Earth Day: Celebration or Apocalypse Now?

EARTH WEEK STARTS WITH A BANG

“6.6mag. Taiwan S.Japan location 24º129'N 122º335E 01a.m. UTC April 20. 2015

Four hours ago, a massive 6.6 magnitude Richter earthquake hit coastal Taiwan and Southern Japan. Local agencies, already overburdened with ongoing (nuclear) clean-up, continue to report. Minimal U.S. press coverage—slow to extract reports from the world arena in (western) night-time, unless specifically targeted—may find that differences in international dateline/time-zones may not result in this event’s being buried, It may not fit into a neat, orderly media-orchestrated political schedule.

There are ramifications, however—especially for western U.S.A.

EarthCrisis or Early Warning?

Minimum ‘safe’ height: 146ft—most of Tsunami Alley: sea-level

MAGNITUDE 6.6 mwp
Location / uncertainty 24.129°N 122.335°E± 5.4 km
Depth / uncertainty 28.9 km± 4.4
Origin time 2015-04-20 01:42:58.470 UTC
Source: USGS

Two groups of Native American elders have summoned their communities, in preparation for uprooting and a move inland, away from their traditional ocean-listening posts. In San Luis Obispo county, a small nucleus of Chumash, originally ‘whale-whisperer sea-shell people’from Morro Bay to Malibu—their traditional lodges and burial grounds long-since displaced by ex-pat. Ventura- and Topanga Canyon-ites—have returned to hear “repeated warnings from our cetacean siblings” that we are endangering our homeland.

Washington Tribe prepare for Move to High Ground
The Quileute tribe of La Push, Washington holds a ritual each year, where every woman, man and child in the reservation summons local whales, dolphins, sharks, seals and other marine species to the community’s beach by playing drums. The tribe’s chief then wades among the animals and interprets their sounds.

Cetacean whisperers help us tune in—use it before we lose it

In 2014, tribal leaders were “summoned” by Pacific Ocean whales, to alert them to a tsunami, ‘soon’ to engulf their community. La Push is located at the intersection of three tectonic plates, prone to earthquakes of nine-point magnitude. The tribe immediately started to make plans to move their community to higher ground. It applied for and received money from both the State of Washington and the federal government, to fund the relocation. Synchronously, assistance has been offered to Quileute elders by Finland’s University of Aalto, in designing their new settlement. In Finland’s Baltic and Arctic Oceans, they are also brother-whale-whisperers.

Wilderness no Longer Wild

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness” John Muir

John Muir—progenitor and founder of first U.S. National Park—would be proud of us, his descendants. While he was born in lowland Scotland and thus learned how precious is wild forest floor—Scotland’s indigenous trees mostly eaten by commercial sheep enterprises— un-mangled [by humans] tangled growth. Yet we seem oblivious of our continuing and unrelenting pollution of our only home.

Radioactive Slush
Gallons of slush and ice melt flood Great Lakes and Chicago hinterland.

Combination of Fracking, waste water recycling, human negligence, cause man-made quakes in U.S. central states

Sudden floods in New England, the Carolinas-coastal Virginia cause concern over contaminated drinking water supply. Marinas in Coral Gables, Everglades and Gulf states, Alabama, Louisiana and eastern Texas are revamping water towers last used in Hurricane Katrina, to cope with extra demand. Meanwhile Four Corners, Gila Bend, Arizona, Utah, Nevada—don’t even think of temperatures in Death Valley—and in a geographical spread as far east as Idaho, Kansas and Minnesota, high winds bring risk of grass fires.

Half the country is burning up, while the other half flounders in rising sea levels.

Do we still deny we have a hand in this? Are we pretending we don’t know what’s going on?

Competing for Cleanliest
Last week California Governor Jerry Brown scoffed at Florida governor’s amorous advances for a tourism “exchange”. While organic Californians greatly outnumber Brooklyn retirees in the balmy Everglades and Fort Lauderdale, in ecological terms, neither state can boast a totally clean city.

Echoes from Earth’s Chasms—Ring of Fire Rumbles into Activity
X-Class Solar flares emerging from the ‘hidden’ side of the Sun, add a frisson to so-called normal spring weather. Global extremes have caused great loss of life, however.

