Solstice and Yule—When Cosmic Forces Collide, Religions Meet

Sudden snowstorm in Denver focuses our seasonal senses—photo Andy Cross

Christmas Full Moon
Eight foot tides will run at their highest for Solstice. This year, as a bright waxing moon leads up to Christmas Night, from Monday through Wednesday December 21-23, 2015, tides along the Northern California coastline will reach near-‘maximum tidal range’, beyond which local fishermen and surfers abandon ports of Eureka and Shelter Cove and retreat behind the sandbags.

Full “Cold Moon” at sunset on Christmas Day—first to return to that configuration in our skies since 1977—will add to the frivolity and human goodwill generated en masse at this time of year. Happy Hanukkah, Eid, and of course Siderealview’s greatest pagan celebration, end of the old year—Hogmanay yay!

Earthquake Zone meets El Niño

As northern Pacific waters begin to freeze around the edges, the Southern Ocean revs up for the 2015 El Niño season. Prelude this year has been massive heat ceilings, causing water to become warmer for longer than the norm. September 2015 Equinox water temperatures in Humboldt Bay, Northern California, were 68ºF. Coastal Land temperature same day was 58ºF.

This autumn, however, the tropical storm system has had cosmic assistance.

Primeval fear of the Kraken kept medieval sailors watchful on the Deep—

Musical system known as the Circle of Fifths matches perfectly with Buckminster Fuller’s “vector equilibrium”: the Cuboctahedron. This same geometry is theorized in the Resonance Project, as a way we measure Space itself as an almost infinite supply of energy (in the form of quantum vacuum fluctuations), even though we perceive it to be completely empty. This is because it is in a perfectly balanced state, where all Vectors in the geometry are of equal length—
—Twelve around One—
Nassim Haramein, The Resonance Project

Sudden land temperature change is not the Ocean’s way. Slow to heat up, this watery stage holds its warm baby longer—until El Niño enters from the wings.

Solar (sunspot) activity has increased in recent weeks and Christmas weekend, Earthlings are targeted for more Coronal Mass Ejection—CME—effects: solar panel damage, electronic blackout, countered by spectacular (North) Polar Aurora Borealis. NOAA and SOHO label is ‘incoming STORM’, sidebar below right.

Meantime the equatorial ‘Volcanic Belt’ which few people pay attention to—just happens to run parallel from coastal-Mexico South to coastal-Peru and in mid-Pacific, through the Mariana Trench, the deepest ocean on Earth, through Fiji, Tonga. The so-called Carnegie Ridge is a huge submerged volcanic plate that runs through Cocos Ridges and the Galapagos tectonic plate, or Platform. There it heads for the coast of Peru, becoming sub-ducted under the South American continent where it collides—approximately—with the Andes.

In East-Central Equatorial Pacific, El Niño feeds off this interaction between ocean and atmosphere, producing cyclical peaks, like any other natural phenomenon. Geneva’s World Meteorological Center predicts end-2015-2016 season to run neck-and-neck with three greatest historical surges. The strengthening 2015-2016 season is forecast to hit New Year’s Eve, with current ocean temperatures two degrees Centigrade—2ºC—above normal.
Strongest previous El Niños were in 1972-73, 1982-83 and 1997-98.

‘This naturally occurring El Niño event and human-induced climate change may interact and modify each other in ways which we have never before experienced’
Secretary-General, World Meteorological Center, Geneva EU

Where Tropical Cyclones and Hurricanes meet
El Niño has already sparked an active tropical cyclone season in the Northern Pacific. Closer to U.S. in eastern North Pacific basin, Hurricane Patricia made landfall in Mexico October 24, 2015 and was reportedly (NOAA) the most intense tropical cyclone in the western hemisphere. Coastal Peru, Ecuador and Chile usually bear the brunt of warming waters and concomitant extra rainfall.

