HUNTER’S MOON HERALDS CELTIC NEW YEAR Fireworks in the Sky for Hallowe’en/Guy Fawkes
Ancient custom SoCal style—Ghostbusters-inspired Hallowe’en frivolity in the glitz capital
Orionids began the whole celestial fireworks show by scattering fragments of leftover comet Halley (orbit period 76 years) last Tuesday night, October 20th, as we hovered at Scorpio’s door. Ostensibly meteors came from the head and spear of Orion. The Hunter, however, forever pursuing the Pleiades through the northern sky, lies 1,344-Light-Years distant from us, while Halley’s cometary fragments skidded past within a skittish 50-miles overhead.
Brit Guy Fawkes mask, traditional headwear for Bonfire Night mingled with Hallowe’en, is banned in English Ex-pat Reserves in Persian Gulf as anarchist
Halloween 2015 approaches, and with it British Guy Fawkes’s revolutionary—but foiled—attempt to blow up Parliament in 1605 Gunpowder Plot, celebrated throughout the English-speaking world. It is hard not to feel a revving up of cultural unrest, mirrored in grand scale on the celestial tapestry overhead. Following recent eclipses, planet conjunctions and lunar standstill moments to light up the sky, the Heavens continue to give us a box-office show right through our transition into autumnal Scorpio restriction, Saturnine beating our not-so-savage breast, and our cultural winding down of the Creational Clock—to primordial death.
And regeneration.
Earth’s Crustal Plates in state of Flux
It is horrific to learn of devastation caused by last weekend’s two massive 7.5-magnitude and 7.1-mag. Richter scale earthquakes, interrupting an unusual lull in quakes worldwide. Both are causing havoc and tragic loss in HinduKush and Vanuatu.
Earth’s tectonic crustal plates: Himalayan upthrust mirrored by Pacific plate displacement in Sunday’s shock in Vanuatu
While in Afghanistan, fears surface that such ferocity will open subterranean faults to the Ganges and Bangladesh, Pacific plate movement in Fiji shows equivalent turmoil only 50 miles deep. Both tremors were forecast.
Algol as Demon Star
Media traditionally tries to displace or make light of world tragedy by focusing attention on the cultural caricature. The current fave demon star is Beta Persei, otherwise known as Algol in the constellation Perseus. The star’s archaic name comes from the Arabic for ‘head of the ghoul’, or ‘head of the Demon’, because it appears to die and come back to life.
Why did early stargazers name this dual star for a ghoul—demon? Beta Persei, otherwise Algol or the Ghoul Star* was known to flicker. Ghoulishly, it was also seen in folktale as Medusa’s hair. Entwined within a legend of a star that fades and returns mysteriously from the Realm of the Dead.
Sound familiar?
Ancient astronomers calculated its rhythm and guessed—rightly—that its twin star system, with the dimmer of the two bodies passing in front of the brighter, has a regular beat. It causes Algol to shine in spurts—to pulsate. So, throughout the ancient world, Algol was seen as a demon or monster, who, as we know, is the Devil’s familiar. Centuries of observation have proved Arab astronomers’ calculations. 2015 Astronomy forecast is for Algol to reach minimum brightness late Friday night, October 30th 2015 at 11:52 p.m. in central U.S.A. (October 31st 04:52 Universal Time).
*To find the Ghoul Star: look for constellation Perseus—cuddling Andromeda—in the northern evening sky. Perseus lords over the northeast sky, above the bright star group Capella and The Kids (lower left of Perseus) and the Pleiades star cluster (lower right).
Greek and Roman culture associated the star with the Head of Medusa, monster-woman, whose fearful countenance struck a man to stone. Snakes in place of her hair were additional encouragement not to stare.
When the dimmer of the two stars passes in front of the brighter, Algol shines at minimum brightness. Astro forecast calls for Algol to reach minimum brightness late Saturday, October 30th, at 11:52p.m. Central time, U.S.A. (October 31st 4:52UTC).
Ancient astronomers were fully aware of the influence the heavenly bodies’ movements had on their population. Greek and Roman culture controlled their populace by providing—not only bread and circuses—but also seer-oracles with miraculous predictions to affect their worlds.
Meteorite held as sacred fire from Heaven in sanctuary of Hellenic Oracle at Delphi, and in Saudi Mecca’s Inner Sanctum
A meteorite, a “Zeus-fallen thing,” was kept in the Temple of Venus on Cyprus, and another in the pre-Hellenic Temple of Apollo at Delphi, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus in Greece. In Rome, a piece of sky iron, regarded as a heavenly shield upon which the tenuous security of the state depended, was cared for and guarded by a special order of priests.
Most famous holy meteorite is called the Black Stone, Hadshar al Aswad. Mounted in silver, it sits in a place of honor in the Ka’aba, the sacred shrine at Mecca, and is circumambulated by all Muslim devotees who make the Hadj, the requisite holy pilgrimage. The sacred stone has a vulvic-shaped cleft which suggests ancient pre-Islamic goddess worship. It is attended by a phalanx of men called the Sons of the Old Woman.
Arabic and Arab culture dominated the sky: star names still bear their mystical Arabian names—their connotations striking fear in believers’ breasts. It may even put goose bumps in ours.
Algol is one of these.
TRIPLE PLANETARY CONJUNCTION SHINES BETHLEHEM BRILLIANCE Jupiter Venus and Mars triangle in pre-Dawn Eastern sky
Saturn moves out as Sun moves into Scorpio. Get started on the Grand Plan: all signs in 1st/2nd house
To counteract all the willies, hoolies and ooeys, there is contrast—thank the Angels—in the morning sky.
If we have learned anything from last month’s astounding sky tapestry, it is that celestial cycles are never-ending. And there is a rhythm which we normally-oblivious humans can attune to—if we take the time to do that.
