November Remembered for ‘Gunpowder, Treason & Plot’:420yrs Later Have We Learned Anything?
NOVEMBER REMEMBERED for GUNPOWDER, TREASON & PLOT—420 YEARS LATER HAVE WE LEARNED ANYTHING?
November’s First Wednesday Emergence from Writers’ Subterranean Wo/Man Cave 2Greet Same-old Same-old—or Heavens2-Betsy Are We Creatives Starting 2 Get it?
Hallowe’en 2023’s Full Hunters’ Moon— [Native American: ‘Falling Leaves Moon’]& Samhainn [ancient Celtic New Year], mark transition to Autumn: ‘clocks #fall back’ to EST/GMT closest to Guy Fawkes Day
Remember remember the 5th of November Gunpowder,Treason & Plot; I see no reason why Gunpowder Season shuld everB forgot
1875 & 1926 British Nursery Rhyme
Guy Fawkes was discovered midnight Nov.4/5 1605 lurking in cellar underLondon Houses of Parliament building with a fuse, box of matches & 36 barrels of gunpowder as Catholic sympathizers tried to blow up Protestant govt led by King Jas.VI & I
Warlords, Political Peacemakers? Do Leaders Inspire or Conspire?
This has never been a political blog—my work here has always been to find the best in human nature and share it with writers [insecure or otherwise, screenwriters & creative talent always included]. But there are times…with constant news focus on violence, war on Mediterranean shores, and challenging video footage of human conflict, when it is vital to try to see the #BiggerPicture, a greater perspective.
Guy Fawkes/Brit ‘Bonfire Night’ Combines Hallowe’en & ‘Guising‘- 17thC Equivalent of Nevada Desert Burning Man’s Flaming Effigy
Whatever the weather—amid storm, rain clouds or bright moonlight, British teens [& many traditional adults, too] still show up at their local park or town centre on Bonfire Night aka Guy Fawkes, Nov.5th, to watch [and participate in] a large bonfire—wood & scrapheap incendiaries collected by local Council volunteer groups beforehand. The event, contrary to strictly monitored U.S. equivalent, is accompanied by a Council-funded fireworks display. With adult supervision, toddlers & small children are allowed to set off their own “squibs”/firecrackers.
With the exception of iconic U.S. music festivals like Newport/Monterey Jazz, Woodstock, Altamont, CA & Reggae-on-the-River, Humboldt, CA, many recent community [music and other genre] events have been distinguished by an extreme police presence, yellow tape, restricted parking and other controlling measures which often undermine the ethic invested in the event to begin with.
Last year’s Burning Man at Black Rock, Nevada Desert is a fine example of human resourcefulness in face of deluge & extreme flooding, to extract thousands of powerless individuals from a soaking sand wasteland. Police were on standby, but their vehicles were unable to accomplish what kindhearted humans did for one another—saving many from certain demise.
Human Kindness Factor in Hawai’ian Rescue of Làhainà, Maui
Maui’s 150-year old Banyan tree [Ficus Benghalensis, relative of edible fig], pix l. upper, before & lower, after 8/8 Lionsgate fires which demolished its surroundings, along with adjacent neighborhood marina filled with boat owners & vessels unable to flee the burning harbor. Nobody drowned, but so many vehicles were destroyed that road traffic was impossible.
Arborists have sunk water pipe network of tree ‘food’ near re-plugged aerial roots to help re-anchor her system to regenerate.
Benches under canopy were unharmed, & caustic burned earth has been removed.
Red Cross & volunteer agencies still there.
Three months on from Hawai’i’s “most horrific disaster since WWII”, the brave residents of LàHainà community on Maui’s western shore, have chosen collectively this week to welcome tourists/visitors back to their [partially-rebuilt] town and marina resort—with the proviso that visitors maintain respect for those 115 lives lost in the fires on 8/8 which burned 22,000acres of town & woodland, including a marina filled with boats, surfboards and small craft.
While outside agencies have tried to provoke long-time residents into taking Hawai’ian Electric to court, many have declined, knowing that fire itself was the ultimate criminal in burning down both power lines and island-wide emergency siren towers, used in event of tsunami emergencies. Telephone, electric and siren poles were first casualties, giving citizens sole option of fending for themselves and helping their neighbours—which they did in spades!
LàHainà’s emergency will go down in history as one of great Human Kindness. Maui Humane Society is still on site, and has been returning rescued cats, dogs & other pet animals to their long-lost owners. The banyan tree is only one of several local tree replanting projects to restore Nature’s bounty to Maui.
Samhainn pre-Celtic New Year:Six Months from Bealtainn/MayDay
The ancient calendar began November 1st, one of four ‘cross-quarter days’, to distinguish them from the solstices [June/December 21st ‘quarter days’] & equinoxes [March&September 22nd].
In N.E. Scotland, where rewilding is restoring rich Caledonian pine forests which used to stretch from Abedeenshire to Morayshire coast before being burned by Robert Brus in his personal vendetta against rival Comyn, Forbes, Keith estates in 1308 Herschip o’Buchan /harrying/burning of Buchan, exciting restoration work is being done by private individuals, as well as foundations such as the family trust of Viscount Cowdray descendants of Cowdray Polo Park, W.Sussex & Dunecht House ABD, below.
Viscount Cowdray’s Heirs Continue his Legacy in Aberdeenshire
Weetman Pearson, (1856-1927) 1st Viscount Cowdray was an industrialist invited by Mexican President to build the Tehuantepec railroad between Atlantic & Pacific coasts. During stopover in Texas where he missed his connection, he noticed oil bubbling from a local puddle; called his technicians to investigate (thinking any resource found could fuel his Mexican enterprise!). When the well produced big time, he not only completed his Mexican deal, but created the early stages of what became Royal Dutch Shell. His family Coat of Arms above pix bottom l. pays tribute to his Mexican past.
When he died at Dunecht House aged 70, his £400million [$24billion by today’s standard] fortune was split 10 ways among his children. Grandson, Weetman John (Churchill) Pearson [1910-1995] 3rd Lord Cowdray was interested in following in paternal footsteps after fighting [& losing an arm] in WWII. He & his children all continued to support his Aberdeenshire Dunecht Estate-still do.
When Craigenlow, l.&rt. top above reopened granite operations 1945 after the war, Cowdray liked to attend a “blast”. My father, RCKelman, chairman Craigenlow Quarries Ltd enjoyed inviting Aberdeen dignitaries & VIPs to watch strictly-supervised gelignite explosions along the 100ft high 100yd-long granite quarry face, felling approx.150,000tons granite at a time. He & Lord Cowdray had much in common: my father, a childhood polio victim, had a ‘gammy’ leg which agreed well with Lord Cowdray’s missing arm.
Today Dunecht Estate is run by his second son Hon. Charles Pearson & family, with several properties in trust, including fishing on River Dee, forestry, farming, field sports [Raemoir, Forest of Birse, Durris & Edinglassie] and including, pix middle 2 above, Dunnottar Castle Kincardineshire coast, now Aberdeen. This ancient Keith-Earls Marischal stronghold is run as a visitor attraction and is a focus for the family’s continued ethos of using sustainable farming and growing practices to support local communities.
