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Placenames: Hidden Gems Strewn Along Drove-Roads to our Past

PLACENAMES: HIDDEN GEMS STREWN ALONG DROVE-ROADS TO PAST

MONTHLY FIRST WEDNESDAY EMERGENCE FROM OUR (INSECURE) WRITERS’ CAVE TO GLIMPSE THE LIGHT

Northumbrian Venerable Bede, left, 7thC monk at Jarrow’s church of St. Peter and St. Paul, pulled north England and Pictish east Scotland up to the level of Rome by building stone kirks, ‘educating the unlearned’ populace.

Language is a dialect with an Army, a Navy and a Monarch

Simon Taylor, PhD, ‘Pictish Placenames’

Eastern Scotland holds Secret Language Key to the Past

When Bede wrote his glorious Ecclesiastical history of the English people—Historia Gentis Anglorum Ecclesiastica—before he died in 736, most of the landmass he was addressing still lived a rural pastoral life with belief in nature spirits, Celtic deities and giving gifts to the Earth in thanks for sustenance through the year.

An English education custom which continues to this day is sending boys to boarding school at an early age—in the Noughties girls go, too. Sometime around 680, a small seven-year old Bede was enrolled at Monkwearmounth and spent the next fifty years learning Church history. As an adult, he wrote 40 books—including his De Natura Rerum—a 7thC guide to the Universe—along with hundreds of pamphlets to enlighten ‘unlearned’ Britons in the ways of Rome. As Irish churches and Iona calculated by a different calendar—one year King and Queen of Anglian Northumberland held Easter on separate Sundays. Bede encouraged closer alignment with up-to-date Rome.

He succeeded.

King Nechtan Orders ‘Fite’ Peterkirks for Roman Easter in N & E Scotland

During Bede’s own simple monastic life, he was able to witness Pictish King Nechtan write to Jarrow asking for stonemasons to help build stone kirks ‘in the manner of Rome’. When work began on ‘Fite Kirks’ (rather than ‘black hoos’ hovels), Nechtan thanked his resident monks (from Iona, i.e. antiquated) and asked them to leave. Bede recorded in his own lifetime the lives of Nechtan, Adamnan, Columba and the rise of Christianity.

Throughout Pictland, new monasteries were set up, sometimes—as at Turriff—on the foundations of the old, where Celtic observance was replaced by the ‘new’ Roman calculation and, for monks,  their hair cut in the tonsure of a crown. Others, like Rosemarkie and Tarbet may well have been completely new foundations. Curitan (Boniface) of Rosemarkie was a strong supporter of Adamnan (abbot of Iona and Columba’s biographer) at the 697 council held at court. He continued to support Nechtan’s initiative.

Maelrubai (‘Maree’) had founded the huge settlement at Applecross in Wester Ross, dying there in 722 at the age of 80. His influence was widespread, did not conflict with the royal strategy, and stretched east to Keith, where his Summareve’s Fair was [and is still – Keith Show] held annually.

Status and wealth were directly related.

The larger the citadel, the more land it controlled; but it had the burden of producing more to feed its dependents. Food had to be grown in abundance to stock a royal town (urbs or civitas, Bede, (HE I1). For a small dun crops could be grown locally. Whereas in a larger province, centred on a major fortress, a higher proportion would be tithed and collected as tribute from widespread tenantry.

‘He held his household . . .
Sometyme at Edinburgh, sometyme at Striveline,
In Scotlande, at Perthe and Dunbrytain,
At Dunbar, Dunfrise, and St. John’s Toune,
All worthy knights more than a legion,
At Donydoure also in Murith region’
Jhon Hardyng, 1465 describing wealth of Pictish nation and royal residences

Scots and Irish Gaelic travelling monks used ogham etched into sacred stones as a means to teach locals Christianity. Fish shape design incised in rocks at parish boundaries held the message from Gk ICTHYS (L. piscis) which would be understood by the locals as salmon was sacred beast in Pictish pantheon

ICTHYS Jesu Christos son of God Gk. ΙΧΘΥΣ

Brandsbutt on old Inverurie ‘marches’, now in housing estate; Aboyne Formaston ogham flanks ClassII cross slab; Afforsk simple cross-inscribed boulder in ancient Caledonian forest on parish boundary of the Garioch and Monymusk—itself an early monastery with ClassII cross stone.housing Columba’s ‘Monymusk Reliquary’

‘At the present time there are five languages here [in
Britain], just as the divine law is written in five books …
These are namely the languages of the English, of the
British, of the Gaels, of the Picts as well as of the Latins;
through the study of the scriptures Latin is in general
use among them all’ Bede Historia Gentis Anglorum

Writing in Latin, which he learned from age 7, gave him unlimited access to church history. It also elevated him to stardom.

In 1022 a monk carried Bede’s remains from Jarrow to Durham cathedral, where he was interred as a saint next to Cuthbert. Durham is considered the greatest Anglian cathedral.

Britain’s Four Languages—and Latin

Celtic linguistic roots surface in all four British languages: pronunciation being the dividing line between Q-Celtic [West Coast, Glasgow, Eire and Isle of Man Manx] and P-Celtic sounding Breton, Cornish, Pictish and Welsh or Brittonic. e.g. Latin piscis, fish above, is Gaelic iasg ‘fish’. Latin pater, becomes Gaelic athair ‘father’.

P-Celtic pen ‘head’ becomes Q-Celtic ceann—sometimes ‘borrowed back’ into P-Celtic. Aberdeenshire has Kintore and Kincardine: combines caen + carden=rich grassland, pasture enclosure. Pit or pett is well-known for denoting a place of Pictish importance, a regional division, an enclosed place owned by Picts, usually high status. Pitcaple in the Garioch was royal stables: Pit-capull place of the horse. Many Scots Gaelic names borrowed into Pictish survive in rural steadings, ancient kirkyards and wild sheep-devoured meadows.

Original Uu sound of Celtic in Uurguist (Pictish king) translates Fergus in Scots Gaelic. St Fergus of Dyce Aberdeen (pic below of his ‘teaching slab’) represented his king, stonekirk-building Nechtan, at a Council in Rome in 721, to relate his nation’s conversion to Roman Christianity.

Royal Forests, Cold Mountain Passes & Gleaming Fields

Among Pictish beauties still giving their names and meaning to the landscape—rare in Britain south of the Border—are Aber ‘river or burn mouth’ as in Aberdeen, Arbroath, Aberfeldy; Cet, a wood (Keith family name ruled from Caithness to Angus); Cuper a confluence, Cupar in Fife; Mig bog, marsh, perhaps peat bogs, Migvie ABD;, Migmar ABD, Meigle Gowrie PER & Strathmiglo FIF. Pert wood, grove as in Perth. Interestingly Perth in Welsh means wood, copse, hedge brake or bush. Strath, Pictish broad valley like Welsh/Brittonic ystrad. Strathearn lush valley of Earn, see below.

Some names contain Pictish loan-words attested as common nouns in Scots Gaelic, e.g.bad (‘spot, clump’), dail, (‘haugh, water-meadow’), monadh (‘hill, hill-range, muir’), preas (‘bush’), pòr(‘seed, grain, crops’); and obsolete pett. The Slug—difficult climb alternative road over the Mounth from Crathes to Dunnottar comes from sluig (v.) ‘to
swallow, devour’ slugan m. ‘gullet, or whirlpool..Yet on a totally different tack, the Slug connects 2royal strongholds.

Fergus/Uurguist Pictish monk who represented his king in Rome in 721 Stone rear wrapped in fish-curled ogham

Royal Ownership Dictated by Fertile Valleys

It is thought by linguistic scholars that the Mounth—1500ft.mountain ridge denoting E-W geological fault dividing ‘lowland’ from ‘highland’ Scotland—is pure Pictish, as Irish-Gaelic Annals of Ulster list ‘Dub Tholargg rex Pictorum citra Monoth 782,’ King Dub Talorc gives family name Duff, surviving landowners in Aberdeenshire.

Fetter names contain Gaelic foithir usually translated as a slope, a terraced ravine. Multiple locations, however, include a remarkable number of high-status names in former Pictland: both N & S: Dunottar, Fetterangus,
Fettercairn, Fetteresso, Fetternear, Forteviot, Kineddar, Kingedward – all medieval parishes. foithir is made up of two Gaelic elements: fo ‘under’ and tìr ‘land’. The Welsh/Brittonic cognate is godir ‘region, district, lowland, slope’.

Dr Taylor suggests that behind this foithir in many eastern placenames is Pictish *uotir, which may have referred to some kind of high status/royal administrative district within Pictish domain. Probably not fuar=cold as in freezing Balfour (cold place!) equivalent of Cinrighmonadh=old name for religious pinnacle St.Andrew’s where kings were buried. ‘Head of the mountain of kings’. Birse, brass describes ‘gleaming’ cornfields, i.e.rich pasture = contented tenantry.

*It is quite synchronous that HRH Prince William is traditionally called Earl of Strathearn when he treads North of the Border, It was, after all, the highest pinnacle of royaldom any mormaer coiuld reach. The regal hub, as it were.

I believe Dr Taylor has hit jackpot on his connection of P. uotir as a high-status arondissement ruling body district, considering much of Scotland still remembers feu duty, tenantry and ownership of land by ruling classes.

Now that makes complete sense in high status and royal Pictish strongholds such as Forteviot, Fuor-triu (nom., acc. For-trenn) ‘Kingdom’ of Forgue, Aberdeenshire (kingdoms included Fife Fib, Forgue, ‘Regality of the Garioch

Surviving Ten Centuries of English Domination

While a surprising amount of anti-English rhetoric survives since our Scots barons signed their Declaration of Independence (1320), there are quite a few who (Cornish, Manx are being revived, the Doric is still spoken among loons & quines o’ the NorthEast) working to an all-indigenous culture. Much new research brightens the horizon.

That’s the Light we cave-dwelling scribes look for when we emerge from our [deeply-immersed-intuitive Muse-driven internal space into the sparkle of a New Dawn—ever hopeful—a new vibrant Earth full of its own history, totems and tautology—aka longwindedness. Us writers can’t help it. It came with the package.

p.s.incidentally, our Muse this month is Deva, Celtic goddess of the River. Aber-Deva: patroness of Aberdeen. She’s a star! ©2021 Marian Youngblood

Surprise Benefits of Lockdown: Revealing New Insights in Old—Archaeological—Territory

LOCKDOWN’S SURPRISE BENEFITS: REVEAL NEW INSIGHTS ON OLD—ROMAN—GROUND

MARCH MUSINGS IN THE WRITERS‘ CORNER—INSECURE WRITERLY STYLE—AFTER ONE YEAR OF SOCIETAL DISLOCATION, INNER DISRUPTION & FOLLOWING THE RULES

Writing—especially when done under difficult conditions—can, like many professions—medical, physical, psychological—bring joy, new discoveries, even resolve to beat one’s own record. When our usual comfort zone in the Writer’s Cave is threatened, writers, creative artists and humans generally have the capacity to hunker down and do what it required. We have had TIME to think, to be comfortable with ourselves, sometimes to open new doors we didn’t know existed.