There’s more to come.

Triggered by solar CMEs incoming—bombarding Earth’s heat shield to stretching point, dormant volcanoes along subterranean ridges and lava reservoirs of the Ring of Fire are exploding.

Ring of Fire—Seismic Deeps and Ridges of the Pacific Ocean: festering to blow

Sewage and polluted water are high-profile questions that affect the whole human Earth-population.

Californians, once again, get to act guinea pig.

When Chualar—Salinas-Monterey Bay hinterland—received its first crop circle December 2013, it seemed to point the finger at even the most enlightened of Administrations for allowing continued proliferation of housing development in the Salad Bowl of the World. Fuller account of the Salinas fantasy here.

When the dice are rolled, who gets the blame for leading humanity over the edge of the world——?

Unfortunately for Governor Brown—and for all his supporters south of Sacramento—the WWII-aircraft carrier U.S. Independence has been rediscovered on the ocean floor, in San Diego’s back yard. However supposedly :safely: out of sight, according to U.S. National Ocean and Atmospheric Administrqtion (NOAA) Chief Science officer, James Delgado, the hulk, used for monitoring hydrogen bomb tests on Bikini Atoll in South Pacific’s Marshall Islands was deliberately sunk off San Diego’s beaches, carrying one hundred barrels of nuclear waste in its hold.

Bikini Atoll: no Place for Bikinis Now
NOAA make light of the rediscovery:

WWII. aircraft carrier, U.S. Independence, scarred in Pacific battle theater

“After 64 years on the seafloor, Independence sits on the bottom as if ready to launch its planes”
J.Delgado, Chief NOAA Science officer

Damaged in WWII, aircraft carrier US Independence found intact April 2015 in Pacific waters carrying nuclear waste

A half-buried metal ship full of discarded nuclear waste is not what U.S.Navy residential retirement community of Coronado needs. Not to mention its hold, stuffed with radioactive bricks, concrete and mortar—’in case of leakage’—lies now exposed to every little rattle emanating from the San Andreas fault and its tributaries stretching south into Baja California. Los Angeles’ Baldwin Hills experienced two middle-range quakes last week. Pasadena and San Marino residents live constantly with shaking mantels.

Sentient Earth
In cyclone-hit Philippines, residents live their lives in the shadow of a stratovolcano.

Pinatubo still fuming a century later

Fifty years to the day, volcanic activity around the planet regurgitates ash, debris and detritus from its dormant cone, as if marking the event in EARTH’s calendar, Earth‘s schedule, Earth’s Grand Plan.

Residents of Pinatubo‘s local island Luzon—unlike the cancer-prone residents of Bikini—still recount stories their grandfathers told of wildlife death toll, relocation and readjustment to life under a stratovolcano’s gaze.

Shooting Stars on Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Five years on: NorthAtlantic ridge giant, Eyjafjallajökull, used pyroclastic flows to delay SpaceShuttle Discovery’s reentry to Earth

It is also five years since Iceland’s volcanic-field-cum-ice flow blasted ash and pyroclastic mush into the North Atlantic, delaying the return of NASA’s last space shuttle, Discovery.

Their favorite volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, standing proud in a 33-mile wide lava field, is still smoldering, shooting reminders up into the stratosphere along the fault held loosely by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In case anyone farther afield is listening, Herta, Surtsey are telling us Earth has its own idea of marking anniversaries.

Perhaps we should go along with the conclusion drawn by an old veteran WWII Lancaster bomber navigator friend, who only last week decided to slough off this mortal coil at the youthful age of 95:

Combination of Earth’s silicate core, presence of Iridium and solar flares gives us our weather. It’s the CORIOLIS EFFECT.
Commander (retd.) Sandy (Gogo) Constable, RAF

We shall see, Sandy. When the tsunami hits Coos Bay, may we remember your words of wisdom.
©2015 4/20 Siderealview

Solstitial Stillness : Prelude to Midsummer Madness?