Before Heading Back Underground to Our Muse Den…
With so many telltale warnings from Mother Earth in her quiet way trying to tell us to slow down & go easy on our little planet—the only one we got until Mars or Space-X prove otherwise—it’s a good time to keep an eye on the heavens. At top of this blog there appears strange looking black celestial object which isn’t just there to scare the Hallowe’en crowd. Part of a recent scan by the Jas.Webb telescope, and NASA’s Hubble, it shows ancient Arabic-named supergiant star Betelgeuse [pron.Beetle-juice! hence the joke movie] situated high above constellation Orion—very visible in winter skies. Its pre-Christian legend is of one-armed or one-legged god swinging a club/or dragon at an invisible force for an eternity. But this supergiant [in Orion’s outstretched arm] may be dimming at such a rate that it may become a supernova, i.e. explode.
Betelgeuse is only 725 light years away—meaning if it has already gone supernova, it happened c.1300 A.D. and we are about to witness what happens. If it continues to dim & throw great chunks of carbon-filled fire & dust into its immediate orbit, it could end in blowing itself into oblivion. Hubble astronomers say:”No one knows what a star does right before it goes supernova, because it’s never been observed”.
So keep your eye on Orion through the winter—he might just throw us a treat!
And p.s. Don’t forget—Brit music fans, particularly in Stroud/Gloucestershire/Salisbury area: Saturday, November 4th at the #SubRooms [mid pic above l.] Tiger Split Outfit playing your fave music. Enjoy. ©2023MarianC.Youngblood
Taking the Summer (S)Train—Leaving the World to its Own Fine Madness
LEAVING ON THE NEXT TRAIN
Monthly INSECURE WRITERS Corner
“From all I’ve learned, there’s no religious revelation more satisfying than hard-won food of simple understanding—no liberation compares with seeing oneself as the illusions/delusions of the Age we live in.”
Terence McKenna b. November 16, 1946, Paonia, CO. d. April 03, 2000, San Rafael, CA
R.I.P. SweetSpirit
Living in a Time Wobble
Most nations now live in a kind of time wobble, predicted by McKenna, with fantasy worlds available to us electronically day and night.
Fifteen years after the death of ‘Altered Statesman’—colleague and ethnobotanist partner in triumvirate of Berkeley LSD scientists—of whom only Baba Ram Dass survives, Terence McKenna progressed Timothy Leary’s ‘sixties psychedelic débût by experiencing 15 years as an Amazon Ayahuasca Shaman.
Finally he planted his own Hawai’ian paradise, where his life cycle terminated.
McKenna was convinced that Western society lives in a kind of a time wobble. With fantasy worlds available via Internet and Cell 24/7, we have essentially relinquished control over what our subconscious has already (collectively) devised for us.
“Time and our consciousness are speeding up. We are being drawn closer to the Attractor at the End of Time”
He called this our Eschaton.
Media-eye-view of the World
If we are already in the thrall of a winking blinking (fantasy-internet-Muse) light at the end of a metaphorical Tunnel, the only antidote for these Cosmic surprises is laughter.
Thunder Moon Jupiter-Venus Conjunction
Before we get to the funnies, however, let’s take a quick look at how indigenous cultures in the Americas call on ancestral Spirits, to aid them through each Moon’s wax-wane cycle.
Vedic Ganesh holds tonight’s July 1st Full Moon between his Tusks, shines Light of Clarity into Waters of our Soul
January: Wolf Moon (end December) Old Moon
February: Snow Moon, Hunger Moon
March: Worm Moon, Crow Moon, Sap Moon, Lenten Moon
April: Seed Moon, Pink Moon, Sprouting Grass Moon, Goose Egg Moon, Fish Moon
May: Milk Moon, Flower Moon, Corn-Planting Moon
June: Mead Moon, Strawberry Moon, Rose Moon, Thunder Moon
July: Hay Moon, Buck Moon, Thunder Moon
August: Corn Moon, Sturgeon Moon, Red Moon, Green Corn Moon, Grain Moon
September: Harvest Moon, Full Corn Moon
October: Hunter’s Moon, Blood Moon, Sanguine Moon
November: Beaver Moon, Frosty Moon
December: Oak Moon, Cold Moon, Long Nights’ Moon
Alternate Avenues through Muse Moodswings
When all else fails, #Humor never fails to do the trick. Even the saddest, most died-in-the-wool ‘LeaveMeAlone~I’m going away to eat Worms’ Muse-abandoned writer—the Mole—cannot fail to pause—if only for a blogging millisecond—and let out a chuckle.
If this apology for a monthly moan will suffice, dear Reader, and dear Cap’n-@our-Ninja-helm, Alex J. Cavanaugh 😉
then let me regale you with an Alternative Alphabet, conceived somewhere along those truly ephemeral airwaves our war-torn parents/grandparents constructed to amuse themselves, after a hard day’s work.
In their precious evenings, RADIO sprang to life. All kinds of fantasies might be fulfilled, all sounds and frequencies attempted.
Fantastical ‘Forties Fantasies over the R.A.D.I.O
For my sins, I grew up in a ‘Forties household, shielded from The Woah by a protective parent who—child polio victim, unable to serve—made all broadcasts [aka News] top priority. It became evening entertainment for the whole family—as there was only one radio!
Among a plethora of sounds emanating from the small walnut-cased glowing-dial box in the corner of the sitting room, after homework was done, we were allowed to hear a few tidbits.
One of these—probably altered beyond reasonable comprehension, to any but a native Scot—a rare glimpse into a smattering of hilarious popular culture of the time, a mingled brew—indiscriminate. But it has to make you laugh.
Give me this. You will at least allow yourself a giggle.
And, with all the crazies going on out there—Full Moon tonight, Jupiter and Venus in close conjunction, solar flares mixed in with Fourth of July weekend yet to come—you know it’s the best medicine~lol
‘FORTIES FORTITUDE: Adversity Kindling the Common Heart
Ralph Waldo Emerson got it right.
“Yet, from it all I have learned that there is no religious revelation more satisfying than the hard-won food of simple understanding.”
Om, Omega, Oversoul
ALTERNATIVE ALPHABET
A is 4 ‘orses
Beefor Mutton
C For Th Highlanders
Deef or Dumb
Eve or Adam
F for Vescence
Geoffery Farnol
H for Scratch
Ivor Novello
Jefferson Airplane*
Kay Fr-ancis
L for Leather
M for a Pie (Dundee accent, pie=peh)
N for a Pint (probably home brew: post-War booze was in short supply)
O fer the Sea to Skye
P fer Sninks ???
At anchor in Dundee, HMS Discovery, flagship of Robert Falcon Scott’s tragic Antarctic expedition, 1910—symbol of Brit fortitude/failure against all odds
Q fer the ‘tippenies’ (cheap tuppenny seats Saturday matinée local cinema)
Rfur Askey
S for Williams
Tea for Two
U for me
V for Victory—this WAS the ‘Forties
W for Quits
X for Breakfast
Y for No?
Z for the Abbulance [nasal voice]
*[inserted by TimeMaster Alien, ‘cos.I can’t remember 1940s’ original]
I dare some Elder from the Olde Countree of Great Memory NOT to remember at least some of these [North-of-the-Border] Vaudeville gems.
©2015 Marian Youngblood
Hathor Blessing: Crop Circle Finale & Farewell
Salutation to Hathor, goddess of love, music and beauty and Lady of the Stars, whose ritual Menat necklace represents the Souls of the blessed ones
The formation’s simple lines and clear message to crop circle followers may be overlooked among a plethora of dimensional designs which have dominated the 2010 crop circle season.
Linking its unadorned but glorious glittering shape to a Menat necklace — the symbol of primeval mother goddess Hathor in both the Old and New Kingdoms of ancient Egypt — is not difficult. A ritual curving jewelled shoal of splendour, its form is emblazoned in our collective memory, even as a northern species, derived from classical and prehistoric civilization of Europe and the Mideast.
