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.

The Spiritual Route: we used to call it the Road less Travelled

In the ‘sixties, there were a lot of us about.  We called ourselves seekers, but others had less complimentary – yea, derogatory –  names for us: hippie was one of them; living on the land was another.  We didn’t care: we were poets, musicians, philosophers and we were catalysts for Earth Shift.  At the beginning of the ‘seventies, we thought everybody in the Universe was a believer; the world was going to flip overnight, heaven-on-earth was imminent.  We could and would create the World We Chose.

I lived in Northern California at the time and the world was my oyster.  Communes were two a penny; Buckminster Fuller domes proliferated, tree houses, goat shed shacks converted for summer living, tipis abounded, everyone had an organic garden and all kinds of people drifted through, joined and disjoined, contributed (sometimes) and accepted free food, board and lodging.  It was light-hearted, fun and nobody thought it was going to end.  We had come full circle: the Great Spirit was on our side and We Were Invincible.  

In my particular neck of the woods – I kid you not – Cat Mother (& his All-Night News Boys) were neighbors with Gene Clark of The Byrds. The Fifth Dimension sang the song ‘Age of Aquarius’. Fulleresque geniuses came from the Bay Area for an overnight stay and helped  build hyperbolic paraboloid structures in two days.  Fuller’s other shape, the Dome – sixteen plywood boards bent and bolted together – were like the Amish equivalent on the East Coast: erected in a day.  Small villages of these instant creations appeared on The Ridge, the known hangout of the Alternative Lifestyle.  Redwoods nodded wisely as humans found summer shelter in their root boles, bluejays didn’t object to sharing nest sites.  Gray whales waved huge arms in passing as if signaling approval of the human race. 

We all promised to hold the vision forever and as silently as the movement started, it faded into individual dreams as we each followed separate paths and drifted away.

Some, I know for a fact, became convinced on their return to the ‘real world’ that their dream was a fantasy and that they should follow the rest of the human race in amassing great fortunes or becoming famous for their contribution to the corporate world.  In the intervening forty years I often wondered if I should write and remind them of our Pact.  I didn’t, of course.  Others stood firm in their belief in themselves and their dream, but found the 9-to-5 a killer and succumbed to heart disease, self-doubt or disappointment in relationships and love.  It was a difficult time for believers: the age of Thatcherite Britain and Reaganite America.  I retreated to an organic garden of my own making, lost myself in writing about my dreams, having a family and getting on with life: the act of watching one’s genes grow into another being is hard to resist.  The Path (and the Pact) were still there, but tucked away in a subliminal stratum.  Life moved in circles of parenthood, overdrafts, insurance, schooling and subsequently into computers, cell phones and the internet.  Imperceptibly we grew old, let some things go, held on to others and became different people.  They say the body changes all its cells completely every seven years.  In six times that number, it isn’t surprising that the bodies and minds of those dreamers forgot everything they promised themselves in a few brief years at the dawning of the Aquarian Age.

Until February 14th this year.  Then, according to respected and accurate ‘progressed’ chart astrology analysts, Planet Earth did in fact enter the Age of Aquarius.  On that day, lyrics of the song from the Broadway musical ‘Hair’,  made popular by the Fifth Dimension  in 1969, came true:

When the moon is in the Seventh House,  And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets,    And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
The age of Aquarius  Aquarius!    Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding     Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions    Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation       And the mind’s true liberation
Aquarius!   Aquarius!

 It is ironic that those visionaries in 1969 had to wait half a lifetime to watch the rest of the human race reach epiphany:   it took scientific and engineering and electronic miracles like the internet, satellite communications, jet travel and cell phones to bring about an electromagnetic shift in planetary consciousness.  Now, with the miracle of virtual friendships, instant messaging,  spiritual .ning sites – even blogs – the world has begun again on the Road Less Travelled.  

Tomorrow (July 28th, 2009) there will be a planet-wide meditation and spiritual convocation of believers in our common destiny: for one hour we may all, if we wish, visualize, contemplate, dance, sing or ‘Om’ together in celebrating our shared ability to create the World We Choose.

This one-hour appointment with our Higher Self is the initiative of Fire+The+Grid, a group of young people (about the same age as we were in 1969) led by Shelley, musician and lyricist Bradfield and singer-songwriter Anael.  They fired the planetary grid in July 2007 and were surprised that 800,000 other people joined them in a wave of world meditation.  Tomorrow – at 1919 Rio de Janeiro time (conveniently, at 11:19p.m. in your time zone wherever you are) – we shall do it again: fire the planetary grid of light, dream dreams and send beams of potential round the world – another chance for all of us to create the World We Choose.  This time it is expected we will be joined by upwards of one million souls.  Don’t take my word for it – you can check the truth of this at http://www.firethegrid.com and, if your inner child (or cosmic dreamer) is still active, you too can be part of creating the New Heaven and the New Earth.

In 1969 a seed was planted in human consciousness.  Without the internet and instant sharing worldwide, there was only intuition, channeling, a medium frowned on by middle-of-the-road humanity.  In 2009 we’re all in the middle of the road: the Road Less Travelled, and we’re in it together.