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