She is the world’s most ancient goddess, embodiment of the planet Earth herself. It is she who cradles the sun each night as he sinks in the west.
Even the current fashion in heavy female neckware harks back to that classical curve: row upon row of minute turquoise beadwork and beauty created to invoke delight in a child, desire and pleasure in a model on the catwalk.
In present-day Wiltshire, we may not admit to being familiar with Egyptian hieroglyphics, hieratic script or deathmasks and tomb-paintings of the earliest dynasties (Great Pyramid of Khufu, 2589 – 2566 BC). But we have dormant memory banks, our bodies contain suppressed genetic code which probably remembers such a time, can ‘feel’ the weight of such a beautiful collar round our necks, desire the touch of such a ritual necklace.
It belonged to the Earth’s primeval goddess, Hathor: bringer of love, abundance, joy, fertility and regeneration.
As a swan song for the Wiltshire crop circle season of 2010, it seems a fitting statement to place at the height of English summer, when crops of wheat, barley, maize and even oats glorify in eight-hour days of beating sunrays pounding health and vitality into their stems and cells, literally seconds on the cosmic clock before the combine harvesters slice through life, growth and celestial graffiti.
Judging by a pronounced extra-terrestrial bent to this season‘s creations — despite a fairly good supporting cast of ‘plankers’ (man-made designs) — and with Science now firmly convinced of genuine CC enhancement in grain nutrient value and crop size by ET’s ‘light treatment’, I fervently hope someone is buying up Wiltshire wheat to bake into ‘DNA-enhanced’ bread, or wonder-pasta for our general wellbeing!
While there have been many man-made attempts this summer to emulate the light-bent nodes of superluminary crop circles, the Beckhampton message from the goddess appears to be genuine.
But, back to symbolism. Why Hathor? Why choose to imprint English fields — and thereby all of croppiedom — with a blessing from an ancient goddess who ruled heaven and earth before most of the western world could write?
Hathor, Earth-Mother Cow-Goddess bestowed bounty
Hathor, frequently seen as Egyptian Cow Goddess whose horns ‘held the Sun’, is probably Earth’s most ancient female deity. She encompassed so many different qualities and roles that it’s near impossible to list them all. She has been known as Sky Goddess, Sun Goddess, Moon Goddess and Goddess of the West. She was known as goddess of Moisture, and of Fertility, Agriculture and Motherhood; Goddess of the Underworld, Mistress of the Necropolis and, in her role as Protectress of the City of the Dead at Thebes, she became Goddess of the Dead.
Amenhotep III's ritual Menat necklace of bronze, faience, stone, glass and turquoise was gifted by goddess Hathor to pharaoh to engender his rebirth; courtesy Metropolitan Museum of New York
The Menat Necklace was a ritual object first seen adorning the neck of the goddess and later used in ritual ceremonies to Hathor. The bejeweled necklace had many strands which ended in a counterpiece that, when originally worn as a collar, would hang down the back of the neck. In later use it had a ceremonial purpose and was wafted and waved as an amulet over the devoted to convey a blessing from the Goddess. The Menat symbolized fertility, and some sources see its offering a mystical union between the Goddess and her followers.
Are we earthlings now ‘followers’ of the wise goddess? Do we rate a heavenly blessing from the most high?
All summer long we’ve been expecting a message from God. Finally, as the year turns to autumn, we get a blessing from Goddess.
Much like the goddess Ishtar, Hathor’s attributes were a complex combination of the sacred feminine, death and the afterlife. It was she who bore bodies of the dead to the Underworld, she who actually took ownership of them. In this role Hathor became Queen of the Underworld.
Sun blessing embedded in a Wiltshire crop circle: Hathor regalia ends the 2010 season
When she governed in her principal place of worship at Dendera, Hathor’s role as Goddess of Fertility, Women and Childbirth was venerated specifically. Her temple there was filled with incense, intoxication and pleasure. At her other temple in Thebes, however, Hathor changed into her robes as Goddess of the Dead, known as ‘Lady of the West.’ In Thebes she cradled in her arms the sun god Ra, as he descended below the horizon in the west.
Goddess Hathor wearing the Menat, holding her sacred Sistrum (rattle)
Eventually, in a later period, when Hathor’s role began to change, Isis/Osiris (Serapis) cults gained popularity in Egypt and then spread through the Roman empire and Greece. Because of her fertile and life-bringing nature, Hathor was considered capable of reviving the dead; she welcomed them to the Underworld, dispensed water to them from the branches of a sycamore tree, and offered them food. In various New Kingdom tombs at Thebes Hathor is depicted embracing the dead.
In pre-dynastic times, and certainly in the early dynasties, Hathor is seen as the cow-consort of the Bull of Amenti, the original deity of the Necropolis. As queen or ‘Lady of the West’, her mortuary title as Protectress of the Necropolis valley on the west bank of the Nile, in her role as protector she not only oversaw where the sun (Ra) went down, but this choice location for later kingdoms’ burial tombs.
Amazingly Hathor, one of the world’s greatest goddesses, was worshipped for a longer period than Christianity or Islam have reigned. Hathor’s religion of joy and celebration dominated for over 3,000 years. It continued strong throughout Egypt, and through both Greek and Roman empires, where it spread and became assimilated.
Her cult was in its heyday when the first great pyramids were built and used as sacred pharaonic tombs, and lasted until pyramids were no longer used for that purpose, by which time royal patrons continued under her protection on the west bank of the Nile in the great Necropolis Valley of the Kings.
She is the equivalent in Nordic, Celtic and Anglian territories of the Old Goddess of the pagans. She perpetuated in popular speech, in rituals of hearth and earth, in festival custom with its cargo of symbol and myth. She was seen as the source of life, power and wisdom. People prayed to her for wellbeing, abundance, protection, and healing. They invoked her during birth, and the dead returned to her and moved in her retinue.
They say that the Old Goddess, Crone who rode the winds, caused rain and snow and hail on earth, and that she revealed omens of weather and death and other momentous things to come.
In this sense she and Hathor are one and the same: primeval Eve, Brittonic Bride, Norse Auohumla, the great cow-giant goddess, true ancestor of the Norse gods. She is also Gaia, Sumerian Antu (who later ‘became’ Ishtar, goddess of love and procreation).
Apex of inspirational 'Hathor crop circle' at Northdowns, Beckhampton, Wiltshire, photo courtesy Bert Janssen
The superstition held today of Friday the 13th being unlucky may stem from the betrayal of the Knights Templar on Friday, October 13th 1307 (Old calendar) when their monastic military order in France was arrested en masse by King Philip. The Spanish, however, hold Tuesday as their unlucky day; so the suggestion is a tentative one. Perhaps ET used the date merely to get our attention. It’s a familiar technique he’s employed over the years to combine crop images and Calendar.
An alternate explanation occurs: in later European tradition Friday was observed as ‘holy day of the goddess’, beginning with its eve on Thursday night. In that sense she is Norse goddess Freyja. The dark of the year was sacred to Old Goddess. On winter solstice nights, she was said to fly over the land with her spirit hosts. Tradition added that shamanic witches rode in her wake on the great pagan festivals, along with the ancestral dead.