Lunar standstill provided the springboard for repeat eclipses, close encounters of heavenly bodies with Earth, and an awareness
that galactic fireworks can be to us—as they were to our ancestors—a source of gratitude and awe for the Great Beyond. Now—tonight—one month farther into this miraculous heavenly cycle of an amazing year—three cycles later than Mayan predictions—we prepare for Hunters’-Harvest full Moon: closest tightest brightest full moon combination of highest tides, lowest rainfall, highest land temperatures and greatest earth movement and tectonic mayhem since the last cycle.
Pacific plate movement is merely a reflection of crustal displacement along the Himalayan upthrust, according to NOAA and USGS. It helps to remember, however, As Above So Below. And it was independently forecast.
Azimuth, angle and rising times coincide miraculously to give us a pre-dawn display all week until Ghoul Hour
Ancient astronomers, students of celestial expansion and collapse, would have been amused by our (modern) human frailty and lack of vision, in midst of clear cosmic signs that all is well in Star Worlds.
All this week—prior to and immediately after Tuesday (tonight’s) full moon, where our cultural sight should be set is perhaps less on poor old Sol, led by Saturn into Scorpio’s western clutches over the Pacific.
Brilliant Venus, in conjunction with Jupiter above, and dimmer Mars below, 4:45a.m. October 25, 2015 looking East
Rather should we look East: Shake our culture shackles and set the alarm to get up before dawn—with Daylight Saving Time imminent—November 1st—this is an easy 6a.m.event. Then feast our eyes on three miraculous planets—Jupiter, Venus and Mars—rising in conjunction within minutes of the Sun’s brightening rays. Each dawn they can be seen, dancing a jig: vying a little each morning for position, getting closer and yet closer into a conjunction mazurka, which will separate and scatter in early November.
Two thousand years ago, such a spectacle would have inspired pilgrims. If we suspend 21stC. disbelief, their heavenly beauty might also inspire us to pause briefly in our headlong millennial crawl over the edge.
Gods wielding Thunderbolts: not imaginary mythological tales but formative Earth's memory of her violent past
Plasma braids:
“Thunderbolt that steers the Universe”
Heraclitus, 5th Century B.C.
Our galaxy is not void.
For years we were taught traditional theory of our Universe as ‘space’, a vacuum, inert, orderly with few surprises. It was forever expanding outward from a point of primeval Big Bang, controlled and geared by gravity (the weakest celestial force), full of black holes, with anomalous behavior in comets, meteorites and exploding galaxies explained as the work of anti-matter, ‘dark’ matter or, as in nuclear physics, attributed to ‘unknown’ factors such as quarks, charm, CERN‘s conjectural Higgs-Boson particle or the existence of the ‘weak force’, anti-gravity or String Theory’s multiple dimensions. While physicists had trouble proving their theories (many of the ‘forces’ and particles were hypothetical and had theoreticians predicting ‘mass-less’ entities and the ‘graviton’) they are now swinging to a view of the operation of the Universe via another mode of Being:
As electrically-charged plasma.
Plasma is looked upon as the ‘fourth state of matter’, different from solid, liquid, gas. And as plasma is almost exclusively electromagnetic –a cluster of ionized particles– electrical theory is being unwrapped from the closet and given another airing.
NASA, JPL, CERN and the Los Alamos National Laboratory all give explanations for their switch from traditional space theory to a more generally accepted (and more familiar electromagnetically-driven) plasma physics, whose founding father, Swedish Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén (1908-1995) coined the phrase ‘Plasma Universe’. Originally trained as an electrical power engineer, he researched and taught many years in the field. His plasma theories describe behavior of aurorae, Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts, effect of magnetic storms on Earth’s magnetic field, magnetic and electric fields in cosmic plasmas, the terrestrial magnetosphere and dynamics of plasmas within our galaxy.
Because of its unique behavior, (unlike solids, liquids, gas) plasma is seen as the dominant form of matter in the universe. It has been called the ‘fundamental state of matter.’
When a material is heated from solid to liquid to gas phase, and then even hotter, it starts to become ionized, i.e. one or more electrons of an atom become liberated. Plasma is essentially a collection of ionized particles and while in its simplest form it behaves according to basic electromagnetic laws, at its most complex it continues to astonish specialists in its ability to self-organize into cells with different electrical characteristics.
Plasma comes in many forms, all electromagnetically active
Plasmas are not routinely encountered on the Earth’s surface. Natural plasmas, however, do form lightning and aurora, with the cool, man-made version most commonly seen in fluorescent light bulbs. Solar corona and solar flares are good examples of hot plasma. Earth’s magnetosphere contains plasma generated by particles of solar wind interacting with Earth’s own electromagnetic field, liberating ions into the Ionosphere (upper atmosphere).
Aurora borealis, Aurora australis
Aurora on Jupiter, photo courtesy John T Clarke (U.Mich)
Aurora borealis/australis is the result of charged solar wind particles clashing with and becoming trapped within the Van Allen radiation belts, where they hit the ionosphere and fluoresce. Every planet with a magnetic field generates its own plasma, like that around Jupiter and its moon Io. Beyond the solar system, in interstellar space, ions and electrons proliferate everywhere.
Fire in the Sky
A plasma discharge (spontaneous flash of light) is familiar to students of electromagnetism. To our ancestors, however, who must have witnessed many such plasma discharges in the ancient skies and recorded these (frightening) occurrences, they were seen as battles of the gods, sky heroes and god-kings clashing with sky monsters, serpents, ‘smoke-stars’, fire-dragons which, against apparently insuperable odds, they succeeded in overcoming.
As comets enter the inner solar system, a plasma tail often develops (in addition to a non-charged tail of dust), like Shoemaker-Levy 9 (1993-4) and Hale-Bopp (1995, 1997). NASA’s most famous comet-rendezvous program, Deep Impact, confirmed cometary composition (‘dirty snowball’ plus ionized particle tails) in its hit on comet Tempel 1 in July 2005 and flyby of comet Hartley 2 November last year.