Suggestions from the world of archaeology have indicated that long term study provided by enforced closure and reversion ‘to the books’ and laptop have produced remarkable new insights into what we thought was a locked-up world of Scotland’s Pictish past.

Fierce Pictish ‘beasts’ guard Class II relief slab at former early Xtian site in Conon Bridge, Easter Ross Black Isle. Rescue-restoring a previously-recycled 18thC McAuley tombstone, revealed affinity with larger group of Pictish relief cross-slabs Rosemarkie, Cromarty Firth and inner Morayshire, direct line to southern enclaves of Pictish centres Forfar, Brechin, Meigle. Pink granite stone will be on display after conservation in Dingwall museum.

The new Dingwall cross-slab is a uniquely significant western extension of the prestigious Pictish symbol-bearing relief sculpture of Easter Ross, notably connected with the tall slabs of Shandwick and Rosemarkie Dr. Isabel Henderson

Double disc, Z-rod & horsemen, 7thC similar to reliefs in ‘Kingdoms’ of Fib (Fife), Fotla, Fortriu (Forteviot) & Forgue are dominated by cross-carved interlace guarded by beasts on Christian side of 6-foot Conon megalith

Not so. In Pictland, the former Scotland, that is. With time on their hands, access to drone and digital technology, it’s all change.

So say archaeological field- and National Museum-based historians and archivists who have had amazing revelations on their doorstep appearing within last 24 months. With recent lockdown private time provided to reassess and appreciate collections and individual finds, their vision of North Britain in (1st C) Roman times and following Roman withdrawal in A.D. 420 has changed.

At the close of the 1st Century, when Roman legions were at their most adventurous and conquering best, the Empire stretched from modern Russian riviera in the Caucasus to Scotland’s Ultima Thule. Marching camps furthered the Roman reach beyond what would become Hadrian’s Wall, and while Romans never quite relaxed to enjoy the warm waters of Moray Firth and Cromarty—no lush villas built after Agricola’s seminal campaign, A.D. 83 below, as they did in the South near Bath, Colchester, St. Alban’s or Birdlip Gloucestershire. No swimming pools, games or multi-servant dining in the triclinium until autumn return to Rome. Nevertheless, Roman marching camps (following the few ancient tracks north) were substantially built upon—sometimes like Inchtuthil reworked to become fully-manned forts—Raedykes in Kincardine spanned 93acres/37ha. and was capable of housing three legions, or 16,000 troops.

A marching camp of similar size at Durno in Donside seems more likely to have fueled 11,000 legionaries ‘held in reserve’ at battle of Mons Graupius—on undulating lower ramparts of Mither Tap of Bennachie—in the Garioch*, while 3000 cavalry and 8000 British auxiliary infantry (according to Tacitus) alone decimated the screaming tribes numbering at least 30,000. *pron.Gee-ree

Pictish Placenames come to the Rescue

Cairnamounth pass between the Mearns (Kincardineshire) and Deeside (Aberdeenshire) has also been suggested, but no large Pictish royal centre lies south of River Dee at Banchory. Several Pictish placenames do help, however—Pictish Pitcaple Pet-capull ‘place of royal horse’ gives weight to a location closer to Bennachie. Kintore was built adjacent to a mile-long avenue of prehistoric cairns, circles and carved stone megaliths (Druidsfield, Broomend Crichie, Kintore kirkyard) sacred-ancestral to local tribes. Kintore-Inverurie corridor is lined by Pictish Class I (5thC-7thC) incised carved stones.

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  At the time of building Emperor Hadrian’s wall to keep out wild pagan Caledonii (A.D.122) Roman presence in NE Scotland followed ancient trackways from conquered territories in S, over the Mounth into Donside and via Aberdeen north to Fyvie, Banff and Moray coast, in order to control gold reserves and pre-Pictish sacred centres in Black Isle (Rosemarkie) and Cawdor

At the height of Agricola’s campaign, 20 years before the end of the 1st Century, according to his son-in-law, Tacitus, Rome could do no wrong. Twenty years earlier, her legions had defeated (tortured and killed) most of the Iceni under their great queen Boudicca, ransacked all the Brigantian gold reserves and sacred shrines they could find, and were on a mission to subdue the northern tribes: Dicalydones (Caledonian tribes in two main divisions) for their rich eastern landholdings.

Caledonians Unsubjugated, Rome Withdraws
By A.D.368, just thirty years before Roman withdrawal from Britain, Ammianus Marcellinus describes tribes of the Priteni [Picts] split into two by the Mounth: northern Dicalydones and Verturiones in the south. To Roman authors, Priteni-Britannii were linguistically just another people of Prydein. By the post-Roman (early Medieval) Dark Age, Caledonians had re-possessed their northern forests, the Fortriu people their rich lands of Perth, Kinross and Fife.

Tacitus was faithful to his father-in-law in the possibly fictitious speech he put in Caledonian chieftain Calgacus’ mouth:

Solitudinem faciunt pacem appelant

They create a wilderness and call it ‘peace’

Following the rout of local tribes by such a small Roman force—not even involving key legions— army ranged from 17,000 to 30,000; although Tacitus says that 11,000 auxiliaries were engaged, along with a further four squadrons of cavalry, the number of legionaries in reserve was iapproxunately 15,000—none deployed.

Caledonian chariotry was charging about on the level plain between both armies, their wooden war chariot wheels getting stuck in mud. Imagine Harthill Castle, Back of Bennachie, Gadie Burn hinterland, leading to Insch, the Cabrach, protective forest cover.

After a brief exchange of missiles, Agricola ordered auxiliaries to launch a frontal attack on the enemy. These were based around four cohorts of Batavians and two cohorts of (paid) Tungrian swordsmen intended to terrorize the tribes who were deployed in a U-shape upslope. Caledonians were cut down and trampled on the lower slopes of the hill. Those at the top attempted to outflank them, but were themselves outflanked by Roman cavalry. Caledonians were then comprehensively routed and fled for the shelter of nearby woodland, ‘relentlessly pursued’ by well-organised Roman units.

It is said that the Roman Legions took no part in the battle, being held in reserve throughout. According to Tacitus, 10,000 Caledonian lives were lost at a cost of only 360 auxiliary troops. 20,000 Caledonians retreated into the woods, where they fared considerably better against pursuing forces. Roman scouts were unable to locate any Caledonian forces the next morning.

Tacitus was succinct in his criticism of Agricola’s recall to Rome in the autumn of 83: having confiscated the Caledonians’ granary harvest—leaving the locals without food for winter—their subjugation was assured. It was a significant victory for Rome. Honors and illustrious awards awaited him, but the frontier he had opened shut down tight. Tacitus’ quote on his account of Roman history A.D.68-98 : Perdomita Britannia et statim missa ‘Britain was completely conquered and immediately let go’, showed his bitter disapproval of Emperor Domitian’s failure to unify the whole island under Roman rule after Agricola’s successful campaign.

Perdomita Britannia et statim missa Britannia was completely conquered and immediately allowed release

Retreat to Writer’s Cave When no Other Avenue on Offer

Given Tacitus’ example of a journalist’s account of an event outwith his area of conttrol (mostly), our suggestion to fellow scribes for March—one year down the line from a time when we had not a (writing) care in the world—must be to hold down that inner knowing that we’ll pull through; that we can (and will) find the words we’re looking for. And to use them as wisely—and with as much human compassion—f not love—as we can muster.

Because we know our writerly Muse has higher [consciousness] ancestral connections, who also look down—like Calgacus—from their virtual mountain perches, wishing us well and directing us—ever so gently—along this new, previously untrodden path. ©2021 Marian C. Youngblood

Sparrow in a Leopard’s World—SpaceHab Man who Lived many [Earth]Lives

SPARROW IN A LEOPARD’S WORLD—Bob Citron was a Giant under the Sheepskin Rug
No Wolf-in-Sheep’s Clothing, He Changed Space Travel Forever

Leopard from triclinium floor, preserved after Vesuvius eruption A.D.79

Buckminster Fuller said: I live on Earth at present and I don’t know what I am.   I do know that I am not a category, I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb. An evolutionary process—an integral function of the Universe.

Carl Sagan: The Universe is within us. We are capable of so much more than we allow.

Bride put her finger in the River
On the Feast Day of Bride
And away went the hatching Mother of the Cold. — Carmina Gadelica

February 2nd—sacred to pre-Celtic goddess Bride—Candlemas, Americans’ Groundhog Day celebrates Return-of-the-Light as Winter loses her grip. A cross-quarter day six weeks after Solstice, six weeks before Spring Equinox, the Spirit of Earth growth begins. In Scotland they hear first wrens building nests. Groundhog goes back to sleep for six weeks if the sun shines.

The Candlemas season—five days from end January thru first week of February—holds significance not just for our pagan brothers & sisters, but for the Space world—a date when fourteen astronauts, space engineers, orbiting teachers and NASA veterans died.

It is also the time when SpaceHab designer and astro traveler Robert A. Citron, rt. below, took his own rocket ship to the stars.

Man in SpaceHab suit, dinner jacket or archaeological welly boots, Citron sponsored Gerald Hawkins & Aubrey Burl, Argyll EEI expedition, 1974.

After a lifetime of adventure travel on Earth and vicariously in Space, Bob died at home in Bellevue, WA the same year Space Shuttle Endeavour, below left, made its final iconic parade through the streets of downtown Los Angeles. He must have known. Bob had “an intense desire for opening the Space Frontier to humans”, according to former senior advisor to NASA for Commercial Space, Charles Miller. He is survived by his third wife—an author—& children/grandchildren

Space Agencies hold annually January 31st as a multiple Day of Remembrance for the many fatal orbit/re-entry disasters in their Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. Shuttle Endeavour flew over Golden Gate bridge, San Francisco on its way to a home town parade LAX-to-Edwards Air Base 2017

Hawkins, rt. and Burl l. assess Kilmartin Glen stone alignment Argyll, EEI expedition 1974, photo GSHull

With Virgin Galactic‘s planning a launch date in two weeks’ time—February 13th 2021—for its next spaceflight, all eyes are on the skies—well, in places like Edwards’ Airforce Base, Kennedy Space Center, Smithsonian and the International Space Station, that is.

