Lunar Standstill: Returning to the Cradle of Civilization

Full Moon Perigee—Eclipse @ Moment of Moonrise—California PDTime—Four Nights of Light

Earth and Moon in Eclipse–rarer than 18.6-year wobble at Standstill—courtesy SOHO

When the Ancients calculated ahead in time to the most spectacular tracking through the Heavens visible to the ‘greatest number of peoples of Earth’, it was foretold, we should all become visionaries. 2012 received much kudos and focus, but what if the Maya Long Count Calendar were three years out? What if the Egyptian and Assyrian and Indo-Arctic peoples were right, after all?

Tonight’s the Night, Josephine
Tonight it all comes into coalescence:
In North America at least, because of wide television and media publicity, a huge surge of population will raise their eyes to view the ‘closest blood moon’ to come our way. Actually, media moguls are only partially right: it is the closest to Earth—perigee—in the moon’s orbit round us for this year, but it is also the closest—cosmically—in breaking time-space barriers that will come our way once in a long time.* Tonight’s full moon—appearing most spectacularly in California at her stage entrance in the east, as she enters total eclipse AND as the sun is setting due west–is the crux of the 2015 Minor Lunar Standstill.

Now and over four nights the Harvest Moon will appear to rise and set at roughly the same place—and within moments of the same hour—on our east horizon, setting due west at dawn—in concert with sunrise— under identical conditions. Tonight’s total eclipse is a bonus of the Standstill.**

Closeness to Earth may appear to add vibration to her brightness.

Full equinoctial Standstill Moon Eclipse at moment totality breached, Sept. 27/28, 2015, courtesy Gail Slaughter

As for the tides, wow. Similar extremes: as high as seven feet; then ultra lows less than the ‘normal ‘six hours apart. Even the fishermen are confused. But abalone love moonlight.
*PDT Moon enters eclipse at Moonrise 7:11p.m. exits totality after approx. one hour, 8:11p.m. or: enters totality beginning at 10:11 p.m. EDT, ends at 11:24 p.m. EDT.

Ancient Man thought the Moon had come to a nineteen-year cyclical Standstill. Its so-called wobble created an enormous spread of cultural carvings in stone throughout the Neolithic world.

Are we any wiser for our anthropocine leap through time?

Twenty thousand years ago—18,000 B.C.—myth and legend were one. Man looked to the heavens for guidance and to check the weather, and then went out and found another flesh-eating animal to kill and cook on the sacred fire embers.

We may believe civilization has evolved way beyond that amygdalian impetus, but in the opinion of Maya calendrical scholar and astronomy buff, John Major Jenkins, we have barely scratched the surface of ‘civilization’.

SEPTEMBER REMEMBER, OCTOBER ALL OBER

Shifing aurora borealis erupt over Anchorage AK 9/19/15 at height of CME storm

Current notions about cultural evolution refers to a type of social Darwinism in which human society today is supposed to be hierarchically more refined and advanced in every essential way than our grunting? dirty, cave dwelling, ‘primitive’ Neolithic ancestors. This view is naïve; compare life in a typical Third World urban slum of today with the cosmopolitan city dwellers of Alexandria 2,000 years ago. Technology and science is not the barometer of cultural sophistication. Social Darwinism has entered the realm of cliché, although still to a surprising degree it holds currency in the underlying assumptions of many people, including scholars—John Major Jenkins on preface to Hamlet’s Mill de Santillana & von Dechend 1969

Heavenly intervention—in the form of repeat eclipses—is an aspect of Metonic cycle that has always intrigued.

As the sun, moon and earth return to the same relative positions, the pattern of eclipses of moon and earth repeats every nineteen years. A six-hour difference in the lunar draconic cycle, however, is enough to throw the eclipse repeatability out of kilter, but up to four eclipses may repeat around the same dates nineteen years apart, before this happens.

Lunar standstill calendar, NatiMuseum of American Indian, Washington DC

June—too soon
July—stand by
August—come it must
September—remember
October—all over
Hurricane ‘creation’ rhyme, Bahamas 1940s, now outdated, outclassed by year-round storms

ANCIENT OF DAYS—AUTUMN EQUINOX 2015—Repeating the Cosmic Loop—Eclipse, Standstill Harvest Lunar Wobble

Four dominant periods* are 18.6 years—the precession period of the lunar orbit— and 182.6 days or half a year; 13.7 days or half a month, and 9.3 years—the rotation period of the moon’s return to perigee.

