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.

We are Stardust taking Destiny into our own hands

Sacred geometry, sacred comfort zone

The crop circle phenomenon is really rocking the boat; even though there have been no further crop circles imprinted on Wiltshire farms (or elsewhere) since August 29th this year, world interest is piqued and they’ve picked up the baton and won’t put it down. Even Google, when I opened my mailbox this morning, had ‘Google’ written in croppie image in the bookmarks bar. If Google knows about crop circles, I assure you the whole world knows.

What is less certain is why we have become obsessed with these beautiful creations.

A very small percentage of world population lives in rural Wiltshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, but that is where the crop circles are: each summer another series more sophisticated and intriguing than the summer before.

Holland and Germany, Scotland and the NW Pacific states of the U.S. have had a smattering, but the bulk of appearances has occurred within the sacred precinct of ancient tombs and temples in the Cotswolds and Marlborough Downs. They are often accompanied by high frequency sound and more-than-average people-friendly feelings.

There are already an enormous number of electro-magnetic nodes in this rolling countryside. They attract fluctuations in compass readings, making dowsers mightily confused: cell-phones are turned off because their signals are useless; camera batteries recharge spontaneously. The magnetic nodes are what Neolithic farmers noticed in the land; it inspired them to build solar doorways made of stone: lunar alignments in megalithic grandeur stretch as far as the eye can see.

Now a more cosmic imprint appears in this anomalous zone. And it is affecting visitors who have described sensations of ‘deep peace’, a desire to be ‘at one with’ and share their experience with others in the circle, an ‘inner glow’.

Is it too far-fetched to call them messages from the stars?

Before he died in 1996, American astrophysicist and quantum astronomer Carl Sagan was convinced we as an evolving race were capable of using our intelligence and technology to reach the stars. He would have been the first to express jubilation at the fact that the stars may be reaching out to us in return.

‘We are stardust taking our destiny into our own hands’: his words.

One of his ‘babies’ was SETI, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence; he spent years devising mathematical code which could be sent in pulses via (in his day) the world’s largest radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. He envisioned pulses returning from a distant intelligence, advanced enough to understand and use mathematical signatures as a common cosmic language. When Sagan died of bone-marrow cancer in 1996, computers were large, but the internet was in its infancy. He could only dream that a radio beam of binary pulses would elicit a response from a stellar region in the middle of the Milky Way; of how a mere 13 years later computer code would be the new means of communication. He might have guessed.

He called the essence of number the ‘Rosetta stone’, the common language of science and mathematics. He was prophetic when he described distant intelligence as ‘someone fond of mathematics’, using our own knowledge to beam back to us a message we too might understand.

Fractal Wave image near Avebury Wiltshire June 2008

Sacred geometry and music have much in common: harmony of sound is reflected in the harmony expressed in mathematical Fibonacci numbers – or a cascade of increasing dimensions seen as visually perfect, the Golden Mean. After 2007, a year of curvaceous designs leading the eye and enhancing the land, 2008 brought patterns that upped the ante: in June a Pythagorean Comma graced a Yatesbury field near the ancient sacred site of Avebury. This ‘standing wave fractal’ was described by University of York electronics expert James Lyons as a pictorial rendition of the harmonic scale on a piano. “The Universe is a glorious keyboard with strings between every atom of matter (holographic) and by implication all mankind!” In July a crop circle depicting swallows (the totem bird of perspective) had a second layer added on a successive night. There were other ‘multiple’ sequential patterns. August culminated in a magnificent sacred ‘rose window’ motif (top) and several indications of the number eight or viewed laterally, infinity. Visitors to August formations were seen to kneel in prayer, sound the ‘Om’ and share food, water and animated conversation with their fellows in the barley.

