From Sixties to Ascension: an Existential Chronology

CHRONOLOGY of the NEW AGE: a Countercultural Diary of Celebration
A work in progress

Icon of an Era: Jimi Hendrix November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970

He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here, and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.
Douglas Adams

When we began this blog—the Siderealview of Life, the Universe and Everything—in 2009, we posted a retrospective look at the New Age in personal terms, as a little accompaniment to fellow beings walking along the Road Less Traveled. Now, a few years down the road, interestingly it seems the world IS awakening, and more of us are traveling.

The chronology that follows of that much-romanticized Era of the ’Sixties Until The Now is not complete, but an ongoing compilation of many people’s work, involving a myriad hazy memories, or lack of them…

If you remember, you weren’t there’

with a musical underground, rock, R&B edge.

As a salute to all those amazing souls who didn’t make it, but who gave the journey meaning for the rest of us, it’s probably best read while completely submerged within earphones of your favorite surround-sound. And for those of us still here, wasn’t it a blast? And won’t it get even better now that the younger generation indigoes and star children are waking up their elders!

From Neanderthal to Ascended Being in one Lifetime…or
where were you when it all began…?
As a prelude to the ’Sixties, deference is here paid to living legend, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 94, who founded City Lights Bookstore in 1953—prescient indeed—and to those who

Voyager’s golden record sent to the stars explains human culture/sounds

“threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot with eternity outside of time…”
Howl, Allen Ginsberg: dedicated to and inspired by Jack Kerouac

but it is also a celebration of the survivors… B.B. King, Chuck Berry, Cher, Clapton, David Crosby, Ram Dass, Doris Day, Bruce Dern, Emmy Lou Harris, John Hurt, Dorothy Maclean, Joni Mitchell, Robert Plant, Linda Ronstadt, Sting, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jimmys Carter, Page and Webb, Carly Simon, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Neil Young…and the beat goes on…

Sensational Sixties1960

Icon of an era: Marilyn said goodbye in the sixties

January Bob Dylan, 19, plays Greenwich Village; visits Woody Guthrie in hospital
— Civil rights demonstrations, Atlanta, GA
January 7 First Polaris nuclear-armed ballistic missile launched Cape Canaveral, FL, missile test base on Jupiter rocket, precursor to US Space Program, launched Cape Canaveral Sept.20, 1956 as Jupiter-C oxygen-fueled booster which would power embryo space vehicles
February 13 France becomes fourth nuclear power
March 15 Lunch-counter sit-ins spread 15 cities in five southern U.S. states
May 6 Civil Rights Act of 1960 signed by President Eisenhower
July 20 First live nuclear-armed Polaris missile (SSBN) launched ‘successfully’ from submerged submarine, USS George Washington [Forty further SSBNs with nuclear warheads launched between 1960-1966]
July Sidney Cohen survey: 5000 individuals administered LSD 25,000 times concluded ‘safe’
August 9 Timothy Leary, 39, program of psilocybin mushrooms in Cuernavaca
August 10 Antarctic Treaty creates peaceful international ‘scientific preserve’
November 6 John F. Kennedy elected president
Eisenhower warns U.S. about ‘Military Industrial Complex’ power
November 9 Brian Epstein meets the Beatles
December Birth control pills go on sale in USA

Internationally recognized, except in war zones…

1961
January 17 Eisenhower warns of increasing power of military industrial complex
February Four black students arrested at whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, SC
February 18 Bertrand Russell, 89, leads march of 20,000 sit-down of 5000 anti-nuke outside British Defense Ministry, London. Jailed for seven days
March – Richard Alpert [Ram Dass] takes psilocybin as part of the Harvard Project
March 1 John Kennedy initiates $17 billion dollar nuclear missile program, increasing military aid to Indochina; announces creation of Peace Corps
March Polaris missiles (SSBNs/Brit ICBNs) manufactured by Lockheed, sold to British Navy, installed Holy Loch, Scotland
April 11 Bob Dylan’s first billed performance at Gerde’s Folk City, New York
April 12 Yuri Gagarin, first man in space USSR

Berlin Wall, c.1980

April 25 Bay of Pigs, Cuba: U.S.-planned invasion, defeated by Fidel Castro
May 4 Freedom Riders DC-southern tour to test integration bus stations
May 28 Amnesty International founded
June Robert Heinlein‘s Stranger in a Strange Land published
July Ban-the-Bomb demonstrations start worldwide
July 19 Telstar satellite live televised transmission across Atlantic
August 13 East German border guards begin constructiom of Berliner Mauer BERLIN WALL (opened 19 years later)
September 11 WWF (World Wildlife Fund, US & Canada, World Wide Fund for Nature, Switzerland, GB) open offices in Geneva, Switzerland, inspired by Julian Huxley, Victor Stolan, Godfrey A. Rockefeller
September 15 U.S. starts underground nuclear testing
October 6 President Kennedy advises Americans to build fallout shelters

“If the words ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.”
― Terence McKenna, 1999

Psychedelic Review, ©1971

1962
February 2 (Candlemas) French Liner SS France, 66,000-tons, maiden voyage to New York; last (sole) steam liner on transatlantic route, see 1963; cost (then) $80-million; sold 1974 to Norwegian Line, q.v. as losing French govt $35-million annually
February 16 Boston SANE, fledgling SDS first anti-nuclear march on Washington with 4000-8000 protesters
April 25 U.S. resumes atmospheric nuclear testing after three-year moratorium
August 5 Marilyn Munroe—Norma Jeane Mortenson—b.June 1, 1926, died, age 36
September Timothy Leary founds International Foundation for International Freedom [IFIF] to promote LSD research; publishes the Physchedelic Review
October 22 Cuban Missile Crisis Soviet missile bases in Cuba, President Kennedy orders naval blockade
November 17 Findhorn Bay Community (later Findhorn Foundation) established Moray, Scotland by Eileen/Peter Caddy + Dorothy MacLean
December 25 Oscar-winning movie ‘To Kill a Mockingbird‘, based on Harper Lee novel, released, makes careers of Robert Duval, Brock Peters

Recognizing that there is intelligence in Nature that goes beyond our concept of the survival of the fittest and ecological diversity is not yet commonplace in our western culture.
Dorothy Maclean

1963
January Alabama Governor George Wallace Segregation Forever speech at inauguration
April 3 SCLC volunteers stage sit-in Birmingham, AL
June 11 JFK proposes Civil Rights Bill
June 12 Mississippi Civil rights leader Medgar Evers assassinated
June 26 John F. Kennedy “Ick bin ein Berliner” speech, Berlin
July Timothy Leary hosts Freedom House groups in Zihuatanejo Mexico, Dominica, Antigua
July 26-28 Newport Folk Festival includes Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger
August 5 First Nuclear Test Treaty signed
August 28 Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream speech, Washington, D.C. civil rights 2-million march
August 30 U.S.-Soviet hotline installed
September Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and other Harvard alumni LSD researchers move to Hitchcock estate Millbrook, NY

Last Atlantic steamship SS France, 66,000-tons, sold 1974 became SS Norway, scrapped 2006-8

September 24 Nuclear Test Ban treaty ratified by U.S. Senate
October 10 Nuclear Treaty takes effect
October 13 Beatles televised London Palladium, 15 million audience She Loves You, Twist and Shout
November 22 SS France 1st commercial voyage Southampton-New York; communications freeze 6-days JFK death until November 29th; Old World Order plays deck quoits, skittles, cabin roulette, drinkiepoos with Capt.Christian Pettre
November 22 Sidereal sails Atlantic for America; JFK assassinated in Dallas, TX, LBJ sworn in
November 22 Aldous Huxley dies on deliberate self-administered LSD; his dying intention
November 29 Beatles I Want to Hold your Hand released

‘What’s wrong with using biotechnology to get rid of mental pain altogether?’
Aldous Huxley

1964
January 8 LBJ declares ‘War on Poverty’ in State of the Union address
January 11 U.S. Surgeon General declares cigarettes cause lung disease
January 30 New military junta takes over in South Vietnam
February 7 Beatles arrive in New York to 10,000 screaming fans
February 9 Beatles appear on Ed Sullivan Show, 74 million largest audience in history of television
April 23 Beatles at Hollywood Bowl; Rolling Stones, turn the Beatles on to marijuana
July Millbrook LSD sessions with Timothy Leary
July Ken Kesey’s First Magic Bus Trip to New York
July 23 Senate passes $947 million anti-poverty bill
August Ken Kesey, his Merry Pranksters visit Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert at Millbrook
August Beatles first U.S. tour: 25 North American cities
August 4 Three missing civil rights workers found dead in Mississippi
August 11 Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night movie released

My people await PAHANA, the lost White Brother—from the stars—as do all our brothers in the land. He will not be like the White Men we know now, who are cruel and greedy. We were told of their coming long ago. But still we await Pahana—
He will bring with him the symbols, and the missing piece of that sacred tablet now kept by the Elders, given to him when he left, that shall identify him as our True White Brother—
The Fourth World shall end soon, and the Fifth World will begin. This the Elders everywhere know. The Signs over many years have been fulfilled, and so few are left—
HOPI Update 2012

symbol of a generation: awakening consciousness

August 20 LBJ signs anti-poverty program
August 23 Beatles Hollywood Bowl concert
August 28 Race riots in Philadelphia
August 31 LBJ signs food stamp bill
October 14 Martin Luther King Jr wins Nobel Peace prize

1965
Time Magazine calls youth a ‘generation of conformists’
January 4 President Johnson outlines ‘Great Society’
February Martin Luther King Jr, 770 protesters arrested Selma, AL picket county courthouse to end discrimination in vote
February 8 U.S. starts bombing North Vietnam
February 18 Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara calls for U.S-wide network of bomb shelters
February 21 Malcolm X shot and killed, New York
March 3 Owsley starts LSD factory making large units of acid publicly available for first time
March 6 first American soldier sets foot on Vietnam soil
March 7 Alabama state troopers attack 525 civil rights workers before march
March 8 3,500 Marines land to protect Da Nang air base
March 16 Quaker Alice Herz, 82, immolates herself in Detroit in protest of Vietnam war
March 16 Police break up demonstration of 600 Montgomery, AL
March 17 1600 demonstrate at courthouse Montgomery, AL

