All the Cs: Crop Circles, Comets, eClipses

Comet McNaught presently moving away from the Andromeda Spiral Galaxy, NGC-891, a near-twin of our own Milky Way galaxy

Throughout history the appearance of comets was seen in the mind of ancient Man as a sign of great change; a bad omen, sometimes heavenly intervention. Usually a bright comet was viewed as a ‘harbinger of doom’, a ‘messenger bringing bad luck’, or ‘death to tyrants and their evil’. But it was also seen – in the light of change – as a portent of unexpected gifts, a messenger from the gods, a shift in observation, in human awareness, a ‘quickening’. As signs in the heavens, comets were both feared and venerated.

The Romans recorded that a fiery comet was blamed for excess bloodshed in battle between Pompey and Julius Caesar in the days of the triumvirate. Shortly afterwards, another marked the Ides of March and Caesar’s assassination. Halley’s Comet was thought to have brought the Black Death in Europe. In the Andes, the Inca record a comet as foreshadowing the arrival of Francisco Pizarro. His armies conquered them and committed acts of brutality literally days after the comet disappeared.

Recent research suggests the Star of Bethlehem was either the cosmological conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 7BC; or Halley’s comet (or a similar periodic comet)’s appearance in mid-April 5BC.

7000-year old Great Gallery 'Ghost Panel', Horseshoe Canyon Canyonlands National Park, Utah with Milky Way Galaxy backdrop

In North America indigenous Americans saw them as communication from Grandfather Great Spirit; their sudden bright appearance and disappearance marking the descent of special shaman or spirit messengers who joined their number on Earth.

The Chinese made a study of comets for centuries before written records were begun by Western society, but thought of comets as ‘vile stars’ or ‘long-tailed pheasants’ and yet they mapped and recorded their appearance and passage through the heavens.

In ancient cultures astronomy and astrology were inextricably linked – they were both sciences. And what went on in the heavens affected the lives of mere mortals on Earth.

Last week Jupiter and Uranus joined together (in astrological conjunction) in 0ºAries, the cusp degree of the fire sign of action, movement and drive. They are headed for a great opposition, three days after solstice, when a celestial Grand Cross will stand in Earth’s astrological chart.

In western astrology, Jupiter signifies growth and expansion and is considered fortunate, influencing belief, philosophy and social justice. Uranus implies change and excitement. It is eccentric and influences revolution, invention, and technology, such as spacecraft and the internet. Put these two planets together and you can expect fireworks: the change and excitement of Uranus will be amplified by the expansiveness of Jupiter. Growth and the philosophy of endless capacity (Jupiter) are subject to Uranian change with unexpected twists and turns.

Windmill Hill 6th August 2009, a month before comet C/2009 R1 was discovered

Uranus also breeds awareness that comes from a rapid awakening in our (Jovian) belief and faith. If you put the two together, and right now they are neck and neck, the biblical essence called ‘Quickening’ arises in humanity.

There have been pointers.

We’ve been given lots of ‘wayshowers’ by the ‘signs in the fields’.

Swallow, symbol of 'quickening', leading comet with coded tail, Alton Priors, June 2009

Last summer, the last few crop circles which graced the late harvest fields of Wiltshire and Oxfordshire included a stunning swallow with what might now be seen as a ‘comet tail’; it appeared in wheat in the South Field at Alton Priors on June 27th. On August 6th, 2009 another wheat crop received the imprint of a comet ‘panel’ of celestial objects breaching the solar wind or sun’s magnetosphere. This crop circle appeared at Windmill Hill, Wiltshire one month before Comet McNaught was discovered heading our way from the Oort Cloud.

Last crop circle of the 2009 season links to one of 2010's first designs

And the very last crop formation of last season appeared on August 29th at Waylands Smithy, Oxon in maize (corn): a spiral suggesting both comet and orbit.

So, it is interesting to see comets manifesting in one of the first designs of the 2010 season: at Stony Littleton near Bath in Somerset a wonderful double spiral appeared in a field of beans, in the forecourt of a 5000-year old neolithic chambered tomb, which might suggest two comets orbiting a central cross formation of planetary stations – the June-July Grand Cross perhaps?

Crop circles have in the past sent fairly regular messages which have been interpreted with delight by the astronomical, mathematical and scientific communities: invariably using the ‘Golden Mean’ or Fibonacci perfection, almost always encouraging us to look within or upwards to the heavens. Designs have traditionally been laid out with beautiful geometric precision, but the theme lately has been decidedly astral.

Should we expect the unexpected from Comet McNaught, a new body from the Oort Cloud just starting to appear in the east to the naked eye?

Stony Littleton near Bath, Somerset June 2010 formation in bean crop of comets circling opposing planets?

COMETS
The name Comet derives from Greek ‘long-haired’ because of the coma or tail which emanates from the head as the astral body enters the inner solar system on approach to the sun. Known to emanate from two areas in the far reaches of the outer solar system, the Kuiper Belt between Uranus and Neptune and the Oort Cloud beyond Pluto’s orbit, many have been witnessed and recorded for centuries, some making repeat visits. One of the most famous, Halley’s comet, recorded by astronomer-Royal Edmond Halley (1656-1742) in 1682 as having a recurring orbit with previous documented sightings in 1456, 1531 and 1607, last visited Earth in 1986 and will on its 76-year elliptical orbit, approach the sun again in 2062.