Peru declared a pre-emptive state of emergency in July 2015 for fourteen of its 25 states, setting aside $70 million, to prepare for the coming winter rains. Local authorities have been clearing river beds of debris, reinforcing river banks with rocks, sandbags and fortifying reservoir walls.

Yet it may not be enough.

El Nino tropical Pacific anomaly

The two deadliest floods in Ecuador’s history occurred during strong El Niño events: in November 1982—307 deaths—and October 1997—218 died. Peru’s deadliest flood (518 fatalities) occurred during the 1997 El Niño event. A United Nations-backed study said that the 1997-1998 El Niño cost Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela approximately $11 billion.

One aspect of the El Niño effect is to reduce rainfall in drought-prone regions. Australia, India and Bangladesh have already been suffering with near-desert conditions prevailing through summer-autumn 2015

Ocean Warming
Increasing water temperatures in the central-eastern Pacific create more fertile conditions for tropical rain and clouds. Seasonal heavy rainfall that usually hits north Australia at this time, abandons its southern tropical band and heads for the central-eastern Pacific basin.

Also prevailing trade winds, traditionally blowing east to west over the Pacific, weaken—or, worse, reverse.

Fueling more extremes.

HIGHEST & LOWEST Tides Herald Solstice and Christmas Full Moon

Warm water funneling through ocean trenches, exaggerated by a full moon’s return in its 38-year cycle, coupled with CMEs for Christmas Day? Look out!

Highest tides for a decade combine with solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs, sidebar right)—incoming—to give the human race a little more to think about over the Festive Season than just buying trinkets, decorating trees or lighting sequential candles on the Menorah.

Haven for Humankind
For those who watch the skies, the Full Cold Moon [‘when deer shed their antlers’ in Native American Pacific Northwest] blesses us by rising ENE—Azimuth= 69.6°—at dusk on December 25th, opposite the sun setting WSW—Azimuth=239.1°—in constellation Sagittarius. The fickle Moon rises first in opposite astro sign Taurus; then moves one hour later into challenging Gemini. If humankind needs to be stimulated any more than we already are, this year-end astronomical/astrological cycle returning after thirty-eight years, promises innovative solutions.*
*Lunar 18.6-year cycle x2: for explanation, see Lunar Standstill-Returning to the Cradle of Civilization, here.

Northern Pacific Fishing Season on Hold
Snow-wracked northern hemisphere—with its rainy coastal counterparts (Naples, Florida experienced 87ºF on Solstice) may bring a better outcome for fishing fleets on both shores—California crab fishing has been on hold throughout December, while authorities assess potential risk of ‘bottom-feeders’ transmitting domoic acid-packed meat through the food chain.

While coastal control agencies continue to monitor the crab disease, fishing boats lie idle in Humboldt Bay. Some say they’re glad of the break. Others look to January and the start of the 2016 sport fishing season for new beginnings.

Hogmanay/Saturnalia

This time of year we loosen Kronos/Saturn’s bonds.
The ancient God awakens from His sleep,
and rules the Earth as in the Golden Age.

Meanwhile, with the joyful sound of merrymaking—even Saturnalian singing—on our lips and ears, perhaps the human race may find a place where we, as simple vibratory beings withinin the Great Vibration may find a bolt hole—Resonance Project quote by Nassim Haramein, above.

Sending (the smallest, whispered) blessings to those less fortunate than ourselves in this Yule season of challenge and change—earthquake-prone Hindu Kush comes to mind—we may, like Native Scots, invoke angelic help for Hogmanay—by welcoming the dark stranger over the threshold for our New Year.
©2015 Siderealview

Lunar Standstill: Returning to the Cradle of Civilization

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are we any wiser for our anthropocine leap through time?

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

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

SEPTEMBER REMEMBER, OCTOBER ALL OBER

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

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

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

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

Lunar standstill calendar, NatiMuseum of American Indian, Washington DC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maximum moonrise and moonset invariably repeat every nineteen years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Antikythera—Ancient Astronomical Prediction Device

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.