one — known only as Oxlahun-ti-ku, (trans. the ‘Thirteen’, perhaps referring to his moons; Cuzcoan Viracocha) — one of two gods ruling the heavens. Venus was ‘born’ in 3147BC, when Longcount began. In the Inca creation legend, Viracocha is the Great God (Saturn, temple disk above), worshipped by the sun, moon and planets.

One last teaser: before we return to our preoccupation with culture, conformity and crisis. Where thunderbolts and lightning struck terror into the hearts of primitive peoples — not unlike the terror being felt in the eastern US states right now as Earth tears her hair and sheds her shackles — the power of light, plasma discharge, electricity and magnetic storm had a hold over our ancestors. They viewed the heavens as a place from where gods came to wield instruments of light not known on Earth. Similarly, light orbs (balls of light, ultrasonic/electric crackling) have been witnessed in association with crop circle formation.

So many eye-witness accounts now attest to the creation of authentic crop circles — sometimes literally in minutes — by means of hovering plasma balls of light, that their elusive nature was this year one of the serious discussions at the annual CircleChasers gathering July 27th at Alton Barnes. Perhaps the most genuine, enduring — and authenticated — footage capturing the orbs is that of Steve Alexander’s Milk Hill video (1990).

Thunderbolts, light orbs, gods in the sky. The seasonal finale seems also to signal symbolic change (N. hemisphere) from summer (Leo full moon August 13) to fall (Virgo new moon August 29) — always a deep psychological shift. It also marked Maya 5th ‘night'(of world chaos) August 18th-September 4th.

That elusive ‘signature’, shown top, next to the Jubilee crop circle harks back to several ‘dragon’ designs of earlier years. It may even be the meteorologist’s symbol for a ‘weather-feather’. But it surely connects us through age-old wisdom to ancient beasts of prophecy — dragon, serpent and crow. It now appears with intriguing regularity each season.

Jubilee plantation’s choice location may also signal reason for jubilation: transition to higher, more noble principles, unbelievably even entry into the fifth dimension.

Suspending our disbelief, we are capable of creating new miracles, events which are not part of commonplace experience. We are becoming a one-world consciousness. Together we are beginning to resonate as OneMind. The Elevator doors are open. What are we waiting for?
©2011 Marian Youngblood

Five Crop Circles: Mexican Wave & Water Wakeup Call

One of five crop circles in Tlapanaloya, Hidalgo, Mexico last weekend

In the last few years the eyes of the world have been fixed on Crop Circles in the (Northern hemisphere) summer months. The eyes of the world are elsewhere at the moment. So it is not surprising that five crop circles which appeared over last weekend’s Vernal Equinox in two oat fields in Tlapanaloya, 33 miles north of Mexico City were given little media attention. Reuters, the Washington Post and Mexico’s El Universal seemed to be the only news media interested in the phenomenon. They are the first new appearances since the January surprise in Java.

TLAPANALOYA is the old name for this fertile farming region, still tilled and irrigated along indigenous/traditional lines and miraculously spared in Mexico’s headlong drive for industrial ‘revolution’. In its new guise as Tepeji del Rio de Ocampo, Hidalgo, Mexico, it is surrounded by industrial development: several hydro dams, effluent canals, a bauxite-cement works at Cruz Azul, a large military installation, several multi-lane highways (autopista), a national rail line and access roads to feed nationally-supported mineral extraction and mining operations to north and west.

Tlapanaloya lies at latitude 19º52’ N longitude 99º21’W.

Mexican Cordillera L to R: Iztaccíhuatl, Popocatepétl, volcano Malinche, Cofre de Perote and Citlaltépetl

Latitude 19º is significant as the Parallel along which the southern boundary of the North American tectonic plate meets with the Central American plate. Here a line of volcanoes rising to 16,000 feet –the Cordillera de Mexico (or Neovolcanic Ridge)– stretches from the Revillagigedo Islands in the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Seismic activity is frequent here, and the valley is considered an earthquake-prone zone.

Located thirty-three miles north of central Mexico City, Tlapanaloya lies within the closed basin of the ancient Valley of Mexico. At around 7,000 feet, it was the original picturesque Lake District of five lakes, and domain of the people of Teotihuacan, the Toltec and Aztec. The Toltec and Aztec spoke Nahuatl.

The Nahuatl name for the Valley of Mexico was the Anahuac, meaning the plateau or ‘place between the waters’.

Now those waters are crying out for help.