Shoemaker-Levy crashed in fragments into Jupiter in 1994 after its near-Earth flyby

In the meantime we’ve had Shoemaker-Levy in 1994 which circled Earth before splintering and crashing into the atmosphere of Jupiter on its return trip; Hyakutake in 1996 and Hale-Bopp in 1997, a spectacular comet with a double tail tracing a similar path through Perseus; along with comet 17P/Holmes and a previous McNaught in 2007. [Robert McNaught is a British-Australian astronomer who spends a lot of time focused on telescopic comet discovery from the Antipodean observatory at Siding Spring].

Comet Hale-Bopp in solar orbit in 1997, with dramatic double tail and coma

The nucleus of a comet is like a ball of rock mixed with dirty ‘ice’: frozen water, methane, ammonia. As the object gets close to the sun, frozen gases and dust start to heat and evaporate, creating a long tail of vaporized molecules, dust and debris emanating from the coma – the ‘hair’ – to flow behind it. Out beyond the solar system perimeter, the object is only a small unremarkable frozen nucleus, visible by telescope as reflected sunlight: a speck of ice and dust. But as it is pulled in on its saucer-shaped orbit towards the sun, it transforms.

Dust elements are blown by the solar wind to form the tail, and water and gas molecules heated by their approach to the great solar furnace – hydrogen, oxygen, carbon monoxide and dioxide – have one of their electrons torn off (ionized) by the action of sunlight and they too are pushed into the ion tail. The ‘coma’ can extend to many times the size of the original nucleus, creating spectacular night-sky objects visible first through binoculars and telescopes and then, as the comet gets close to Earth orbit, to the naked eye. Because the comet’s head is on orbit headed for the sun, the tail always points away from the sun, outward from the nucleus, driven by the solar wind.

Comet C/2009 R1 McNaught has a green coma and has regrown its tail; it may manifest more unexpected variations

Special effects can result when added molecules are present. In the case of C/2009 R1, its luminous green coma is a result of ultraviolet solar rays mingling with cyanogen gas.

Comet R1 McNaught was discovered on 09/09/09, but only started becoming visible in the northern hemisphere just before dawn in late May-early June 2010 on the eastern horizon. It should be a naked-eye object best seen this weekend and early next week when the new moon is at its thinnest crescent and the comet at close range to Earth. It lies a one-and-a-half ‘Cassiopeia’ lengths below that famous ‘W’ shape in the northern sky.

Path of C/2009 R1 Comet through constellations Andromeda, Perseus, Auriga and Gemini

Thereafter it will increase in brightness as it moves from the constellation Andromeda through Perseus and then into Auriga between mid-June and early July when it passes Earth on towards its closest brush with the sun, perihelion, on July 2nd.

While C/2009 R1 then becomes difficult to see in the north, it will be a bright addition to the dawn sky in the southern hemisphere in the early nights of July on the runup to July 11th, when something miraculous will occur.

To backtrack a little, New Age metaphysician, charismatic speaker and student of the Maya and indigenous peoples, Drunvalo Melchizedek took a journey in 2003 starting in the north and moving to the south Pacific with a group of people who represented every nation of the planet Earth.

He says:

We have to find the secret of how this leap in consciousness we are being asked to make is acquired: human consciousness combines conscious awareness of the Ancient world – the world of Nature – with the conscious awareness of the modern world. The two meshed together create a new shift upward in all consciousness. If we can at least try to reach that respect and atunement with Nature, with the divine essence of the planet, we can make it into this new level of consciousness.

Drunvalo and his group first held a ceremony of love and appreciation in 2003 at the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, said to be the north pole of the etheric web – or electromagnetic field around the Earth – offering gifts of peace and meditating on Man’s return to natural ways of living on Earth. Then, through Geomancy, (Arabic, ilm al-raml), various degrees of difficulty and many months, they finally succeeded in holding a similar ceremony on a small island in the South Pacific in 2008 at the closest point to the planet’s electromagnetic ‘south pole’, diametrically opposite the Great Pyramid and on the other side of the world within the Easter Island group. When the ceremony was over, Drunvalo says there came a series of ‘signs’ from the heavens and they knew as a group that their work of ‘birthing a new consciousness’ for the planet Earth was completed, although he says he knew it would take some considerable time for the rest of humanity to follow and to see similar ‘signs’ of awakening, quickening.

It just so happens that when Comet C/2009 R1 McNaught moves as a night sky object in early July into the southern hemisphere, something else will occur which may rock a few (astronomical as well as spiritual) socks. On July 11th, Comet McNaught will become difficult to see in both northern and southern hemispheres: in the north it is too close to the horizon – and getting very close to the sun – for practical observation as dawn breaks, another distraction; in the south it occurs during daylight hours.

On July 11th, however, the Cosmos has devised a little trick to make it visible. On that day the southern hemisphere – in particular the island of Mangaia near Easter Island (close to where Drunvalo Melchizedek and his group of meditators and earth-healers held ceremony in 2008) will experience a total solar eclipse and the sky will be dark for four minutes. During the occultation Comet McNaught will be the brightest object in the (daytime) sky! What a delightful coincidence: Easter Island residents not only got to help participate in healing the planet’s electromagnetosphere but they now get to see the heavenly response to their work.

Drunvalo, I suspect, along with the New Age community and astronomy buffs worldwide, will be pleased.

As an afterthought,
Swami Beyondananda, aka Steve Bhaerman says:

THE bad news is that the world as we know it is coming to an end; the good news is the world as we know it is coming to an end…