Apollo’s command module—susceptible to the flash fire that swept through Apollo-1 in January 1967—is decades later seen by the Space Agency as a ‘rare opportunity to rebuild with inspired help.’ NASA recalls the Apollo-1 incident every January in an annual Day of Remembrance. It also honors Space Shuttle Challenger, (1986) and Columbia (2003) crews, whose death date was also January. 31st.

Man’s First Footprints on the Moon—1969

On the 50th anniversary of the (1967) deaths of the first Apollo mission crew in January 2017, NASA unveiled a new exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center showing the hatches of the damaged command module’s SpaceHab compartment. NASA continues to hold a Day of Remembrance every January to mark the tragic event.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin sets up solar wind sail experiment on lunar surface July 1969, photo Neil Armstrong, whose first moondust footprints are visible, right.

2017, on fiftieth anniversary of death of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, NASA honored them. Day of Remembrance now held annually on last day of January.

Space Shuttle Endeavour’s 2017 aerial flypast Griffith Observatory, as NASA’s baby comes home to roost, following a ceremonial honor parade through streets of downtown L.A.

The Apollo program changed forever January 27, 1967, when a flash fire swept through the Apollo-1 command module during a launch rehearsal test at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Despite ground crew’s best efforts, the three men inside—breathing pure enriched oxygen—died. It would take more than 18 months of delay and extensive redesign before NASA sent more men into space. NASA held a special ceremony honoring Apollo-1 astronauts on the 50th anniversary of their deaths in January 2017, which included unveiling a new exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center showing the hatches of the damaged command module. NASA continues to hold a Day of Remembrance every January, to mark the event.

The 2017 exhibit honoring Apollo-1 crew at the Kennedy Space Center displayed the spacecraft’s damaged hatches—release doors on outside of SpaceHab interior human compartment . These release hatches were only discovered on the bottom of ocean floor—along with still-sealed SpaceHab capsule—pictured below left—in 1999.

Historical Picture puts Astronauts’ Life in Perspective

Apollo-1 crew commander, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, was an Air Force veteran of the Korean War. He was chosen among NASA’s first group of seven astronauts, the Mercury Seven. Grissom was America’s second person in space in 1961. On that mission, Mercury’s Liberty Bell 7, the hatch door blew for unknown reasons upon splashdown. Grissom ended up in the water and was rescued by a helicopter (which at first tried, in vain, to pick up the spacecraft; the spacecraft was later pulled from the ocean floor in 1999).

Some in the Astronaut Office were skeptical that Grissom’s reputation wouldn’t recover (many believed Grissom blew the hatch; he swore he didn’t). However, Grissom successfully commanded the first Gemini flight, Gemini-3, and was selected to do the same for Apollo.

Changes made to the design of Apollo spacecraft greatly improved crew safety. The crew’s flammable oxygen cabin environment used for ground tests was replaced by a safer nitrogen-oxygen mix. Flammable items were removed. Rapport developed between astronauts and contractors [SPACEHAB], pictured below left. Design changes used in the next mission series were geared to individual comfort and mobility. Most important, the door hatch was completely reworked so it would open in seconds, when the crew needed to get out in a hurry.

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  Spacehab crew quarters in Earth orbit

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Apollo-1 mission that never was—top center astronauts Roger Chaffee, Ed White and Gus Grissom, pic NASA/JPL-Caltech B
Space Shuttle launch aboard Saturn V rocket: early missions fraught with anxiety over temperature & design changes

SpaceHab, Diamond Ring, Peruvian Desert Art

Historically, none of this would have been possible, were it not for the ‘single-minded star-struck passion’ of inventor Bob Citron, whose first claim to astro fame was as a young student of aeronautical engineering at U.Inglewood: director of the Pacific Rocket Society’s ‘satellite tracking station’, he succeeded in tracking Sputnik-1 only 48 hours after the Russians’ surprise launch in 1957—the first American group to do so.

Citron worked for the Smithsonian Institution in Cambridge, Mass. for 17 years, establishing satellite tracking stations around the world, and creating and managing scientific field research projects. While at the Smithsonian he built and managed astrophysical research observatories in the USA, Spain, Norway, Ethiopia, South Africa, and India (1959–1968) and founded the Smithsonian Institution Center for Short-lived Phenomena (CSLP) in 1968. Purpose of the Smithsonian Satellite Tracking Program was to track satellites to determine precision orbits, in order to understand Earth’s atmosphere and to define the geodesy of planet Earth. Citron created and managed the Smithsonian Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP) program for NASA during the Apollo Program (1968–1972) and established the NASA/Smithsonian Skylab Earth Observing Program (1973–1974, disintegrated over Pacific 1979) during the post-Apollo period.

After launching Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Short-Lived Phenomena (CSLP) in Cambridge, Mass, 1968, and Educational Expeditions International, EEI in 1969, he concentrated on space travel—inside his space module. He created SPACEHAB—designed as result of his involvement with CSLP, adding enormous impetus to NASA’s Apollo program and Skylab (earth observatory). After his death the company changed hands, although Citron’s self-operating habitable system is still in use.

By 1983 his SpaceHab pressurized module designed to transport human passengers in the Space Shuttle’s cargo bay, was fully operational. Although NASA was cautious about its carrying humans in the module, it continues to serve the Agency a decade after his death. It carried cargo for scientific experiments, flying over 20 shuttle missions between 1993 and 2011.

Throughout his life he was an adventurer, a discoverer, an expedition-investigator. It is ironic that on the day he died January 31st [quietly at home with his third wife and family in the Pacific Northwest] was the anniversary of so many Space-related events—he must have had a reverse-lens telescope trained (from his cloud) on downtown Los Angeles as Space Shuttle Endeavour flew in on the back of a Boeing 747—or maybe he’ll be watching the skies when Virgin takes off in a couple of days.

Educational Expeditions International—EEI funded Smithsonian’s African total solar eclipse research in Mauritania, May 1973, where first-time hands-on telescopes captured ‘Diamond Ring’, the moment when solar orb reappears after totality.

Educational Expeditions International EEI-funded

One great earthly success in ‘adventure-expedition-learning’ was founding non-profit EEI—Educational Expeditions International—later Earthwatch—in Belmont, Mass., 1969. Ideas man and chairman of the board, he left the running of this groundbreaking group of scientists/students/research wannabes and volunteers to fellow business genius, managing director Brian Rosborough, a Jacksonville, Fla. aristocrat and fellow life-long student.

Brian oiled the scientific works, fueled expeditions and staffed international research projects with knowledgeable guides, on environmental or historical projects which otherwise would never have fledged. His great successes were the Mauritania total solar eclipse, 1973, above left, Tony Morrison’s Nazca Lines and Gerald Hawkins’s Megalithic Britain series of EEI expeditions in 1973-74, pictured top left.

Gerald S.Hawkins had previously been using the Smithsonian Institution’s building-size computer, to calculate and measure megalithic solar and lunar alignments at Stonehenge—his work innovative and now fully accepted. His work with EEI in Kilmartin and Mull of Kintyre was revolutionary and has wide acceptance. Hawkins went on to study crop circles until his death in May 2003.

Aftermath & Fast-forward

A longtime fan of all of the above, I am humbled by how History has dealt with of a group of men who were geniuses in their own way, sharing their passion with us, wannabe learners. And, to passionate teachers and influencers of children in our modern times—end January/festive Candlemas notwithstanding—I thank you. ©2021 Marian C. Youngblood

Satellites and Fairy Lights in Good Old Festive Tradition

SATELLITES AND FAIRY LIGHTS
Seasonal Catch-up Corner for IWSGers & Skywatchers
If you thought Cruithne was archetype king of Picts—check your Histories again.

‘Morsheimer do Cruithne clainn raindset Albain i secht raind; Cait, Cé, Cirig, cétach clann Fib Fidach, Fotla, Fortrenn Ocus is o ainm gach fir dib fil for a fearand.’

‘Seven of Cruithne’s children divided Alba into seven divisions; the portion of Cat, of Cé, of Cirig a warlike clan, the kingdoms of Fife, Fidach, Fotla and Fortriu; and the name of each of them remains upon his land.’
Scots 12thC version of ‘lost’ Pictish Chronicle

21st Century Cruithne Orbits the Sun
Since 1997, Cruithne has been monitored by the European version of SETI—Carl Sagan’s fave extra-terrestrial intelligence search engine—as our closest “near-earth satellite”. [Not including the ICBMs and other space junk we throw up into orbit]. It even has its own space number—3753—though it may take some time to figure out where the other 3752 satellites roam within our inner solar system!

December’s Tree-Popping Moon

Recent volcanic activity in the Arctic threatened unseasonal nesting terns in Franz Josef Land

2017 seems to be going out with a bang. Despite the drawback of Mercury going retrograde for the first 23 days, a Gemini Full Moon—native American ‘Tree-Popping Moon’—brought an atmosphere of unreality—cotton-mouth of the brain—through the season’s open door, with romance, magic, confusion; but look out for deceit. It’s as if we’re already at the party, a fog machine’s running, and we’re wearing novelty glasses with rose-colored lenses.

Smack in the middle of the festivities, illusionist Neptune stands, in an exact T-square to the Sun and Moon. Its force both escalates and forces out fantasy, lies, and fraud, while doing the same with love, compassion, empathy and divine guidance. Because of Mercury’s spin retrograde, communications, transportation and moving around are difficult.

In this atmosphere, emotions may be clouded, confusing, muffled, or blissing us out to an extreme. We IWSGers may be float around in a daze. Our reaction to information may push us to escapism—never a bad thing for a writer—or binging, or retreating into a fantasy land.

Simultaneously.

Don’t Despair, Dragons Are There
Thankfully there is hope for discernment and possible safe passage through the Christmas rush—that single release point to the T-square’s pressure—the empty space in Virgo, opposite Neptune. Virgo, having given birth to Jupiter so recently, is empty: she helps us chew over things, call timeout, redraw boundaries, assist in navigating the haze.

A surprising lifeline to stabilization comes via Mercury. Even though he’s retrograde, he is conjunct Saturn, who brings order and slow, deliberate movement, underscoring the molasses feel of the retrograde station.

Handpainted dragon mask, glued on to brown paper bag, courtesy Ms. Rose

Order doesn’t mean same old, same old, though, as Saturn’s journey in the last year has shown. Innovative perspectives, approaches, and paradigms are all over 2017 Gemini Full Moon activity. They’re coming not just into consciousness, but into being, via a trine from this pair to Mercury’s genius uncle, Uranus. Visionary and radical change agent of the cosmos, Uranus is tossing intermittent lightning bolts, which pierce the fog and illuminate what’s inside. See last month’s excitement with Uranus.