Reverting to the Hathor connection, one ancient tale is retold of a group of goddesses, bearing cow horns and playing tambourines who went by the name the Seven Hathors. These Hathors were able to foretell a child’s destiny; similar in many ways to the weaving of the Tapestry of Life by the Fates, the Norns or the Disir. The Hathors were more than clairvoyants who could see into the future. They were questioners of the soul as it made its way to the Land of the West. In addition to knowing a child’s destiny, the Seven Hathors could foretell the exact hour of his death.
Egyptian mythology held that a person’s destiny was decided by the hour of his death and therefore his fortune, or lack of it, stayed with him throughout his life. The Hathors were known to have extreme powers, and were able to replace a prince, born with a bad fortune, with a child born with a good one. In this way they had the ability to protect both the Dynasty and the nation. The Seven Hathors are presently receiving some attention through the works of musician and psychic channeler, Tom Kenyon. When Hathor’s ‘old’ attributes became overshadowed by those of Isis and new kingdom beliefs, the Hathors were sent into the sky. There they have become identified with the Pleiades.
In more northern latitudes, reverence was paid for centuries to the Old Goddess in planting and harvesting, baking, spinning and weaving. The fateful Spinner was worshipped as Holle or Perchta by the Germans, as Mari by the Basques, and as Laima by Lithuanians and Latvians. She appears as Befana in northern Italy and as a myriad faery goddesses in France, Spain, and Celtic countries (Brittonic Bride). In Serbia she is Srecha; in Russia Mokosh, Kostroma or the apocryphal Saint Paraska.
Corn dollies embody ancient goddess Mother Earth
When farmers, and those who worked the land, were less dependent on technology to produce our food, Mother Earth and nature played a much more important role in the annual cycle of life. In particular, the harvest of cereal crops was a major event in the calendar.
We are now three weeks into ancient Lammas, the traditional harvest season.
In pre-industrial times a summertime ‘Lord of the Harvest’ would be given the responsibility of planning the harvest and marshalling the workforce, and when harvest was finally done they would celebrate with a ‘Harvest Home’ feast.
Corn Dolly made from the last (Clyack) cut sheaf, held sacred through winter, a blessing of Earth's bounty
Straw from this last sheaf was woven or plaited into the complex shapes of corn dollies, as cornucopiae, horns of plenty, horse shoes, knots, fans and lanterns. Ultimately, shape depended on local tradition, but in every case a symbolic ‘dolly’ graced the top table at the end-of-harvest feast and was then carefully guarded over the winter months. When spring crops were sown, the dolly re-emerged to be carried round the fields to pray that Nature and corn goddess delivered up another good crop.
In Wiltshire they’ve already started the harvest. Even in my native Aberdeenshire winter barley is going under the combine. Three weeks into Lammas (which pivots round August 1st), harvest is in full swing.
Our consciousness these days has become less aware of such natural cycles of food-cultivating-and-cutting; we are lulled into ignorance of the provenance of our daily bread. Perhaps it is this lulling that the crop circle presence wants to jerk us out of: to rekindle in us an appreciation — even reverence — for Earth’s bounty and her unconditional gifts of life and nourishment. More significant may be the appearance of a ritual symbol in the crop to help us understand our civilization’s most ancient ancestral traditions which show respect for (Earth’s) sacred creator gods.
Hathor was probably civilization’s earliest goddess. Her blessing showered on us now from above, five thousand years after the zenith of her devoted following, emblazoned in golden grain for our delectation and visual appreciation (aerial photographs superbly provided by Frank Laumen and Bert Janssen, thank you guys); it sparks our earliest memories of civilization. Are we being given a futuristic jab in the arm, to trigger our DNA? or to learn to appreciate more fully what our ancestors understood?
Our senses are being stroked, honed, we are receiving her gifts again. Not only was she goddess of birth and death, she was goddess of REBIRTH.
It’s just possible she has returned in essence now to show us that — at the end of the 2010 season of remarkable cosmic signs — our species is poised on the brink of rebirth: that we humankind are jointly headed for regeneration.
Dare we hope? As we come together as a race, as we feel joy in our rebirth, may we also see a faint promise of Hathor’s greatest gift? Immortality?
Gab o’ May to Gemini June
Ne’er cast a cloot till May be oot
Old Scots rhyme
May blossom: Kanzan ornamental cherry, cedar and pale green maple leaves
Gemini offers a kindly doorway to summer: and we are now thankfully a few days into this communicative astrological sign. Gone the stress and hardship of winter, cold spring, slow growth. Enter the Cosmic Twins: dualism, communication, seeing both sides of the same situation. In other words, enter the mercurial element. And warm.
Fingers crossed.
Gemini is usually a forgiving zodiac month. It fills one third of the calendar month of May. Its communication is tangible. Emblazoning shocking pink blooms dance on pale green leafy branches next to russet peeling-bark maples. Purple blossoms shout color from bending lilac boughs. Who wouldn’t want to communicate, yea, rejoice, in May? at least in the latter part of it.
“The world’s favorite season is the spring.
All things seem possible in May.”
– Edwin Way Teale
Not only has the zodiac sign of Gemini the backing of communicative Mercury to support it, but this year Mercury has only recently turned from retrograde to direct. Time for winter silence to end, stilted conversation, lack of fluidity gone; communication can start up again. The earth, too, a little miffed at having to wait so long to see the sun, is throwing caution to the winds, and everything is blooming at once.
As far as I’m concerned, this is a Godsend. It has been a long hard winter. We can all do with some relaxation. A little light relief, duality, multi-vision. Spring, however late, is welcome.
Trees this year are coming into leaf together all at the same time. We are reminded by birdsong of the fullness of life – fresh greenness of trees and shrubs – blossoms open. Life coughs and restarts.
‘If the oak comes out before the ash – we’re in for a splash;
If the ash comes out before the oak – we’re in for a soak‘ more Scots wisdom
All trees came into leaf at the same time
What potent blood hath modest May.
– Ralph W. Emerson
Other aspects of the season begin to rub off on our chill northern disposition. We loosen up a little, feeling perhaps not so obsessed to compete or complete projects under the pressure of frost. Northern character is driven by cold: it precipitates one into working harder; showing that one is capable of braving hardship along with challenging temperatures. Mañana doesn’t work here. No cultural bias here, but who ever heard of a multi-million-dollar operation run by a Jamaican?
Is it any wonder that the Scot is Scotland’s greatest export? And, as a corollary, that the Scots hard-working northern ethos is one which takes well to leadership? Historically, successful world empires have been run by expatriot (and patriot) Scots: think Andrew Carnegie 1835-1918 (coal, steel and museums), Thomas Blake Glover 1838-1911 (Mitsubishi), John Paul Jones 1747-1792 (founder of the US Navy). Or politics, art and philosophy: think Sir Walter Scott 1771-1832 (lawyer, poet, novelist), Adam Smith 1723-1790 (author, Wealth of Nations, first modern economist), John Sinclair 1754-1835 (politician, writer, first to coin the word ‘statistics’). Or naturalist John Muir 1834-1914, founding father of the environmental movement.
That said, the Scots, like the Germans, are addicted to exotic places — but only as a place to ‘chill’, to ‘get away from’ their ‘real world’. Nowadays Scots populate world cruises and Germans overrun southern Italy. But then they come back home.
Mary Queen of Scots, at one time claimed the thrones of Scotland, England, France and Ireland
what if Mary Queen of Scots had not been executed in 1587 by her cousin Elizabeth I?
Would we Scots still be the same feisty underdogs, over-achievers striving to pit our wits against the Universe? If she the Roman Catholic queen, rather than her protestant son James VI & I, had reigned in Great Britain, would we be more stay-at-home? more continental (‘auld alliance’ Scotland/France)? more laid-back? less prickly? less worldly or world-travelled?