Jefferson Airplane, Janis and Big Brother at the Fillmore 1966

March 21 Martin Luther King Jr leads march from Selma to Montgomery, AL joined by 25,000 marchers
March 24 SDS organizes first Vietnam War teach-in, University of Michigan, 3000 attend
March 25 Civil rights worker shot, killed by Ku Klux Klan in Alabama
March 28 Martin Luther King calls for boycott of Alabama on television
April 25 25,000 U.S. troops stationed in Vietnam
April 2 Ken Kesey arrested for marijuana possession
Apri1 7 SDA leads first anti-Vietnam march in Washington, D.C. 25,000 attend, including Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Judy Collins
June 11 Beatles awarded MBE by HM the Queen
July 8 Chicago school integration protests
July 10 Rolling Stones I Can’t Get No Satisfaction #1
July 24 Bob Dylan Like a Rolling Stone enters chartsJuly 25 Dylan goes Rock at Newport Folk Festival
July 30 LBJ signs Medicare bill
August – Ken Kesey meets Hunter S. Thompson: introduces Hells Angels to Merry Pranksters; Alan Ginsberg, Richard Alpert at party
August 11 Major race riot—6 days—in Watts, Los Angeles, CA leaves 35 dead
August 13 National Guard enter Watts riots in Los Angeles
August 14 Sonny and Cher release I Got You, Babe, #1 Britain-worldwide ‘R+R Hall of Fame’s ‘greatest pop-rock song of the ’Sixties’

Biscayne Boulevard, Miami amid hurricane Betsy, August 1965

August 23 Première of Beatles’ Help!
August 27-September 14 Hurricane Betsy hits Bahamas, Florida Keys, Louisiana and southern U.S. states—first tropical storm to cause in excess of $1billion damage, c.f. Katrina 2005
August 31 Burning draft cards becomes illegal
September 5 San Francisco author Michael Fallon uses hippie in San Francisco counterculture article: Blue Unicorn coffee house; LEMAR [Legalize Marijuana] and Sexual Freedom League meet in hippie houses
September 25 Eve of Destruction sung by Barry McGuire top of the charts
October 1 Anti-pollution bill sets emission standards for cars
October 16 100,000 anti-war protesters U.S-nationwide in 80 cities
November Unsafe at Any Speed published by Ralph Nader: re automobile industry’s disregard for safety
November 22 Bob Dylan marries Sarah Lowndes; moves to Woodstock, NY
December 25 Timothy Leary arrested for el poto at Mexican border

1966
January 3 The Psychedelic Shop head shop opens Haight Street, San Francisco
January 14 March on Atlanta, GA to protest oust of Julian Bond
January 17 B-52 collides, drops four 10-megaton H-bombs over Spain, none explodes, cover-up follows
January 20 Ken Kesey arrested with Mountain Girl on the roof
January 21 First light show, Grateful Dead, 10,000 attend in San Francisco
February 19 Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin perform at the Fillmore

Dead Rock Stars: Janis received posthumous Grammy, Lifetime Awards

March 3 GI Bill grants veterans rights to education, housing, health and jobs
March 11 Timothy Leary sentenced Texas to 30 years in jail trying to cross into Mexico with personal marijuana
March 25 Anti-Vietnam war protests in NYC bring out 25,000 on Fifth Avenue. Other protests 7-U.S. cities, 7 internationally
April FBI releases file on LSD, ‘drug’ bad press
April 30 Mississippi blacks build tent city under President Johnson’s window to protest housing conditions
April Discothèques are the rage in New York and Los Angeles; Andy Warhol produces light shows
April 7 Sandoz stops supplying LSD to researchers
April 12 New York Stock Exchange hit with anti-war leaflets
April 16 Timothy Leary arrest at Millbrook by G.Gordon Liddy FBI for marijuana possession
May 15 Anti-war demonstration Washington D.C, 10,000 assemble
June Star Trek tv series by Gene Roddenberry débût; series ran three summers on NBC
July 29 Bob Dylan: motorcycle accident
July 10-year anniversary Cutty Sark Tall Ships youth race North Sea international ports–Bergen, Aberdeen, Hamburg, Copenhagen, patron HRH Prince Philip
August 5 John Lennon pronounces ‘Beatles more popular than Jesus’
August 18 Red Guard begins to remove western influence in China
September George Harrison to India:six weeks study sitar with Ravi Shankar

Cream, Airplane, Big Brother, CSN: those were the years

September Timothy Leary holds press conference in New York Press Club announcing formation of a psychedelic religion of Spiritual Discovery ‘Turn on, tune in, drop out’, and starts nightly presentations at Village Theater
November 5 Walk for Love and Peace and Freedom: 10,0000 attend in New York City
December Cream first album released by Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker
November 5 Mariner-3 sent to Mars: first fly by

1967 Summer of Love
January 14 Gathering of the Tribes, First Human Be-In, 20,000 San Francisco
January 27 US-USSR-GB sign treaty banning nuclear weapons in space
February 25,000 U.S. troops sent to Cambodian border
February Beatles release Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, Michelle, Yesterday
March US Scientists’ report LSD causes chromosome damage: not validated
March Berkeley Barb starts ‘smokable banana’ rumor, based on Donovan’s song Mellow Yellow
March 3 Alice B. Toklas dies
March 18 First U.S. supertanker wreck: Torrey Canyon spills 90,000-tons oil, English coast
March 26 Be-In Central Park, NY, 10,000 attend
April 5 Grayline starts hippie tours of Haight-Ashbury
April 10 Vietnam Week begins Draft card burnings and anti-draft deomonstrations
April 15 Anti-Vietnam War protest 400,000 march from Central Park to UN, Speeches by Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Dr Benjamin Spock
May Paul McCartney announces all Beatles have ‘dropped acid’
May 19 First U.S. air strike on Hanoi
May 20 Flower Power day in New York City
June 2 Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album released
June 16 Monterey Pop Festival, Monterey Bay, CA
June 21 Summer solstice party, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
June 25 Beatles sing All You Need is Love on worldwide television
June 30 448,400 U.S troops total in Vietnam
July Summer of Love in San Francisco

Fabled ‘summer of love’, 1967 came midway thru cultural change

– Summer of rioting in U.S. streets: Chicago, Brooklyn, Cleveland, Baltimore
July 1 Sgt Pepper hits #1
July 11 Newark riots start ‘long hot summer’, 43 die Detroit ‘worst in U.S. history’
July 26 H Rap Brown arrested for inciting riot in Maryland
July 29 The Doors‘ Light my Fire and Procol Harem’s Whiter Shade of Pale at #1
August 26 Jimi Hendrix’s Are you Experienced? hits charts
August 27 Beatles in India with Maharishi; informed of Brian Epstein’s death
September Richard Alpert meets Bhagwan Dass, Blue Tibetan Katmandu, stays in India; follows until he meets his guru
September 15 Donovan performs at the Hollywood Bowl
October 3 Woody Guthrie dies, age 55
October 8 Che Guevarra killed in Bolivia by U.S-trained troops
October 12 Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills with Janis Joplin at top of LP charts
October 21-22 Anti-war protesters storm the Pentagon
October 26 Draft deferments eliminated for those who violate draft laws or interfere with recruitment
November 9 Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner, San Francisco
November 14 Air Quality Act provides $428 million to fight air pollution
November 20 National commission on Product Safety established
December Beatles release Magical Mystery Tour
December 486,000 American troops in Vietnam [of total 15,000 killed, 60% died in 1967]
December ‘Stop the Draft’ movement organized by 40 anti-war groups U.S. nationwide protests
December 5 1000 anti-war protesters New York induction center, 585 arrested: Allen Ginsberg, Dr Benjamin Spock
December 5 Beatles open Apple Shop, London
December 8 Otis Redding records Dock of the Bay
December 10 Otis Redding, 26 (b. September 9, 1941) dies plane crash
December 22 Owsley arrested, stops making acid
December 31 Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner, Dick Gregory pronounce themselves ‘yippies’

1968
January 16 Youth International Party —Yippies— founded
January 18 Eartha Kitt visit LBJ at White House speaks against Viet war
January 22 B-52 carrying H-bomb crashes in Greenland
January 23 USS Pueblo seized by Korea
January 31 Viet Cong launch Tet Offensive
February Timothy Leary evicted from Millbrook House
February Beatles visit Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at Rishikesh-on-Ganges; Mia Farrow, Donovan follow
February 8 George Wallace announces candidacy for President on law and order platform
February 28 Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India founded
March 12 Eugene McCarthy wins 42% of New Hampshire vote in presidential primary
March 16 My Lai massacre: 200-500 Vietnamese villagers killed
March 16 Robert F. Kennedy announces candidacy for President
March 31 LBJ announces decision not to run again; offers partial Vietnam bombing halt
April 4 Martin Luther King shot, killed Memphis, TN
April Week following Martin Luther King’s murder: black uprisings 125 U.S.cities
April 6 Oakland police ambush Black Panthers. Eldridge Cleaver arrested with bullet-shattered leg. Bobby Hutton shot/killed
April 8 Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs established [DEA]
April 11 LBJ signs Civil Rights bill banning housing discrimination
April 11 Major reserve call-up for Vietnam duty

Monday Night Class with Stephen Gaskin ©1971

April 14 Love-in at Malibu Canyon, CA
April 15 Start of Spring Mobilization against Vietnam war
April 23 SDS-led students take over five buildings Columbia University, one week, 700 arrested
April 24 300 black students occupy admin. building Boston University, demand black studies, financial aid
April 25 Paul Horn records in Taj Mahal
April 29 Rock musical HAIR opens Biltmore Theater, Broadway
May ‘The Weight‘ single released by The Band—Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 songs that shaped rock and roll. Rolling Stone‘s song that ‘most influenced American popular music’entered U.S. British, European and Oriental charts
May 10 Vietnam peace talks begin, Paris
June 3 Andy Warhol shot by unknown woman
June 5 Robert F. Kennedy assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan after winning California primary
June 14 Dr Benjamin Spock convicted of conspiracy to abet draft evasion
July 1 Nuclear non-proliferation treaty signed by 61 nations
August 1 541,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam
August 3 First Newport Pop Festival Costa Mesa, CA to 100,000+ audience. Performers included Steppenwolf Jefferson Aiplane, Sonny and Cher, Tiny Tim, the Byrds, Iron Butterfly, the Grateful Dead and Eric Burdon and the Animals

