Vesica Piscis: Mother Earth and the Creative Force

Waylands Smithy Vesica Piscis crop circle, August 4th, 2011 -- sacred geometric co-radial circles where circumference of each shares the center of the other -- its central axis symbolizing the Cosmic Birth Canal to which, according to the Maya, all life returns in December 2012

The symbol of an ovoid –an egg– expresses the the primordial form of everything manifest, from atom to globe, from man to angel. The spheroid is with all nations the emblem of eternity and infinity —- a serpent swallowing its own tail. To realize the meaning, however, the sphere must be thought of as seen from its centre
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine

The Vesica Piscis in sacred tradition — from Kabbalist to Vedic to Zen — is considered to represent the female organ of creation. Its circular shape invokes an intertwining of feminine energies, Mother Earth’s womb, a mingling of Nature and primeval cultural reverence: it is a symbol seen in all ancient graphical traditions, from pagan Sun Wheel, Celtic cross, architectural ‘golden mean‘ to sacred windows in cathedrals, mosques, tabernacles and pagodas.

The Vesica Piscis also represented to the Maya the summer and winter solstices in any time cycle. To them the Vesica Piscis shape held the Cycle of the Ages — the Precession of the Equinoxes, less of a calculation of Time; more as a symbol of evolution of consciousness. We are experiencing this change now as we move from one World Age (Christian Age of Pisces, 0BC-AD2000) to another (‘New Age’ of Aquarius).

Its Latin meaning, lit. bladder of the fish, may seem to lessen its sacred quality to the prosaic, but it remains connected in a bodily way and in the geometric sense in all cultures — East and West.

Antediluvian Meaning
In earliest traditions, the supreme being was represented by a sphere, the symbol of a Creator with no beginning and no end, continually existing, perfectly formed and profoundly symmetrical. The addition of a second sphere represented the expansion of unity into the duality of female and male. By overlapping, both spheres — goddess and god — created a divine offspring. The Vesica Piscis with its derivatives, the Flower of Life, Tree of Life, and fundamentals of geometry, has a history of thousands of years, easily predating all major religions of the current era.

A theme running through several recent crop circle seasons — most striking from 2007 on — has been the suggestion by the ‘Circlemakers’ that we return to the wisdom of our roots: roots in our native Earth, roots of our tradition, our sacred beginnings. Since it is presently clear to almost anyone in the Western World that in pursuing our headlong drive for power, riches and exploitation over balance, human warmth and respect for the earth, we have gone seriously awry. It might seem that our combined consciousness — that deep level of awareness we share beneath the cultural façade; what Terence McKenna called Humanity’s Oversoul — has chosen to ‘wake us up’ by bringing us (those genuine electromagnetically-produced) crop circles each year, to educate us and lead us gently towards a more loving future.

Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised by the ingenuity and wry sense of humor of the Circlemakers.

West Kennet Crop circle central tuft with 'spiderweb' filaments. Sacred earth pyramid Silbury Hill in distance, largest manmade mound in Europe,
photo Mariusz Szymaszek

For instance, this year in May — while we were all looking forward rather than looking at the miracles of the season — a quiet little ring appeared in green barley at East Kennet. It lay within one field’s breadth (roughly 10 acres) of one of Wiltshire’s most ancient shrines — the Neolithic tomb (long barrow) of West Kennet. Several 5,000-year old monuments lie — inter-visible — in this densely-built Neolithic landscape within two miles of Avebury’s Great Stone Circles.

Stonehenge and its magical meridian (51ºN) aside, the modern British are not particularly drawn to ancient shrines for their sacred quality, but crop circles — appearing within the same landscape and overlying the same limestone aquifer that produces measurable electromagnetic resonance (likened to human meditational alpha waves) — have been drawing them in. Nobody who has spent time in a pristine formation can deny it holds an ‘atmosphere’, an energy which can be uplifting, almost surreal. There is a growing body of evidence that crop circles are indeed produced through the medium of light and sound.

When the East Kennet circle first appeared, Stuart Dike, one of the long-time stalwarts of CropCircleConnector, crop circle ‘bible’, said at the time:

East Kennet crop design, May 17th, was ringed by extra circles June 22. If seen as the 'negative', it acquired a mirror-image 'positive' at West Kennet, July 25th 2011,
photo Olivier Morel

It certainly takes me back to over twenty years ago, from the 1990 days in Wiltshire. This is what we were all used to seeing back then, very simple designs, with a sense of excitement of what they could become. It’s a great indication that the earlier designs are very much part of what’s occurring today: the precursor of what was to be an evolutionary road in geometry and complexity. Perhaps the phenomenon is telling us not to ignore the purity of what was occurring at the very beginning.