Would we have been motivated to invent anything? (James Watt 1736-1819, steam engine; John Logie Baird 1839-1913, television).
Would we tolerate living in a climate which supports, in the words of Lord Byron – whose mother came from Aberdeenshire:
“Winter – ending in July
To recommence in August” ?
Is it any wonder we are obsessed with May?
The Gab o’ May is a harsh word for the beginning of such a gentle month, but historically its behavior has been erratic. The ‘Gab’ or ‘maw’ of a new month which perpetuates the weather of its predecessor is given short shrift. Lest the unwary shepherd forget, ancient tales tell of sheep dying in the fields in May.
Aye keep in some corn and hay
To meet the caul Kalends o’ May
The old earthman’s repeated rhyme about the Kalends of May sounds antiquated and without relevance to the modern ear, but in the North of Scotland this year his words had meaning.
Icy April
The Pentland Firth, chosen to host the World Surfing Championships, presented contestants with ice floes. Not a single tree opened its spring foliage in April.
A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June
Is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm of bees in July
Is not worth a fly.
– Rhyme from England
Not a bee in sight. Not even an over-wintering midge. And May was imminent. Back to the Kalends, though.
Fearless spring inhabitant: peacock butterfly in early May
It was the Roman name for the beginning of the month which gave us the word for Calendar in the first place. In Roman Scots it’s the same as the Gab o’ May – Maw of the month – the cold raw maw of May.
So what does it mean?
In times before there were trains, buses, mechanized transportation, when every countrydweller lived close to the land, the only modes of travel other than foot were a horse or a bicycle. And one of the surest ways of surviving was to keep a cow, or a sheep or a goat close to home. It’s what many rural communities still do in countries other than the First World. In Scotland before the 18th century, little “but ‘n’ ben” shacks were built of turf and earth. When stone building became more common at the end of that century, the same structure was converted to stone, but of similar design: a ‘but’, (abutting the ‘byre’ or stable with access to outdoors) where the animals lived and kept the building warm with their cozy breathing; they provided easy access for milking before being put out to pasture in the fields at the end of May. The ‘ben’ was the other part of the house, ‘through’ the house where guest humans went, away from the warm kitchen hearth and adjoining beasts. Until well into the 20th century, ‘company’ were invited into the ‘ben’ part of the house. Only the family spent time in the ‘but’, within soundwave proximity of the beasts. Even after the advent of a more leisured farming class – those in stone farmhouses with separate quarters for farm animals, barns and other sheds – no good practitioner of husbandry would send his animals out into the fields before the end of bad weather.
You kept your feathered friends indoors until all risk of frost was past
That’s where the calendar and the month of May come in.
The original Roman calendar calculated according to a 13-lunar-month regimen. Julius Caesar, after an extended visit with Cleopatra in Egypt, upgraded the Roman ‘Julian’ calendar in 46BC to run along lines similar to the Egyptian solar one which he admired. The Julian year was on average 365.25 days long. It worked well until extra ‘leap’ days started to mount up over a period of 1500 years. When the Gregorian calendar took over from the Julian calendar, the western hemisphere ‘lost’ 11 days. In country districts in the northern hemisphere – Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Shetland, Orkney, the Western Isles – country people saw this as being robbed of life’s most precious commodity – time.
Because the original Roman calendar had run on cycles of the moon, even the revised version began to clash with solar time and calculation which made sense in the first centuries AD by the 18th century had lost relevance. An adjustment had to be made. September 2, 1752 was chosen as the date on which the old calendar would ‘switch’ to the new. On that day, the British Isles and all English colonies, including America, lost 11 days–September 3rd through 13th. People went to bed on September 2nd and when they awoke next morning, the date had become September 14th.
Country ways: living in harmony with your neighbours
Naturally they were upset when Christmas fell 11 days earlier that year, Epiphany 11 days earlier the next January and then it played havoc with spring. May started 11 days before the accustomed season and so our title quote, another favored Scots expression, became meaningless:
‘ne’er cast a cloot
till May be oot’
It has often been said that the ‘May’ of the quotation refers to the blossom of the May or Hawthorn and this would tie in well with spring timing. In calendar terms, however, in now (Gregorian) time, the Scots are seen to suggest caution when divesting winter woolies, extra layers of ‘vests’ (underwear) until the month of June has begun!
The original aphorism may have applied to the hawthorn, which did indeed bloom during the latter weeks of May; but when 11 days were subtracted from the old calendar, May became 11 days chillier and so in northern Scotland at least, the hawthorn no longer blooms until the last week of the month or the first week of June.
‘Ne’er cast a cloot till May be oot’
becomes the month as well as the tree. i.e. don’t take off anything until June.
… and now is not the time for me to tell the tale of the Victorian Scots bothy loon (farm worker) who was sewn into his underwear in November by the ‘kitchie deem’ (kitchen lass, maid) only to have the stitches removed the following summer solstice.
I’ll leave that delight for another story-telling session…
Arbor Day and Earth Week
Trees: without them and our wilderness, we as a species are lost
We used to call it Arbor Day. On the hinge between Aries and Taurus, when the Sun enters this celebratory earth sign in the western zodiac calendar: that’s the day John Muir was born in 1838. A native Scot who emigrated to the United States and changed the face of a nation, Muir was the original arborist: lover of trees.
Wolves being hunted to extinction following a change in legislation to the US Endangered Species Act
Muir had similar adversaries. A naturalist and explorer of nature, his favorite wildernesses were in northern California, and it is there that his perseverance eventually paid off.
His activism was instrumental in saving swathes of western wilderness which eventually became the National Parks of Yellowstone, Yosemite Valley and Sequoia NP. The Sierra Club, which he founded in 1892, is now the most important (and vociferous) conservation organization in the United States.
His essays, letters and books have been read by millions.
At first, however, his petitions to conserve large areas of natural beauty were ignored. In the USA, it was a time of railroad expansion, the explosion of large cities, and big business in politics and in agriculture.
In his opinion, the high Sierras and other wild mountainscapes were being ravaged by livestock grazing (especially sheep, which he termed ‘hoofed locusts’). He personally spent weeks, sometimes months, in this high country, documenting and writing about the need to allow areas of such magnificence protection from grazing and (by analogy, its later counterpart,) the human and vehicular footprint.
He was persistent and he was inspired. The wild nature of California captivated him, from his first moment of exposure to its awesome grandeur.
Yosemite by Ansel Adams
“We are in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us” John Muir
He had, after all, grown up in rural (but ‘tamed’) Scotland, where the wildcat was close to extinction, where wild boar no longer existed outside zoos, and where in his grandfather’s time a royal patron, King George I (‘Big Geordie’), had commissioned a granite bridge over a tributary of the River Dee at Invercauld, so he could be wheeled from Ballater to the hide to shoot; and where, incidentally, he is credited with killing Scotland’s last wolf in 1722.
Muir saw huge vistas of the Cairngorms, Deeside, Donside and the Ladder Hills have their natural tree populations annihilated by sheep, deer and rabbit. He dreamed of a world that might be otherwise.
Grandeur of Yosemite inspired Muir's lifelong work for wilderness
In 1872, the first National Park was created by federal legislation, on the strength of Muir’s efforts, at Yellowstone, Wyoming. It was to be the precursor of many others in the continental United States, including a total of nine national parks, now administered within the State of California by the National Parks service.