Seminal literature: Ram Dass published BE HERE NOW 1971, changed a generation

August 8 Nixon and Agnew nominated during Miami riots
August 20 Soviets invade Czechoslovakia
August 25-29 Democratic convention Chicago police riot 10,000 demonstrators vs 11,000 Chicago police; 6,000 National Guard 7,500 US army troops and 1,000 FBI, CIA and other services agents. Humphrey nominated on platform supporting war
August 28 Humphrey-Muskie nominated amid violent Chicago anti-war protest. Bystanders/press beaten by police
October 18 John Lennon; Yoko Ono arrested
October 30 ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’ released by Marvin Gaye; Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, 2004
November First ‘Whole Earth Catalog‘ publshed by Stewart Brand
November 5 Nixon elected Prsident, Spiro Agnew VP
November 6 Student Strike San Francisco State U

1969
January 28 Santa Barbara, CA oil well blowout
February Massive strike UC Berkeley for Ethnic Studies
February 11 200 students smash computers with axes, set computer center on fire during sit-in protest racism at St George Williams College, Montreal
February 13 33 students arrested at admin bldg sit-in University of Massachusetts
February 18 Students seize building, begin boycott Howard University
February 24 Students occupy admin building at Penn State
February 27 Police charge student picket lines, club and arrest two Chicano leaders at UC Berkeley
February 27 Thousands rampage thru nine buildings at U Wisconsin Madison over black enrollments

Jim Morrison in 1969

March 1 Doors concert, Dinner Key Auditorium, Coconut Grove, FL; Jim Morrison peaceful débacle; used by media/city officials to arrest Morrison; trials/pardon/pending sentence +$50,000 bail bond remained unresolved at his death in Paris two years later
March 2 Concorde maiden flight of SuperSonicTransport planned to take London Heathrow-New York JFK in three hours; achieves 1350-mph
March 12 Paul McCarney marries Linda Eastman
March 20 John-Yoko fly Gibraltar, marry, fly Amsterdam for week ‘lie-in’ for peace
March 20 James Earl Ray sentenced 99 years for murder Martin Luther King
April 543,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam
April 4 Smothers Brothers TV show canceled ‘too controversial’
April 9 300 Harvard students led by SDS Seize University Hall, evict eight deans
April 10 police called into Harvard, 37 injured, 200 arrested
April 11 start of 3-day student strike Harvard
April 22 Harvard faculty votes to create black studies program, give student vote to select faculty
April 22 City College NY closed after black/Puerto Rican students self-lock re higher minority enrollment
April 23 Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death for murder of Robt.F. Kennedy
April 24 US B-52s launch biggest attack on N Vietnam, protests in 40 cities
May 15 Hippies in People’s Park, Berkeley attacked by police/National Guard
July Movie ‘Easy Rider’ released: Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, music stardom for The Band: The Weight
July Stephen Gaskin starts the Farm commune, Tennessee
July 3 Brian Jones of Rolling Stones dies
July 14 Easy Rider premières
July 20 Men walk on the Moon
July 27 Police raid on gay bar, Greenwich Village NYC results in Stonewall Uprising 2000 protesters battle 400 police, start of Gay Liberation movement
August Blind Faith forms, with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker from Cream and Steve Winwood from Traffic

Albion Doo-Wah 1969 post-Woodstock sounds from Cat Mother’s country cabin in Mendocino wilds

August 9 Sharon Tate LaBiancas found murdered by Charles Manson
August 15-17 WOODSTOCK Festival; 500,000 people gather for three days of music and peace that changed the world
August 24 Movie Alice’s Restaurant released with Arlo Guthrie
August 26 FBI reports 98% increase in marijuana arrests from 1966-1968
September 3 Ho Chi Min, North Vietnam dies
September 13-14 Big Sur Folk Festival
September 24 Chicago Eight trial begins Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin charged with conspiracy to incite riots
October 8-11 The Weatherman ‘Days of Rage’
October 15 Peace Day 5000,000 protestors U.S. nationwide. First Vietnam moratorium
October 21 Jack Kerouac, b. March 12, 1922, beat author of On the Road dies
October 30 Supreme Court orders desegregation nationwide

CSN hit San Francisco, Altamont with Wooden Ships, Guinevere

November 15 500,000 march Washington, DC for peace-largest anti-war rally in U.S. history; speakers- McCarthy, McGovern, Coretta King, Dick Gregory, Leonard Bernstein; Singers; Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul and Mary, John Denver, Mich Miller, cast of Hair
November 17 First round of SALT talks, Helsinki
November 20 78 Native Americans (AIM) seize Alcatraz Island, demand its return
November 20 DDT use banned in residential areas, USA
November 24 Lt William Calley charged with murder 102 S. Vietnamese civilians at My Lai
November 25 President Nixon orders all US germ warfare stockpiles destroyed
December over 100,000 U.S. troops dead or injured in Vietnam
December First draft lottery since WWII held NYC
December 6 Altamont Free Concert, Altamont Speedway, CA Hells Angels incident; one death Performers: CSN, Rolling Stones, Santana, Grateful Dead (did not perform)
December 8 Raid on Black Panther headquarters Los Angeles shoot-out
December 24 Rolling Stones Altamont free concert erupts in violence, one spectator killed (Sidereal in attendance)

Ken Carey’s Return of the Bird Tribes, HarperCollins, see 1991

The Awesome Seventies
1970
January 1 Nixon signs National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA]
February Timothy Leary sentenced to ten years for Tex/Mex marijuana arrest
February 4 Riot in Isla Vista, CA protesting Chicago verdicts
February 18 Chicago Seven acquitted of consipiracy charges
February 19 Explosions in three office buildings in New York, California, Washington, Maryland; Michigan; Weathermen suspected
February 25 Isla Vista Riots, Santa Barbara Bank of America bombed
February 26 U.S. Army discontinues surveillance of civilian demonstrators’ files
March 6 Three Weathermen blow themselves up in Greenwich Village New York
April 1 Cigarette commercials banned on U.S.radio, television
April 7 Referring to student unrest Gov. Ronald Reagan of California: ‘If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with’
April 10 Paul McCartney announces breakup of Beatles

Greek letter theta: symbol of Earth Day, of back-to-Earth movement

April 22 First Earth Day Millions participate [former Arbor Day, now transferred to April 26!?!]; John Muir birthday, April 21, 1838]
– Nixon sends troops into Cambodia
May 4 Four College Students killed by National Guard at Kent State University, OH
May 5 Nuclear non-proliferation treaty takes effect
May 8 Construction workers attacked anti-war demonstrators, Wall Street, NYC
May 9 100,000 attend anti-war rally Washington, DC
May 14 Police kill two Jackson State during violent student demonstrations
June 15 Supreme Court approves conscientious objector status on moral grounds
June 18 U.S. voting age lowered to 18; now old enough to kill and vote
June 11 Daniel Berrigan arrested by FBI for kidnapping/bombing conspiracy
September 12 Timothy Leary escapes prison, San Luis Obispo helped by Weather Underground, joins Eldridge Cleaver, Algiers
September 18 Jimi Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) dies, age 27
October 4 Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) dies, age 27
October 13 Angela Davis arrested on kidnapping, murder amd conspiracy charges
December Paul McCartney sues to dissolve Beatles
December 2 Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] activated

1971

First Mars Rovers ‘lost’ in 1971 ‘found’ again April 2013 on Martian soil

January 7 DDT use outlawed by U.S. Court of Appeals
January 12 Rev. Philip Berrigan + 6 others indicted for conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger; bomb federal buildings
January 12 Ralph Nader forms Earth Act group
January 25 Chas. Manson and followers found guilty of murder
January 25 Supreme Court first ruling against sexual discrimination in workplace
February 2 [Candlemas] Ramsar Convention on World Wetlands adopted in Iran shores of Caspian Sea. Convention now celebrated internationally with water-conservation/awareness projects
March 1 Bomb explodes in Capitol men’s room. Weather Underground claims repsponsibility ‘in retaliation for Laos’
March 1 U.S. stops licensing commercial whale hunters

Whaling in California, c,1924

March 8 U.S. Supreme Court rules objection to war not grounds for conscientious objection
March 23 U.S.Congress votes to lower voting age to 18
March 29 Lt. Calley convicted for My Lai massacre
March 29 Chas. Manson et al sentenced to death after longest trial in California history
April 5 Friends of the Earth founded in Britain; International Dawn Chorus Day
April 19 1000+ Veterans demonstrate against Vietnam war Washington, DC
April 20 Supreme Court upholds school busing to end segregation
April 23 Vietnam vets return medals, ribbons in antiwar protest
April 24 350,000+ veterans march on Washington DC and San Francisco to protest war
April 26 50,000 demonstrators in Washington DC set up Algonquin Peace city
May 3 May Day anti-war protest Washington DC
May 11 Native American (AIM) occupation of Alcatraz ends after 19 months
May 28 First Russian Mars Landers launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, USSR, see December fail
June 13 Pentagon Papers published by New York Times
July 3 Jim Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971) voice of The Doors dies in Paris, age 27 (Joplin, Hendrix identical age at death)
July 6 Louis Armstrong, tour-de-force jazz trumpeter-bandleader-musician Satchmo, b.August 4, 1901 New Orleans, dies New York in seventieth year
August Earthwatch Institute earth environment charitable org founded Cambridge, Mass.
November – Nixon starts withdrawing troops from Vietnam
December Greenpeace founded in Vancouver, BC
December 2 Russian Mars Landers 2 and 3 “lost” minutes after soft landing

1972

Native American peaceful occupation of Alcatraz island, San Francisco Bay 1971

January 25 Shirley Chisholm first black woman to run for president
February Life Magazine ‘high school generation interests security stability, comfort’
February 24 Angela Davis is released after 16 months in prison
March Equal Rights amendment (ERA) passes US Congress
March 22 13-member National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse recommends legalization of Cannabis
March 22 Equal Rights Amendment prohibiting sex discrimination passes Senate
March 30 N Vietnamese launch attack thru DMZ into S Vietnam; U.S. resumes bombing
April 10 Biological Warfare treaty signed by US and 120 nations
April 15 President Nixon Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau sign pact to clean up Great Lakes
May FBI director J Edgar Hoover dies
May 9 President Nixon orders mining of North Vietnam’s ports
May 15 Gov. George Wallace shot during primary campaign Maryland
May 18 Margaret Kuhn start Gray Panthers to protest discrimiantion against elderly
May 22 Nixon makes first US presidential trip to Moscow
May 26 US and USSR freeze nuclear weapons at current level
June 5-16 First UN Conference on Human Environment: created World Environment Day [and World Oceans Day≠]