There were originally five great lakes in this stunningly beautiful setting, hemmed in on all sides by mountain peaks that rise to 16,000 feet. But in the last 200 years successive dams and reservoir construction schemes have funneled and tunneled the waters away from their traditional lakebeds and aquifers. Their clear streams were instead diverted to become waste carriers: ‘effluent’–glorified drains for the population of megalopolis Mexico City–now bursting at the seams with a central population in excess of nine million souls (2010 census 8,851,080, see MCMA, below).

Image of Eagle on Cactus in miraculous growth from Stone: Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the Mendoza codex

Mexico City’s ancient name was Mexico-Tenochtitlan after the Nahua-Aztec tribe, Mexica: it means the ‘co-‘ ‘place of the Mexica among stone cactuses’. In symbolic terms, the image (represented in Mexico’s coat-of-arms and flag) is one of an eagle perched on a cactus which grew from a stone (supreme achievement through the greatest of adversity in environment)

The Rio Tula–the Tula River, from which the nearby industrial town of Tula Allende takes its name–is, according to Mexico’s National Water Commission [Comisión Nacional del Agua de México], one of the most polluted rivers in the country. Tula (Tollan) was the Toltec capital, Tollan-Xicocotitlan in its heyday–AD8th-10thCC (Post-Classic period)*–but suffered brutally under Spanish invasions of 16thC, when its society collapsed.

The Toltec called their capital Tollan, surrounded by natural wetlands–a fertile gift from their Sun-and-star god Quetzalcoatl–Xicocotitlan, the ‘place among the reeds near the home of the wasp/bee’.

The Atlanteans of Tula Grande, basalt figures over 12feet high carved from volcanic rock guard the Toltec Tollan temple to Quetzalcoatl (AD10th-12thCC)

The great Atlantean statues which guarded the temple of serpent-god/Venus-morning-star-Queztalcoatl, prior to Tollan‘s destruction by the Spanish, have been reinstated to stand on their original plinths, rescued from the ignominious ditch where they were found buried–hidden by retreating Toltec from Spanish gaze.

Today Tula and Tlapanaloya reflect Toltec civilization in name only. And even that has changed. Tlapanaloya is now called Tepeji del Rio de Ocampo and Tula is Tula Grande or Tula Allende– a far cry from its original endearing Toltec-Oromi name: Tollan-Xicocotitlan: ‘place of the bumble-bee.’ Implication is that bees flourished in a rich hinterland where agriculture, flowers, and fruit trees blossomed. Much has changed since their culture died.

Popocátepetl, Aztec 'smoking mountain' stands at 17,802feet 33miles S of Mexico City

Coincidentally, 33miles SE of Mexico City stands the stratovolcano Popocatépetl. At 17,802 feet, its massif is also contained within the 19th parallel and its location is within one degree of longitude of the Tlapanaloya crop circles–at 19°1’24″N 98°37’20″W. It erupted last year (2010) and its present rumblings are ongoing. Its eruptions were recorded in Aztec codices and its legendary lahars and pyroclastic flows (mud and ash slides) are seen as a constant threat to Mexico City in modern times–since the city’s massive sprawl has gradually spread into the volcano’s sphere of influence.

FIVE LAKES: how many remain?
Although originally flowing through the wide Tula Valley, which could accommodate its wild seasonal fluctuations, the river was guided by an ingenious 17thC drainage system, itself a replacement for indigenous waterworks built with native stone, which for the previous 500 years supplied the local population with much-needed water in the dry season. The Tula works simultaneously provided essential water for agriculture (as the ancestors had done) and allowed excess floodwaters in the rainy season to channel from the Basin of Mexico into the Gulf. Now–thanks to gigantic 19thC dams and, more damaging to culture and ecosystems, massive bureaucratically-driven hydro-related and industrial concrete construction from 1930s onwards, the Tula River is catchment for what is left of the rivers of the Valley of Mexico basin which originally tumbled out of the five lakes: Texcoco, Chalco, Xochimilco, Xaltocan and Zumpango.

Five Great Lakes of (15thC) Valley of Mexico: only one remains and it is dammed

Tula River is part of the Pánuco Hydrologic Region, which has a long history of exploitation for its fresh artesian ground-water. The Tula itself feeds into the Rio Moctezuma which empties into the Pánuco, one mile outside the industrial ports of Tampico/Altamira and Cuidad Madero on the Gulf Coast. Altamira has major industry-standard docks for container-vessel traffic. It is no longer known for its (previous reputation as a) bird sanctuary. Tourist traffic is usually carefully diverted south to the coastal resorts of Vera Cruz or the Yucatan peninsula.

According to data from the National Water Commission of Mexico, the Tula is one of the most polluted rivers in the country. It ‘generates 409.42 million cubic meters of “wastewater” annually.’ Tula River’s pollution stems from this stream’s manmade adaptation as a channel for solid (untreated) human waste along with industrial effluent from both the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA, sic), and the ‘industrial zones’ around Tula de Allende.