When they hit, we’re not doomed to reacting like a deer in headlights. An epidemic of remarkable emotional flexibility and nimbleness is available, through the Moon’s benevolent trine to Jupiter with his generous powers of expansion. Since the great benefactor is in the intense waters of Scorpio, this connection makes it possible to perceive more deeply, into one’s self as well as others, than our usual Gemini surface-skating mindset.

As old secrets and previously hidden truths surface, we have to face/respond to them.

Doorways are opening; opportunities to move are within reach through the Mercury/Saturn conjunction’s sextile to Mars in Libra. Action in or through relationships is the key, such as discussing terms for structure or commitment, or a close ally offering a helping hand.

Maybe time to set the scene for a new novel, Alex? IWSG-ers all?

As we wander through the fog, it may feel vaguely familiar. Remember the mutable grand cross of June 2016? That sense of watching events play out without our ability to steer or direct.

Are we prepared for a blue moon on New Year’s Day, 2018? Or an extra Cruithne companion, perhaps?
©2017 Marian Youngblood

500 Days till 12:XII:TWELVE: Crop Circle prophecies

500 Days until 12:XII:TWELVE

'Angel' crop circle Barbury Castle, July 2, 2011: dimensional wormhole or Mayan 13-moon calendar? Images courtesy CircleChasers & Nardeep Pujji

Humanity loves prophecies: our histories are full of them.

According to several ancient cultures, we are entering a new phase in human development, human consciousness, earth-consciousness, union with the Divine.

Astrology was to the ancestral mind a gift from the future, the heavenly bodies’ allowing the human race a glimpse of time’s far shore, a beacon through uncharted waters –literally steering the human vessel by the stars. And –however skeptical you may be– all ancient cultures had their oracle, allowed themselves to be guided by astrological readings based on ever-changing celestial movement and planetary alignments and collisions.

Many have become dissociated from the daily rhythms of the Earth, forget to look nightly at the stars and their feelings seem divorced from reality –whatever that is. The thought of one’s emotions actively being influenced by the electromagnetic and orbital changes of planets in the solar system — let alone the distant stars — is often ridiculed as being naïve, even ignorant.

Solstitial full moonrise, stone circle Northeast Scotland Midwinter 2004, photo Marian Youngblood

But our ancestors were not ignorant. Unlike us, they were daily in touch with the earth, aware of her ‘forcefield’ — for want of a better word– her seismic and electromagnetic fluctuations which altered weather patterns, brought bounty and drought, changed seasons. They were so aware of such regular rhythmical cycles that they devised stone circles to measure and signal points in that cosmic compass, hours/days in that solar and lunar calendar. From modern scientific data collected at some stone circles, it is thought likely that our ancestors knew where and when risings of the sun and moon affected rings of stone to produce increased ‘flow’ — a power not unlike electricity as we know it.

The calendar of the ancient Maya has become significant in recent times as a wayshower to help us navigate through the choppy waters of group consciousness. In Mayan calculation, their ancient Long Count calendar — a measure of Man’s rising to meet the gods — is beginning to wind down. We are approaching the End Times, the Moment of Cosmic All-change, the point on the ecliptic where the Sun (and the Earth in orbit around it) comes into conjunction with the center of our Galaxy at 11:11 on December solstice 2012.

There are 500 days from Lammas this year to the 10-day prelude to solstitial union with galactic center: on 12:12:12 we shall either have completed planetary ascension or we will know our work has been in vain. I prefer to think we shall complete the program — that we as a species are destined to rise to the challenge facing us.

New Age philosophy and astrology support a path to ascension required of its vision-keepers, lightworkers (through meditation and right living) as a process of uniting these two conflicting polarities, emphasizing the need to bring harmony to the male-female yin-yang, left and right brain hemispheres which must operate before the Earth may return to a balanced state of wholeness and oneness.

Life spiral: 2011 crop circle at Avebury Trusloe July 13th (left) & neolithic carved rock, Argyll c. 3000BC

Crop circles this month have featured both the yin-yang (Louth, July 20), several spirals (July 13 Avebury) and an elaborate serpent motif (Inkpen, July 29), the symbol of all life, as well as orbiting bodies reminiscent of the inner solar system. See Siderealview blog for more detail.

The serpent, symbolic of Life, seen in the snaking of equinox sunset light down the pyramid of Chichen Itza, is common to many archaic worlds: medical science’s caduceus, Hermes the messenger to the gods, and the Garden of Eden would not be the same without him.

According to the ancient Maya, he rises through the world Ages, culminating with the flowering of human consciousness — NOW. To the Maya in their Long Count calendar, the Cosmos consists of Nine Underworlds or levels of development that complete in 2012. So important to their cosmological measurements were the numbers Nine (levels), Twenty (days, katun) and Thirteen (moons) that these powerful digits were expressed in their most significant monument construction. Mayan pyramids all have nine tiers or platforms.

The twenty-year (katun)cycle is intrinsic in all their calculation.

The longest tun-based time cycle was called the hablatun, each totalling 460,800.000,000 days = 1.26 billion years. Thirteen hablatuns made up the first Underworld (the initial creation cycle, beginning 3114BC) giving a total duration of 13 x 1.26 MM days or 16.4 billion years. This time period of 16.4 billion years is very close to current scientific estimates for the formation of matter from light at the birth of creation, or the ‘Big Bang’.

Each of the nine levels represented a different Underworld — expressed horizontally in the pyramids’ construction. Just as the levels of the pyramids are seen to become progressively smaller as they tier towards the top, so too the amount of time in each Underworld becomes shorter in duration as they progress hierarchically through the calculation.

It is interesting in a lunar calendrical context that this weekend –July 31-August 1– marks the Leo New Moon: a powerful coming-together of celestial forces following on from the Mayan Day-out-of-time, Monday 25 July 2011. And on August 1st we, the human race, walk through the dimensional wormhole and enter the Fifth Day of the Ninth and final Underworld of the Mayan Longcount.

This coincides with Lammas, Celtic quarter day, fire festival of the ancient Britons which was celebrated at the height of Nature’s season of bounty, the middle of the fruiting year when Earth empties her cornucopia into the laps of an unsuspecting world. As the midpoint (in all calendars ancient and modern) between summer solstice, June 21st, and autumn equinox, Septmember 23rd, Lammas —Lughnasad, the festival of light god, Lugh, revered in indigenous harvesting communities in the Old World– marks the point in the celestial sphere where the Sun culminates, arriving at 15 Leo on August 7th, a week from now.

Ancient Brittonic communities marked Lammas as the most joyous of all fire festivals, often feasting and dancing, sharing and giving for three weeks before LAMMAS and three weeks after. During the Neolithic, stone circles were used for such fire festivals, the central floor marked by successive generations of fire-burning, heavily pounding feet which revellers flattened like a remarkably sophisticated dance arena.

Video of West Woodhay Down, Inkpen crop circle July 29th 2011,
thanks to Shumnyabai (Joan Wheaton): Divine Serpent with Neptunian forked tongue and rattler tail reflecting Maya god Kukulkan (Quetzalcoatl), the divine feathered serpent who gives life.

Miniature tufted crop circle appeared in pristine East Field, Alton Barnes on the morning of July 26, 2011, after a night of torrential rain, photo courtesy Bert Janssen

Now, in the 21stC, we are greeted with the mystical equivalent for our time — crop circles, created electromagnetically — and capable, through the miracle of late age images and electronic media, of stimulating our primeval alert system, piqueing our human pineal gland into producing natural mellowing melatonin and driving our dormant DNA into revving up to a higher gear. We are entering the brief Mayan Fifth Day — a portal of opportunity which completes on August 17th.

We should use it.

HUMANITY HEALING alert
Humanity Healing Community acts as one of the new world’s wayshowers in suggesting that the arrival of the Lammas/New Moon/Fifth Day is even more potent because as a point in consciousness — it encourages us to choose actively how we want our new world to be.

Roundway(2) pine cone crop circle, July 25, 2011. The human pineal gland is massively affected by sunlight, goes into catatonia if deprived of light

‘What do you Want?
The Universe is asking and waiting for your answer.
The cosmic force of Creation needs you to focus the lens, to get clear on your vision, your dreams, your intent. You can take a giant step forward with whatever you want this weekend when three energetic gateways converge.
There is both an opportunity and a responsibility in this.’
Humanity Healing: A call to focus

Thoughts, intent, actions, emotions are intensified — go quantum — at a time like this. The energetic portal is more than an opportunity given us by our overlighting Presence — Humanity’s Oversoul — it is an instruction. We can each make a difference, add a contribution to the fate of the human race.

This may sound rather dramatic. Actually, it is. This is a time, unprecedented in human history. On the esoteric level, we are told we asked to come and to be here –incarnate– at this time. On the psychic level, we are sensing a coming-together of many traditions, a meeting of minds from many populations and backgrounds. Many spiritual leaders of the world’s diverse faiths are encouraging us –willing us to take the plunge.

Planetary transformation. It’s what Carl Sagan would have called our stepping up to take on the mantle of a Level I civilization. He and Kardashev would have been proud.

Prophecies of indigenous people everywhere point to the times we are going through now as a period of intense purification, a transition from our current cycle to whatever comes next.

Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation; Chief of the Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs, Iroquois Confederacy

“So then, what is the message I bring to you today? Is it our common future? It seems to me that we are living in a time of prophecy, a time of definitions and decisions. We are the generation with the responsibilities and the option to choose the the path of life for the future of our children, or the life and path which defies the Laws of Regeneration. Even though you and I are in different boats –you in your boat and we in our canoe — we share the same River of Life: what befalls me, befalls you. And downstream, downstream in this River of Life, our children will pay for our selfishness, for our greed, and for our lack of vision.

“500 years ago, you came to our pristine lands of great forests, rolling plains, crystal clear lakes and streams and rivers. And we have suffered in your quest for God, for Glory, for Gold. But, we have survived. Can we survive another 500 years of ‘sustainable development?’ I don’t think so. Not in the definitions they put ‘sustainable’ in today. I don’t think so. So, reality and the natural law will prevail: The Law of the Seed and Regeneration.