Global warming 1950-2012, with El Niño-La Niña years

June 8 ≠World Oceans Day El Niño-La Niña live data shown here
June 14 EPA bans DDT in the USA
June 17 Watergate Break-In
June 29 Supreme Court rules death penalties unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment
July First Rainbow Gathering, Colorado
July 1 Gloria Steinem launches feminist magazine Ms
July 10 Democratic Convention nominates George McGovern for President of U.S.
July 30 Deliverance, screenplay by elusive James Dickie, directed by John Boorman, cements careers of Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox, and Ned Beatty; strikes fear into American moviegoers
August 11 Last U.S. military unit withdraws from Veitnam
August 18 Water Pollution Control Act passed by Congress over Nixon’s veto
August 21 Republican National Convention renominates Nixon and Agnew
August 23 1100 antiwar protest arrested outside Republican National Convention Center
August 28 Consumer Product Safety Commision established
September 5 Arabs kill Israeli athletes at Munich Olympic Games, Bavaria
October Canadian director Douglas Trumbull’s Saturn special effects set—still under wraps in 2001:A Space Odyssey—released Silent Running with Bruce Dern; environmental script has worldwide impact during decade of war
November 13 U.S. + 90 countries sign International Oceanic Pollution act
December 18 full scale bombing of North Vietnam resumes

1973
January 27 Vietnam ceasefire agreement signed after 58,000 U.S. casualties: miltary draft ends

Carl Sagan changes worldview, 1973

January 30 McCord + Liddy found guilty of Watergate burglary, wiretap attempt
February 28 250 American Indians [AIM] occupy Wounded Knee
March 29 Last American troops withdrawn from Vietnam
April 16 U.S.A bombs Laos
April 30 Nixon accepts resignations of HR Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, releases John Dean; denies knowledge of break-in or cover-up
June U.S. Dept of Defense (DoD) invents GPS for worldwide military surveillance, see 1998
July 20 U.S. Senate subpoenas Watergate tapes
August 8 Nixon resigns amid Watergate scandal
September Carl Sagan publishes The Cosmic Connection: an Extraterrestrial Perspective to world acclaim, bringing concept of Higher Intelligent Lifeforms—Kardashev Civilizations levels I, II, II into public domain; television series, his academic influence in NASA/military circles softens blow for billions
October 10 Spiro Agnew resigns
October 16 Henry Kissinger awarded Nobel Peace Prize
October 23 Nixon Impeachment begins
November Congress passes Freedom of Information Act
November 7 War Powers Act passed over Nixon’s veto: gives Congress approval for military actions over 60 days
November 9 Six Watergate defendants sentenced

1974
February 4 Patty Hearst, 19, kidnapped by the SLA [Symbionese Liberation Army]

Inner Space meets Outer Space—Astrophysicist Sagan visits Tim Leary in jail

February 12 SLA demands Randolph Hearst begin food distribution to poor
February-March Carl Sagan visits Timothy Leary in jail, Vacaville, CA—Inner Space meets Outer Space
April 1 Jane Fonda arrives in Vietnam on second visit
April 15 Patricia Hearst participates in bank robbery with SLA members
May 17 SLA shoot-out in LA
September 1974-December 1975 Britain’s Three-Day-Week: government attempt to create Socialist Commonwealth (rescued by Margaret Thatcher, see 1979 below)
July 30 Two articles of impeachment voted against President Nixon
September 4 Nixon pardoned by President Ford
September 7 CIA operation against Chile’s Marxist government disclosed
September 16 President Ford announces conditional pardon for draft evaders and deserters
November 16 SETI sends Message to ET from Arecibo PR World’s Largest Radio Telescope
November 21 Freedom of Information act passed over presidential veto
December 21 New York Times reports CIA illegal domestic activites in Viet war

1975
March 8 United Nations initiated International Women’s Day
April 17 Khmer Rouge reclaims Cambodia
April 30 Fall of Saigon—North Vietnamese troops enter city

Lineup of the century: The Last Waltz ‘farewell’ concert

September 18 Patty Hearst kidnapped, San Francisco
October New York Radio City Music Hall UNESCO African Literacy Drive sponsored by Marvin Gaye
November 20 COA and FBI charged with illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens; planning foreign assassinations

1976
January 21 Concorde enters service [Aérospatiale—BAC French-British consortium] flying London-Dakar and Paris-Rio de Janeiro routes
February 12 Production of Monsanto Red Cye #2 banned
April BBC ‘most successful drama series of all time’: I, Claudius, Robert Graves-scriptwriter Jack Pulman launched careers of Siân Phillips, Derek Jacobi, Patrick Stewart (future Star Trek), John Rhys-Davies and John Hurt (Alien series)
August 15 Apocalypse Now world première, ends career of Marlo Brando; makes Robert Duval, Martin Sheen
August “hottest summer since records began“, Europe *see millennium decade
November 25 Thanksgiving: The Last Waltz ‘farewell concert’ by The Band, Winterland, San Francisco special guests Paul Butterfield, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Ringo Starr, Ronnie Hawkins, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, Neil Diamond, Bobby Charles, Eric Clapton. Filmed as Martin Scorsese’s Last Waltz released 1978

Icon for a generation of space-age children boldly going…

Hottest summers Northern hemisphere, mean world temperatures
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1976
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1977
May 2 2000 Clamshell Alliance occupy site of nuclear reactor Seabrook, NH, 1400 arrested
June 6 Washington Post reports U.S. developing neutron bomb
July Star Wars movie released; Harrison Ford becomes idol of youth generation overnight
August 16 Elvis Presley (b.January 8, 1935)—the King— dies, age 42
August 20 – Voyager II and
September 5 Voyager I launched from Cape Canaveral, FL by NASA to outer solar system, aboard Titan-Centaur rocket [for official crossing the heliopause, see 2012-2013]. Aboard is ‘golden disk’ inspired by Carl Sagan, q.v. 1996

1978
June 15 Tellico Dam project, Tennessee halted by snail darter per Endangered Species Act
July 18 American Indian Movement [AIM] leads march from Alcatraz to Washington, DC to protest legislation depriving Native American land rights
August Close Encounters of the Third Kind released by Steven Spielberg; humanity enchanted by ET
September Martin Scorsese releases The Last Waltz movie of The Band’s Winterland ‘farewell concert’, see 1976

1979

Margaret Thatcher, new female Prime Minister of Britain launches Conservative manifesto. Isle of Wight May 1983

February 1 Patty Hearst released from jail
March 28 Three Mile Island Pennsylvania radiation accident, partial meltdown; plant to be dismantled in 2044
April SS France, longest passenger ship ever built, record unchallenged until 345-metre RMS Queen Mary-II in 2004, sold to Norwegian Line; sails as SS Norway, increased to 76,000tons, until scrapped 2006
May 4 Margaret Thatcher accepts positon as Great Britain’s first female Prime Minister; serves three consecutive terms; brings Britain out of recession
July U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission orders Three-Mile Island’s undamaged Unit-1 reactor remain shut down until accident is studied
September 23 200,000 in NYC for nuclear weapons protest

Robert Wise directing actors on set of Star Trek: the Motion Picture, USS Enterprise bridge, 1979

December 7 Saturn Award for Best Director Robert Wise‘s Star Trek: the Motion Picture premieres worldwide; Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films Best Ever Film

The Eventful Eighties
1980
May 18 Mount St. Helens, WA ±8364ft(!!) collapses; ash builds in jet stream, falls in TX, AZ, OK 2-year worldwide weather depression; c.f. Yellowstone—3500-miles—blows, 2millionBC, 640,000BC, 1360BC where ash fell in LA, FL, Africa, Asia, precipitated global cooling
July Montreux Jazz Festival: Marvin Gaye among other black performers celebrated in Europe
September 25 John Bonham, (b. May 31, 1948) musician, songwriter, drummer for Led Zeppelin, dies, age 32; Led Zeppelin disbanded, see 2012
December 8 John Lennon b. 9 October 1940, murdered outside apartment New York, age 40

1981
April 12 First Space Shuttle STS-1 Columbia launched from Cape Canaveral, 20-yr anniversary Yuri Gagarin space capsule USSR

International Peace symbol since 1981

May 11 Bob Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981), 36, dies brain cancer
September 21 Equinox UN General Assembly ratified first International Day of Peace; specifically encouraging ceasefire and absence of violence/war for one day

1983
April 4 First ex-vehicular space walk from shuttle Challenger-4
June 18 First U.S. woman in space Sally Ride helps deploy and retrieve comms satellite aboard shuttle Challenger-5
November 28 First Spacelab launch shuttle Columbia-6

1984-1985 One million dead in Ethiopian famine; see Bob Geldof Live-Aid, below
Live-Aid London:
Live-Aid Philadelphia:

1985

LiveAid largest benefit concert in history

July 13 Wembley Stadium, London: First Live-Aid Concert opened by HRH Prince/Princess of Wales (Diana and Charles) arranged by Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats); with simultaneous concert Philadelphia: British, US international acts with Genesis drummer, Phil Collins playing both locations (Sting in London—74,000—Led Zeppelin in JFK Stadium, Philadelphia—90,000) flies Concorde between to catch both shows.