The primary nutation of 18.6 years drives two other observational cycles:
the Saros cycle (18 years, 11 days) and
the Metonic Cycle (19 years)

2015 Eclipse Solar Lunar Cycles replicate Ancient Egyptian Astronomy
The great Zodiac of Dendera at Luxor, established during Roman rule 50B.C. and superimposed on the archaic Egyptian temple to Hathor, celebrated the wobbling moon.

The cause of this weird wobble cycle is the precession of the lunar orbit around us, on Earth.

Photographed from ISS: our galaxy, our planet, our moon in eclipse—surrounded by AIRGLOW

The Sun’s gravitational pull also brings about a precession of the Moon’s orbital axis, within a period of 18.6 years. Precession advances locations at points where the moon’s orbit crosses the ecliptic—at the nodes.

Maximum moonrise and moonset invariably repeat every nineteen years.

Literally, after exactly nineteen solar years the sun will return to the same position relative to the stars—our view of the heavens—and the moon will have nearly the same phase—with a two-hour difference in its cycle.

Significantly, repeat eclipses will occur on the new or full moon nearest to the sun’s passing through one of the nodes.

Sun + Moon conjunct astral nodes. Ancient eclipse prediction practice returns equinox 2015 to surprise skywatchers

This sacred numeric calculation was much appreciated by the Egyptians, followed by the Greeks, Carthaginians and all early northern peoples, including pre-Celtic Arctic nations. As the dates of the new moon, full moon, would repeat every nineteen years, it naturally fell within cultural knowledge of the privileged. It became ‘mystery schools‘ fodder.

For any given solar calendar date, full Moon events will replicate every nineteen years.

This creates a cyclic loop back to pre-Celtic mythic nineteen Priestesses of Bridget/Brigantia. Each of these individual priestesses represented a character or experience associated with nineteen components of the Great Lunar Year. This relationship creates an excellent basis for cyclic pattern divinations.

*Lunar Standstills
Because of the 5.1 degree tilt of the moon’s orbit with respect to the ecliptic, the moon may be anywhere within 5.1 degrees above or below the ecliptic. During major standstills the moon reaches a declination of 23.5 plus 5.1 degrees or 28.6 degrees; major standstills occur every 18.6 years. At minor standstill the greatest declination that the moon reaches is 23.5 minus 5.1 degrees or 18.4 degrees.

Antikythera—Ancient Astronomical Prediction Device

Antikythera 2000-year old Greek analog computer geared to predict astronomical positions of sun, moon, major planets and constellations. Eclipses were used for calendrical and astrological divination for the Olympiads, 86B.C.

This means that every 18.6 years, the rising or setting Moon reaches a northern extreme in rising and setting azimuth at summer solstice, and a southern extreme at winter solstice. These are called major standstills. While such standstills can in principle be determined using horizon observations, as with the summer solstice Sun the Moon’s year-to-year angular displacement along the horizon at summer solstice is very small near standstill. It should be noted that 18.6 years is measured from the point of view of the lunar orbit. Observationally, from the Earth’s surface, the length of time between two major standstills is not 18.6 years: it switches back and forth between 18.5 and nineteen years, with 18.6 years a modern observational average.

Post Scriptum In Death We are in Life The Hajj Stampede
It is with regret that we observe the panic-related crush of death which came this week in Thursday’s New Moon pilgrimage—Hajj—to the Saudi shrine of Shrines. Ancient texts note death and life are one. Yet our condolences nonetheless.

Hilal [waxing lunar crescent]—First ‘New Moon’ Sighting sends Seven Hundred to their Death

Hajj—pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia—annually calculated to fall on waxing lunar cycle

2015’s Hajj—Pilgrimage of self-denial after month of fasting during Ramadan. Many believers were delirious with joy, even at the concept of being within sight of the shrine, staggering to follow fellow devotees in the sacred circumambulation of their faith’s most hallowed Mosque. Yesterday’s unfortunate panic—two fully locomotive swirling streams of humanity colliding at an intersection in the holy city—crushed and killed 736, leaving for dead thousands of adherents and lost family members in an Arab/Persian/Islamic nightmare.