After his meeting with Emerson and over the following twenty years, Muir gathered, collated and compiled volumes of data on geology, natural history and plant and animal life populations of the Sierras. He envisioned Yosemite and the Sierra mountain range as pristine lands where original wildlife might roam, breed and proliferate, unimpeded by artificial (human) regulation. It was a difficult concept to instill. And his vision suffered throughout his life, wherever conflict surfaced between wilderness and ‘business.’
In one respect he was visionary, in doggedly hounding US Congress, and in writing for pro-conservationist magazines and organizations.
‘“Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts, and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.”
In 1873 and 1874, he made field studies along the western flank of the Sierra Nevada, on the distribution and ecology of isolated groves of Giant Sequoia, one of the few redwood groves left in the world in virgin stands. In 1876, the American Association for the Advancement of Science published Muir’s paper on the subject. In his personal essays, however, he valued nature for its spiritual and transcendental qualities.
Mount Whitney, at 14,500ft, the southern terminus of the John Muir Trail
“Muir has profoundly shaped the very categories through which Americans understand and envision their relationships with the natural world.”
John Muir in 1907 - wildman to the end
Many wilderness areas are named after him: from Muir Woods and Muir Beach in Marin County, north of San Francisco, to the 211-mile John Muir Trail, which runs from Yosemite through King’s Canyon NP and Sequoia National Park, to the 14,500-ft peak of Mount Whitney in central California. A glacier in Alaska bears his name. He was instrumental not only in establishing the structure which became National Parks, but in the resulting expansion of National Forests, including areas with protected ‘Reserve’ status. In addition, State Parks now proliferate throughout the US. California, alone, has twelve regions of state parks (CSPs) administering 278 parks on 1.4 million protected acres.
So, what has happened in the bigger picture?
John Muir would be delighted to know that in 1964, the US government passed the Wilderness Act, to protect around nine million acres of wilderness. Arbor Day was traditionally a celebration conceived in the midwestern state of Nebraska (a treeless zone), as a springtime event to encourage the young to plant a tree. And two Earth Days appeared on the American calendar–one ratified by the United Nations and celebrated on equinox, March 21st–when both hemispheres receive equal amounts of light and dark and when the sun appears to stand directly overhead on the equator; the other, April 22nd, has gradually superseded Arbor Day; their celebrations now interchangeable.
Recently, with the advent of the blog, acceleration of internet communication and a focus on Earth-related activities, New Earth consciousness, Earth Day has expanded into ‘Earth Week‘. That, too, would please Muir.
But what of his homeland? the sheep-munched treeless wilderness of northern Scotland?
Cairngorm National Park
That in itself is disturbing.
Its ‘Angus glens’ the ‘haunt of red deer and golden eagle’; ‘heather moor vivid with summer color’, and ‘wild tundra of high mountain tops’ tell the story.
Every last vestige of hunting forest put to the torch by Robert Bruce, 1308
What Robert Bruce’s actions created – a treeless raised beach from the Grampian mountains to the sea – was not replanted. Except for small pockets on landed estates where tree regeneration was encouraged, an agricultural zeal took over the desolate wasteland, capitalizing on open countryside with few obstructions.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Highland estates cleared out their resident employees–crofters–to make way for agricultural innovation: turnips and sheep. While these ‘clearances’ were more specific to Caithness, Sutherland and the western portions of Scotland, some effects were felt in what is now the Cairngorms National Park. Where sheep were introduced, trees died; were not replanted; not allowed to regenerate. Where deer population had been nurtured and maintained in small numbers in remnant natural forests, for hunting, with the exit of human monitors, they overpopulated and devastated their own environment.
Thus, the Tourist Board’s ‘heather moor with vivid summer color’ and ‘wild tundra’.
Tree planting has begun again in the agricultural hinterland
The good news is the story of Glen Affric: and Trees for Life. This Scots charity has gradually (through donation) been purchasing 600 square miles of ancient Caledonian remnant forest west of Inverness, and has begun the mammoth task of replanting original species of oak, alder, Caledonian pine, juniper, birch and rowan (mountain ash).
Regeneraton of Caledonian pine -- a rewarding task
‘We envision our work to restore the Caledonian Forest as not only helping to bring the land here back to a state of health and balance, but also having global relevance, as a model for similar projects in other countries.’
Other small parcels–once adjacent to hillfarms, and escaping the ‘set-aside’ agricultural brainstorms of the 1980s–were maintained by individuals, and planted with pines, which are now starting to look mature.
John Muir would indeed be proud of his ancient heritage and the inspiration it has given new groups to start again.
Old growth 1000-year old redwoods felled in early 19thC lumber operations
In Muir’s time, after the (1848) Gold Rush, California was inundated with new immigrants. His beloved trees came under great threat. In the 1880s four hundred sawmills north of San Francisco were churning out lumber from felled redwood giants–a process which accelerated after the 1906 earthquake–in a need for timber to rebuild the city. In 1920, however, the Save the Redwoods League began purchasing groves that would become the backbone of California’s redwoods parks. It continues adding to this day.
In the 1950s–the post-war boom–lumber mills were cutting in excess of one billion board-feet of timber per year, a level maintained until the mid-1970s, when clear-felling vast acreage of virgin trees was still allowed.
…Until science and sense stepped in.
Science argued, but the battle was won by 1990s tree-sitters, those brave souls who camped out in makeshift treetop platforms while Caterpillars, chainsaws and chokesetters bumped and strained and devastated beneath them.
To explain:
Old growth virgin redwoods now protected in State and National Parks
They were supplied food and refreshment by allies via pulleys, by night, their hoists and ropes removed and burned by loggers, by day. Tempers ran high; lives were lost; protesters murdered. But State legislature listened and stepped in.
Headwaters Forest was purchased in 1999 by State and Federal government agencies, and put under permanent protection. Clear-felling practice was legally reduced to a 20-40-acre maximum.
The logging industry finally sat up and paid attention. Its own resource was decimated; salmon runs and ecosystems had suffered in a mindless race for economic gain, with only ‘table scraps’ left, in the view of Humboldt State University forest scientist Steve Sillett. ‘The challenge now is to improve management on the 95% of redwood landscape (felled) that is just starting into regrowth.’
Sequoia sempervirens, redwoods as big as a Boeing 707
They are on target to create new forests (in one hundred years) like the ones protected in the Redwoods National and State Parks. Muir is by now roaring with delighted laughter in his (redwood) coffin.
So, when they ask you ‘what did you do for Arbor Day, Mummy or in Earth Week, Daddy?’ it may no longer be adequate to say you took the dog for a walk or raked leaves off the driveway. With renewed focus on the Earth, a show of determination coming from youth groups and in education, we may be inspired to show our ability to replenish, regenerate and restore parts of our planet we’ve been gifted as custodians, to bring back to life.
During Earth Week at least, the gardener in us is being asked to wake up.
©2010-2012 Marian Youngblood
Ides of March: Prophecy & the Power of Belief
Julius Caesar, iconized and immortalized after his death, Ides of March 44BC
What is it about phases of the Moon and our need to believe in doom and gloom?