Little did we know that the Circlemakers had further plans for that small field. One month later, during excitement of solstice and a profusion of appearances (2 at Stonehenge + 4 more in the vicinity over a 2-day period), nobody seemed to notice that East Kennet had acquired three concentric rings (June 22).

West Kennet Longbarrow, July 25th 'mirror image' of East Kennet phases 1 & 2, photo courtesy Bert Janssen

Then exactly a month after that, on July 22, attention focused on the intricate and superb ‘spider-web’ headdress formation which appeared in an adjoining field (East Kennet-2). There followed in quick succession two exceptionally graphic ‘suggestive’ crop designs at Roundway (1 & 2, July 23 & 25) –appearing to advocate humanity’s opening its third eye, releasing the body’s natural happiness hormone, melatonin— so, once again a little mirror appearance the same day — at West Kennet Long Barrow itself this time, next to the passage grave — seemed less than significant.

Working behind the scenes are a multitude of local altruistic researchers (CCC, above, is one of many). Their common bond is that they believe that ‘genuine’ crop circles are phenomena somehow produced through an electromagnetic or dimensional medium, either by light, sound or other variants within that vast spectrum. Sometimes, when local conditions are just right, a substance colloquially known as ‘angel hair’ (documented as being found after UFO sightings) has been deposited and can be measured, if collected within the first few hours after a formation has been laid down. Researchers in this field include the Massachusetts-based BLT, the British Harmony Blue group, and the CircularSite in the Netherlands,. They are consequently disappointed and nonplussed by world media efforts to persevere in ‘replicating’ crop circles, as has been tried on several occasions. Research on the dimensional/spiritual nature of real crop circles continues. On the morning the West Kennet circle motif appeared, the HarmonyBlue team found angel hair in the West Kennet formation (‘spiderweb’ photo, above).

There is even the suggestion — by the much more charismatic ‘spider-web’ crop appearance at East Kennet on July 22 — that the Circlemakers were telling them where to look!

Two Cherhill crop circles in the same week: Cherhill Down, July 20th, left; Cherhill 'smoking alien' July 27th, right

Sacred geometry
The Vesica Piscis is the root principle in sacred geometry, interlocking circles which share radii, cosmically and intrinsically entwined. In precise mathematical measurement, where the circumference of each shares the center of the other, the ratio between the width of the vesica piscis to its height is the square root of 3, or approximately 1.7320508…

A mathematical sub-note: if straight lines are drawn between the centers of both circles with each other and with the two points where their circumferences intersect, two equilateral triangles can be formed, joining along an edge.

Eye of consciousness, complete with eyelashes! Crop circle at Silbury Hill, Avebury August 2, 2011

Archimedes of Syracuse, 287-212BC, Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer, in his On the Measurement of the Circle, used these ratios:

In Christian tradition this sacred number –153– appears miraculously in the Gospel of John [21:11] as the number of fishes which Jesus of Nazareth caused to be manifested in the Feeding of the Multitude story. Since all Judaic written (Biblical) tradition centered on sacred number, numerological sequence and coded word combinations/number of letters used, this coincidence has a deeper meaning. The Fish — Lat. Piscis — is well-known as the secret symbol used by the Early Christians in Rome. By enumerating the total catch on the Sea of Gallilee, specific use of that sacred geometric ratio would have had meaning to early followers, aware of the significance of number.

Interlocking circles, Water & the Sacred Feminine: Vesica Piscis's sacred shape which seals the cover of the Sacred Chalice Well at Glastonbury, Somerset

Probably the best known example in England of the Vesica Piscis is the design on the wellcover of the Sacred Chalice Well at Glastonbury. While we are now culturally ignorant of number, this design resonates with us on a subliminal level (internal balance) and, seen there in a New Age context, represents the Universal symbol of the Feminine, Mother Earth, in contrast with the nearby masculine emblem of Glastonbury Tor. The Glastonbury example on the lid of the Chalice well — like the crop circle at Wayland’s Smithy (top) — contains the meridian line that runs through the centers of both circles.

Even though this archaic symbolism may not seem relevant to some after so many aeons of time, it is not unrealistic to suppose that our cultural unconscious, even blurred and insensitized by modern inconsequential minutiae in massive overdose, does at some deep level sense peace, harmony and beauty when we behold this sacred design.