Several ancient cultures name fearful comets as ‘smoking stars’ and lightning, with its thunderbolt — often in the shape of axe, jagged staff or flashing sword — was seen as the divine weapon of gods and king-heroes wielded against ‘fiery dragons’ curled inside the earth (volcanoes?) which threatened the populace.
Castor and Pollux —Alpha and Beta Geminorum, the ‘heavenly’ or ‘thunder’ twins — were revered by the Aztec as the first ‘fire sticks’, from which Mankind learned to drill fire. And, interestingly, when the Peruvian Indians became Christian, they chose to call one of those twins Santiago because their missionaries taught them that Christ named James (Santiago) and John the ‘Sons of Thunder’.
In Mesopotamia 4,500 years earlier (4000 BC), Gemini* served as pointers to mark the beginning of the new year by setting with the first new moon of spring, just as Egyptian astronomy’s pointer Dog star Sirius, Sothis signaled annual flooding of the Nile. Classical Greece called them the Dioscuri, the ‘thunder boys’, sons of Zeus.
In the opinion of seminal scholar of world mythology Prof. J. Rendel Harris:
‘Great commentators of the Christian church had missed the meaning. In demythologizing the Bible, they threw out vast sections of primitive culture’s connection to the stars.’ (Boanerges 1913)
Authors Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend of (IMHO) one of the greatest compilations of world mythology, (Hamlet’s Mill 1969, 1977, 2002) call the Bible ‘that most unscientific of records.’
Viewing cosmology in an electromagnetic context, the Mill of the title begins to make sudden sense of millennia of myth. Hamlet is a translation of Finnish/Norse/Icelandic proto-hero Amlodhi whose staff (Yggdrasil, ‘world tree’) spun the mill of the maelstrom, the whirlpool of the cosmos, the vortex, axis mundi — the Earth’s magnetic polar shaft. The Finnish quern/mill Sampo (vault of heaven, from Sanskrit skambha, pillar, pole, axis) ground out Mankind’s deep origins: it was this mill which created ocean, earth, Man. In good times it ground out ‘peace and plenty’, in bad times, salt. And, according to the Finns whose mythology is alive in recitation, it grinds still. It lingers in Vedic tradition in a hymn —Atharva Veda— to the world pillar (skambha):
A great monster in the midst of creation strode in penance on the back of the sea. In it are set what gods there are, like branches of a tree roundabout the trunk. AV 10.7.38
From such fragments of antiquity embedded in folk memory indicating a preoccupation with earth’s magnetic axis, it is tempting to believe that a polar shift, such as predicted by some for our ‘End Times’, may have occurred at least once before.
There seem to have been other cosmic cataclysmic occurrences.
Heliospheric current generates its own electromagnetic field
In an electromagnetic context within interstellar space, plasma spontaneously generates filaments which, like magnetic poles, attract each other at long distances and repel each other at short range. These filaments often braid themselves into ‘ropes’ that act like power transmission lines through space, with virtually unlimited scope in the distances and speeds they can travel.
Following precise magnetic field lines, these braids and ropes are known as Birkeland currents, after Norwegian explorer and physicist Kristian Birkeland who predicted them in 1903 after years of study of aurora in the Arctic.
Space plasma moving through a magnetic field generates its own electric current, and conducts electricity better than metals. Professor Emeritus of the Swedish Alfvén Laboratory, Carl-Gunne Fälthammar wrote (1986):
“A reason why Birkeland currents are particularly interesting is that, in the plasma forced to carry them, they cause a number of physical processes to occur (waves, instabilities, fine structure formation). These in turn lead to consequences such as accelerated charged particles, both positive and negative, and element separation (like preferential ejection of oxygen ions). Both classes of phenomena should be of general astrophysical interest far beyond that of understanding the space environment of our own Earth.”
In the medium of space, strong radial magnetic fields can make a plasma pinch like the hourglass-shaped Ant nebula, left, produce characteristic filaments like the plasma ball (top), and particle beams, as in its dense plasma center.
Filaments leave a magnetic field signature that is recognizable in the observable universe. Astronomers have been aware of these electromagnetic fields, but have historically paid them little attention.
At a most basic level, magnetic fields are produced only by electricity. So with new eyes we observe our Universe as electrically charged, electrically based and electrically-operated.
If stories transmitted through myth in all ancient cultures are taken as genuine records of visual phenomena –plasma bursts in the heavens– we begin to see formative earth peoples experiencing life on a volatile planet among cataclysmic prehistoric events happening in their skies. Our recent past, by comparison, has been a peaceful one. We can imagine how such events must have instilled fear, but faith and belief that their leaders (god-kings in ancient Egypt, China, Babylon) could and did overcome such monsters is not in our makeup. By ignoring the heavens, we have become complacent: we are no longer skywatchers. Because our history relates few cosmic incidents, we are lulled into ignoring our unique connection to our star, its orbiting companions, the Milky Way galaxy which drives us and the great space of infinity beyond.
Yet this is a running theme through all primitive earth culture, myth and art. And while science is beginning to access the bigger picture, we may be seeing a greater whole just in time: as the predicted solar maximum (increased sunspot activity, below) has the potential to return us to such tempestuous celestial activity as our ancestors experienced. Fire in our skies… perhaps eliciting earth’s (volcanic) response…
Astronomers and astrophysicists are beginning to accept that every energetic object in the universe has a plasma associated with it. Plasmas are detected by trace electromagnetic radiation (light, x-rays, radio waves), or in some cases, by the interaction of their ions and electrons with other objects.
Scientists think solar wind has been turned sideways by pressure from interstellar wind from distant stars
Distilling plasma theory down to its simplest form, and with great leaps in astronomical technology (space vehicles like Cassini and Voyager, telescopes like Hubble and SOHO), we can view and photograph from earth beautiful plasma nebulae which, excited by light from nearby stars, display precisely the same formations and explosive patterns seen in electromagnetism produced in the laboratory. It is also synchronous that Voyager is only now hurtling toward interstellar space approximately 10.8 billion miles (17.4 billion kilometers) from the sun on the outer edge of the solar system. Voyager 1 has crossed into an area of deep space where the velocity of hot ionized gas, (plasma) emanating directly outward from the sun as solar wind has slowed to zero.