Of the planet’s five billion people, 1.4 billion stopped and watched Geldof’s “global jukebox,” and were treated to one of the biggest, most ambitious concerts ever staged. At one point, according to a stage announcement, 95 percent of the world’s television sets were tuned in to Live Aid

April 1 Marvin Gaye, b.April 2, 1939, voice of Motown, murdered by his father, age 44; posthumous Grammy Achievement Award and Rock and Roll House of Fame
May: Three-Mile-Island: NRC allows GPU, successor to Metropolitan-Edison as plant’s post-accident operating company, to restart Unit-1.
July 31 First successful breeding/reintroduction of sea eagles to Scotland

1986

Return of sea eagles, osprey, snowy owl to Scotland

April 5 Chernobyl Nuclear accident in Soviet Union; cloud spreads N. Europe; newly-planted crops die
May 26 Michael Jackson’s huge benefit chain of Hands Across America, 6.5-million people joined hands from Battery Park, NY to RMS Queen Mary docked Long Beach, CA
June 20-30 First Burning Man prelude to annual festival, see 2010, burned by Larry Harvey and friends, Baker Beach, San Francisco
November 26 Star Trek: The Voyage Home, directed by Leonard Nimoy smashed attendance records; human-space-whale theme popular worldwide

1987
July World Population Day: world population passed seven billion, 1987
August 16-17 First global synchronized Harmonic Convergence group meditation-prayer; celestial Grand Trine of major planets Jupiter-Saturn-Moon-Neptune-Uranus-Mars-Venus, see 2003
September 16 International protocol agreed to protect Earth’s ozone layer
October 19 Black Monday world stock market crash
October 1 San Andreas fault (Whittier) tremor Richter-6.1, $100million damage to freeways L.A, San Francisco

1988
May 8 Robert Heinlein, ‘dean of science fiction’, fantasy author ‘Stranger in a Strange Land‘ dies age 88 Carmel, CA
July 15 Bruce Willis’s Hollywood blockbuster “Die Hard‘premières, ‘largest grossing movie of decade’

1989
May 20: Memorial Day weekend: GaiaFest worldwide celebrations of the Earth

May 21 Universal release Kevin Costner, Burt Lancaster ‘Field of Dreams‘ inspire millions; see 2012

Berlin Wall, c. 1991 courtesy Autobahn Hamburg-Berlin

October 3 Berlin Wall opens; DDR and West Germany unofficially reunited, Berlin Wall souvenirs proliferate Europe-wide
December 23 Leonard Bernstein conducts orchestra comprising musicians of ‘occupying’ nations: French, British, US, Soviet, in his reworked Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Schiller’s Ode to Joy becomes Ode to Freiheit/Freedom; concerts repeated either side of Wall East and West
December 25 on both sides of Wall, supported but E/W Berlin choirs, signals official reunification underway

Leonard Bernstein heals the breach: December concerts East and West Berlin

The Spending Nineties
1990
Margaret Thatcher replaced as Leader of Conservative party retires in face of laborite derision. Great Britain becomes financial power again —Thatcherite economics
October 14 Leonard Bernstein, composer, conductor, see Berlin Wall, above, dies age 72 New York
October 15 Apple Macintosh Classic computer launched on unsuspecting world

1991
June 24 Reforesting Scotland founded
June 28 Ken Carey‘s ‘Return of the Bird Tribes‘published by HarperCollins, establishes Carey as spiritual guru—Starseed Transmissions, Third Millennium series
September 28 Miles Dewey Davis, (b. May 26, 1926) genius jazz trumpet/musician dies Santa Monica, age 65

1992
Collapse of Soviet Union. Russia reemerges
Holy Loch US Nuclear Submarine base, Scotland closed. Excess of 200 redundant ICBMs/ISSMs Trident missiles ‘redistributed’
September 28 Mars Observer launch
October 4 Taiga Rescue Network—Boreal Forest Network founded specifically to protect Arctic forests from exploitation/shale oil drilling etc.
November 21-30 International Buy-Nothing Day, founded Mexico to combat overconsumption; becomes US ‘Black Friday’ “NO-SHOP-DROP” day

1993
March 22 [spring equinox N.hemishere] United Nations declared World Day for Water

1994
January 17 Northridge 6.7-Richter earthquake, San Fernando, CA: costliest quake in history $20billion, 57 dead
July Comet Shoemaker-Levy crashes into Jupiter; billions watch televised impact

Plant for the Planet

August 9 International Day of World’s Indigenous Peoples established by U.N.General Assembly
September GPS begun 1973 by DoD offered to US/Europe as fully functioning satellite directional navigation aid—free

1995
June 17 World Day to Combat Desertification established by UN (UNCCD)
August 9 Jerry Garcia (August 1, 1942–August 9, 1995) lead guitar Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, dies age 53
December 2 SOHO—SOlar Heliospheric Observatory—launched into heliocentric orbit to study gas and magnetic fields, see 2012

1996
May 31 Timothy Leary (1920-1996) dies aged 76, or so it seems
September 21, 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA) initiated discrimination against same-sex marriages in some U.S. states
October Cradleboard Teaching Project founded by Buffy Sainte-Marie to improve Native American Indian ‘participation in learning’ educational non-profit org
December 4 Mars Pathfinder launch
December 20 Carl Sagan (b. November 9, 1934), prophetic astronomer, author of Cosmos, Contact television presenter of Cosmos dies, age 62

mingling musical modes. iDead for the 21stC

1997
April 5 Allen Ginsberg (3 June 1926-5 April 1997) dies, age 71
July 4 Mars Pathfinder Sojourner Rover lands successfully; comms lost Sept.27, same year
August 31 HRH Diana, Princess of Wales, dies Paris (Lady Diana Frances née Spencer b.1 July 1961), age 36
October 15 NASA launch Cassini-Huygens Saturn-orbiter spacecraft from Cape Canaveral on Titan IVB/ rocket
1997-1998 Aerosmith‘s Steven Tyler ‘Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing’ all time high single, featured backing daughter Liv Tyler in Bruce Willis’s Armageddon, blockbuster 1998; see video above

1998
January 5 Sonny Bono dies in ski accident
July Deep Impact and Armageddon; cement Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis’s careers as artist-cinematographer-producer-actor-benefactor – highest grossing world-wide space sci-fi action fantasies set world alight
June VP Al Gore initiates upgrade of planetary GPS—freely provided American gift to world
August 25 World List of Threatened Trees published, detailing 8753 endangered planetary species
September 6-28 Aerosmith #1 Billboard’s Hot 100 greatest hit I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing after band’s 28 years together; success of blockbuster Armageddon
Dec 11 Mars Climate Orbiter launch

1999
July 16 JFK jr (b. Nov. 25, 1960) and wife Carolyn die in Atlantic ocean private plane crash
October 12 Human population passes six billion mark

30- years of Space Shuttle: Challenger, Columbia, Endeavor— symbol of freedom

“To me, the chance of surviving with dignity on this planet hinges on the acquisition of a new mind. This new mind must be wrought, among other things, from a radically different epistemology which will inform relevant actions.”
French neuroscientist Francisco Varela

The Naughty Noughties
2000
January 1 Millennium Bug did not strike–damp squib; rise of internet for everyman
April 3 Terence McKenna, (b. 16 November 1946) psychonaut, author, lecturer in metaphysics, entheogens, shamanism, dies of brain tumor, age 53
December 30 Cassini Orbiter on way to Saturn, does close fly-by of Jupiter

Golden Lizzie ‘GoldElse’ icon of Berlin’s victory over 3 centuries of war

“We have to create culture; not watch TV, read magazines, not even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe. What is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. If you’re giving it all away to icons, you’re not empowering yourself. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron, consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”
― Terence McKenna

2001

HHGttG: DON’T PANIC

May 11 Douglas Adams, author of ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy‘, dies age 49
November 30 George Harrison (25 February 1943–29 November 2001) dies, age 54

2002
Hubble Space Telescope deployed by NASA-controlled space shuttle program

2003
January 16-February 1 Space Shuttle Columbia micro-gravity/earthscience research flight, all seven astronauts killed on failed re-entry
July Tesla Motor Company, CA first lithium battery electric car in service
September Concorde’s last flight; SST retired from service after 27 years
November 3 Harmonic Concordance millions meditate worldwide under heavenly grand sextile-star tetrahedron; 16 years after astrological Convergence Grand Trine, q.v. August 1987

2004
January 31 Mars Rover Opportunity/Spirit lands on Mars

2005
January 14 NASA’s Huygens Titan-lander component of Cassini orbiter, lands on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan
February 16 Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases implemented
February 20 Hunter S.Thompson, (b.July 1937) American author ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas‘, ‘Gonzo Papers‘, journalist dies, age 67

Hurricane Katrina, greatest —unprepared-for—natural disaster in US history until 2013

April Cher completes 2003-2005 three-year 325-venue Farewell Tour highest grossing female tour ever
August 23-30 Hurricane Katrina hits southern USA:FEMA,emergency & rescue services collapse; water shortage Memorial Medical Center chaos; media coverup;2000 die needlessly. Highest winds 174mph; Costliest natural disaster in history of USA
September 14 Robert Wise, b. 10 Sept 1914, Saturn-Oscar-award-winning director Star Trek, Andromeda Strain, West Side Story, Day the Earth Stood Still, dies age 91 Los Angeles

2006
January 16 International centennial birthday Symposium ‘LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug’, for Albert Hofmann, Swiss chemist discoverer of LSD, Santa Cruz, CA
September SS France, see 1963, synonym SS Norway, see 1979, scrapped

2007
January 1 Romania and Bulgaria join European Union—27 nations
February 7 U.S. sends 30,000 troops to Iraq

2008

Milk Hill Astrolabe alien code came in 3 phases solstice week 2009

March 19 Arthur C. Clarke, sci-fi guru author 2001: A Space Odyssey, b.16 December 1917,
July 24 Barack Obama addresses Berliners at Siegesäule/Victory statue ‘Golden Lizzie‘ pre-election campaign
July-August California wildfires claim 1.6million acres; largest loss on record, mismanaged for inadequate resources focused on So.CA property to detriment of No.CA forests; Yosemite fire started by target-shooters; majority lightning-Santa Ana-induced

2009
March European beaver reintroduced in eastern Scotland
April Actor Morgan Freeman wins Oscar award for his role as Nelson Mandela in Clint Eastwood directed ‘Invictus‘
June 25 Michael Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) dies cardiac arrest Los Angeles, age 50
June 21-30 Triple-phase Crop Circle Milk Hill sextant/astrolabe alien script defies translation-interpretation

2010
January 4 World’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa, 2722ft (Burj Dubai until Dubai bankcrupt, borrow from Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President UAR, Ruler Abu Dhabi, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority who bale out in time for New Year’s opening
May 29 Dennis Hopper, b May 17, 1936 Dodge, KS movie actor, director, revolutionary, dies, age 74

2010-2011

Burning Man in Nevada desert has become annual Labor week event

August last week- Labor Day weekend September
Annual Burning Man Festival and intentional community, Black Rock, Nevada desert
HOPI SAY:

‘There is a river flowing now very fast. Some will be afraid and try to hold on 
to the shore. Feeling torn apart, they will suffer
 greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let
 go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes 
open and our heads above the water.
And I say, look around and see who is in there with you and celebrate’
Hopi Elder Prophecy, Oraibi, Arizona 2000

2011
March 11 Fukushima nuclear plant Daiichi, Japan crippled in mag.8-9 earthquake, world response to greatest nuclear leak since Chernobyl, 1986; pollution circles Pacific, see Philippines 2013
June 28 B.B.King, 88, Blues musician extraordinaire celebrated in sold-out ‘LIVE’ concert , Royal Albert Hall London
November 11—11:11:11— Fire the Grid, Spark in the Park, World Grid Meditations affect ‘coherent consciousness’, see PrincetonU’s Global Consciousness Dot