“We can still alter our course. It is NOT too late. We still have options. We need the courage to change our values to the regeneration of our families, the life that surrounds us. Given this opportunity, we can raise ourselves. We must join hands with the rest of Creation and speak of Common Sense, Responsibility, Brotherhood, and PEACE. We must understand that The Law *is* the Seed and only as True Partners can we survive.”
Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, and a Chief of the Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs

All the Prophets said this moment would come. The Hopi say we are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the Bird Tribes, circling and massing, congregating for our shared flight through cyberspace, to reach consciousness, nay, communion with that all-pervasive force of the Universe, call it what you will. We have five hundred days to go. So, are we ready?

Coincidental with the 500-day look ahead, Father Time is presenting us with a seven-day energy window in present time for us to focus our intent. From Ramadan/new moon through Mayan 5 I’x (Gregorian August 3rd,2011 –this week) until August 5th–still to come– we would do well to use this cosmic energetic helper: 5 I’X was to the Maya symbolic of the Force of the Universe and the day of commemoration of the World.

As a springboard from which we step off and project ourselves into the new, Culture has not prepared us for what comes next. No avid scanning of ancient texts, no guru, no world leader, no reincarnation of the Spirit of Delphi or channeled message from Arcturus can prepare us any better than we can ourselves for what may greet us on the other side of this Portal in contemporary Time.

The Human Race has reached the Finish Line. We have to step forward and claim our prize, some call it our birthright, gird our loins and step into the blue yonder.

The energy window is OPEN. Let’s fly together.

What a trip.

©2011 Marian Youngblood

The Future is Crystal –reworking a WIP

Celestial motif at Honey Street, crop circle formation of June 26, 2011, photo Gordon Burns

When the Crop Circle season really gets going, as it did last week in mid-June this year, their mesmerizing patterns seem to reach out and grab hold of human imagination. And, if you’re a croppie they don’t let go until you’re thoroughly immersed in the ethos of their messages and their beautiful craftsmanship in the corn.

I am hooked every year: I go through the unbeliever stage in early April, when it’s a question of ‘will they–won’t they appear?’ and then when midsummer comes [this year, 2011, the main season was unimaginably late and huge doubt attended any crop appearance], I’m a convert all over again.

In winter the mind wanders to what seasonal miracles appeared and what might have been.

I wrote a whole crop circle-cum-crystal novel for a writing contest in the month of January 2010 and have yet to polish and rework, re-edit and improve it for final submission. So, it is still a work-in-progress, my current WIP. But, because we’re in mid-crop circle season right now, I am daring to share just a taste of its flavor: hope you enjoy. This is one of the middle chapters for
THE FUTURE IS CRYSTAL.

THE FUTURE IS CRYSTAL by Marian Youngblood Chapter TWENTY–ONE
Just as Mark said it would, the trail led towards the main section: the astrolabe, he called it. On the ground you couldn’t tell, but Megan had overheard Colin and Mark discussing over Mark’s laptop, the intricate way the crop circle had been laid out, complete with its new tail formation that had happened in a flash of light last night. The whole thing was beyond amazing. This time the light orbs, the crop circle creators or whatever you wanted to call them, had done something truly out of this world. And, even more miraculous, Mark had managed to capture them on film with his special Kirlian camera.
Even more miraculous, Megan had managed to get some real cool footage on her own camera. It was just a regular state-of-the-art video, but when Colin persuaded Mark to upload the results, she was thrilled to see she had actually got light orbs on screen. How cool was that.

Astrolabe crop circle from solstice, June 21st, 2009, 'phase one' at Alton Barnes

Now they followed Colin along the curved line through the ‘orbit’ he’d chanced upon first off: looked like Jupiter at the central axis, he said, but each orbit had smaller shadows leading to the largest planetary body. If they followed the Jupiter orbit all the way round they’d reach the astrolabe. From the main stem, they could see it all laid out, straight down the field into the distance — at least four football pitches — down the central axis of the tail.
 He led them carefully along the single file path, moving from the smallest circle to one slightly larger, then larger then larger as they progressed along the orbital arm.
Megan followed close behind with the others trailing a little. She paced slowly past neatly-folded wheat stalks lying exactly parallel one with the other as if a medieval monk had come and gently laid each bundle of stems in neat rows like a rush mat leading to a temple. Colin heard Megan’s breathing –- gentle and rhythmical -– measure for measure placing her footsteps where he put his. Neither of them wanted to disturb the pattern, lying so lovingly in a prearranged layout, willing them on through a series of ever larger ‘moons’ to where the orbits connected to the central solar system axis. From there, Colin was determined, from what he’d seen on Mark’s screen, that the pattern opened out and they would find a space to set down all their equipment and really get a feel for the place.

Alton Barnes Astrolabe crop circle 2009 'second phase', June 22nd

There was definitely a sensation in the air and it wasn’t only his sensing like a dowser: he could feel it: a tangible electrical charge.

‘These stems are bent at the node ever so gently, but the stem isn’t bruised or broken in any way. It’s amazing.’ Megan was right behind him.

‘I know; I was noticing that. It’s so carefully contrived.’
Colin couldn’t help himself. He was quick to launch into the scientific explanation, given any excuse. He continued to pace slowly forward, but spoke quietly over his shoulder to her.
‘You know, It’s been scientifically documented that soil samples taken from inside crop circles show changes in crystalline structure and mineral composition. Expert analysis concludes that heat of 1500ºC would be needed to create such a change.’ Megan gasped, but kept her feet on the path in front of her.

‘So the orbs we saw last night were capable of that kind of heat?’

‘Seems so.’

‘Unbelievable.’ They both continued pacing, aware that the other two were gradually catching up with them.
Mark gave a hoot, like a bird. He too must have noticed the bent nodes on the unbruised plants.

‘There’s a big one up ahead,’ Colin called out, knowing Megan was so close behind him she probably couldn’t see, but to give the others a brief guide. Even though these new generation wheat crops were agriculturally developed to grow roughly no higher than knee height, it was still pretty difficult to get any kind of vista; Colin could see a widening area, with a lot of tufted decorative clumps surrounding it like cherries on a Christmas cake. It had to be the joining of phases one and two and the start of phase three.
He decided to continue his little lecture, since Megan was probably new to the whole thing and might be interested. He’d always been quick to spot a new convert.

‘Did you know crop circles also show evidence of ultrasound? you know, the kind of frequencies that are known to hover at ancient sites like Avebury, stone circles and such like?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ She sounded interested. So he went on.

‘And like all ancient sacred sites, crop circles appear at the intersecting points of the Earth’s magnetic pathways of energy; the nodes. Therefore the size and shape of a crop circle is typically determined by the area and position of these node points at the time of their appearance.’

‘Sorry, you lost me there. I don’t quite get that. Say again.’

‘Well, this electric and magnetic energy, it’s quite common here round Avebury. The whole of Wiltshire, in fact; the Salisbury plain…’

‘Yes, I know about Stonehenge.’ She was still following devotedly, both his argument and his footsteps. He liked that.

‘Thing is, it usually happens in chalk; not so common elsewhere. There are areas where they have similar electromagnetism, parts of Oxfordshire have deep underground waterways, aquifers — and Northumbria. Northeast Scotland is pretty heavily imbued with it. But there the aquifers are in granite. It’s something they think may even have protected the ancient sites -– here especially -– from being broken up; something about it that can interact with human brainwave patterns, and because the human body is itself electromagnetic, crop circles are known to affect people’s biorhythms. Consequently, it’s not unusual for people to experience heightened states of awareness and spontaneous healings in crop circles –- a situation also common to sacred sites and holy places. That effect alone could have protected them from desecration.’

‘That’s interesting.’


Milk Hill, Alton Barnes crop circle phase three (end June, 2009), the 'tail' of the astrolabe, photo Lucy Pringle

‘So, you’ve noticed?’

‘Yes. For instance, back there, in that first little circle, I didn’t want to leave.’

‘I have to say you’re not alone in this. It’s been talked about a lot in recent years. The crowd that gathers at crop circles is usually very placid, peaceful. No rowdy demonstrations like a street crowd after a football match.’ He thought that was a pretty good analogy.

‘I wouldn’t expect that anyway. Must attract a different group, these formations.’

‘Yes.’
‘
So what were you saying about ultrasound? I thought lights were making the circles. Are you saying both sound and light?’

‘There’s no evidence to suggest…’ he stopped and looked back at her. ‘…until what your camera picked up last night. Now we’ll have to start all over.’ He laughed.

‘Well, what about the scientific evidence? You said…’

‘Yes. scientifically speaking, the plants are subjected to a short and intense burst of heat which softens the stems to bend 90º at the plant node just above the ground. They seem to re-harden into their new position without damage. They keep on growing. Research and lab tests suggest that ultrasound is capable of producing that kind of effect.’

‘But short bursts of intense LIGHT could do it, too, right?’

‘Well, with what you just provided the scientific establishment –- I mean, your great video footage -– might send them all back to the drawing board.’ He looked over his shoulder and gave her a congratulatory smile.

‘Wow. I like that. But it doesn’t explain how some of the crop lies in one direction and right next to it there it is lying at right angles; sometimes you get four different directions going in one space.’

‘True. I don’t know how they DO it. I just know that the process has been isolated to make it possible.’

‘Ah. So you don’t really know either. We’re all still guessing when it comes to the magical quality and the designs they come up with, right?’

‘Right.’ Colin thought he’d need a whole lot more time back at the drawing board to convince this new audience. He changed the subject. ‘Clearing coming up.’

‘OK.’ Megan glanced back. The other two had caught up and were right behind her. ‘Could you see anything as you came along? I’ve been a little in the shadow of the expert, here. Dogging his footsteps.’ She burst out laughing and Jane joined in.

‘Yes. He CAN get to be a little pedantic.’ Colin did not react. He’d apparently heard it all before. He stepped into the new space, stopped and laid his bags down gently on the matted ground.
The others joined him and paused to survey their new surroundings.

The vista was breathtaking. It did have a magical feel and it spread out in a swirling pattern that looked phenomenal. Like all the smaller circles, growing in size as they progressed round the curve, as well as the padded path by which they entered, the whole quadrant they stood in was matted at a level less than an inch above the ground and folded criss–cross over and back like a woven blanket. Only where the pattern reached the circle’s central point, did the direction and flow of the lay change, going the opposite way.
They were standing in an ellipse, rather than a pure circle; more the shape of a facial oval. There were four quadrants each with a separate directional lay. This gave the pattern a three – dimensional effect, foreshortening the optical distance, so the far edge of the ellipse seemed closer that it actually was. From their perspective, the complete formation must have stretched as much as thirty feet across and forty feet from side to side. They’d come in on a lateral arm of what appeared to be a graphical rendition of the sun, round which the planets with their little moons –- the spaces they’d walked through were Jupiter’s moons –- clung on one arm.
‘See how those two sides are like an ellipse stretched into points of a compass. Two points: left and straight across, forming a geometric outline. That leads to the sextant instrument, I’m sure of it. It’s acting like a compass needle for the astrolabe itself.’ The other three were silent, in awe of the formation. They let Colin speak. A third arm, to their right didn’t actually project, but led the eye all the way down the field, stretching to where they had parked the car. It had to be fully 800 feet long. 
Mark immediately dug out the laptop from his bag and dropped everything else on the ground.