Lake Texcoco was described in 15thC historical records as a huge natural reservoir–a ‘visual masterpiece’ of mountain-fed streams, wildlife-filled marshes and brackish pools. It was home to the Pelican. Agriculturally-adept and innovative, the native Indios harvested salt from the saltlakes and dammed the ‘sweet-water’ lakes for use in their agricultural terraces (traditional Chinampa ‘gardens’ or small fields). Aztec tradition records that the northern lakes were inaccessible by canoe during the dry season between October and May. When the (summer) rainy season came, Texcoco was known to ‘join up’ with its four sister lakes and canoes were again able to navigate within the lake system.

Lake Texcoco is now dry. The other lakes have gone.

Zumpango Lake (Nahuatl=Tzompantli), the northernmost of the historical lakes in the main basin of the Valley of Mexico, between the towns of Zumpango and Teoloyucan, is the only body of water left of the original five. It lies within 12 miles of the five Equinoctial crop circle formations. It is a manmade version of the original whose boundaries were formed when a canal begun in 1605 started the process of drainage in the Valley, North into the Tula River. It is still home to the 10-meter-deep canyon, the sewage-laden Gran Canal. The original lake has been drained. Only the canal and west drainage tunnel system remain.

Zumpango reservoir has suffered a gradual process of degradation by the presence of industrial operations on its shores and the influx of sewage from Mexico City. The ‘West Issuer’ tunnel, which was originally used exclusively for stormwater drainage, now transports wastewater with a high heavy metal content while increasing tonnage of human waste is discharged into Presa tributaries. Currently, state and local government officially designate it a ‘Water Sanctuary’, but there are no active conservation plans to maintain its high ecological value in the Basin for numerous migratory bird species that take refuge in its waters.

Pelican persevere here. But pollution continues by the local population, compounded by motorized tourism (aquaplaning, outboard motors), and water verges are not maintained. Motor boats disturb avian habitat. Few tourists shown the neighboring solid waste effluent make return visits. At this rate, it is a matter of time before both birds and visitors will have no refuge here.

Formerly part of five legendary lakes that made the Valley beautiful, the name Zumpango is also derived from the Nahuatl meaning ‘the place of the row of skulls’. It was a place of sacred prayer and reverence for the Ancestors. That, too, has gone.

Tourist trajineras on the canals of former lake Xochimilco

The remaining three lakes were drained by settlers from the time of Spanish Conquest, accelerated by subsequent labor, military and government initiatives. The old lakebeds are now almost entirely covered by urban development. One remnant canal at (former Lake) Xochimilco is maintained as a tourist attraction where visitors tour in trajineras (gondolas).

The axolotl, a rare salamander endemic to Lake Chalco, moved house when that Lake was drained, to take up fragile residence near the Canals of its neighboring ‘Lake’ Xochimilco, It is now considered a ‘critically endangered species’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Otherwise, the historic Lake Region is now without lakes.

A whole settlement flooded by the Army in 1931 to form Presa Taxhimay

Tlapanoloya is itself ringed by further waterworks–all artificial. They are called Presas=reservoir, dam.
Presa Escondida at the southern end of the Requena Reservoir, is a small dam 3km N of Tlapanaloya; the Presa Requena Tepeji itself, within the town limits, is a reservoir still frequented by wildlife, including pelican; the Presa Escondida, a dam to the west, is polluted and has no wildlife whatsoever; the Presa Encinillas 5miles distant at Jagüeyes is skirted by six-lane Highway 57 at a busy intersection. It no longer attracts fowl and is polluted by industrial effluent from the Cruz Azul plant. It seems ironic that Highway 57 headed 100 miles NW brings pilgrims to the tiny rancho Chahin at Tlacote near Querétaro. There Señor Jesus Chahin gives away samples of spring water from his own ‘miracle’ well, an artesian supply of unrivalled purity believed to cure all ills.

Back in Tlapanaloya, the largest dam, Presa Taxhimay, formerly Laguna Taxhimay, three miles south of town, is the largest man-made Presa of them all. It was flooded by design in 1931 on the order of General Manuel Avila Camacho. In so doing he completely annihilated the Post-classic, colonial and Spanish settlements of Hacienda Catarina and San Luis Rey, whose church towers remain above the waters of Taxhimay dam surface.