Nostradamus, French apothecary and seer Michel de Nostradame (1503-1566) was famous not only for thousands of quatrains, but for the obscurity and multiplicity of their interpretation. He wrote the following quatrain:
‘The Moon in the full of night over the high mountain, The new sage with a lone brain sees it: By his disciples invited to be immortal, Eyes to the south. Hands in bosoms, bodies in the fire’ Century IV number 31
French Apothecary and Seer, Nostradamus
‘Earthshaking fire from the centre of the earth will cause tremors around the New City. Two great rocks will war for a long time, then Arethusa will redden a new river’
When rewritten to tie more closely into the the Twin Towers scenario, it reads:
‘Sea of fire at the world centre, The tower of the new city will tremble: Two great blocks will be at war for a long time, Then Arethusa will redden a new river
Lost in the thrill of proclaiming the French mystic’s ability to see five hundred years into the future with such precision, the interpreters failed to notice a suggestion by a contemporary volcanologist that Vesuvius is sited between two great massifs, did in fact tremble and erupt shortly after this prediction and Arethusa – a Greek mythological Neried who was turned into a fountain – appeared to influence ‘rivers’ of lava which cascaded down its slopes. Nearby Napoli/Naples, in translation does also mean ‘New City’.
Such is the nature of perfect prognostication.
Its interpreters may never agree. And yet it is human nature to ‘see’ the alternate reality, poised, ready to believe.
In the months following 9/11 public hysteria whipped up by veiled suggestion had books on Nostradamus and those quoting his work catapulted to best-seller status in both Amazon and Barnes & Noble reading lists.
In Nostradamus‘s time, the Scots-Gaelic equivalent of the French prophet was one favored by Clan Mackenzie in their talented son ‘Dun’ Kenneth (Coinneach Odhar), the Brahan Seer. While first reference to him in print does not appear until Thomas Pennant’s ‘Tour of Scotland’ (1769) “Every country has its prophets… and the HIghlands their Kenneth Odhar,” it is likely this refers to Keanoch Owir, ordered prosecuted by Rossshire authorities for witchcraft by two Commissions of Justice in 1577. Oral tradition says he predicted the fate of Fairburn Tower, seat of the Mackenzies overlooking great landholdings in Rossshire river valleys of the Orrin and Conon:
‘The day will come when the Mackenzies of Fairburn shall lose their entire possessions; their castle will become uninhabited and a cow shall give birth to a calf in the uppermost chamber of the tower.
Fairburn Tower where the Seer predicted a cow giving birth
A laborer on the Brahan Seaforth estate, Kenneth was summoned by Isabella, Lady Seaforth to give her news of her husband, then on a visit to France. He saw in his mind the Earl cavorting with a Parisian demoiselle and wouldn’t answer his mistress. She threatened him with dismissal and insisted until he told her what he had seen. The revelation cost the oracle his life. Traditional reward for the bearer of bad tidings was death by ‘tarring’ in a barrel of boiling pitch. Before receiving his sentence, he threw his ‘divining’ stone into Loch Ussie and foretold the end of the male line and the extinction of the Seaforths.
In its Georgian heyday, one mile west of Brahan House the grounds stretched to meet the A835 Dingwall-to-Ullapool road. A monument rests by the road. It was here that the Brahan Seer’s final prediction of the fall of the Seaforths became a reality.
When the last Lord Seaforth died (after his four sons) the estates went to his eldest daughter, Mary. She had married Admiral Hood, spending several years stationed in the East Indies. When the Admiral died, Lady Mary Hood, (later Lady Stewart-Mackenzie) returned wearing the traditional Indian white coife of mourning. In 1823 Lady Mary was in control of a pony carriage near Brahan accompanied by her sister, Lady Caroline Mackenzie. The ponies bolted and the carriage overturned. Lady Caroline was thrown out and died of her injuries.
Dun Kenneth’s last words before he was ‘tarred’ were that Lord Seaforth’s possessions would be
‘inherited by a white-coiffed lassie from the east and she is to kill her sister’
Two of his predictions remain, so far, unfulfilled:
‘One day black rain will fall on the City of Aberdeen’
Optimists hope this refers to North Sea Oil and not nuclear fallout. And
‘Rome was; London is; Edinburgh shall be’
While this could refer to the present condition of Scots parliament sitting in the Scots capital, it may imply a future time when Edinburgh becomes more important than the capital of Great Britain…
Scotland’s most famous seer, however, is 13th-century Thomas the Rhymer, Thomas Learmounth of Ercildoune (c. 1220 – c. 1298), from a district now called Earlston near Berwick in the Borders. There is documentary evidence of a Thomas Rimor de Ercildoun witnessing deeds in the 1260s.
Nearly all his sayings have been recorded, and were first published in 1603, but it is remarkable that in the handing down through oral tradition of his many prophecies, the rhyming and rhythm has been maintained, so that his legacy is indeed a series of poetic prognostication.
And, remembering that what a poet, bard or seer of the 13th century was usually expected to foretell was the fate or future of a great house or a noble family, his words have a way of telling an alternative history of ‘lowland’ Scotland stretching from the Moray Firth to the Forth.
Sir Walter Scott became fascinated by him and created the ‘Ballad of Thomas the Rhymer’ to include in his ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border‘, 1802.
Syne they came to a garden green,
And she pu’d an apple frae a tree:
‘Take this for thy wages, true Thomas;
It will give thee the tongue that can never lee.’ Thomas and the Queen of Fairyland 17thC Anon
The Queen of Elfland gave Thomas the gift of prophecy
And he returned with the power of prophecy.
The Queen’s gift was bestowed on condition he should always speak the truth, but also on the strict understanding that he would return immediately at her summons.
His elf-given powers predicted some historically life-changing events:
The death of King Alexander III in 1296 in a fall from his horse
The succession of Robert the Bruce as King of Scots
The disastrous defeat of King James IV of Scots at Flodden in 1513
The defeat of Mary Queen of Scots at the Battle of Pinkie in 1567 and
The Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England in 1603.
The downfall of many a great landed family was until the age of film and television attributed to the powers the Queen of Elfland had bestowed on Thomas the Rhymer. Now fantasy is the stuff of moviemakers.
However, some of his prescient pronouncements bear repeating.
The family of Gordon from whom George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (the poet Lord Byron) was descended, suffered in a typically Thomas fashion:
‘When the heron leaves the tree
The laird o’ Gight shall landless be’
On May 12, 1785, his mother Catherine Gordon of Gight, the last female descendant of an estate overlooking the river Ythan in Aberdeenshire, married Hon. John Byron. The estate was sold soon after the marriage. Tradition says that about the time of the marriage the falcons or ‘herons’ which had built their nest for many years in a ‘fine tree near the castle’, left and took up their abode in the woods of nearby Haddo. Gight is now a ruin. Another, that
‘At Gight three men a violent death shall dee
And after that the land shall lie in lea.’
This prophecy was also fulfilled.
One of the most famous tragedies to befall a family in Aberdeenshire was that of the hereditary Earls Marischal, (former Knights Marischal), Masters of Horse to the Royal Household from time immemorial. The honour was traditionally given to the house of Keith, earlier known as Keiths-Falconer, later Earls of Kintore, Lords Inverurie and Stonehaven, a family with hereditary lands at Dunnottar south of Aberdeen, and Inverugie near St Fergus in Buchan. Their medieval power was so great that when county boundaries were drawn up in the 12th century after Norman nobles moved north with the Court, St Fergus (and Inverugie) was allowed to maintain the status of being part of Banffshire, from where the family originated. It is to this day an enclave of ‘Banffshire’ within the confines of ‘Aberdeenshire’ in this Buchan corner.
Crown Jewels of Scots Regalia, hidden from Cromwell's soldiers in the cellar at Kinneff
They were trusted, loyal to the Crown, had held their hereditary position as protector of the King’s person and his stable for centuries. They were elevated to Earls Marischal after supreme acts of bravery on behalf of the Royal House, concealing the royal regalia – the Crown Jewels of Scotland – after the coronation of James II in 1650, from the eyes of Cromwell’s soldiers, whose most ardent quest was to remove and destroy them, as they had so recently melted down the English regalia.