Egyptian Celestial and Sacred Measure
We owe the Egyptians for the application of Sacred Geometry on the surface of the Earth.

Cosmic serpent-of-Life returning to its birth canal at the center of the Galaxy in 2012 -- West Woodhay Down, Inkpen crop circle July 29th, arrived as a prelude to the August 4th glyph (top), the Cosmic birth canal itself

Geo-metry means ‘measure of the earth’. In ancient Egypt, from which Greece and eventually the West inherited the study, the Nile would flood its banks each year, obliterating orderly demarcation of plot and farm areas. This annual inundation symbolized to the Egyptian the cyclic return of primal watery chaos, and when the waters receded the work began of redefining and re-establishing boundaries. The temple astronomer might announce that celestial configurations had changed so the orientation or location of a temple had to be adjusted. It was seen as regaining law and order, dominion over the earth. The laying of squares upon the earth had, for the Egyptian, a metaphysical as well as a physical and social dimension. This activity of measuring the earth – ‘geo-meter’- became the basis for a science of natural law embodied in the archetypal forms of circle, triangle and square.

Plato at his Academia required the study of mathematics as a prerequisite for philosophia, a term signifying “the love of wisdom” and “to lift the soul to truth.” To him, symbolic mathematics provided a map of our own inner psychological and sacred spiritual structure. Through the study of recurring harmonious patterns inherent in mathematics, music, and nature, ancient mathematical philosophers recognized that consistent correspondences occur inside the human mind and simultaneously throughout the universe.

Sacred geometric shapes: circle, triangle, square

This Zen calligraphic drawing shows Creation through the simple progression from the unity of the circle, through the triangle, to the manifest form of the square.

The circle –one– and the vesica piscis –two– were considered by ancient mathematical philosophers to be the parents of Number. Their firstborn, the triangle –three– was the ‘first’ and eldest number. Its geometric expression, the equilateral triangle, is the initial shape to emerge through the portal of the vesica piscis, the First of the Many. The square –four– was the second born.

Alpha and Omega
Mathematics and sacred geometry can take us beyond our ordinary limits to cosmic depths.

Furze or Morgan Hill, Bishops Cannings, August 6th dimensional progression on the Vesica Piscis: two cosmic parents produce a dimensional child

Man –from the Sanskrit root manas, meaning ‘Mind’, Consciousness, is a creature who can reflect upon himself. Man is not a mere constituent part –a cog– in this Universal Cycle, but he is both the final complete product of evolution and the original seed potential out of which the Universe germinated. The Alpha as well as the Omega. Both the seed and the tree: the tree of the universe is the actualization of the seed potential, which is Cosmic Man.

The World Tree of the Maya now begins to make sense. Mayan cosmology saw the Rift in the Milky Way as the the female birth canal (Yoni, Vesica Piscis) to which the Serpent of Life returns in December 2012.

Spiraling towards Source

CCC denizen Dike may have had a premonition when he said (above) that ‘the (CC) phenomenon is telling us not to ignore the purity of what was occurring at the very beginning’. Without realizing it, he may have been referring to the very beginning of Time. As we spiral onwards through the Galaxy towards our 2012 rendezvous with that primeval birth canal, we are indeed completing a cycle, coming to our ending, but also returning to our beginning.

The Wesak Effect: Changing Human Consciousness

Mount Shasta & lenticular cloud: spiritual center for US Wesak festival; photo courtesy Living Shasta

“Mind is the Matrix of all Matter”
Max Planck

Wesak is the most important date in the Buddhist calendar — regardless of where it is held in Indian, Chinese, Zen, Tibetan, Indonesian, Nepalese, Mahayana or Western practices.

HH Dalai Lama participates in the Newark Peace Education Summit in New Jersey during Wesak week 2011

Celebrated by one-third of the world’s population during the week of the full moon in May, it marks the birth of the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama, c. 563BC) and, for some Buddhists, his enlightenment (Nirvana) and his death. In Burma and Thailand, for instance, it is celebrated with special lanterns made of paper and wood; candles are burned continuously and houses are cleaned, decorated and made new with much joyful music and the sound of bells. In Laos it is known as the Feast of the Lanterns. In India, it is Vesak Day, or Buddha Purnima.