Tlapanaloya Crop Circles in Chinampa ‘Gardens’

Farmer Enrique Hernandez in one of 5 crop circles in his oats in Tlapanaloya

Fortuitously, all five of last weekend’s crop circles appeared in oat meadows still farmed in the Chinampa style–planted and lovingly tended in traditional small rectangular-shaped fields by local Tlapanaloya farmer Enrique Hernandez. He was reported to be mystified by their choice of location but delighted that his crop was not spoiled. On the other hand, if he had been assured that his own way of life and his organically-grown porridge oats–now with their hugely enhanced CC/ET-vibration–were teetering on the edge of extinction, he might feel proud.

It is becoming clear that–whatever one feels about the provenance of crop circles the world over–they do occur in locations which require our attention.

Given that the Tlapanaloya crop circles did NOT contain elaborate interior designs–as are now commonplace in sophisticated annual formations on Salisbury Plain and the fields of Wiltshire’s electromagnetic aquifer–it seems a simple intuitive leap from the five Mexican crop circles to a crisis water situation, symbolized by the five extinct Great Lakes of the Basin of Mexico–along with their important historical contribution to this crucial aquifer.

They also occur as part of a triangle of 33: Their point is 33miles N of Mexico City. Also 33 miles NE of the city lies Teotihuacan, where equinox is seriously celebrated each year. And Teotihuacan lies approx.33 miles E of Tlapanaloya.

Equinox sunset over the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Valley of Mexico, March 20, 2011

The crop circles appeared on Equinox weekend when hundreds of thousands of Mexico City residents head for the pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan–to pay their respects to the setting sun as it disappears behind the pyramid. Teotihuacan, Toltec ‘place where men become gods’ lies just 33miles east of Enrique’s field. Its central avenue’s due N-S alignment, on which the pyramid’s shadow casts a precise shadow at the moment of dusk, remains today a fascination for Mexicans who traditionally celebrate the onset of spring on Equinox. This year was no exception. Teotihuacan was mobbed.

It was also the weekend before the world-wide celebration of World Water Day, March 22nd.

Water is becoming scarce in many countries with over-population and rising mean annual temperatures. Water will soon be a commodity more precious than the metals mined in the Mexican hinterland.

The present explosion of shanty towns — barrios — which have sprung up in the last decade around the Mexican megacity have bolstered the population of MCMA (see above) to 21 milion people. While canals and drainage systems channel their human waste North into the Valley of Mexico agricultural region centered on (the crop circles of) Tlapanaloya, a clean drinkable water supply continues to be a problem in the city.

Industrial growth within an enclosed basin has not only produced pollutants in smog, but water quality issues for the Valley. Over-extraction of ground water has caused new flooding problems for the city as it sinks below the historic lake floor. Seasonal flooding was thought to have been historically ‘cured’ by the Spanish and successive Mexican governments by the very act of drainage. Now excessive drainage–and extraction of more water than is being replenished naturally causes subsidence and the need for further infrastructure–more pipes and tunnels.

For a high mesa totally enclosed within mountain ranges, the Valley is completely dependent on its groundwater supply. This has traditionally come from the underlying aquifers, the upwelling of seasonal springs supplemented by (previously unwanted) flooding and rains. These underground springs and wells are now almost exclusively the source of drinking water for the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City. With the rapid addition of shanty barrios around the city’s outer limits, more water is being pumped out of the city’s underground reservoirs than Nature is pouring in–[main aquifer currently pumps 880,000 USgallons/minute while the water table refreshes at around 440,000 gals/min]–that is, water is replenishing at around half the extraction rate.

Much of the city has now sunk below the ancient lakebed level and it continues to sink at around 15 inches per year. Water from the surrounding mountains which always flowed towards the city, now passes through shanty towns where there are no city ‘services’ (water supply or sewage removal), so the rivers become sewers–which contribute to an ongoing health risk in the capital. MCMA is struggling to prevent this contaminated water from entering the drinking supply.

The present dilemma is specific to Mexico. But in the West, clean and clear water is a blessing and a gift we may not have appreciated enough until now.

All this communicated by a chance appearance in two traditionally-planted-and-irrigated Chinampa fields in a rural district of central Mexico? you ask?

Perhaps not explicitly, but we have had a little experience of messages transmitted in the last decade of crop circles in other areas of the world where aquifers–and their underlying electromagnetic mysteries–have contributed enormously to the medium.

This Mexican Wave may indeed be sending us a High Five: a reminder to reconnect with our traditional lifestyles. But it is more likely to be a distress signal–a wakeup call.

We would be well-advised to listen and heed its message.
©2011 Marian Youngblood
*Postclassic in its historical context refers to Mexico’s original peoples whose culture flourished until Spanish domination: Aztecs and Toltecs in Central Mexico, the Mixtec in Oaxaca, the Tarasco in the West, the Huasteca in the northern plain of the Gulf of Mexico, and the Maya in the Yucatan peninsula and Guatemala|

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.