With life so precious, may we all enjoy the miraculous Antikythera provided by the Heavens tonight and for the next few…
…millennia.
With gratitude
©2015Siderealview ©Marian Youngblood
Equinox 2015

Vesica Piscis: Mother Earth and the Creative Force

Waylands Smithy Vesica Piscis crop circle, August 4th, 2011 -- sacred geometric co-radial circles where circumference of each shares the center of the other -- its central axis symbolizing the Cosmic Birth Canal to which, according to the Maya, all life returns in December 2012

The symbol of an ovoid –an egg– expresses the the primordial form of everything manifest, from atom to globe, from man to angel. The spheroid is with all nations the emblem of eternity and infinity —- a serpent swallowing its own tail. To realize the meaning, however, the sphere must be thought of as seen from its centre
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine

The Vesica Piscis in sacred tradition — from Kabbalist to Vedic to Zen — is considered to represent the female organ of creation. Its circular shape invokes an intertwining of feminine energies, Mother Earth’s womb, a mingling of Nature and primeval cultural reverence: it is a symbol seen in all ancient graphical traditions, from pagan Sun Wheel, Celtic cross, architectural ‘golden mean‘ to sacred windows in cathedrals, mosques, tabernacles and pagodas.

The Vesica Piscis also represented to the Maya the summer and winter solstices in any time cycle. To them the Vesica Piscis shape held the Cycle of the Ages — the Precession of the Equinoxes, less of a calculation of Time; more as a symbol of evolution of consciousness. We are experiencing this change now as we move from one World Age (Christian Age of Pisces, 0BC-AD2000) to another (‘New Age’ of Aquarius).

Its Latin meaning, lit. bladder of the fish, may seem to lessen its sacred quality to the prosaic, but it remains connected in a bodily way and in the geometric sense in all cultures — East and West.

Antediluvian Meaning
In earliest traditions, the supreme being was represented by a sphere, the symbol of a Creator with no beginning and no end, continually existing, perfectly formed and profoundly symmetrical. The addition of a second sphere represented the expansion of unity into the duality of female and male. By overlapping, both spheres — goddess and god — created a divine offspring. The Vesica Piscis with its derivatives, the Flower of Life, Tree of Life, and fundamentals of geometry, has a history of thousands of years, easily predating all major religions of the current era.

A theme running through several recent crop circle seasons — most striking from 2007 on — has been the suggestion by the ‘Circlemakers’ that we return to the wisdom of our roots: roots in our native Earth, roots of our tradition, our sacred beginnings. Since it is presently clear to almost anyone in the Western World that in pursuing our headlong drive for power, riches and exploitation over balance, human warmth and respect for the earth, we have gone seriously awry. It might seem that our combined consciousness — that deep level of awareness we share beneath the cultural façade; what Terence McKenna called Humanity’s Oversoul — has chosen to ‘wake us up’ by bringing us (those genuine electromagnetically-produced) crop circles each year, to educate us and lead us gently towards a more loving future.

Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised by the ingenuity and wry sense of humor of the Circlemakers.

West Kennet Crop circle central tuft with 'spiderweb' filaments. Sacred earth pyramid Silbury Hill in distance, largest manmade mound in Europe,
photo Mariusz Szymaszek

For instance, this year in May — while we were all looking forward rather than looking at the miracles of the season — a quiet little ring appeared in green barley at East Kennet. It lay within one field’s breadth (roughly 10 acres) of one of Wiltshire’s most ancient shrines — the Neolithic tomb (long barrow) of West Kennet. Several 5,000-year old monuments lie — inter-visible — in this densely-built Neolithic landscape within two miles of Avebury’s Great Stone Circles.

Stonehenge and its magical meridian (51ºN) aside, the modern British are not particularly drawn to ancient shrines for their sacred quality, but crop circles — appearing within the same landscape and overlying the same limestone aquifer that produces measurable electromagnetic resonance (likened to human meditational alpha waves) — have been drawing them in. Nobody who has spent time in a pristine formation can deny it holds an ‘atmosphere’, an energy which can be uplifting, almost surreal. There is a growing body of evidence that crop circles are indeed produced through the medium of light and sound.

