Solstitial Stillness : Prelude to Midsummer Madness?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Delphic Oracle—Eta Delphinids, Cetacean Commiunications

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

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

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

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

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

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

Constellation Ophiuchus, Flamsteed Celestial Atlas, 1776

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

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

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

“Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu!

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

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

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

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

Burning Man annual late summer festival in Black Rock Nevada desert

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We know our Earthmother’s answer.
©2013 Siderealview

Lifting the Veil: Humanity at the Gate: Solstice 2012

Santiaguito volcano, Guatemala, September equinox 2012; Earth stirred in transition from summer to autumn

Serpentine Mind disentangles from branches of confusion uncoils its knowledge to greet the dawn and sees In the growing light
Great Colored, feathered wings
That grew unnoticed in its sleep
Understanding perfectly
In a single rush of joy
It flies above the ancient promises
Beyond where the forest lies to the Sea
The open sea
As rings around the Morning Star
Light corridors through the air
Kukulkan

During classic harvest time, a crop circle appeared on new moon August 17th/18th, predicting thirty-six days stretching from then until autumn equinox, September 22nd; and coincidentally twenty days backwards to Lammas and the Avebury masterpiece, more below.

According to some Maya present-day research, Equinox is the famed day for witnessing the serpent of light creep down its light staircase at Chichen Itza. Equinox ceremonies there are attracting increasing numbers each year on that day, and it added to the excitement this year that seven “triangles of shadow and light” appeared on the northern staircase. The August crop circles appeared to reinforce this appearace of Kukulcan.

Today, one hundred days farther on, the full moon in Gemini/Sagittarius—plus a partial lunar eclipse——may be closing one door——the end of an astronomical sky show and spectacle which the Heavens have been giving us all year—

2012 Astromical Highlights
May 4 Partial lunar eclipse, off Mexico
May 14 First standstill Venus during retrograde loop
May 20 Annular eclipse of Sun
June 6 Transit of Venus (above) and Inferior Conjunction
November 13 2012 Total solar eclipse, in which Sun and Moon align with head of the Serpent (constellation Serpens)
November 18 Solar system conjunct dark ridge Galactic Center
Nov 28 Partial (penumbral) lunar eclipse

—or a preparation for what is —more energetically— to come.

We are told by all Cultures that moments of experiencing the “Shift” are individual: that we will be taken by the Light, know if it is meant for us, that it matches our own inner right-ness, intent, and it will allow us to move on down the new path. Our spiritual senses are being honed. It is thrilling to believe the crop circles—particularly later in the 2012 seson—are showing us a kind of starmap of consciousness: in the essential original meaning of the Maya calculation of time: they appear to be more a calendar to consciousness.

Sadly, out there in television land there is a war being waged to capture our attention “in fear” and to distract us from what is happening in our inner-spiritual world.

Avebury forecast solstice dawn to precision limits; photo M.Etchepare

Human consciousness is rapidly transitioning to a new state, a new intensity of awareness that will manifest as a different understanding, a transformed realization, of time and space and self.
Daniel Pinchbeck

Several years ago Michael Glickman suggested some crop circles were representative calendars or ‘maps of time’. A square within a circle in 1997, itself made up of twenty-six rows of 30 squares, the total number of squares coinciding with the number of weeks remaining from its appearance date until the end of 2012. Glickman and Pinchbeck both believe that the focus on the end of this year too marks a dimensional shift and the purpose of crop circles is to key us in to this change, and to give us clues as to how this shift in dimension will manifest itself in our world.

Thankfully, help from the crop circles has only continued to manifest and inspire us—with the magnificent series of serpent formations all summer, and the Avebury culmination, commented on in so much detail by astronomer Miguel Etchepare.

More sigificant than the development of language…
We are all aware that there is a Shift going on. In physical terms, it has taken some by storm; continents have upheaved, hurricanes have raged; and the December portal beckons.