Voyager 2 confirmed the existence of Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Uranus and Neptune.
As with Earth, the outer planets are affected by solar storms, but Earth’s proximity to her star (93 million miles, 1AU) makes her more susceptible.
Van Allen radiation belts surround Earth's magnetosphere
Energetic particle fluxes (radiation) can increase and decrease dramatically as a consequence of geomagnetic storms, themselves triggered by magnetic field and plasma disturbances produced by the Sun. We moved out of an unusually extended solar minimum last year. It may be in our interest to be (cautiously) more aware of the possibility of increasing solar disturbances during this next eleven-year cycle which will crown at solar maximum, thought to occur 2012.
While solar disruption on the scale of 1859’s Carrington Event may not happen, with our present dependence on electronic media for almost all human activity, we would be wise to have backup systems available, should such a CME-derived blackout occur.
Nobody in living memory knows what to do should a pole reversal occur. Angelic assistance is preferable.
Westbury crop circle July 2010 'Van Allen radiation belts'?
As we know (or rather, as some of us on this weblog community are following), 2009/2010 crop circle seasons were significant in their display of designs and consciousness-triggers alerting us to astrophysical phenomena and Earth’s fragility in its electromagnetic cocoon. Solar flares, plasma ejections (coronal mass ejections, CMEs), sunspot activity have all featured in Wiltshire wheatfields and are on the increase –see blog entries February through October 2010— alongside dimensional and spiritual instruction to prepare us for what may be around the corner.
Earth’s Mythological Past
Meantime, interdisciplinary researchers have not been idle. Given such a wealth of new information from astronomers, mythologists (following the trail begun by Hamlet’s Mill authors) have been working alongside scientists to make sense of thousands of years of transmitted lore, art, ancestral wisdom and belief which attest to hugely violent episodes in our planet’s past related to the heavens. Mythological and cultural archetypes worldwide share language, symbols and a timeframe which suggest a less-than-tranquil formative period in Earth’s evolution than the one traditionally held by astronomers.
Under the umbrella of the Thunderbolts Project of Portland, OR, scientists, authors, mythologists and historians led by Wallace Thornhill, David Talbott and electrical engineer Prof. Donald E. Scott, are cooperating with plasma physicist Dr. Anthony Peratt to interpret petroglyph symbolism used by almost every ancient civilization to depict mythological heroes and events. Peratt has for 30 years run a laboratory using computer-generated electrical activity to predict plasma bursts in celestial forms. Together they are finding remarkable resonance between plasma forms in the lab, those produced in the cosmos, and the rock art of ancient man who drew what he saw in the sky.
On a spiritual and cosmic level, an ‘electric Universe’ — via our planetary umbilical cord to our star; its energetic tie to Galactic Center and through it the galaxy’s electromagnetic relationship with all other galaxies and the most distant stars — can be viewed as a purposeful whole, held together by plasma ropes, braids of light and power transmission lines which do indeed transmit information.
We are only just learning the language of the stars.
*According to pre-Hellenic myth, the Age of Gemini (approx 6000 BC) was considered the ‘Golden Age’, Saturnia regna when Saturn/Kronos ruled. Following the Precession of the Equinoxes, each celestial Age lasts around 2200 years. More detail on successive ages here. In Mongolian myth the Age of Gemini signaled a time when ‘heaven and earth separated’ and fire was born. In other words, before the ecliptic and celestial equator fell apart (and the equinoxes started to precess), there was no fire. It was ‘given by heaven’ in the Golden Age of the Twins. 8000 years on, we entered the Age of Aquarius on February 14, 2009.
Tesseract, pentaract or hexaract? crop circle at Cley Hill, Warminster, Wiltshire 'inspires one to journey to the edge of knowledge'
We’ve heard a lot of talk recently about entering the Fifth Dimension. Not exactly mainstream media, but you know what I mean: it’s been in the visionary blogs, the music, the crop circles. They, most visually, are our guides to this next rung on the spiritual ladder. This is our Stargate, the next stop on the celestial tour: our starmap imprint sent to guide us across the Rainbow Bridge.
I know, you’ve heard Rainbow Bridge used as a metaphor for crossing ‘over’, i.e. leaving this mortal coil, abandoning your family and friends on earth and becoming one with the Great Spirit. As one aging body which fondly remembers the ’60s, that thought is paramount in my understanding of signs we are being shown right now — this 2010 season — in these so-called End Times. And, goodness knows, with earthquakes in Haiti and Eureka, African drought, world temperature extremes and the Deep Horizon oil spill, we are being shown death in no small measure. No-one explained, however, in those wonderful and awful predictions mentioned in so many religious and spiritual disciplines, that this is potentially a time of joy! We are being given pointers to show us how to express our personal joy. I think that’s what it’s about.
The eclipse from Easter Island: photo by Stephanie Guisard
Last weekend, July 11th, stargazers in the southern hemisphere experienced a total solar eclipse. Totality was visible throughout a massive swathe of Pacific Oceania starting midday in the northern Antarctic, through the Easter and Cook Island chain, (Mangaia in particular) and ending at the point of dusk on the west coast of south America. Observers from the North — not treated to an iota of this spectacle — flew to Pacific atolls in French and American Polynesia while locals in Chile, Argentina and the Andes gathered to witness varying shades of totality as the moon’s shadow all but obliterated the sun’s disk. The path of totality crossed the Pacific from west to east, over Cook Islands, Easter Island, the waters off Tahiti, and ending in southern parts of Argentina and Chile as the sun set and its movement through differing time zones inspired dramatic pictures.