When the East Kennet circle first appeared, Stuart Dike, one of the long-time stalwarts of CropCircleConnector, crop circle ‘bible’, said at the time:

East Kennet crop design, May 17th, was ringed by extra circles June 22. If seen as the 'negative', it acquired a mirror-image 'positive' at West Kennet, July 25th 2011,
photo Olivier Morel

It certainly takes me back to over twenty years ago, from the 1990 days in Wiltshire. This is what we were all used to seeing back then, very simple designs, with a sense of excitement of what they could become. It’s a great indication that the earlier designs are very much part of what’s occurring today: the precursor of what was to be an evolutionary road in geometry and complexity. Perhaps the phenomenon is telling us not to ignore the purity of what was occurring at the very beginning.

Little did we know that the Circlemakers had further plans for that small field. One month later, during excitement of solstice and a profusion of appearances (2 at Stonehenge + 4 more in the vicinity over a 2-day period), nobody seemed to notice that East Kennet had acquired three concentric rings (June 22).

West Kennet Longbarrow, July 25th 'mirror image' of East Kennet phases 1 & 2, photo courtesy Bert Janssen

Then exactly a month after that, on July 22, attention focused on the intricate and superb ‘spider-web’ headdress formation which appeared in an adjoining field (East Kennet-2). There followed in quick succession two exceptionally graphic ‘suggestive’ crop designs at Roundway (1 & 2, July 23 & 25) –appearing to advocate humanity’s opening its third eye, releasing the body’s natural happiness hormone, melatonin— so, once again a little mirror appearance the same day — at West Kennet Long Barrow itself this time, next to the passage grave — seemed less than significant.

Working behind the scenes are a multitude of local altruistic researchers (CCC, above, is one of many). Their common bond is that they believe that ‘genuine’ crop circles are phenomena somehow produced through an electromagnetic or dimensional medium, either by light, sound or other variants within that vast spectrum. Sometimes, when local conditions are just right, a substance colloquially known as ‘angel hair’ (documented as being found after UFO sightings) has been deposited and can be measured, if collected within the first few hours after a formation has been laid down. Researchers in this field include the Massachusetts-based BLT, the British Harmony Blue group, and the CircularSite in the Netherlands,. They are consequently disappointed and nonplussed by world media efforts to persevere in ‘replicating’ crop circles, as has been tried on several occasions. Research on the dimensional/spiritual nature of real crop circles continues. On the morning the West Kennet circle motif appeared, the HarmonyBlue team found angel hair in the West Kennet formation (‘spiderweb’ photo, above).

There is even the suggestion — by the much more charismatic ‘spider-web’ crop appearance at East Kennet on July 22 — that the Circlemakers were telling them where to look!

Two Cherhill crop circles in the same week: Cherhill Down, July 20th, left; Cherhill 'smoking alien' July 27th, right

Sacred geometry
The Vesica Piscis is the root principle in sacred geometry, interlocking circles which share radii, cosmically and intrinsically entwined. In precise mathematical measurement, where the circumference of each shares the center of the other, the ratio between the width of the vesica piscis to its height is the square root of 3, or approximately 1.7320508…

A mathematical sub-note: if straight lines are drawn between the centers of both circles with each other and with the two points where their circumferences intersect, two equilateral triangles can be formed, joining along an edge.

Eye of consciousness, complete with eyelashes! Crop circle at Silbury Hill, Avebury August 2, 2011

Archimedes of Syracuse, 287-212BC, Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer, in his On the Measurement of the Circle, used these ratios:

In Christian tradition this sacred number –153– appears miraculously in the Gospel of John [21:11] as the number of fishes which Jesus of Nazareth caused to be manifested in the Feeding of the Multitude story. Since all Judaic written (Biblical) tradition centered on sacred number, numerological sequence and coded word combinations/number of letters used, this coincidence has a deeper meaning. The Fish — Lat. Piscis — is well-known as the secret symbol used by the Early Christians in Rome. By enumerating the total catch on the Sea of Gallilee, specific use of that sacred geometric ratio would have had meaning to early followers, aware of the significance of number.