Caged birds released on Wesak: spiritual symbolism and vegetarian practice

There is a long tradition of releasing caged birds on Wesak, signifying the freeing of the soul from the body cage on reaching enlightenment — Nirvana. Many (strict) Buddhists are vegetarians, but those who are not, often pay butchers to release animals otherwise scheduled for human consumption. On this auspicious day, others forgo eating meat. Water ceremonies include bathing the Buddha’s shoulders to remind devotees to purify the mind from greed, hatred and ignorance.

Wesak is a festival we might all benefit from sharing — or at least understanding its roots. In contrast with many world religions, Buddhism is unique for its focus on personal spiritual development and striving for deep insight into the true nature of life, through the practice of morality, meditation and awareness of one’s own accessible inner wisdom.

Buddhists believe nothing is permanent: that change is always possible.

22,000ft axis mundi Mt.Kailash, Tibet, simultaneously the world's most venerated holy place (to 4 world religions) and the least visited, acts as the Earth's Crown Chakra

OM
MANI
PADME
HUM
May we dedicate all positive words to the enlightenment of all sentient beings in six realms of cyclic existence.
Buddhist prayer

Buddha literally means ‘one who is awake’ and has become enlightened. It is a term that denotes a person who has attained the supreme wisdom and compassion that Enlightenment brings.

The Wesak festival is unique in world religions in that it is a present-time cosmological event and not just one that commemorates a past spiritual happening–as do most holy days.

In Buddhist tradition, Wesak is a five-day festival: two days of preparation, both mental and physical; the day of the Wesak full moon itself, (this year, Tuesday 17th May) and two days after for meditation, direction of energy for good, for self-healing, and for planetary vision.

Ideally, one should approach Wesak week with discipline, clearing the mind beforehand, eliminating from our consciousness all negativity — including the influence of negative people — so that our mind and spirit are opened and ready to receive the forces of Light (love).

“If someone negative tries to complicate your life, turn and walk away from them” Caroline Myss

In the western version of the tradition, the day of the Wesak full moon is known as the Day of Safeguarding.

On the full moon of May, with the rising of the morning star, Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, the enlightened one

While Siddhartha’s enlightenment happened over 2500 years ago, it is interesting to note that this year (2011) the ‘morning star’, Venus, is not only recapturing brilliance celebrated in that age-old Buddhist proclamation, but also — on May 11th — approached within one-half-degree of fellow morning planet Jupiter, alongside Mercury and Mars in the pre-dawn eastern sky. This Jupiter-Venus-conjunction is the same configuration as that heralded in 6BC as the brilliant ‘Star in the East’ which signaled the birth of Christ.

So Venus and Jupiter, among others, are presently contributing as planetary pointers to this year’s Wesak week. Other celestial phenomena are in store for the rest of 2011 and 2012.

“On the Day of Safeguarding (May 17th) itself, we the human race should try to receive, contain and hold as much of that great spiritual light, (energy, love) as we possibly can within our bodies as a kind of intelligent network of conscious ‘Mind’ for the planet — as her brain, so to speak.” Wesak Souled-Out Spiritual Hierarchy.

In the West, this year’s festival has primary focus on raising planetary awareness: a rising tide of human Unity Consciousness, which has been a consistent feature of this blog and is becoming the focus of much attention in the runup to 2012. The western hub of Wesak ceremonies, festivities and deep religious rededication is Mount Shasta, Siskyou County, California.

Earth's energy grid, portals and Chakras on the electromagnetic network

In the language of Earth-Gaia Medicine, the Earth, as a sentient being, has energy chakras, one on each continent, just as the human body has energy centers. Shasta is believed to hold the energetic focus for Mother Earth’s root or base chakra.

Her other chakra points are:
Island of the Sun, Lake Titicaca: Sacral second Chakra
Uluru, Ayer’s Rock, Australia: Solar plexus third Chakra
Glastonbury, Somerset: Heart fourth Chakra
Great Pyramid, Giza: Throat fifth Chakra
No fixed location for sixth, Third Eye Chakra
Mt. Kailash, Tibet: Crown 7th Chakra and axis mundi, peak of the world axis.

’Sixties Revolution
California is known for its leading-edge ethos begun in the 1960s and ’70s of multi-discipline spiritual thought, an EarthFirst lifestyle and as home to many New Age groups. Hermann Hesse’s ‘Siddhartha‘ was virtually ‘required reading’ during the spiritual revolution of the ’sixties in a State which became a honeypot for spiritual entrepreneurs, gurus and devout followers of a New Age way of life. While that ‘off-the-grid’ lifestyle continues a presence in the State, it has become — like other spiritual practices — subsumed by the great unwieldy machine of human progress, population growth, and the media/internet/communications revolution.