2012
Voyagers I and II hit heliopause, exit solar system, begin journey into ‘outer’ space
Mars Project Disclosure

Shuttle Endeavour lifta off NASA Boeing-747 transport for last sentimental journey LAX through downtown Los Angeles, September 2012

“Fourteen Americans are known to have taken a jump room to visit Mars. They are: Andrew D. Basiago, Raymond F. Basiago, Major Ed Dames, Regina E. Dugan, Mary J. Eisenhower, Courtney M. Hunt, Linda Hunt, William C. McCool, Bernard Mendez, Arthur Neumann, Barack H. Obama, Michael C. Relfe, William B. Stillings, and Admiral Stansfield T. Turner. In addition, three other Americans are known to have served as support personnel for the Mars project. They are: Stanley Ann Dunham, Thomas J. Stillings, and Michael Strickland. That a secret US colony exists on Mars has been established by the testimony of Laura M. Eisenhower.” — Andrew D. Basiago

January 12 70th birthday celebration for ‘Dead Rock Stars’—Janis Joplin would have been seventy
April 19 Levon Helm, drummer, vocalist, rock-wayshower for The Band, dies age 71 of throat cancer
May 20 Trees for Life Scotland’s millionth native species planted [pine and birch]; regeneration thriving
September 19 Last Space Shuttle Endeavour lands LAX atop NASA 747 transport; parade downtown Los Angeles
October 17 Save the Field of Dreams initiated by Los Angeles film editor David Blanchard, see FB page
November 6 Colorado-Washington first states to legalize sale/possession cannabis sativa for recreational use since Marijuana Tax Act 1937
December 5 Jazz composer-pianist musicianDave Brubeck, b. December 6, 1920, dies age 92 years, minus one day; Grammy Award-winner for Greatest ‘Classical-Crossover’ Album, TakeFive, Rondo à la Turc, TimeOut, etc.
December 26 Led Zeppelin honored at Kennedy Center by President Obama
December 31 SOHO solar satellites complete 360º monitoring orbit of sun: full solar surface revealed

2013

Eugene, OR top hipster city on latest poll of cool US cities

February 5 ‘Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act’ calls on the federal government to regulate marijuana as it does alcohol; bill amended September 2013
March 28 Maya Sun-Venus Calendar ends fifty-two-year Venus cycle which began April 10, 1961 and marks start of new 5000-year cycle of the Sixth Sun.
April 8 Baroness Thatcher, first female Prime Minister of Great Britain—1979-1990, Leader of Conservative Party 1975-—1990 (Margaret Thatcher, née Roberts, 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013) died just after she moved Britain into the new tax year!
April 20 4/20 Festivities openly held to celebrate relaxed medical marijuana laws in 22 US states
May 9 Ascension Day —coincidentally Roman catholic festival
May 20 Dr John, blues musician singer dubbed Dr Dr John by Tulane U honorary degree
May 28 James Taylor and Carly Simon receive Library of Congress Gerschwin Prize at White House
June 18 Luminato Arts Festival birthday tribute concert to Joni Mitchell, Toronto, Canada

…Don’t Panic…

‘There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.’ Douglas Adams

July Section-3 DoMA considered unconstitutional. Federal Government acknowledges/supports rights for gay couples
August 21 Norwegian study ‘Psychedelic supplements improve mental health’
August 22 Oregon and Washington legalize personal use of marijuana
August 25 Crosby and Nash benefit concert, Pasadena, CA
September Some U.S. states legalize cannabis for medical or personal use; press celebrate 17 ‘Hipster’ US cities

“My children and I use music the way all people should use music: to help you process your feelings and to help you get on with your life”
Linda Ronstadt, 2013, Parkinson’s Disease sufferer, rock-jazz musician

September 27 Linda Ronstadt belatedly awarded Rock Hall of Fame, book-launch ‘Simple Dreams’
October U. S. Government shutdown
October 5 BMW-all-electric car launches International Auto Show, Orange Co, CA
October 8 New York Film Festival premieres Bruce Dern’s Nebraska
October 19 Fukushima human chain Ocean Beach, San Francisco hold hands against oncoming pollution from Daiichi (March 2011) fracture—nuclear cleanup operation halted; rods & effluent flow unabated into Pacific Ocean
October 27 Lou Reed, seminal rock musician, songwriter, Velvet Underground, dies New York, age 71
October 27 Neil Young, Elvis Costello et al perform Lou Reed tribute concert Bridge School benefit, Mountain View, CA
November 2 Comet Ison appears to naked eye in Earth skies—heralded as Hopi blue-star Kachina, above
November 7 Solar Radiation Storms accelerate Category-5 tropical cyclone ‘super’-Typhoon Yolanda-Haiyan (winds 195-205mph) destroys much of Philippines; deaths in hundreds of thousands; survivors unreachable ‘burying’ dead at sea, pollution cloud follows Fukushima-2 to US West Coast, landfall San Diego, CA
November 11 11:11 11/11/13 Comet Ison morphs into Blue Star Kachina twin tailed blue visible thru backyard binoculars
11/11 Solar X-class and M-class flares continue CME bombardment via earth-facing solar wind; Saturn eclipses Sun; Pacific storms aggravate pollution in North Pacific Gyre

November 23 Full moon/solar X-class flares; seven volcanoes erupt in six countries worldwide,: Daiichi subterranean fault-line re-fractures; cooling rods “lost”, clean-up abandoned, new island=Niijima 新島 formed, off coast of Nishinojima, west island= 西ノ島
November 29 Comet ISON’s awaited reemergences from perihelion ‘slingshot round the sun’ as naked eye evening spectacle in western skies stymied by solar elves who swallowed her and spat out planetary awakening ascendance code instead
December 5, 2013 Nelson Mandela,—xhosa [xoˈliːɬaɬa manˈdeːla] member of Thembu royal family, & South Africa’s first black President (1994-1999), Nobel Peace Prize recipient 1993, dies at peace in Johannesburg, age 95
December 7, 2013 Shirley MacLaine, Martina Arroyo, Billy Joel, Carlos Santana, and Herbie Hancock honored at Kennedy Center Award Dinner Washington, DC

As we said at the beginning, this is a work in progress and if you have read to the end, you may be inspired to add something that’s missing. Any and all contributions via our comments page will be considered.
Thanks for being part of it.

©1960-2013 Siderealview, with angelic assistance

Galactic Stillpoint: Longest Night on Earth

‘Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known’
Carl Sagan In Memoriam

Stone circle and midwinter sunset light

It is Solstice. Tonight is the longest night of the year for planet Earth’s northern hemisphere dwellers. It is at midwinter when all animals (except the human creature) go within, curl up and meditate in their own fashion; and wait for the light to return.

Neolithic farming communities in Scotland between the 56th and 57th parallel dragged massive 50-ton blocks of stone over the snow to form windows on the sky.

Recumbent stone circle at winter solstice

They took time out from their hard agricultural working life to create ‘recumbent’ stone circles which would mark forever that point on the horizon where the sun set at winter solstice. Five thousand years ago solstice was celebrated with fire. They’d learned that fire embodied in the Sun seemed to disappear forever; then was miraculously rekindled, reawakened and with it their land, their precious earth on which all depended, would respond; it began anew to nurture seed into growth, to produce fruit and harvest all over again.

Fire festivals reenacted fire of the dying sun in stone circles

Flames from solstitial fires reached for the heavens all through that cold winter night.

It must have seemed like a miracle at solar standstill when, after disappearing for seventeen hours, the sunlight returned and days began to lengthen once more. Seventeen hours of darkness is a long time if you live in a cave, an earth dugout or a stone mound.

The human subconscious appears to retain partial memory of this primordial condition which animals have, because in northern latitudes midwinter is often celebrated to an irrational degree. It is as if at a cellular level we remember that after galactic stillpoint is reached, the Earth starts to awaken once more and we realize that the Universe is going to keep on turning. What a blessing. What a miracle. What better reason to rejoice?

It is said our biological form is quintessentially-adapted for language: that the Word has created in our brain’s motor centers a highly developed auditory discrimination, with rapid muscular response in tongue, lips and palate; but we were not its makers. It was a gift from Creation which we have evolved to a remarkable sophistry. Fire, on the other hand was Man’s ultimate discovery.

At the forty-fifth parallel of latitude, in the cave vaults of Choukoutien near Beijing, a heavy-browed paleoanthropic form of Man with a cranial capacity as low as 860cc gnawed marrow bones and chipped stone implements. His time lies 500,000 years remote from this and yet in those years of the second Ice Age, this Man, with scarcely two-thirds of our modern cranial capacity, used fire.

Is it any wonder, then, that world mythology is filled with tales of sorcerer-priests who conjure light, the hero-giant stealer of fire from the gods? In discovering fire, were we not amazed at our ability to do as the gods themselves, to create Light?

In that dark cave half a million years ago ‘Peking Man’ created a spark which dispelled the darkness. His was the crucible which contained our entire human future. Have we not ever since – at a cellular level – been searching to return to that same realm of Light?

Round Zodiac of Dendera, from 50BC during Roman rule of Upper Egypt

In our reaching for the stars we have for generations been guided by mythology, world religions, the ancient astrological zodiac calendar and by our own deep need for an otherworldly force which is both strong and loving. In myth, the goddess Ishtar/Isis is the celestial mother/lover (Roman Venus); in a crossover with astronomy she is seen as the stella maris, the heavenly guide to mariners, the star of the (celestial) sea, Sirius, Canis Major, the brightest of the fixed stars, whose heliacal rising marked the beginning of the Ancient Egyptian calendar on July 19-20: end of zodiacal Cancer, beginning of astrological Leo.

In Babylonian legend, the redeemer of the world, Celestial Man, is expected to rise from the heart of the (cosmic) Ocean.

Ancient Man looked to the heavens for inspiration. Medieval Man was convinced heaven was right out there among the stars. It is only we, modern homo (so-called) sapiens who forgets to do that kind of communing with the Universe.

On the other hand select niches in our society still seek: within the scientific establishment the search for extra-terrestrial life (SETI) continues apace. Carl Sagan, exobiologist, astronomer and visionary, along with his colleagues at Cornell, created a fashion in the early ’70s for that kind of exploration.

He said:

‘We are starfolk, but we live in the galactic boondocks where the action isn’t’

and took steps, aided by NASA, to communicate with any advanced civilizations out there which might deign to reply. In sending the Pioneer 10’s message plaque of gold-plated aluminum to a star region in the vicinity of Taurus/Orion, they hoped to trigger a response from any listening/receiving civilization.