Interlocking circles, Water & the Sacred Feminine: Vesica Piscis's sacred shape which seals the cover of the Sacred Chalice Well at Glastonbury, Somerset

Probably the best known example in England of the Vesica Piscis is the design on the wellcover of the Sacred Chalice Well at Glastonbury. While we are now culturally ignorant of number, this design resonates with us on a subliminal level (internal balance) and, seen there in a New Age context, represents the Universal symbol of the Feminine, Mother Earth, in contrast with the nearby masculine emblem of Glastonbury Tor. The Glastonbury example on the lid of the Chalice well — like the crop circle at Wayland’s Smithy (top) — contains the meridian line that runs through the centers of both circles.

Even though this archaic symbolism may not seem relevant to some after so many aeons of time, it is not unrealistic to suppose that our cultural unconscious, even blurred and insensitized by modern inconsequential minutiae in massive overdose, does at some deep level sense peace, harmony and beauty when we behold this sacred design.

Egyptian Celestial and Sacred Measure
We owe the Egyptians for the application of Sacred Geometry on the surface of the Earth.

Cosmic serpent-of-Life returning to its birth canal at the center of the Galaxy in 2012 -- West Woodhay Down, Inkpen crop circle July 29th, arrived as a prelude to the August 4th glyph (top), the Cosmic birth canal itself

Geo-metry means ‘measure of the earth’. In ancient Egypt, from which Greece and eventually the West inherited the study, the Nile would flood its banks each year, obliterating orderly demarcation of plot and farm areas. This annual inundation symbolized to the Egyptian the cyclic return of primal watery chaos, and when the waters receded the work began of redefining and re-establishing boundaries. The temple astronomer might announce that celestial configurations had changed so the orientation or location of a temple had to be adjusted. It was seen as regaining law and order, dominion over the earth. The laying of squares upon the earth had, for the Egyptian, a metaphysical as well as a physical and social dimension. This activity of measuring the earth – ‘geo-meter’- became the basis for a science of natural law embodied in the archetypal forms of circle, triangle and square.

Plato at his Academia required the study of mathematics as a prerequisite for philosophia, a term signifying “the love of wisdom” and “to lift the soul to truth.” To him, symbolic mathematics provided a map of our own inner psychological and sacred spiritual structure. Through the study of recurring harmonious patterns inherent in mathematics, music, and nature, ancient mathematical philosophers recognized that consistent correspondences occur inside the human mind and simultaneously throughout the universe.

Sacred geometric shapes: circle, triangle, square

This Zen calligraphic drawing shows Creation through the simple progression from the unity of the circle, through the triangle, to the manifest form of the square.

The circle –one– and the vesica piscis –two– were considered by ancient mathematical philosophers to be the parents of Number. Their firstborn, the triangle –three– was the ‘first’ and eldest number. Its geometric expression, the equilateral triangle, is the initial shape to emerge through the portal of the vesica piscis, the First of the Many. The square –four– was the second born.

Alpha and Omega
Mathematics and sacred geometry can take us beyond our ordinary limits to cosmic depths.

Furze or Morgan Hill, Bishops Cannings, August 6th dimensional progression on the Vesica Piscis: two cosmic parents produce a dimensional child

Man –from the Sanskrit root manas, meaning ‘Mind’, Consciousness, is a creature who can reflect upon himself. Man is not a mere constituent part –a cog– in this Universal Cycle, but he is both the final complete product of evolution and the original seed potential out of which the Universe germinated. The Alpha as well as the Omega. Both the seed and the tree: the tree of the universe is the actualization of the seed potential, which is Cosmic Man.

The World Tree of the Maya now begins to make sense. Mayan cosmology saw the Rift in the Milky Way as the the female birth canal (Yoni, Vesica Piscis) to which the Serpent of Life returns in December 2012.

Spiraling towards Source

CCC denizen Dike may have had a premonition when he said (above) that ‘the (CC) phenomenon is telling us not to ignore the purity of what was occurring at the very beginning’. Without realizing it, he may have been referring to the very beginning of Time. As we spiral onwards through the Galaxy towards our 2012 rendezvous with that primeval birth canal, we are indeed completing a cycle, coming to our ending, but also returning to our beginning.