Among a plethora of New Age spiritual frontrunners from that era, however, one guru stands tall above the rest — Ram Dass. As (former) Dr Richard Alpert, b.1931, he was the renowned Harvard professor whose experimental psych lab –alongside Prof. Timothy Leary and his (then) graduate student Dr. Ralph Metzner, founder of the Green Earth Foundation— used mind-altering techniques in the study of the transformation of human consciousness. They co-authored the volume ‘The Psychedelic Experience‘: a Manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead and dedicated to Aldous Huxley. In his subsequent conversion and becoming a messenger for ‘American Buddhism’, Ram Dass was seen not only as a genuine seeker, practitioner and proponent of the simple spiritual lifestyle, but his consistency and practice of personal liberation have affected many lives.

“My life is my message” Baba Ram Dass, 1992

Author of the seminal spiritual bible of the time, ‘Be Here Now‘, 1971, he practised the art of self-discipline in maintaining one’s own unique balance and wisdom, in allowing self-liberation, and the ‘voice of the Divine’ to come through into daily life.

Ram Dass suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 1997 which paralyzed his right side. It has taken him over a decade to recover all function, but he is back on the lecture-appearance circuit, his message stronger than ever. Before the stroke, he finally met and was interviewed by contemporary and fellow research/occult scientist, Terence McKenna (video conversation above). While they had taken divergent life paths — McKenna researching the biological immediacy of shamanic experience and altered states of consciousness; Ram Dass eschewing mind experimentation for spiritual ritual and meditative practice — they discovered shared truth and remarkable similarities in their need to question accepted authority and discover ‘one’s own reality’: McKenna’s ‘felt presence of direct experience’. The video series is unprecedented in its honesty and their familiarity with each other, because while they shared a youthful background of the counter-culture, this was their first encounter as seniors in the consciousness field. In that sense, the video interviews (on YouTube) are unique, unrepeated. McKenna died in 2000 of brain cancer.

Terence McKenna, author of 'Food of the Gods,' before he died in 2000

McKenna believed human evolution and particularly language development were triggered by apes eating hallucinogenic plants after their descent from the trees; that either Man must return to Nature before she explodes, or tout de suite launch some rocket ships to the stars. Ram Dass approaches humanity as a concept seen from the transcendental realm of Godhead, as viewed through the Third Dimension. Both men of ideas have lived long enough to be able to dissolve ego in an unprecedented open exchange. But while the duo (in their video conversation) approach the subject from apparently opposite sides, they both bring light to their shared belief in autonomous, intuitive ‘knowing’, as opposed to acceptance of concepts fostered by fear-mongered dogma of state and government attitudes.

They both believe in ‘Mind’, as the engineer of reality, consciousness.

“The Net,” says McKenna, “is an ‘oracle’ fostering an unprecedented dialogue between human beings and the sum total of human knowledge.” He believes that out of computer graphics will emerge a new form of human communication. “We are heading for a world made out of Mind.”

“Go beyond the ‘isms’ and tell me what you really think we’ll find,” says Ram Dass. While he believes in intuitive links, he concedes the need for virtual/real communication.

Dass believes in the transcendental awareness brought about by communion with one’s higher self, the Divine. It hinges on the presently-growing impetus of global consciousness. McKenna had first-hand knowledge of South American Indians who experienced the Collective Unconscious as an immediate, shamanic, reality; not just as an intellectual construct.

As our society weaves itself ever-more deeply into this colossal thinking machine, McKenna believes it may somehow be able to replicate those shaman Indians’ collective knowing. He answers:

“We’re finding a world made out of Mind instead of ‘stuff’. Mind itself is being pulled taut. We are being given that transcendental object at the End of Time”.

“So what is this transcendental object at the End of Time?” asks Dass.

“A material made from hologramatic disk: part bio, part machine, part think tank, part Mind.”

Over one million Buddhists are meditating right now, pooling consciousness. Critical mass requires only one half of one percent of the population to be ‘vibrating’ at a higher frequency for cohesion/enlightenment/ascension to occur.

This Wesak festival might be the very one which decides the fate of the Earth: the one which changes global consciousness and takes it one step farther up the ladder to the stars.
©2011 Marian Youngblood