Pioneer 10 gold-plated plaque continues to travel for 80,000 years

His argument was that any evolved star-beings who were less advanced than us (and in his day, we earthlings were only ten years into being categorized as ‘advanced’ ourselves), would be incapable of responding. Only civilizations more advanced than us would understand the message and have the capability to reply. He also rationalized the graphics of the message sent: reasoning that other galactic residents might not understand English, German, Swahili, Urdu; but they would understand mathematics, astronomy, physics.

Shortly after launching interstellar spacecraft Pioneer in March 1972, SETI directed efforts to beaming radio telescope transmissions to the stars. The latest of these was sent from Arecibo, Puerto Rico towards the Vega-Altair-Deneb triangle in 1999. By that time radio frequency was a speedier means of transmission than the fuel-propelled Pioneer space vehicle where a destination of even the nearest star (four light years distant) would not be reached for 80,000 years.

Besides they reasoned that if any civilizations were listening in/eavesdropping on us the Arecibo message was joining a century of transmissions from our planet, starting with Marconi’s first wireless communication in 1897.

It is thirteen years since Carl Sagan’s premature death on winter solstice 1996. He would be intrigued to learn of the massing body of evidence in favour of extra-terrestrial communication. The crop circle archive alone is superb. Not only does it communicate in the languages of science he advocated (mathematics, physics, astronomy), but, based on his premise that a more advanced civilization would find a more sophisticated means of communicating with us than we had with them, their graphics succeed in touching us at a cellular and emotional level, as well as pointing us to the stars.

Ancient World religions like the Judaic, Arabic, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek and Vedic faiths have frequent admonitions to look to the stars, to ‘observe in the east’, to watch the heavens for signs.

Our society is on the cusp of the year 2010. We have a Space Station partially operational; Hubble and SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) are in orbit; CERN has just collided atoms at an unprecedented rate in the tunnels below Geneva in Switzerland. We are technically advanced.

What about our spirit?

Neale Donald Walsch says:

Individuals — if their thought (prayer, hope, wish, dream, fear) is amazingly strong — can, in and of themselves, produce such results. Jesus did this regularly. He understood how to manipulate energy and matter, how to rearrange it, how to redistribute it, how to utterly control it. Many Masters have known this. Many know it now.
Neale Donald Walsch Conversations with God

If our heads were not so clouded by traffic jams and mind jams and living in a race for security and success, we might pause for this moment of solstice – the last in a single digit year for a century – and look to the heavens with awe. Two of our neighbours in the solar system, the crescent moon and Jupiter, shine brilliantly together shortly after sunset in the night sky. We have just experienced a multi-colour array of Geminid meteors emanating from the constellation which follows Orion through the night, with our brightest star, Sirius, stella maris, hovering below. It is the season for aurora borealis, which has already peaked over the Canadian Arctic. These are ‘commonplace’ wonders. However, we have also been treated to some unusual cosmic ‘signs’.

Spiral of light over Tromsö, Norway on eve of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance

On the day that President Barack Obama was travelling to Oslo, Norway to accept his Nobel Peace Prize, a spiral of light appeared in the skies over Tromsö and reflected light down to earth for twelve minutes ending in a circular hole of light. The spiral is an archetypal symbol representing cosmic force. It was used by all formative cultures in their art: civilizations from the Neolithic North Britons to Celtic Gaul, Egyptians, Japanese, Hopi, Nazca, Arabic, African and Hindu all use this representation of Cosmic Energy. Its appearance added to world spiritual expectation of a sign in the heavens to herald the birth of a New Age.

Great Eye of Sauron in Fomalhaut

Surrounded by these new signs, we may not have noticed that there have been a number of transmissions from Sirius; not beamed, like the crop circles, via light or laser technology, but in a method which travels equally as fast. Using a transference common in the realm of mind messages or ‘channeling’, an entity calling itself SaLuSa speaks from the Galactic Federation through Mike Quinsey, using the most comforting and inspiring words of encouragement to those of us experiencing difficulty adjusting to effects of the long predicted ‘end-times’.

‘We ask you once again to keep your eyes on the skies. These are the days when the signs have become talking points, that will awaken people’s awareness, not just to our presence but our methods of contact with you. For many years we have made crop circles as one means of getting your attention. As you will have noticed in more recent times, they have become more sophisticated. The messages they send have been interpreted, and their symbolism correctly understood. They have carried energy with them, and even although everyone has not understood them, it has connected with them sub-consciously.’

If Carl Sagan were still with us, I think he might consider this form of transmission equally valid from an advanced stellar civilization. After all his criteria suggested that those who had survived a post-nuclear age without exterminating either themselves or their habitat would be in a better frame of consciousness to extend the vibration of ascension and assistance to help another up the ladder of evolution.

If you’re listening, Carl. We miss you. Happy Solstice.

Crop Circle Code: Messages in a Cosmic Bottle

'Eye of God', 8000 light years distant, Hourglass Nebula in constellation Musca

Mysteries have always intrigued us, the human species. It isn’t difficult to see that if someone ‘out there’ wants to send us a message, one of the quickest ways to get our attention is to say it in code.

Crop circles in the last few years have been full of it.

Compared with complex designs appearing in crop circles between 2001 and 2007, however, the summers of 2008 and 2009 have been spectacular in attracting an array of this now universally-known phenomenon. We discussed the rather esoteric code delivered in 2002 in a field of swirling wheat and barley next to the radio telescope of Chilbolton. This was clearly a reply to the Arecibo message sent to the stars. One year earlier to the day in the same field another message in binary code was accompanied by a ‘face’, as though making animate the urgency of the transmission. The 2001 message, decoded, read:

Beware the bearers of false gifts and broken promises; much pain but there is still time; believe there is good out there; we oppose deceit (the deceivers); conduit is closing.

It seems we weren’t listening.

In May and June this year the earth stood within a solar minimum; no sunspot activity at all. At that time one crop circle in particular at Waden Hill, Avebury, Wiltshire appeared to predict a sudden coronal mass ejection (CME) for July 7th to coincide with the first of three eclipses. Scepticism surged. Astronomers could not agree. Solar minima didn’t traditionally spurt out a CME in the middle of a solar calm.

But that’s exactly what happened.

All day July 6th and during the total lunar eclipse of July 7, 2009, a large CME blasted out from the sun’s prominences and headed for Earth.

There had been another message in a crop circle bottle, summarily dismissed along with the July 7th prediction as ‘unlikely’ by astronomers: this crop circle suggested an even larger solar flare for the second occultation, a total solar eclipse over Asia on July 22, 2009. Recorders went back to the ‘bottle’ to see what it contained.

On July 22nd during totality, a solar flare did not materialize, but something different, something much greater, did.

It is difficult to understand the size of the plasma ejection which poured into the jet stream on that day and for subsequent 72 hours.

Butterfly nebula M2-9 in constellation Scorpius

A massive energy outburst of this magnitude is usually associated with deep space; not our little sun. It is the kind of cosmic halo which surrounds the explosion of a supernova, a high energy source such as a black hole, the last expression of a dying star like the beautiful butterfly nebula, 4000-light-years distant, or the creation of a stellar collision like the hourglass nebula featured (top).

Yet such a plasma outburst occurred within the energy emission at approximately 12 hours Universal Time on July 22, 2009 and its effects were felt on Earth for the next two months.

The message in the bottle was fairly direct. It materialized. So why aren’t we paying much closer attention?

Sextant Crop Circle, Alton Barnes, solstice, June 2009

There have been other communications. Like the sextant as a guide to the stars which appeared on three successive nights in wheat at Alton Barnes, Wiltshire on June 23, 2009; and the swallow series. Swallows with even more convoluted Mayan code attached to their tails.

Swallow crop circles appeared at Milk Hill, Adam’s Grave, Wiltshire in August 2003 in wheat; a simple circular formation was created at Wexcombe Down, Wiltshire in May 2007; a double formation of swallows created in two overnight phases appeared in July 2008 in South Field, Alton Priors, Wiltshire. A year later in the same field, a gigantic Swallow crop circle appeared on June 27, 2009 with apparent Mayan-style codex symbols streaming in its wake.

Swallows come to save Earth: Hopi believe they are messengers from Great Spirit

Swallow in totemism signifies ‘light in the darkness’, objectivity and perspective; even on the most prosaic rustic level, the arrival of swallows in country barns and farm steadings heralds the onset of summer; implies protection and warmth in the home. When swallows depart, summer is gone too.

A bird in flight is the universal symbol of spirit and spiritual ascension. In New Age spiritual terms, humanity’s unified presence takes the form of a vast white bird: it flies in formation with a host of smaller birds as One. It has been called the Merkabah, the Birdstar, the Swallow. It is our vehicle for mass ascension.

There are those who would prognosticate doom and gloom as the message in the myriad crop formations over the last few years connected with the Great Cycle of the Maya, completing in 2012. That is material for several blogs in itself. Others point out that, while swallows arrived in Britain 10 days early this year, they left at equinox: an unprecedented five weeks early. Separation anxiety, war, famine, pestilence, plague.

Conversely, New Age teaching advocates the coming together of humanity as like-minds, like-bodies, like-spirits; suggesting the sooner we begin to feel our unification as a species, the sooner shall we ascend to the next level of evolution. The coming of swallows in crop circles seems to predict an event where we rise as One and grasp our power as individuals and as a Race. The Swallow, the Bird Star is not some fantasy starship or alien vessel come to call; the swallow is the symbol of our Unified Presence as the Mind of the Planet.

Judging by messages in 2008-2009 crop circles, coded or otherwise, their predictions are being fulfilled within a brief timespan of their imprint in the earth.

It would be a illuminating to believe that the message in the spiritual bottle brought by the swallows suggests that we, humanity, are standing on the threshold of a new dawn; that we are about to shed our earthbound worries, fears, doubts, differences and fledge as One over the New Earth.

Harvest or Virgin Consciousness

Harvesting a crop circle in Wiltshire

In the ancient world, long before Man’s civilized overlay and 5,000-year male-dominion, there were the Sun, the Moon and the Earth and the Earth was the Mother.

Seasons guided formative cultures who measured time by movement of the moon, sun and constellations, creating permanent power places at energetic nodes in the landscape. In ancient Britain neolithic farmers, most remarkably within the Wiltshire magnetic basin, rolled and erected giant monoliths in difficult terrain to mark changes in the calendar (and solar energy) with a series of fire festivals: hinges of the seasons were celebrated with fire like doorways into dying or rebirth.