Northern hemisphere lineup at dusk
The northern hemisphere has had its own drama too. Comet McNaught may have sunk below horizons in the north before July 4th weekend, but we are being treated right now to a fine evening array as, just after sunset, three major planets, Saturn, Mars and Venus, line up in the western sky with first magnitude star Regulus in constellation Leo — the brightest star to sit almost exactly on the ecliptic. Jupiter alone shines brightly in the East shortly before dawn as a ‘morning star’.
What has this to do with moving into the next dimension? using the Stargate? you may ask.
A lot of centuries’ erudition has impressed on us the need to die first before we get to go to heaven. And in the belief system of most of humankind on planet Earth, that’s still the way of it. But there is the tiniest chink of light — the one streak of hope and delight — shining through a crack in that Stargate telling us Heaven is Here, Now, if we know where to look. Problem is, we’ve been looking in the wrong places.
Yes, we have read our spiritual texts — after all, biblical renditions, Vedic literature, the Quran are profuse on the subject of inspiration — and we are indeed beginning to ‘look to the heavens’, to seek to foster an awareness in ourselves outside our normal preoccupation with bodily sustenance and functions. But we may still be missing the point.
The Stargate beckoning us across the Rainbow Bridge isn’t up there. It’s in here.
Many indigenous cultures have kept ancestral knowledge alive through the time-honored oral tradition: a means often scorned by the ‘capitalist culture’ of the First World as inaccurate, lacking in practical application and unrealistic. In a world of big business, big oil spills and big gas-guzzling machines, such derision may have an audience. But thankfully some of us no longer feel so driven — as we were, for example, in the ’80s — to mow down hectares of trees to plant oil-producing crops, to grub up precious hedgerow habitat to farm pesticide-fed food because it’s ‘cheaper’, or to tolerate maltreatment, even extinction, of our dependent subspecies (the lesser animals) as expendable, predacious or edible. Our determination has brought some awful revelations — one might cite the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, war, famine, plague, and death — and incentive for us to change horses, and so, at the eleventh hour, we may be learning.
“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the heartbeat of the Universe, to match your nature with Nature”.
Joseph Campbell
Crop Circles: the new communications medium
Gradually over roughly a decade, the Crop Circle phenomenon caught the public eye. At the end of the 1980s a small following predominantly in Wiltshire, constantly ridiculed and misreported in the press, announced mysterious (and mystical) overnight appearances in ripening summer crops.
Now it’s worldwide.
Sixth dimensional cube (hypercube) or Hexaract at Cley Hill, Warminster
Sophisticated designs have become infinitely more complex, embedding code and displaying supreme care in laying inner swirls of undamaged layered wheat and barley. In latest designs, as at Cley Hill and at Guys Cliffe, Old Milverton, Coventry, Warwickshire, these layers are used to give extra dimension to the design. It is no coincidence the Cley Hill formation is called the hypercube. It is the closest anyone has ever come to creating a fourth dimensional geometric form in essentially a two-dimensional drawing. The layered crop and the deliberate care with which it has been folded creates an optical illusion of a tesseract – a hypothetical cube in fourth-dimensional space. Its supreme success is that this illusion is visible only from above. And yet, when used as a graphic to focus on for meditation, the design catalyzes amazing changes in perception. A new video compiled from old footage from Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’ is worth watching for his delightful explanation of the tesseract.
The tesseract has a theoretical connection with the mid-May oil seed rape formation at Wilton Windmill whose binary code translated as the mathematical theorem known as Euler’s Identity. Euler’s formula, expressed as the equation (e ^ (i * Pi) + 1 = 0), exists and is provable, but for several years nobody knew what it meant. The tesseract is provable as a geometric figure, but, because it exists in the fourth dimension, nobody (human) has yet been able to create one. Julian Gibsone, director of the Cropcircleconnector DVDs, describes this crop formation as inspiring a ‘journey to the edge of knowledge’.
Old Milverton crop circle July 10 reminiscent of Basil Spence 'crown-of-thorns' rood screen
Following hard on its heels, but in common with this season’s use of ancestral strongholds to display 21st-century phenomena, another complex and multi-layered formation appeared near Coventry on July 10th at Guy’s Cliffe, Old Milverton. Its siting near a medieval chapel, ancient caves and a castle mentioned in the Domesday Book is not accidental.
Basil Spence crown-of-thorns rood screen in the Gethsemane chapel at Coventry
It has been seen both as an amazing piece of crop art and as a representation of the ‘crown of thorns’ screen designed by Basil Spence for the ‘new Coventry cathedral’ rebuilt after WWII.
The phenomenon has become a movement; its messages strengthen a growing number of people who are choosing a spiritual path. People who meet inside the formations describe feelings of peace, brotherly love, and display kindness and shared belief with one another. Farmers, rather than banning people from walking in their crops, are increasingly open to allowing visitors inside formations — so long as they approach via the tramlines — and donation boxes are becoming commonplace.
The movement has been hugely encouraged by an electronic presence: much interaction and shared opinion is generated by groups on the social network, Facebook. They include Crop Circles Index, a recent multilingual addition providing great CC resources; another group, ‘Report a Crop Circle’ attracts 2,910 ‘FB members’, encourages communication on crop circle discovery, meaning and speculation along with related solar phenomena. The much-vaunted Crop Circle Connector website has a reputation for being first base for reporting new formations and its homepage has a forum for discussion. It also has a Facebook page of 3,473 Circle Chasers with daily interaction. Croppies no longer function as isolated eccentrics rushing from pub to pub between field sightings. Croppiedom has hit the mainstream.
Huge neolithic stronghold, ancestral hilltop monument nurturing its 21stC offspring in the amphitheatre below
As if to emphasize this new status, the Cley Hill, Warminster circle site, like most 2010 chosen locations, has huge ancestral stronghold connections, stunning views, and is described by Julian Cope as ‘significant to a powerful Neolithic race.’
Unlike the Hopi or the Maya, the English are nothing if not an urbane and modern First World race, supremely disinterested and disconnected from their ancestors, in dire need of reconnection, it might seem. Crop formations in recent years — and particularly in 2010 — have invariably been sited within the precinct of an ancient stronghold. A hint perhaps?