Ken Carey writes:

The great day of purification has begun—a short but essential division that will gather those who promote fear and volence and separate them from from this Season of the World like chaff is separated from wheat at binding.
During these next two and one half decades [written in 1988] humankind will experience this separation, a transformation in human consciousness more fundamental than the development of language, more significant than the shift to agriculture, more meaningful than any historical revolution.

The dawn approaches.

What if they are all right?

Returning to Galactic Birth Canal
There has been such a plethora of celestial events, from Mars lander, to Voyager breaking through the heliosheath, to Venus transit, and potent crop circle reflections in autumn fields have echoed events, even after the crop crowd had closed down group hopes and expectations for the year.

Venus's Heliacal Rising, November 2011, her return from the Underworld presaged solstic dawn 2012

Something in between dreaming and doing
Something arching down from there to here
We are the arching
We are neither here nor there
We are the hope that lives between
The continual blooming outward and upward
of something we want
but cannot see
– Author unknown

The Etchepare series of videos is important to view—especially for budding astronomers or those less aware of the movement of the skies. On the Maya count, above, November 13th’s total solar eclipse brought the sun and moon to co-align with head of the Serpent (Serpens caput); while last week on November 18th, the Solar System became conjunct with the dark ridge of Galactic Center. Please read various back up blogs on Venusian cycles, significance of Galactic Center, the Maya Sacred Tree.

Each year we spin in and out of this Dark Rift: it is a cosmic sign of our balance in the system, a prelude to our annual rendezvous with Galactic Center—that dark patch in the Milky Way—when the Sun, including us, microscopic specks of energy clinging on to the plane of the ecliptic, all nine planets of our system as one, aligned again with our Motherboard-birth canal, the Creator-energy-vortex, on November 18th in the middle of our Galaxy. The portal is still open—our consciousness is being assisted before the sun spirals away one more time, and we shall head off for another year of peripatetic searching through infinite realms of space.

What is significant about Etchepare’s starmap—interpreted solely from his inspired reading of the Lammas Avebury crop circle, above, is that by associating each planet as it rises ahead of the sun just before dawn on solstice, December 21st, 2012, not only do the planets—led by Saturn, Mars, Venus guide the solar rays ahead like a plough or cosmic train of starlight and planetary bodies—along the line of the Ophiuchus’ [Serpent-bearer] arms, holding both ends of the Serpent—Serpens:caput, head, above November 13th led by Spica and the edge of constellation Virgo; pulling serpens cauda (serpent tail) after him.

But … when all these miracles have been witnessed all over the planet —various earth views are given, making it easier to understand the sky program from any earth location, including Antarctica—the dawn sun … rises from the very mouth of the Galactic Rift.

For the Maya to calculate so far in advance of their own time and to see this train of heavenly bridal veil enticing the light to re-emerge from its birth-hole—was indeed unprecedented. It is still difficult for some to comprehend such detailed knowledge of the heavens so vastly ahead in time. However, their predictions for solstice are phenomenal—to an exact celestial degree: Saturn joins Spica/Virgo to ensnare Ophiuchus, who, wrestling forever with the head and tail of the Serpent, drags—alongside Venus and Mars—the reluctant Sun at the exact moment of dawn from his cosmic birth cavity at Galactic Center to be reborn for a new cycle.

Indeed a spectacle worth keeping predictive records of witness for over three thousand years. And we are the civilization alive to witness it.

In the eyes of the Ancestors, we are the ones we have been waiting for. We need to get our heads round this soon: and … before solstice would be good.

Above all, group consciousness, or combined intuition is clearly the way to perceive what is happening to us.

For those perhaps not willing to take another [spiritual] leap, the earth will continue in her beautiful bounty, I do believe; but I also believe there is an added dimension out there—not just because the crop circles have succeeded in describing “portals” in detail; but because all the ancient calendars can’t be wrong.
©2012 Siderealview