The 2009 season has been heavily laced with 2012 images from the calendar of the Maya: the single remaining earth civilization still to count mankind’s progression in ‘Ages’. We humans are nearing the end of the final Mayan ‘Great Cycle’, scheduled to complete on 12 December 2012 (12/12/12). Also a record number of cropcircles in 2009 produced images of Fibonacci sequences, DNA strands of our own double helix as well as an enhanced multi-strand variation (significant, below), and a plethora of holograms or three-dimensional material bridging the divide between sound, mathematics, philosophy and spirituality.

In all this splendour, a little croppie found in a Chilbolton field in Hampshire in 2001 may have been overlooked:

Binary sequence sent from Arecibo

The Arecibo message sent on November 16th 1974 by Carl Sagan and his SETI cohorts was by design formulated as a sequence of 1679 pulses of sound in binary code (zeros and ones). It was beamed at the M13 stellar cluster in the constellation of Hercules, 25,000 light years distant. Because SETI was attempting to communicate with high caliber intelligence by means of a cosmic language (feet, meters, inches would have no meaning) it used the combination of two prime numbers, 23 and 73, as the logical format: 23 columns of 73 rows (23×73=1679) figure at left. For clarity, the zeros and ones are shown as black and white.

The message was brief. It gave in simple terms the numbers 1 – 10; Atomic numbers 1,6,7,8,15 of the elements of Life, Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen and Phosphorus; a larger section describing the sugars and bases in the nucleotides of DNA with its double helix; a human figure (stick man) with a height of 5ft9ins expressed in ‘wavelength units’; earth’s then population of 4.29 billion (1974 value); a diagram of the solar system, nine planets and sun, with Earth placed above the others to indicate origin of the code; and a curved diagram of the radio telescope from which it was sent.

In 2001, 27 years after transmission, an answer came back. With a few differences. Binary code of zeros and ones highlighted in black and white, appears below, right. Differences are highlighted in red. On the left is the ‘answer’ which arrived on the night of August 21st, 2001 in Chilbolton, Hampshire in a field next to the Chilbolton radio telescope. (Arecibo has no barley fields; it’s on a mountain top). At Chilbolton, flattened crop are zeros, standing stalks are ones.

Chilbolton variations on an Arecibo theme

Numbers 1 – 10 return unaltered. In the second sequence, the atomic weight, 14, of silicon has been added in its correct position on the Periodic Table. [Silicon is the constituent of crystalline structure; this should excite light beings and crystal consciousness supporters everywhere]. There is a change in the number of nucleotides in DNA, which is coincidentally given an additional strand. Our stick man is replaced by a shorter being (3ft 4ins) with larger head. The ‘population’ figure in decoded binary sequence equates to 21.3 billion. In addition to Earth, the fourth and fifth planets are highlighted.

Chilbolton radio telescope and crop circle

Perhaps the population figure is intended to cover all three planets. Or it may represent a distant planetary system where the fourth and fifth are the ones with life. ET doesn’t say. The final sequence depicts not a radio telescope, but a crop formation occurring in the same field the year before. Their previous communication (2000) had fallen on deaf ears. ET was hoping this one didn’t.

While there was a flurry of interest shown in astrophysical circles at the time of the Chilbolton appearance, the general public was unaware of its significance. Criticism ensued from astronomers who knew that a radio transmission would take hundreds of years to reach a distant star system. The crop circle response was generally discredited.

It is interesting to note, however, that after Carl Sagan died, Arecibo sent a second transmission in 1999, this time aimed at the Vega, Deneb, Altair triangle and at the time there were several solar system planets and the moon in the transmission ‘window’. If the code happened to get fielded by ET in the Jupiter moon system, or one of Saturn’s orbiting bodies, the time lapse for a response is less fantastical, more worthy of consideration.

Any transmission from the stellar regions is worth our consideration, don’t you think? Our world may be about to change beyond all recognition. Our future may depend on it. Carl Sagan come out, come out, wherever you are.

Much of the research on the Chilbolton crop circle was carried out by Paul Vigay, a talented mathematician and electronics wizard, to whom this blog is dedicated. He died suddenly in 2008.