“At the time of the 13 Baktun and 13 Ahau is the time of the return of our Ancestors and the return of the men of wisdom.” Maya prophecy
In England, there is no Merlin figure any more, no ancestral role model with white flowing beard to bring ancient knowledge to the people. The Maya in Guatemala, on the other hand, keep a living record — in the person of Don Alejandro Oxlaj, ‘Wandering Wolf’, Grand Elder and Day Keeper of the Calendar of the Maya, 13th generation Quiche High Priest and Head of the Continental Council of Elders and Spiritual Guides of the Americas. The spiritual welfare of the 21st Century Maya of Guatemala is in his hands. He is charged with the duty as primary keeper of the teachings, visions and prophecies of the Maya. While the Maya have no autonomy recognized by the government of Guatemala, their culture is strong and deeply rooted in their historic prophecies. One of their most potent ones expresses the need for all peoples from all countries to come together to help save the earth:
“Those of the Center, with their mystical bird Quetzal, unite the Eagle of the North with the Condor of the South; we will meet because we are one, like fingers of the hand.”
In their view, behavior of human beings all over the world has to change: become more in tune with life on Planet Earth. It is our joint responsibility. Their invitation from the Indigenous Race is extended to everyone, to help rescue human life, save the planet and thus inherit a healthy future for ourselves and our children.
If there were ever such a tradition in England, it has long been forgotten. True, there are hints of ancient lore: that Arthur will rise again when his people are in their hour of greatest need. But it pales by comparison with the strength of combined Mayan tradition.
Perhaps this is what crop circles are doing for the people of Britain. Britain was once Great. Britain was once a force to be reckoned with. Britain saw the Roman presence evacuate in AD420. It held off the Goths, and yet allowed in the Angles, the Saxons and Jutes; eventually Normans. In the mingling, we seem to have lost some of our ancestral connections: our connection with the Land. And it is this synchronization with the spirit of place which crop circles seem to want us to recognize: to tune once more into earth energy, that sacred electromagnetic force which our ancestors recognized, understood and held sacred. If we allow ourselves to tune into our planetary ‘garden’, we are half way towards understanding that feeling of joy which Mother Earth extends to us; wants to rekindle in us.
It has been said that joy is the stargate through which we may reach that ‘promised land’: that sense of place and comfortable being when we are at one with our spiritual home. In esoteric tradition, joy lifts the vibration of a person’s resonance and as one’s vibratory level increases, as one vibrates at a higher frequency, doors begin to open that were closed before. Things happen miraculously, events fall into place. A laugh, a smile can open that door, that stargate.
So, if this summer is the summer we start to ascend– we may already have risen a level. If we can see/experience the tesseract, it’s already happened. Then the next level, the fifth dimension, is also attainable, just a step farther. If we focus our intent: practise meditation, make it part of our life. By revving up our joy vibration, we get to speed up the process. As Joseph Campbell says, atune our nature to Nature.
The aperture which joy opens for us now is the stargate to the next dimension: across the Rainbow Bridge, it’s only a peal of laughter away.
December Full Moon rises exactly at sunset on the opposite (NNE) horizon - latitude 57ºN
New Year’s Eve – the last day of 2009 or Hogmanay, as the Scots call it – will be triply auspicious. Not only is it the eve of a new year, a new decade no less, but it will be graced by a full moon, a partial lunar eclipse, and the Moon will be Blue. In celestial spheres you might say we are being given the royal treatment; or at least being sent a signal.
When a month is graced with two full moons, the second one is called a blue moon. You know, the ‘once in a blue moon’ blue moon? Because our modern calendar calculates by the sun (annual orbit of the Earth round the sun takes 365.25 days), its 30- and 31-day months take us out of synch with our nearest neighbour, whose cycle is 29.53 days. Only the female menstrual cycle and the oceans remain in touch with our lunar companion. The rest of humanity seems to have forgotten what cosmic rhythm is.
Blue moon of May 2007 seen at 40ºN latitude USA
Because of the lunar/solar anomaly, only 41 months in every century can be called true blue moon months, hence a fairly rare occasion. The blue moon cycle of 2.72 years, therefore, makes it something special. December 2009 already had a full moon on the night of December 1st/2nd. The last blue moon month was May 2007 and the next will occur in August 2012.
This New Year’s Eve, because the full moon always rises at the moment of sunset on the opposite horizon and because the moon will not be full this December 31st until 7:13pm GMT, those of us in the Old World will be able to witness the full orb of Luna rise at sunset in the Northeastern skies on Hogmanay night. That’s 4pm GMT in London, home counties, Midlands and Birmingham and about half an hour earlier (3:20pm) in Edinburgh where Hogmanayers will only just be starting their all-night revelry. Four hours later, as Jupiter prepares to set in the southwestern sky, the moon’s disc reaches its fullest and the Earth moves between her and the sun to cast a shadow over her in partial eclipse. This moment of maximum partiality occurs at 19:23 UTC, 7:23pmGMT or 11:23am PST. In astronomical terms it is not a full (total) eclipse because earth’s shadow (eclipse magnitude) will only reach 0.0763, but for us earthlings in the eastern hemisphere it will still be a singular sight.
Solar system planets from outer orbits looking in
At midnight when Hogmanay reaches crisis point in Scotland’s capital, when they shoot off fireworks from the battlements of Edinburgh castle to welcome the new year to the screech of bagpipes, very few, I suspect, will note that the ‘New Year star’, Sirius, reaches its zenith in our northern skies. Sirius will stand behind Orion in the south with the Moon, in Cancer, followed in close proximity by our secondmost close neighbour Mars, the ‘red’ planet, retracing its steps through Leo as we enter 2010. The ringed giant does not arrive on the scene until late when the revellers are wending their weary way home: Saturn is a ‘morning’ planet right now, best seen in the east in the hours before dawn, with its spectacular rings just starting to ‘open’ to our view.