When farming was in its infancy, Harvest time – ancient Lammas, Lughnasad, August’s festival-of-Light (Lugh) – went on for weeks, celebrating the Mother’s generous provision of food, sustaining and nurturing vulnerable embryo farming communities. The Sun’s power was waning, but the Earth was at her peak, her most abundant. Harvest was a sacred rite of bounty: first sheaf cut, the Maiden or Virgin, was blessed, honored, paraded in the fields and then kept over winter indoors until planted – again ritually – in the first tilled furrow of spring.

Along with harvest and farming generally, the Maiden sheaf has been trivialized: she is now the ‘Corn Dolly’. Scythes have become combine harvesters, man-made behemoths which decimate hectares in half an hour; spewing grain into giant dryers whose contents turn up on Tesco shelves a week later as bin-end ‘specials’.

Gone are the female earth-mothering images: Halstatt figurines of pregnant femininity now reside in museums, carved stone balls inspired by the spiral of creation gather dust in archives along with Man’s ancient knowledge.

Return of Saturnia Regna

Carved stone ball Aberdeenshire 3000BC

Celebrations reenacted in our digital age for tourists and late-summer ‘revenue’, are pale shadows of a time when community meant working together to bring in the harvest and throwing a party afterwards. Harvest thanksgiving has now no meaning.

All, however, is not lost.

Virgil, the Roman poet (70-19BC) wrote of a time when ‘the Virgin and the Golden Age (age of Saturn) will return’ (iam redit et Virgo redeunt Saturnia Regna). We may now live in those ‘End Times’ on a planet ravaged by war, famine and pestilence; a male-manipulated pendulum of food mountains and shortages, of deadlines and death-defying daily forays on the freeway; but the feminine may yet have ways of filtering through consciousness into the most hardened of masculine endeavors. The right hemisphere of the brain is rising again, demanding we look in places long hidden.

In one corner of our consciousness we are seeing signs in the heavens which astrologers predict as a coming together of the Virgin and Saturn; the sun and ringed giant are presently in the zodiac sign of Virgo: with upheaval and change seen as major factors. But it can also be seen as archetypal male and female convergence. In another corner we are receiving reminders to appreciate the earth; from matriarchal cultures, like the Maya who have not forgotten their past, shaman leaders are speaking again. In a recent message, breaking a silence of 10 generations, their Elders, keepers of the Mayan ‘word’, suggest a melding of hemispheres – both mental and worldly – as a way forward for the human race.

And in an unexpected corner, from within the sacred precinct of England’s most famous prehistoric stones, harvest has taken on a deeper meaning. Since June this year a staggering 70 new crop-circles have appeared in fields of ripening wheat and barley in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire near neolithic sacred sites like Avebury and Sillbury Hill, renowned for ancient goddess worship. Once the domain of fringe UFOlogists, increasingly complex designs forming within a highly erratic magnetic area have triggered discussion from some of the world’s greatest scientific and mathematical minds. A code sequence emerges alternately suggesting an imminent human epiphany or activation of planetary DNA. And they and the fields where they lie are getting a lot more attention.

Numerologists were minimal when an ‘Om’ design appeared in a crop in July 7, 2007 – 07-07-07; by 2008, sophisticated symbols were increasing and by August 8 – 08-08-08 – an infinity symbol caused a stir. Whether subliminal or actual, crop circle messages were beginning to trigger a change in human consciousness. People flocked to the sacred sites of Wiltshire and Hampshire as soon as summer began.

Crop-circles, writing in the corn, back to the earth: human awakening; Native American belief that the way forward is in the melding of ancient knowledge with modern capabilities: All point toward a vision of the New Age: that through respect for the Earth as giver of life and by cherishing our own female intuitive powers (both men and women), we regain insight into our purpose here and simultaneously arrive at the long-awaited Golden Age.

The year 2009 brings mounting excitement, instant coverage from aerial photography, world media attention. Designs appear in June more complicated and beautiful than the world’s greatest minds might devise. A plethora of new crop circles throughout July have followers on the edge of their seats, waiting for what will happen next. August starts well: designs and embedded code more complex than ever.

Thing is: there have been no new crop circles since August 16th. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Major disappointment in croppiedom; huge let-down for consciousness collectives. Harvest is well advanced in the fields of Wiltshire. What are we waiting for?

The answer may lie in our collective unconscious: the New Age unfolds; Saturn returns to stand with the Sun in Virgo. Around about September 9th this year – 09-09-09 – if there are any fields left unharvested in the countryside around Avebury, Sillbury Hill or West Kennet Long Barrow we may be witness to something none of us can remotely imagine.

We shall have to wait and see.

Silver People on the Shoreline Let Us Be

 

Crop circle code triggers human DNA

We did it.   We transitioned through the Gate.  That’s what they say. On 8th August this year – 08-08 – g8-eight – we as a species ascended. Along with our habitat, our flaws and our failings, our flashes of genius, we and our planet ascended into the fifth dimension.

It’s been predicted for centuries.  All major religions have a cosmic beginning, a human middle and a cosmic end. The Maya, for instance, didn’t do things by halves.  They decorated their pantheon with gold and revered their gods for their mathematical skills. They made it into a science: their calculations are vast,  their calendar precise. Not only that, it is beautiful.   Mathematical functions appear as images. Calendrical pictograms ending in the year 2012. 

Human consciousness has been greatly influenced of late by the calendar.

In 1969 a large section of the world’s youth population believed that they were creating a new world.  ‘Silver people on the Shoreline Let Us Be’ are words from the Crosby, Stills and Nash song ‘Wooden Ships’ composed that year. Richard Alpert, West Coast philosopher became guru, Baba Ram Dass. Forty years on, we celebrate this week the anniversary of Woodstock; music from a magical time reenters the sphere of consciousness; there is a nudge from Father Time: Cronos, Saturn, ruler of the universe, for humanity to wake up and get on with it.  Saturn is said to move through each astrological sign once in 30 years.  So, as a species we’re already 10 years past our Saturn Return, overdue for our awakening.  The Earth waits for us to move into our sacred space within the circle of life, switch on our antennae and tune into the music of the spheres: that motherboard we were always intended to reconnect with.

We are after all, the braincells of the planet.  We’ve been genetically modified to function as her intellect: our neurones, our DNA merely need the correct activation sequence. Ten percent of our mind’s circuitry is wired, like a computer, ready for the other 90% to wake up and use our god-given powers.  The trigger seems to be the recent barrage of electrons being showered in our direction.   We are after all energy, a mass of electrons ourselves.  We respond to waves of energy like solar wind, ionic disturbance in the light spectrum and minute fluctuations in the planet’s magnetosphere all the time. Since around May scientists agree cosmic rays, solar flares, light transmissions – said by starseed followers to bring new code to activate human DNA – have increased. Even the scientific community concede DNA has the capacity to expand. We, the central database, are capable of assimilating these charged particles as they arrive, but we have to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to do it:  we’re meant to be on the alert, awake, aware.  Be Here Now.

For generations ancestral wisdom preached the peaceful life;  joy in simple things. When people used to listen to their elders there was a subconscious equilibrium that kept in balance the environment, their surroundings, their world. But the habitat became too restrictive for the new human; he needed to push the boundaries, to expand, explore beyond his physical arena. In the ‘eighties a large chunk of humanity broke off from the home iceberg and sailed into the sunset.

I mentioned Richard Alpert.  Twenty years previously he, along with a number of his generation, chose to prolong their experience of ephemeral ‘sixties enlightenment and make it a way of life.  As Ram Dass he influenced a generation.  He and his contemporaries are coming to ‘maturity’; they are ‘the ancients’ now.  They are being heard again. Some of the human race, at least, is listening to its elders.

Where does that leave the rest of continental earth? Adrift in a concrete ship, adorned with tentacles of freeways and air lanes, looking for a port of call?

Thing is: they weren’t set adrift without directions, a guidance system.  It is built-in in the system’s consciousness: this is the way home – arrow pointing to nirvana.  Some people in the boat are beginning to swither. How does looking for the moon by means of acquisitions bringing them any closer to home? to inner contentment? is it bringing them joy?  Some of them are turning the ship into the wind, accessing the guidance system, asking the pilot to turn a lighted beacon to the promised shore.  The Jews knew it as the Promised Land.  Christians: Heaven-on-Earth. New Agers like Eckhart Tolle call it the New Earth.

We train ourselves to rise above the mind and return home to the place we have always been, but have forgotten.

According to the Elders of the Maya, the Hopi, Lakota and several other native American tribes, we are due to move through a Shift. Depending on your point of view, this shift is polar, calendrical or as a frame of consciousness. Ram Dass led a swathe of his generation from mind-altering to living beyond mind. One of his contemporaries, Drunvalo Melchizedek, bridges the cultural divide and brings to the Western world oral teachings the Maya handed down to prepare for this time.  Both men believe that the Shift is imminent and thousands of groups of New Agers agree with them.  While one practice focuses on non-duality and non-attachment as the way to enter heaven/nirvana/the NOW, the other reminds its followers that the way back home is through the Earth, that by giving respect to all beings, or ‘treading lightly upon’ our home planet, we shall simultaneously reconnect with earth’s dynamo, to bring us back into balance with lost knowledge, the key to unlock the secret code to living as we were designed to: in possession of all our faculties, self-healing mechanisms, ability to nurture one another and raise the group mind to the next level.

Many networks proclaim the way forward through the Shift is to be present, follow intuition and show love: to ourselves, our friends, extended family and groups. As if reflecting this need to connect, internet pages have sprung up which fill an inner void, as counseling support groups did in the psychiatric age. Now, instead of seeing your shrink, you can blog about difficulties, twitter your daily thoughts, boost another’s confidence, share dreams with cyberfriends – some you may never physically meet.  It takes only minimum hyper-knowledge, a little netiquette and a willingness to let go of old ways like ‘can’t type, don’t know how it works, why do I need a support group of total strangers?’ 

Rainer Maria Rilke (1892-1910) asks us to ‘welcome the new year, full of things that have never been’, suggesting we open our hearts to the concept of possibilities.  The ancient East advocated ‘before and after nirvana, chop wood and carry water’.  New agers say ‘Expect Miracles’. Either way, it seems a pity, at the dawning of a new era, not to use our full potential.   
©2008-2019 Marian Youngblood