Rare lightning storm over Chile’s VLT array (very large telescope) at 8,500ft Cerro Paranal, Atacama desert

Solstice, they say, should be a time of stillness. Ancient civilizations—however primitive our society views them—were aware of the sun’s influence on their lives and its ability apparently to ‘stand still’ twice each year, when it reaches its greatest distance from the celestial equator. Now, in the Enlightened Aquarian Age, we hold festival over winter to celebrate that time of change. What do we do in summer? Go on vacation? Study crop circles? Some continue to work right through this special time, not realizing our connection to its ancient traditions, rooted in the earth.

Party Time!
Some cultures continue to make offerings, like the Ayamara in Peru. English do Maypole dance, Cornish have their Green Man bonfires, Nevada its Burning Man Festival, August 26-September 2nd this year, and California its music. So perhaps the consciousness behind celebrating in the fields is not totally lost to urbanites, if we can drink in the stillness offered by nature and make an effort to incorporate calm communion with the Earth in our everyday lives.

Classical civilization certainly knew how to do that—and party. And if they didn’t have gods of their own to offer obeisance and reverence to, they imported others. Saturnalia was known throughout the Roman world as the epitome of winter revelry, debauchery, excess, as the only time the old rigid god Saturn let down his hair. Equally, in summertime, they pulled out all the stops, liberally borrowing gods and goddesses from other cultures as themes suited.

Cybele adopted as Mother-protectrix of Rome’s ‘city and fields’ wore the Phrygian helmet-crown of warrior goddess

Cybele, right, the original pre-classical (Bronze Age, c.8thC BC) Indo-European Earth Mother warrior goddess from Phrygia-Anatolia, Turkey—symbol of fertility, earth’s swelling summer cornucopia of growth and abundance—was converted for her ‘psychic powers’ to take a place in the Greek and Roman pantheon. The Sybil who issued prophetic knowledge, like the Delphic Oracle, was her Roman adaptation. She was guardian of Rome. Her Egyptian equivalent was revered as Earth Mother figure Hathor; but the later Greeks, succumbing to male-dominant cultural needs, altered her concept of ‘love’ to one embodied by Aphrodite—losing the earth connection.

The Earth Mother of prehistoric cultures—whose neolithic carved dolls date to pre-Ice Age Europe—survives in vestigial worship of Inca Pachamama in Bolivia, but had turned volte-face in the Aegean by the time of the Trojan wars, when male physical prowess and warlike behavior on all fronts were supreme in Greek eyes. It is curious to note that hero of the Trojan wars, Paris, embodying male physical beauty, pure in mind, focused in war and manly pursuits like discus and javelin dexterity, was an imported ‘alien'(suppressed culture) superhero who wore the prehistoric Phrygian helmet (like Cybele), denoting his more ancient origins. The Roman army dedicated its legions’ souls to the care of Mithras—another import from Phrygia, complete with godly war-helmet.

Where the primeval mother-warrior had battled time and the elements for the good of the Earth, bringing fruits in season, male culture—in taking over the role of earth-caretaker—may have gone a little overboard on the warrior front.

Delphic Oracle—Eta Delphinids, Cetacean Commiunications

The locked grid for Solstice June 21st 2013 9pm EST, progressed chart, courtesy Astrotheme

In astrological circles this solstitial time is seen as one of huge change—in context of life, personal vision, and clearing away old debris, solstitial chart by Astrotheme, left.

Astronomically, NASA/NOAA’s solstitial prediction for ‘few’ aurorae over the midsummer period, includes a mention by the space agency of meteor showers, Eta Delphinids, M-class solar flares ongoing, with resulting storms hitting earth through June and July. Earth’s magnetosphere activity is listed as ‘unsettled’ during this period, see changes sidebar right. We are, after all, midway through solar maximum, 2013.