That’s the astronomical picture.
The astrological one is a little different. It reflects a vastly complex array of planetary influences to which our ancestors paid heed, but which Technological Man tends to ignore. However, like the menstrual cycle affecting the female population, it is well, occasionally, to pay attention to heavenly bodies and the way they appear to sway our passage through the cosmos.
At winter solstice the Sun enters the cardinal earth sign of Capricorn, having played and filled us with optimism in late November while in fiery Sagittarius, encouraging us to look to the future, fulfill our dreams. Capricorn Sun and Cancer full Moon bring those dreams and our grasp on reality into sharp focus: both make us examine our ‘outer’ career, capabilities, achievement potential and ‘inner’ love of family, home, need for a peaceful centre: their polarity challenges us to fix our relationships. Cancer may be content to be dependent, Capricorn urges us to be grown-up and responsible. Cancer represents the origin, Capricorn looks to the goal. In this mix stands the astrological giant Saturn in Libra, exerting discipline, demanding that we find balance. Mars, because of retrograde motion in Leo, is teasing us, telling us ego fantasies, diverting our attention from the path of loving acceptance. Our usual mental messenger, our Mercurial helper is currently useless; he is doing a backwards dance through Capricorn and being uncommunicative. It is up to us to review how well we’re using our own natural-financial-mental resources. However, on January 5th, Mercury is joined by loving Venus, so all is not lost. There is hope in the days ahead. The loving, healing solution may show us a way through our planetary difficulties.
Fortunately, we may still call on the largest of the planets: Jupiter, which presently consorts with another friendly giant, Neptune, the bringer of change. Together they stand in forward-looking Aquarius and are guaranteed to bring abundance into our lives, fresh ideas, a new focus, perhaps even a totally unexpected way of solving our problems. Both reflect the potential for the spiritual, the mystical, even a miracle, to bring about the change we cannot perceive ourselves.
This brings us to the spiritual view.
At the time of the December solstice each year the sun approaches the heart of the Milky Way, our Home Galaxy, and conjoins with Galactic Center in the constellation Sagittarius. At this time of year the Earth also gets closest to our own star, Sol. Closest point in our orbit, perihelion, happens annually on January 2nd/3rd.
Through the ages, after solstice when the sun moves northward along the horizon again, each month setting farther and farther north, the period from winter solstice to summer solstice was festival season. In several ancient civilizations winter solstice was associated with the return of a Sun-God to save the world, the bringer of light and fruitfulness to the earth, and hope to humanity.
Spiritual communities too, mindful of ritual handed down from ancestral hierarchies, hold winter solstice sacred, meditating and communing with the silence of winter in a kind of mental hibernation which itself opens up communication with Source. It is at midwinter that many begin preparations for the three major festivals of spring and summer: in the Celtic calendar they are known as Imbolc (February 2nd), spring equinox (Ostara, Easter) and Beltainn (May 1st).
Other indigenous cultures celebrate on these dates, the Hopi, Maya, Chinese, Arab, Vedic and Zulu, but one which has gained world-wide recognition is the May full moon celebration of Wesak, the greatest festival in the Buddhist calendar. All surviving cultures which perpetuate these ancient forms begin with a meditation at winter solstice which culminates in the May celebration.
It is fascinating, then, to discover that in using an ancient technique of knowing when the planet is at its closest to Galactic Center, by aligning with cosmic energy emanating from the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, at the crossing of Galactic Center with celestial ecliptic, at a time when the Earth is herself at her perihelion, closest to her own star, and when the stella maris, the ‘spiritual sun’ Sirius is at her zenith, ancient civilizations and their modern devotees discovered a means to tuning into the cosmic Source of all energy, knowing, and guidance.
In the sacred Long Count calendar of the Maya, one of the most accessible of ancient calculations to modern man, within a period called a Great World Age, an eon, an unimaginably-huge 26,000-year timespan, there are only a few moments when we Earth people come closest to the center of this cosmic cross, the point where the ecliptic crosses the Milky Way, at precise center of our Galaxy.
Galactic Center where stars are born
This nebulous area of the Universe, where stars are born, is our own cosmic womb, from which we, as stardust emerged. It is from this hole in the Cosmos that many spiritual masters and followers believe emanates a divine energy; that the centre of the galaxy is constantly emitting and transmitting a pure energy source which may be utilized in our conscious co-creative process to amplify and transmit new programmes of operation to us, to amplify our awareness and to broadcast light energy directly to enhance human DNA.
Winged serpent sun god Quetzalcoatl of the Maya from Codex Borgia
In the mythology of the Maya, it is to this great birth canal or womb aperture that Creator-sun-god Quetzalcoatl, mythical feathered serpent, one who crawls on Mother Earth but also flies in the heavens will return on winter solstice 2012. This cosmic re-union symbolizes the joining of spirit with matter, in order to be reborn: the Shift of the Ages.
Our alignment with Galactic Center occurs only once in every 25,800 years. We have come close to it several times in the last three decades. During the so-called ‘Galactic alignment period’, or ‘era-2012’ between 1980 and 2016, the closest the Earth came to Galactic Center was on December 21st, 1998.
Galactic center is exactly where the December solstitial sun will stand at noon Universal Time on December 21st, 2012.
Is it any wonder then that we as a species are being given a few reminders of this cosmic date only a couple of years up the stellar turnpike?
If Galactic Center is transmitting messages, is it not logical for us, a technologically advanced civilization, to pick up the spiritual phone?
Galactic Cross or Maya Sacred Tree, the point where the Milky Way meets the Ecliptic
The ecliptic is the path travelled by the sun, moon, and planets through the sky.
Twelve constellations lie along the ecliptic, their symbols used by generations of world civilizations, both as night-time guidance by sextant and, in astrology, to predict character traits and the future.