‘I want to see how it compares: now that we have a kind of aerial shot, thanks to Megan and her camera last night, we can see exactly how it connects from here. The ground falls away from us to where the car is parked. Can you see?’ He pointed to nobody in particular. He was joined immediately by the two girls.
Colin started setting up his dowsing rods next to where he’d dropped his baggage on the forgiving wheat. He turned to Jane, who was starting to gesture if she should help.

‘No, you go ahead. It’s a great video. You should really see what it’s like, so you get an idea of our position here -– makes sense. Super idea, Mark.’ He left them in full chatter, and got back to hooking up his equipment.
Mark was already revving up. He had a rapt audience. He started pointing and gesticulating, fully absorbed.


Immaculate central 'lay' of the June 18th 2011 formation at Cow Drove Hill, Kings Somborne, Hampshire

‘See. We’re in the oval here, sort of the ‘face’ of the Sun and from here the full extent of all three phases are visible: not as brilliantly as Megan’s shots, but…’ He keyed up the passage in the footage where the final tail was completely formed, connecting the other two phases, but before it started standing on its tail like a 3D mirage. ‘Now, watch this.’ He went back a couple of minutes to where the orbs were actually forming the tail with its elusive coded symbols.
‘See how they do it? You’ve got the pattern with its teardrop-shaped center – that’s us here… then there’s the configuration of four connected circles on one side and five more circles of increasing diameters on arcs tethered back to the teardrop center. This is the one we came in on. That’s the bit these light guys’ buddies made last week. Phase one the astrolabe; phase two the planets in orbital arcs. The orbits, the little moons we walked through -– they’re just that bit more complex than the first. They happened overnight, too. Then five days later Megan and I get to see a third addition. And see…’ He traced with his finger on the screen the path the orbs had made. ‘See how they just etch and move, etch another line and move. It appears in seconds.’

‘Awesome.’ Both girls spoke together.
‘Kinda like Maya symbols or something from the early Mid–East –- scripts: you know, cuneiform.’

‘Wow. You’re right, Megan. Hear that, Colin? Megan says like Sumerian cuneiform or Egyptian hieratic. It is, you know.’

‘Problem is deciphering.’ Colin didn’t raise his head. He was preoccupied with his rods.

‘Has to be over eight hundred feet in length from the tip of that compass point back there to the other end of the tail, don’t you think, Colin?’

‘Yeah, one thousand feet, easily.’ He was still fixing rods together.
Megan had perceived something else. She was also pointing first to the laptop screen and then out into space over the field.

‘Each of the tail lines of code or whatever they are come up and attach to the ends of each orbit arc. Do you see that, Jane? sort of like a balance like the way you hold your crystal when you’re dowsing.’
Jane peered over her shoulder with a knowing look and then out at the field.

‘You’re right. The damn thing is telling us dowsing code. Did you get that, Colin?’ she called.

But this time Colin was up and away, totally engrossed in his own world, following his rods where they led him, outward from the middle of the ellipse toward a point where the solar system took off into the imaginary world of dreams: the tale of tails, the stuff of fantasy.

‘I think you’re right there, Megan. Better get my crystals into action.’ And Jane dug her quartz out of her pocket and held it up in front of her face.
The pale transparent beauty hung completely motionless for a moment, dangling in sympathy with the still air and glinting in the sunshine at the end of its slender thread. Then, as they watched, imperceptibly at first and then with more momentum, it began a clockwise spin.

Mark went back to studying the laptop images, but Megan couldn’t. She was completely mesmerized by the gleaming orb.
@2010-2011 Marian Youngblood ‘The Future is Crystal’

Three 2011 crop circles cluster round Honey Street: Barge Inn at upper left with orb #1CC left; centre #2 Knave of Swords, July 4th; upper right #3 cuneiform script, also July 4th, photo Olivier Morel

Interestingly, in 2011, when the season started to get busy — from summer solstice on — a series of ‘orb/orbit’ crop circle images have appeared — at Kings Somborne, Hampshire and near the Barge Inn at Honey Street, Wiltshire. The Barge Inn is famous for its ‘croppie’ clientele and, without fail, the fields in its vicinity get adorned every year at this time. Last year it was the 08/08 Honey Street fractal; this year there have already been three formations: two on July 4th and the spinning space object (photo, top, June 26th, 2011).

There has been much speculation and discussion about incoming intruders from space. Least of these was the June 27th Antarctic special, a non-starter, asteroid 2011-MD, so-called asteroid-doc, which passed earth at 1700UT with 7000 miles to spare. Others include varying reports on the threat posed by comet 2010-X1 Elenin, expected to cross Earth orbit in September. All seem to feature in the rash of orbiting bodies pictured in the 2011 crop circles.

This year’s season, having started late, may still surprise us. If you like, you can take this excerpt of my novel, The Future is Crystal, as a little taster of croppie things to come.
©2011Marian Youngblood

July 4th Honey Street Crop formation #3 points North (rt): 'Milk Hill' script, cuneiform or alien code?

postscriptum: when I posted the above ‘flash fiction’ excerpt from one of my chapters, I wasn’t expecting corroboration… but the Honey Street #3 crop circle which appeared a.m. July 4th is indeed a version of cuneiform [like 1991 Milk Hill coded script] mentioned in my text. Woo-hoo! MY

Midwinter Solstice: Return of the light

Sine umbra nihil

Burning the Clavie at Burghead, Moray

MIDWinter Fire festivals were ancient man’s most fervent prayer to the Universe to return the light to the earth after the shortest day.

At 57º North latitude in Scotland, the equivalent in North America of the parallel of Juneau, Alaska, there aren’t a lot of hours of light in December and January. By the time solstice – the day the sun appears to stand still – December 21st – arrives, ancient man was getting to the point where it was going to get dark forever, unless something was done to propitiate the spirit world.

In the earliest known Calendars devised by Arabian astronomers, even the balmy latitudes of the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas saw a dwindling of the light. And so when Neolithic man erected stone circles and sacred precincts of stone leading the eye to the horizon to a point where the sun set on midwinter’s day, he did it for a most urgent purpose: to ask the Light of the Universe, the Sacred Fire, to return.

What better way to kindle the blessing of the gods of light and fire than with fire itself?

In Northeast Scotland, where recumbent stone circles abound, the recumbent or ‘resting’ stone lies in the southwestern quadrant of the circle, flanked by two carefully chosen pillars of stone (quartz, quartzite, granite with inclusions to reflect the light), creating a window on the horizon where the midwinter sun goes down. At 4:00 p.m.!

Aberdeenshire's recumbent stone circles' window on the horizon

It is more than seventeen hours before it rises again. Seventeen hours must have created an enormous hiatus of doubt and disbelief in the minds of ancient communities whose shaman or holy man might be the only one who knew the light would return. But did they? It is no wonder that oral tradition handed down tales of the supernatural abilities of such knowledgeable men.

We have no record of how such workers of celestial magic were named in the time of the first farmers, the Neolithic communities who raised the megaliths of Aberdeenshire.

But by the time of Roman historians, like Tacitus and Ptolemy, who wrote of ancient Britons’ ‘great powers’, Roman respect for the Celtic peoples of Europe and the Druids of the Britannia was great. Ptolemy and Caesar record phenomenal belief by the people in their magicians, their Druids, their ‘keepers of knowledge’ and rightly so. The Celtic traditions known to the Gauls owed their origins to the British druidic élite. Much veneration and respect was paid in Gaul to this small group of islands lying in Ultima Thule, or in Roman slang ‘off the map’ on the edge of the Roman Empire.

Sun and moon markers embedded in stone

Certainly by the time of our Pictish ancestors – those whom the Romans called the Caledonians – stone circles were in constant use for fire festivals and seasonal rites of propitiation for the welfare of the community. The Picts also had their own druidic priest class like those of Wales and other Brittonic peoples. And their power to be seen to command the elements of fire, water, wind and earth were extraordinarily great. Annals and documents from Gaul, Cornwall, Brittany and Rome confirm their hold over the people, not only to guide farming work through the annual cycle, but also to act as advisor to queens and kings.

By the ancient Celtic calendar, known to the Romans as their equivalent of the Julian method of calculation, there were ten months in the year and thirteen moons. Man moved according to the sun for daily light and warmth, but owed allegiance to the moon for rhythms of planting and harvest, the female menstrual cycle and hence the cycle of birth and death. The Julian calendar was a ruling force for fifteen hundred years, until it started to lose time.

By then the Church, mathematicians and enlightened astronomers had stepped in to alter the rhythm to run more closely with human time. Most nations changed over to the new calendar after it was decreed law by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. But the Orthodox Greek and Russian Churches refused to change. Other nations remained staunchly in favour of the older calculation. Among these were Ethiopia and Russia, who did not accept European calendar reckoning until 1750. Ethiopia still does not.

And Burghead in Moray.

In Burghead they burn the clavie to celebrate the return of the light of a dying sun. An ancient rite practised on the night of solstice in pre-Christian times, to propitiate and ask the dying sun to return, its confused calendrical transposition to January 11th can only be slightly rationalized by calendar change. Nevertheless, it is on this date that Burghead has through oral tradition and in living memory rekindled and paraded its torch of blazing fire.

It’s a little more complex than merely holding to the old calendar. Well-wishing for a new year is what we do in the Northeast of Scotland when the calendar points to January. It’s called Hogmanay. It was always so. Or was it?

In Gregorian, we count this as 2009; about to go 2010. It is already 5770 Jewish time. The month of February 2010 opens the Chinese year of the Tiger; on February 22 Islam moves into 1431. For Sikhs, new year (542) comes just before vernal equinox when Hindus (2067) and Persians (1389) celebrate, just as we used to before the Julian calendar adjusted new year from March to January.

Clavie Crew hoist the burning barrel and parade it round the town

This is no surprise to the Clavie Crew of Burghead on the Moray coast. They still run on Julian time.

When Scotland changed calendars in 1660, there was much misunderstanding in country districts – the loss of 11 days was seen as someone in a position of power having robbed them of important events. This was also a period of change in parishes because of the implementation of new church doctrines introduced at the Reformation. Calendars in Church records added to the confusion by writing numbers in ‘Old Style’ and ‘New Style’. It caused so much concern that Old Parish Records (OPR) had to show both systems. Births in the OPR are recorded for several years in both Old and New Time.