Somewhere between the two star camps there appears in the northern sky one of our least-known yet most massive constellations, only visible in summer: Ophiuchus. Both astro sides agree: this giant (dim) group of stars stretching from the head of Scorpio across Libra and Virgo, to touch the (upside-down) head of Hercules at zenith, brings into the summer sky images—and concepts from the ancient mind—most appropriate to this silly season. Because of the cosmic quirk of precession of the equinoxes—earth’s ‘wobble’ on its axis bringing it successively through each of the zodiac signs, backwards—we in the Aquarian Age in Earth’s subtropical, tropical and temperate zones are seeing—many for the first time—two gigantic constellations which were familiar to the Ancients, who anthropomorphized them as expressions of their own conflicting ideals.

backwards thru Zodiac~~ Aquarius: water-bearer, far-sighted visionary, troubled by burdens—symbol of the Age
Capricorn: seagoat, god of cardinal order, old (outworn? Saturnian) mechanisms, consistently appears at midsummer full moon to put cat among pigeons…
Sagittarius: archer, ruled by Jupiter: Jovian happy-spirited lover of nature, trying to hold balance between the above and…
Scorpio: scorpion, fixed water=ice symbolic of birth, death and rebirth, transfiguration; overcoming impediments, its sting-in-tail never allows others to relax

enter~~ Ophiuchus, serpent bearer holding both ends of constellation Serpens in his hands: Serpens Cauda, tail in his right; Serpens Caput, head in his left.

Constellation Ophiuchus, Flamsteed Celestial Atlas, 1776

Ophiuchus: Ὀφιοῦχος “Serpent-bearer”, serpent-wielding handler of snakes, transitioned from his ancient image of enlightened Man wrestling-with-conscience through medieval image of unbridled male sexual power, to Georgian image of protective fatherly person-of-age and wisdom and healing, to Victorian preoccupation with—mostly male—medical profession—caduceus, or *thyrsus a symbol of healing derived from a rod (bamboo, fennel, or the male member) wrapped in a vine, ivy or flower garlands.

Unusually, both ‘scientific’ and ‘psychic’ astros agree, constellation Ophiuchus will dominate the July 2013 sky, rising higher than it has in the last two thousand years. Some extreme astrologers have suggested rearranging the traditional/tropical zodiac, to make room for another constellation (because his feet actually stand on the ecliptic, between Scorpio and Sagittarius). Current western astrology, however, is a convention developed from zodiac signs visible in Roman/Greek skies, using attributes associated with cultural gods/seasons/beliefs of that time, and these which would lose meaning if arbitrarily rearranged.

As Ophiuchus makes its first appearance since the “EndTimes of 2012″—brighter and more dominant than at any time in human memory—there may be another message for us in its new guise.

“Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu!

Greco-Roman god Priapus, rescued fresco from Pompeii c.AD79, Archaeological Museum of Naples

PRIAPOS was the rustic god of the Ancient world, responsible through his unbridled fertility for the bounty of the vegetable garden. Later stylized as a dwarfish entity with a huge penis, which symbolized garden fertility, originally his head was crowned with a peaked Phrygian cap, belying his origin as a god, native to the Hellespont, ancient Phrygia. His cult was introduced into Greece and Italy, where his mythology was reinterpreted in Greek terms. Greeks naturally named him a son of one of their phallic gods: either Hermes/Mercury or, more often Dionysos. His mother was Aphrodite. They were accompanied by satyrs Orthanes and Tykhon.

Priapos/Priapus was honored by Greeks, Romans, Mysians, Hittites, Egyptians (their Apis, bull of fertility) as protector of sheep, goats, bees, the vine and of all garden produce. In formative cultures, the phallus was the ancient emblem of creation. It represented gods Bacchus, Priapus, Hermaphroditus, Hercules, Shiva, Osiris, Baal and Asher, who were all Phallic deities. Roman Priapus, a stylized symbol of Rome’s mastery of the then world, had odes written to him and poems pinned on patio phalluses in gardens of aristocratic ladies who wished to keep their arboreal spirits potent.

The most famous extant depiction of Priapus is the Pompeiian fresco, above. He is crowned with peaked Phrygian cap, shown weighing his enormous member on a set of scales against the produce of the fields. He wears Phrygian war-boots, and has a Bacchic, cone-tipped thyrsus* resting by his side.
Photo of Pompeiian fresco, courtesy Andargor

Burning Man annual late summer festival in Black Rock Nevada desert

In festive summer frolics, Priapus was depicted accompanied by garden nymphs, dyads and maenads, each waving a flower-wreathed *thyrsus—a wand made from fennel or bamboo, with a pierced pine-cone at its tip, which nymphs used as mini-phalluses to poke at the unitiated or to ward off satyrs and unwanted suitors.