In both astronomical and astrological terminology, the sun passes through all twelve constellations or zodiac signs on the ecliptic during the course of one year. The path of the ecliptic can be seen to cross over the Milky Way at a 60 degree angle near the constellation Sagittarius. Where this happens, it forms a cross with the Milky Way, and this cosmic cross – also known as the ‘crossroads’ – was called the Sacred Tree by the ancient Maya.
It has names in other cultures, too: most famous among them is that of the Norse, where it was called the World Tree, or Yggdrasil.
The Milky Way with its Dark Rift seen at a 60º angle to the Earth
In Britain, with almost no summer night sky to speak of, The Milky Way is usually thought of as a winter night sky spectacle. From our perspective on Earth it is the wide highway of stars arching through the sky, especially clear in northern winter. In the cloudless skies of ancient Mesoamerica, however, it could be seen after dark at almost any time of year, because tropical dusk happens quickly and almost invariably year-round at 6p.m.. So the Milky Way was (and is) a phenomenon of wonder to behold in Mexico and Central America. There this spectacular freeway of stars interspersed with blotchy areas of starless clouds can be seen along the entire length of the Milky Way. These ‘dark cloud’ formations are caused by interstellar dust. The most prominent of these is in astronomy called the ‘dark-rift’ or ‘Great Cleft’ of the Milky Way. It looks like a dark road running through the galaxy, pointing towards the centre or cosmic crossing point where the ecliptic bisects the Milky Way, near the constellation Sagittarius, or, according to the Maya, the fulcrum of the Maya Sacred Tree.
The center of this cosmic cross, at a point where the ecliptic crosses the Milky Way, is coincidentally the precise centre of our Galaxy, a nebulous area of the Universe where stars are born and our own cosmic womb, from which we, as stardust emerged. This Galactic centre is exactly where the December solstitial sun will stand at noon on December 21st, 2012. This alignment occurs only once every 25,800 years.
The Maya called this dark-rift the Black Road, or the Road to the Underworld. They seem to have imagined it as a portal to another world, and their prediction that the December solstice sun would re-enter its ‘birth canal’ in 2012 now appears to be fairly accurate. This special time, in Maya numbers, occurs at the end of one Great Cycle or 13 baktuns: the date 13.0.0.0, from an origin in 3114 B.C. Each baktun numbers 144,000 days and 13 baktuns equals 1,872,000 days since the beginning of Creation.
Oldest civilizations like Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian and Greek culture all saw the movement of the stars within a context of time, rather than space. This is a direct connection to ancient knowledge of the movement of the stars along the band of the ecliptic in a contrary direction to that of the zodiac. The earth was seen as laid through the ecliptic passing through the celestial equator at an angle of 23.5º which divided the zodiac into two halves: the ‘dry land’ northern half of the zodiac reaching from vernal to autumnal equinox; the other half representing the ‘waters below’ the equinoctial plane, or the southern arc of the zodiac stretching from autumn equinox, via the winter solstice, to vernal equinox. These mythological concepts dealt with Man’s measure of time, rather than quantifiable space.
And over time ancient wisdom noticed that the equinoctial points, as well as the solstices, appear to move backwards through the constellations every 2,200 years, thus marking a phenomenon called the Precession of the Equinoxes. In Classical mythology, this movement of the heavens was thought to be the cause for the rise and fall of civilizations and Ages of Man. Each Age was named for an astrological sign and a time when in astronomical terms a particular constellation in the heavens appeared to rise at dawn on equinox.
So as precession made its inexorable journey through time and the heavens, Man and civilization generally moved from the Age of Taurus (the Judaic era of the Golden Calf) through Aries (which Moses heralded on descent from Mount Sinai as ‘two-horned’) or the start of the new Age of the Ram; into Pisces, the Age of Christianity whose symbol was the fish; and now, from February 14th this year, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.
The Ouroboros or cosmic serpent eating its own tail
The Greeks saw the Milky Way as the Ouroborus or Serpent of Light residing in the heavens and, when viewed at Galactic Central point near Sagittarius, this serpent appears to eat its own tail.
Crop circle July 2008 depicting serpent eating its own tail
A crop circle which appeared on July 27, 2008 gave an earthly rendition of the Ouroborus, seen by both classical and Mayan scholars as symbolic of the winter solstice date of 2012 when the sun will appear to rise out of the mouth of the Ouroborus or the dark rift at the centre of the galaxy where the World Tree, the Sacred Tree of the Maya, the Sanskrit Sampo and the Norse Yggdrasil all meet.
While Mythology has stood the test of time in many world cultures, it may be a surprise to learn that science has also discovered a new twist to the old tale/tail.
For generations our acceptance that we are part of the Milky Way galaxy was unquestioned; yet this pathway in the heavens appears to rise from our earthly horizon at a 60º slant: odd if we are one sun within its great spiral of stars. It now emerges that the Solar System belongs to another galaxy which is currently colliding with the Milky Way.
This fact was discovered when astrophysicists recently pursued investigations into the existence of ‘dark matter’ to account for fluctuations in energy which are measurable but invisible. By using infrared wavelengths of light below eye and optical telescope visibility, they detected the presence of a huge sister galaxy circling the Milky Way and colliding with it at – you guessed it – its point of centre near Sagittarius. It’s called the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, or SGR. And its collision may be the source of a huge gravitational pull which influences the 11-year solar coronal mass or sunspot cycle.
So, we really are stardust, colliding with our nearest neighbour, returning to the stars from which we came. And world mythology from our greatest civilizations, like crop circle designs from the cosmic consciousness, were trying to tell us this all along.
View from the Stars: whichever way you look at it, we are present in Sidereal time, Space is our growth medium, and stardust and water our constituent particles. When electromagnetically charged, our solar-powered circuitry is capable of Creating Anything We Choose.
When the dimmer of the two stars passes in front of the brighter, Algol shines at minimum brightness. Astro forecast calls for Algol to reach minimum brightness late Saturday, October 30th, at 11:52p.m. Central time, U.S.A. (October 31st 4:52UTC).
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