Also at the Reformation pre-Christian festivals, such as clavie-burning and fire festivals at Beltane, Hallowe’en and harvest too, were frowned on. On the other hand, local tradition was strong: it was commonplace to mark the return of the light after midwinter in all northern communities and northeastern ports. Such pagan celebrations as ‘fire leaping’ and dancing round the fire within the precinct of stone circles was still known in 1710 and harvest fire festivals continued unabated until the year 1942. Gradually, however, other celebrations and farming fire festivals started to die out.

When the other northern ports stopped their Clavie burning in winter after the first World War, Burghead held on. After the second War, it continued to celebrate as it had always done. It has continued to do so ever since, except for two of the years during the 1939-45 European War.

Now only two villages hold to the ancient tradition: a pre-Christian ritual of celebrating the closing of one seasonal door and the opening of another.

Stonehaven in Kincardineshire celebrates with a street festival of fireball-swingers. Both festivities are awe-inspiring, if marginally dangerous to watch. It must be awesomely perilous for those involved. On Hogmanay night Steenhivers have a street party to end all street parties. Whereas Burghead only spills combustible materials over the shoulders of Clavie-bearers, Stonehaven delights in spinning fire in clumps into an unwary crowd.

Stonehaven has conceded to the newer calendar, swinging its crazy fire balls on Hogmanay; yet it is celebrating the same midwinter seasonal hinge as the Clavie Crew of Burghead: The end of the Old Year; Old Yule: Aul’ ‘Eel.

Burghead is more precisely still counting its eleven lost days.

In Burghead, lighting the eternal fire and carrying it round the town reenacts the celebration of the return of new light after the longest night in the Northern hemisphere – the dark of the Latin quotation often found on sundials: ‘without shadow there is nothing’. Implied, naturally, is the fact that the all-important entity which creates shade in the first place, is the Sun.

To the Clavie King and his torch-bearers of Burghead, this is Aul’ ’Eel, pre-Christian Yule or winter solstice. Yule becomes interchangeable with Christmas south of the border but Scotland has held to its pagan festival of Hogmanay, itself a testimony to and turning point in that Roman calendar.

Fire for the clavie is ritually kindled from a peat ember – no match is used. This is in respect for the spirit of fire itself which is eternal.

The Clavie itself is an old whisky barrel full of broken up staves ritually nailed together by a clavie (Latin, clavus, nail). One of the casks is split into two parts of different sizes, and an important item of the ceremony is to join these parts together with the huge nail made for the purpose. The Chambers’ Book of Days (1869) minutely describes the ceremony, suggesting that it is a relic of Druid worship, but it seems also to be connected with a 2000-year-old Roman ceremony observed on the 13th September, called the clavus annalis. Two divisions of the cask in the Burghead ritual symbolize the hinges of the old and the new year, which are joined together by a nail. The two parts are unequal, because the part of the new year joined on to the old is very small by comparison with the old year which is departing.

Clavie King, Dan Ralph and his Clavie Crew heave the Clavie into position

Clavie King Dan Ralph has carried out his duty for twenty years. He gathers together his Clavie Crew and they help each other take turns carrying the man-sized torch: a tar-barrel stoked with oak staves soaked in combustible fluid. It is a feat of human endurance alone to lift what must weigh more than a man, not to mention avoiding flaming drops of leaking fuel. They stagger in unison round the town, dispensing luck as they go: flaming brands from the burning tar-barrel are presented as tokens of abundance to important burghers, including the publican. The bearers keep changing; circling the town sunwise, stopping only to refuel or change carriers. A final free-for-all happens after the clavie arrives at the fire-altar hill, on a rib of the old Pictish ramparted stronghold, which juts out into the Moray Firth. There it is fixed to its fire-altar, the doorie.

More tar, petrol, any source of incendiary fuel is added until the flames reach for the heavens. Then both fire and wooden vessel, the fast-distintegrating clavie, and its lethal blazing contents are left to die.

Happy New Year. Julian indeed.

Muckle Spate and Sunflower Update

November sunflower: supported by invisible puppet strings from the heavens

In case no-one’s noticed: it’s November. Snow has fallen in Colorado, the Rockies, Kamchatka and Iceland. Frost came to Northeast Scotland, but it was puny compared with what descended last week AND last month AND September: we’re talking floods here. What they used to call – when country people were country folk – a Muckle Spate.

Now there have been spates and floods before. Weather in Scotland, or Ultima Thule, is and always has been the topic which gets most discussion year-round. It’s because of its location:

Americans in particular are amazed to learn that the Moray Firth in Scotland lies at the same latitude as Juneau, Alaska.

For the latitude of Ultima Thule, the farthest and northernmost point of habitable land, read nine degrees below the Arctic Circle, or what is euphemistically named the Northern Temperate Zone. So it’s not unreasonable to experience weather conditions which are enormously influenced by the Atlantic Ocean on one coast and the North Sea on the other.

The powerful warm Gulf Stream current maintains waters mild in Ultima Thule

At the northern end of the Atlantic, the Atlantic Conveyor kicks in, swimming through the Bristol Channel, up the Irish Sea, through the Minch and cresting at the entrance to the Pentland Firth. A small portion of this powerful warm current (more affectionately known as the Gulf Stream or North Atlantic Drift) noses its way along the Pentland Firth between Orkney and Mainland Scotland and curls back south to run inland along the Moray Firth, so-called Aberdeenshire’s North Coast. In historical summers, it has been known to create balmy climes for residents of these northern shores.

For those not aware of these obscure locations in an otherwise frozen belt of Icelandic waters, GoogleEarth will happily provide up-to-the-minute and up-to-the last aerially-photographed section of the Moray Firth, Orkney and Shetland Isles and Mainland Scotland.

The River Deveron near Duff House at Banff

Aerial photographers, however, have had a difficult time of it these last three months. Unless, that is, you were racking up overhead shots of flooded football pitches and river basins fulfilling their description as ‘flood-plains’. Some photographers have documented Council employees who have had to stop road-laying and sweeping to race to the aid of a vast area of housing and newbuild schemes on the ‘rescue’ list in need of sandbags, rehousing the homeless, or pumping out flooded basements and High Street shopfronts.

The fact that these new houses were built on ‘flood-plain’ in the first place is something this blogger prefers not to discuss at this point.

Abnormally high rainfall in September washed out roads in the Highlands and Scotland’s West Coast at Oban and Skye. Over a four-day period in October, rivers Don and Dee in Aberdeenshire overflowed and took out roads and bridges in Banchory, Kintore and Inverurie and claimed the life of a farmer. The Rivers Spey and the Lossie at Elgin on the Moray coast reached record high levels. The Deveron at Banff flooded golf courses, links, part of the Old Town and made the A98 coast road impassible.

One of Gen. Wade's bridges a little worse for wear

Overnight on Hallowe’en and into the early hours of November 1st, the total expected rainfall for the month of November fell in six hours, and put Aberdeenshire Council into the red in its attempts to rescue and rehouse residents made homeless by rivers Carron and Cowie bursting their banks at Stonehaven and the rivers Bogie and Deveron flooding new houses at Huntly.

Aberdeenshire’s North Coast shares something in common with those river valleys in the glacial excavation grinding through the Mounth, the Cairngorms, and the Grampian and Ladder Hills. They have always had extremes of weather. Prophets of global warming suggested cooling temperatures for North Britain in 2005. Yet in the interim, except for the Wet Summer of 2009, Scotland has experienced record high temperatures. House building in floodplains has progressed apace. No wonder Mother Nature decided this year to rebel and balance the books.

She did something similar in the summer of 1829. It was the year of the Great Flood, or in the Northeast vernacular, The Muckle Spate o’ ’29.

If records are to be believed, three months’ worth of rain fell in one week in August of that year, inundating crops and farmland, transporting cattle, sheep, dogs and men from their homes downstream for miles. Bridges were heavy casualties. Even those robust granite bridges built by General George Wade (1673-1748) in 1724 to withstand the weight of his marching troops and to guide his mapmakers through the wilds of Scotland on their first attempt to document the country for King George I. But two centuries have elapsed since then and road- and bridge-building has advanced a pace. Or have they?

Turra United: the fitba' pitch at Turriff, Aberdeenshire

In November, 2009, the Dee washed out the road and bridge at Banchory. Banff causeway was underwater and the Don bridge at Inverurie had water level with the arches. The Old Dee Bridge at Aberdeen was closed, as were roads involving bridges supplying Oldmeldrum, Kintore, Dyce, Turriff, Huntly, Stonehaven, Glass, Keith, Aberchirder, Ellon, Deskford, Banff, MacDuff, Elgin, Findhorn, Forres and Alford.

For all our computer-generated map-making and architect-free design models of flood plains, physical geography and world climate patterns, one would think we had learned something. Last week’s freak storm suggests we haven’t.

I thought you’d like to read a brief excerpt from the vernacular poem ‘The Muckle Spate o’ ‘Twenty-nine’ by David Grant, published in 1915 by the Bon-Accord Press, Aberdeen. Its subject matter was focused on the River Dee at Strachan (pronounced Stra’an) – a mile of so from the base of the Mounth. If you need a translation, I might suggest you ask someone from the ‘old school’ and keep handy a copy of Aberdeen University Press‘s Concise Scots Dictionary. Enjoy.

Giant sunflower and stone circle after three storms

Oh, yes. My giant sunflower: she weathered all three storms. She flowered during October, turning daily towards the light until it no longer rose above the shelterbelt of trees. Then, holding her south-facing stance, she pulled her yellow petals inwards as if to cloak her next (a sunflower’s most important) operation: to set seed. She showed a little yellow up until yesterday, but her colour is now mostly gone. Unlike her two less-lofty companions, she has not gone mouldy; but I hesitate to describe the activity presently occurring in her centre as ‘seed-setting’.

It rained again today after three days of watery sun. I think she may still have time to stretch herself into the record books: as the latest-bloomer of all time to brave insane weather and still reach her goal: the Giant Sunflower of Ultima Thule. Spates be damned.