In Celtic mythology he is the god of spring, Greenman, vestigial Druid prince-king-god who invoked fertility for his land through dance in sacred groves where tree and nature-spirits dwell.

Primitive statues of the god were traditionally set up in vegetable plots to promote fertility, with the added benefit of functioning as a type of scarecrow for scaring away birds. But when garden gnomes became a late 19thC fashion, their priapic member was eliminated in the mass-produced version, as Victorian sensibilities dictated that such garden gnomes NOT display their ‘private parts’, in case ladies in passing carriages should succumb to the ‘vapors’ and require medical assistance.

Priapic Preoccupation in Crop Circles
Victorian humor aside, Priapos was genuinely revered as patron of the garden, guardian of growth for all crops, and it is a relief to see this multi-faceted countryside god showing his (at least symbolic) head above ground—as a sign of bounty to come?—in the first two-phase crop circle appearance at Stanton St Bernard, Wiltshire, June 21st.

Solstitial crop circles have traditionally sent some of the clearest messages as the theme of a season; it is tempting to believe that the paucity of designs in Wiltshire—twelve during June; British total for season—is one of those. Meanwhile, crop circle anticipation remains high: manfully upheld by the Italian contingent, as the fields of Rome, Tuscany and northern Italy have had a relatively ‘normal’ growing season—that in itself may suggest we show a little deference to our classical heritage.

Stanton St Bernard dual-phase phallic crop circle points to ancestral Milk Hill, photo courtesy Paul Jacobs

So it is riveting to see that the season’s first ‘complex’ symbol should appear right on schedule—over solstice—in the Wiltshire ‘hub‘, in the same fields which created all the uproar last year, see Siderealview archives.

*Seen as a thyrsus, (typically, English has no translation for a wand wreathed in flowers sporting a bristle like a dildo), its pinecone-like business end pointed straight at Milk Hill—representative of ancient Earth Mother-milk-and-honey-bounty—the first meaningful crop circle of the season may once more be pulling at us with multiple strands. Targeting the Mother hill (the highest in Wiltshire) goes partway to awakening dormant English respect for ancient ways. By incorporating the dildo-pinecone in a sword- (or thyrsus-like) javelin cut straight through the barley and aimed at Milk Hill’s symbol of male strength—the horse riding the Mother—this crop design rekindles memories of pineal gland/third eye crop formations of summer 2011.

Messages then were that we/’Society’ release our male left-brain stranglehold on our fragile 21stC world, allow the female intuitive right-brain heart-centered side to come out of dormancy and express more freely. And that the pleasure zone: endorphins, melatonin and the pineal gland, function together as a means to synthesize and synchronize this new awareness in us humans by connecting our mind-body-spirit back to our terrestrial home.

Now, in post-Omega-Point reflection through a slow growing season, we are reminded to temper our left hemisphere destruction of habitat, and instead to devote time to more reverent and respectful treatment of our earthly environment.

To add to this summer madness, Ophiuchus rises to full stature in the northern July night, unseen until now in such grandeur by 21stC eyes. He stands diametrically opposite Orion, filling the southern arc of the night sky, his feet astride the ecliptic, between Sagittarius and Scorpio, his head grazed by the upside-down head of Hercules at zenith. Grasping with both hands he wields the Serpent: Serpens Caput in his left; Serpens Cauda in his right, the dual twisting constellation locked between his outstretched legs, as if caught in flagrante delicto, not a god, but a man wrestling his (inner and) outer demons.

Summer’s greatest blessing is that we northerners can relax, feel warm, surrounded by earth’s cornucopia of beauty, vegetative growth at its height—lulled into enjoying the brief season without thought to winter, responsibility, cold… the grasshopper and ant scenario. Or, with American Independence Day July 4th just around the corner, could consciousness of the ‘Silly Season’ already be taking hold? Celebrate now for tomorrow we die?
Te morituri salutamus!

We know our Earthmother’s answer.
©2013 Siderealview