The Muckle Spate o’ ‘Twenty-Nine by David Grant

‘At Ennochie a cluckin’ hen wis sittin’ in a kist,
Baith it an’ her were sweelt awa’ afore the creatur’ wist;
We saw her passin’ near Heugh-head as canty as ye like,
Afore her ark a droonit stirk, ahint a droonit tyke,
An’ ran anent her doon the banks for half-a-mile or mair,
Observin’ that, at ilka jolt, she lookit unca scare,
As gin she said within hersel’ – ‘Faur ever am I gyaun?
I nivver saw the like o’ this in Birse nor yet in Stra’an.
Faur ever am I gyaun, bairns? Nae canny gait, I doot;
Gin I cud but get near the side, I think I wad flee oot.’
We left her near the Burn o’ Frusk, an’ speculatit lang
Gin she were carri’t to the sea afore her ark gaed wrang,
An’ may be spairt by Davie Jones to bring her cleckin’ oot,
Gin she wad rear them like a hen or like a water coot.’

Crop Circles and Ancient Lammastide

CROP CIRCLES AND ANCIENT LAMMASTIDE
A Crop Circle Reverie Ten Years On…

Overhead 360º view from within the simple swirled crop circle of August 24, 1995 at Culsalmond, Aberdeenshire

Crop circles are not new. The phenomenon is centuries-old, embedded in folklore in South Africa and China, achieving sparse comment from English academics in the 1600s; noted in police records and farming journals in 1890; by military and ‘classified’ sources through the 1950s and ’60s.

It was not until 1980, however, that the general populace began to notice them. Since 1990 size and intricacy have developed, mimicking computer fractals, fourth dimensional reality, esoterica known only to quantum physicists. Nearly 30 years after that Thatcherite time, discussion favours excitement over fear, anticipation rather than suppression, belief more than ridicule. The appearance of upwards of 10,000 reported ‘genuine’ crop circles in twenty-nine countries worldwide has brought the subject into the mainstream. It has become ‘cool’ to talk about what they might mean.

In the English countryside since 2005, designs have become so complex, it is natural to speak of codes and mathematical sequences and quantum physics and astronomical numbers. As simple ellipses expanded into trailing solar flares, hypercubes, calendrical geometry and astrophysical complexity, we became mesmerized by beauty in the summer landscape, breathless with anticipation of what would come next.

In 2009 the pick of the crop finished at the end of August. Fields in September were conspicuous by their absence.

They’ve got us where they want us: on the edge of our seats.

In a lull between September’s close and next year’s crop of never-before-seen designs, what have we learned? Why are we being gifted such inspiration?

What associative ideas do they generate? What emotions do they trigger? Where do they mostly appear?

Crop Circles as Seasonal Meditation and Earth Connection

White Horse and star guidance sextant crop circle, Alton Barnes solstice 2009

Many delving, however briefly, into this phenomenon would associate the random appearance of crop circles with that other kind of circle: the ancient and sacred stone circle. That the majority of designs in England has focused on the hallowed precincts of great sacred sites like Avebury and Sillbury Hill, Wiltshire, Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire and within sight of ancient burial mounds of Hampshire is no coincidence. The same is true for appearances near ancient ancestral sites in other countries: Holland, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Latvia; even the Serpent Mound, east of Cincinnati, Ohio. In all this exotica, it is easy to miss one particular circle of great simplicity but infinite importance in the farmland of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, which appeared at the end of Lammas, 1995.*

A little patience and we can find a context, a common link.

First off, like the siting of ancient stone circles, crop circle placement is not random.

Dowsers, diviners, engineers, television cameramen and aircraft pilots can all attest to electromagnetic anomalies occurring in cleared agricultural land where Neolithic and Bronze Age farmers placed their mounds, erected their trilithons, buried their dead. Feng shui proponents, who detect minute variations in electrical body pulses, have commented on the extraordinary fluctuations of energy contained within the relatively small area concentrated on Wiltshire’s sacred sites; Alton Barnes, with its twin village Alton Priors, rank high on the electromagnetic scale. It is not surprising, therefore, that this select valley houses not only the prehistoric White Horse, but was home to Milk Hill swallow configuration (2008) and multiple coded designs in 2009: whirling dolphins, star tetrahedron and the sextant (star navigational instrument) created in three stages; contemporary appearances at Alton Priors include – in perfect timing – the exquisite eight/infinity symbol of 08/08/08 (August 8, 2008) and the swallow with coded tail of June 2009.

Woven corn dolly centre at Sillbury Hill crop circle August 3, 2009

Woven centre, reminiscent of ancient corn dolly craft, Sillbury Hill August 2009

White Horse and Star Guidance sextant Crop Circle, Alton Barnes, Wiltshire

Overhead 360º view from within the simple swirled crop circle of August 24, 1995 at Culsalmond, Aberdeenshire

Annual horse fair and Travelling People’s Market, Aikey Brae, Buchan

Moving the Magnetic Matrix
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to watch your compass needle fluctuate wildly at Yatesbury, Wiltshire; a newly-charged car battery die on the edge of a field at Sillbury Hill, near Avebury or your camera spontaneously recharge in the centre of a newly-laid crop design at Alton Barnes. These magnetic phenomena are commonplace to students of ‘leyline’ energy meridians, with which the Wiltshire basin and Cotswold range are filled. But it is significant that Yatesbury was home to the dragonfly glyph of June 3rd and Phoenix of June 12th 2009. Sillbury Hill has always deviated instruments; its great chalk mound resisting man’s excavations to discover its secret; but it opened its fields to decoration of extraordinary complexity on August 3rd, 2009 when plain swirled circles were found to contain at their centres the intricately woven patterns reminiscent of the medieval corn-dolly craft.

According to a representative of the British Feng Shui Society, an area of Britain ranking second only to the Avebury-Yatesbury-Windmill Hill energy vortex is the largely forgotten agricultural plain of Scotland–lying between the 56th and 57thN parallel–in the counties of Angus, Aberdeenshire and Banff. World attention has focused on names like Bishops Cannings, the Roundway, and Chiselden. But how many have heard of Sunhoney, Easter Aquhorthies, Culsalmond or Old Rayne?

Among the excitement of first circles decorating Wiltshire and Oxfordshire in the 1990s, the contemporaneous appearance of a single swirled design in wheat in Aberdeenshire was overlooked. Yet their locations–within ancient sacred landscape, in proximity to prehistoric ritual sites of previously huge importance to a country population–and the time of year in which they appeared have a common link.

Reconnecting us to our Primeval Earth Calendar
In ancient times, the Celtic calendar revolved round the farming year: birds start to nest at Candlemas (February 2nd), Vernal Equinox fields are prepared for sowing; Beltane (May 1st) held a huge fire festival celebrating the seeded land; fire festivals were perpetuated ritually and with deliberate intent, until well after the Reformation. Only then did Church and State combine to desecrate such ritual, relegating it to the realm of pagan superstition (pagan = L. paganus = country-dweller), implication: simple country folk knew no better. Midsummer solstice was a time of rejoicing for the bounty beginning to appear in fruit and crops; Lammas (August 1st) marked the onset of harvest, usually over by autumnal equinox; and the Celtic Year ended and began anew with the festival of Hallowe’en/All Hallows Day. Christmas was superimposed on the earlier festival of winter solstice, when the land was in almost total darkness, with farming people praying for the return of the Light.

In an abundance of festivals, the greatest for agricultural and rural families was that of Lammas. While its pivotal date was August 1st, the festival coincided in a good summer with the actual harvesting of grain. In most communities it began three weeks before and continued until three weeks after that date–ending around August 24th. Through the medieval centuries, every community in the Land had a Lammas fair dedicated to the local patron saint, a Horse Fair, a fair to compete, display wares, buy and sell food, fruit and harvested bounty.

Annual horse fair and Travelling People's Market, Aikey Brae, Buchan

Aberdeenshire, like many of the southern counties was rich in such events. The names, if not the actual ethos of the celebration, linger in local names. Old Rayne has its Lourin’ Fair; annual Aikey Fair occurs at Aikey Brae near Old Deer. And Culsalmond had the greatest fair of them all: St Sair’s Fair. Named after one of the earliest Brittonic saints to spread Christianity in the North, St Serf was the patron of the St Sair’s Horse and Feeing Fair. Not only serving as a forum for employing (feeing) farm servants, it attracted horse and cattle fanciers from all over the kingdom. While Aikey and Lourin continue to show horses, St Sair’s Fair did not survive World War II.

The stance at Jericho on the Hill of St Sairs has dissolved into the sod of the Glens of Foudland, like the tiny chapel to St Sair which used to mark the spot. Even after such fairs were officially banned in 1660, St Sairs was going strong in 1722. Horses were being traded in 1917 on the hill. Change in farm practices and two wars were its undoing.

What is significant, however, is not that great stallions used to parade these hallowed slopes, but that St Sairs happened within a sacred enclave of ancestral ritual circles, burial mounds and avenues just like Avebury and Sillbury Hill. The Culsalmond recumbent stone circle lies buried among the gravestones of the ruinous pre-Reformation kirk; Neolithic carved stone balls were found on the farms of Jericho, St Sairs and Waulkmill, within a sacred avenue flanked by three stone circles and two burial mounds. Bronze Age urns from Colpy and Upper Jericho have, along with charred body parts and Neolithic carved stone ladles, found their way into museums in Aberdeenshire, Edinburgh and London. More than one hundred flint arrowheads and several hundred flint implements have disappeared from this ancient place–and the archaeological record.

It was here on the last day of Lammas 1995 that a crop circle sent a reminder—a simple swirled design in wheat—to trigger in this ancient landscape a memory of connection to its agricultural past and, perhaps, if we are listening, the key to our communal future.
©2009 Marian Youngblood

Lammas 2019 Update
Crop circles continue to amaze a wider world audience, with drone footage clearly making life easier on farmers, with fewer footprints to inflict crop damage.

Attracting an increase in human interpreters, crop designs seem to have elevated messages to the psychic/intuitive level — viz. the computer chip program crop circle at Chualar, Salinas, CA appearance of December 30, 2013.

The Windmill Coincidence
For the last thirty years crop circles have appeared, mostly in Wiltshire and the Chalk Downs of Salisbury and English southern uplands, but not exclusively so. Dutch crop circles have (happily) besieged windmills, man-made canals and tulip fields. Frequent Downs designs have appeared close to functioning windmills, highlighting ancient ways of life—but wait.

In just the last decade it has become clear to us that the harnessing of water and windpower is more urgent than we have ever known.

In hindsight, is it mere coincidence that the solitary Aberdeenshire crop circle of Lammas 1995, top, appeared on the Colpy-Culsalmond farming estate responsible for the pioneer (and largest) private wind-farm to power the North of Scotland, until the official opening (by Prince Charles) this week of the Beatrice Offshore Wind Complex, off Wick (Sutherland)?

Crop Circle Creators have been telling us all along. We just weren’t listening.
©2019 Marian Youngblood