Dunnottar - fortified promontory keep on the North Sea - where the Crown Jewels were hidden
Until some of Thomas’s prophecies started to bite.
One relates him standing personally within Inverugie Castle grounds on a huge prehistoric boundary stone revered as sacrosanct in his time:
“Inverugie by the sea
Lordless shall thy lands be
And underneath thy hearth-stane
The tod* shall bring her birds hame.”*tod = fox
and
“As lang’s this stane stands on this craft
The name of Keith shall be held alaft’
But when this stane begins t’ fa’
The name of Keith shall wear awa'”
In 1715 the Inverugie property of the Earl Marischal at St. Fergus was ‘attainted’ (put in disgrace). This meant that by order of the Crown, descendants could not inherit. The estate at St Fergus was bought from the Crown by York Buildings Co. Trustees of that Company sold it in 1761 to George, Earl Marischal, son of the attainted earl.
The stone of Thomas’s recital was removed in 1763 and built into the church of St Fergus which was then under construction. This seemed to add to the family’s downfall. The ‘new’ owner went into debt and he sold Inverugie in 1764, the year after the stone was removed, to Lord Pitfour, one of the senators of the College of Justice. Inverugie has not been in Keith hands since that time.
Dunnottar, too, fell into ruin.
One of the family’s other houses was at Auchmedden, near Pennan in Aberdour parish on the North Coast.
“As long’s there’s an eagle in Pennan
There will be a Baird in Auchmedden”
Baird was another family name of the Keiths. In historical records of the House, a pair of eagles built their nest in the cliffs near the village of Pennan and the Bairds protected them with the greatest care and fed them by placing daily on a ledge of rock near their eyrie food and tidbits. Willam Baird joined ‘Bonnie’ Prince Charlie as an officer of his bodyguard at Culloden. He continued in hiding for some years after and then lived the remainder of his life at Echt House (central Aberdeenshire) where he died in 1777. Auchmedden was not confiscated, but Mr Baird had to sell it in 1750 to relieve debt contracted in support of the Stuarts. When it was bought by Earl of Aberdeen in that year, the eagles left.
There is one final Keith prediction which may be their death knell, although Thomas’s words do not specifically mention the family:
‘When Dee and Don shall run as one
And Tweed shall run with Tay
The Bonnie Waters o’ the Urie
Shall bear the Bass away.’
The Bass is a man-made medieval mound used to garrison troops of David I (1170). It is situated at the confluence of the Urie and Don in Inverurie which meets the boundary of the lands of Keith Hall, where the Earls Marischal built their glorious edifice after they were elevated and once more restored to royal favour. The Hall is a superb example of 17th century style and elegance and its surrounding woodland reminiscent of once-great royal hunting forests.
The Earl of Kintore, in his traditional rôle as Chief of Clan Keith
The river floods regularly and in these last floodings, the Bass got its feet wet.
Within the last decade, the great Hall was sold and converted into a condominium; while the Earl and Countess of Kintore remained on the estate – making a comfortable residence in the Stables – they both seemed to have ‘lost’ something in the move.
Lord Kintore then ‘lost his seat’ in Tony Blair’s insensitive reshuffle of the House of Lords and the light went out of his life.
The Countess contracted cancer and was given a few months to live. One Hallowe’en, before events could progress too far in that direction, the Earl took his own life. His wife died within the year. Their son, the present Earl, no longer makes his home in Aberdeenshire.
The lands are walked upon by Inverurie passers-by who use the once-great ‘hunting forest’ to promenade their dogs on weekends, in the evenings; in fact at any time of the day or night. How many of them are aware of the great history that lies under their feet?
“The name of Keith shall wear awa'”
has come true in ways even Thomas could not have imagined.
So, did the Queen of Elfland ever summon Thomas back? Maybe so.
He disappeared one day in 1298 after walking out of his Tower House and was never seen again.
According to legend, he will return and come to Scotland’s aid in the hour of her greatest need…
Midwinter Solstice: Return of the light
Sine umbra nihil
Burning the Clavie at Burghead, Moray
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
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
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
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
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.
Expect Miracles 09/09/09
Last crop circle before 9/9/9: nine-in-mirror, 12-helix DNA, infinity & ascension?
Everybody’s noticing it: 09/09/09. The last single-digit date in the Western calendar for a thousand years. No wonder the energy gurus are out in force.
Astrology pundits are ready with progressed charts: Saturn and Sun in Virgo, Mercury retrograde.
Numerologists are having a field day: 9+9+9=2+7=9 .
Crop circles in the sacred sites of Wiltshire have developed to their most sophisticated form: beauty in nature, tantalizing code.
Channellings are coming in thick and fast from the ethers.
All predict a turning point, the Shift of Ages, new beginnings for the human race. Ascension for some; a little farther up the ladder of awareness for others.
Naturally there are doubters: media takes pride-of-place in offering fear scenarios. But even the media is picking up on it: energy is building in remarkable corners of the planet, in all cultures, as we collectively approach the day.
There are further signs that the ascension process is reaching out and touching more people than before.
In 1987 the Harmonic Convergence of August 16/17 was heralded in esoteric communities like Sedona, AZ, Taos, NM and Mt.Shasta, CA and by New Age gurus generally as the beginning of a new process of awakening for humanity. Bright planets Jupiter, Venus and Saturn were visible together in the night sky, with believers meditating and sharing a ‘global field’ of synchronized human intent for a positive future for the planet. July and August 2009 saw similar planetary initiatives (Fire-the-Grid, Infinity-Gate-8, forthcoming Earthdance, September 26th) celebrating if not planetary ascension, then a progression of human compassion and increased awareness that we are all in this together.
Astrologers have their own explanation: in 1987 a powerful fire trine occurred in August with the Sun and attendant planets in Leo, together forming a trine with Jupiter in Aries and Saturn with Uranus in Sagittarius. On 09/09/09, after a prelude of eclipses, solar energy doorways and planetary conjunctions, the Sun and Saturn stand together in Virgo, the Moon graces earth-sign Taurus, with Mars supporting Jupiter back in Aquarius where he belongs: abundance and plenty for all, release from the old restrictive paradigm, step into the future with joy.
Other calendars agree. Among older cultures who have predicted this event for millennia, Judaeo-Christian prophesies rival Central American and Native American messages for the End Times. Harmonic Convergence in 1987 marked the end of Quetzacoatl’s cycle of Thirteen Heavens and Nine Hells. At that moment when the ninth hell fell, the Earth is said to have entered the 25-year culmination of its 5,125-year Great Cycle of History. Twenty-two years on, as we approach the end of the Maya’s 26,000-year Cycle of Evolution, (due to complete on or before 12/12/12) we as a species are being given evidence of our leaving third-dimensional spatial awareness behind and entering fourth dimensional (time) reality.
Scientifically, on a practical level, the Earth is changing.
Until 1987, and for thousands of years previously while the Earth was ‘asleep’, planetary energy frequency resonated at a fundamental cycle of 8Hz, or 8 cycles per second. This frequency is rising. Current frequency is 13 cycles per second, the musical note of Bflat, and a quantum figure satisfying mathematical proportions predicted by the Fibonacci series of numbers, based on the Golden Mean or Harmonics of the Universe. This is the progression 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 etc.
A boost in planetary energy has been accompanied by a rapid decrease in the Earth’s magnetic field. Whether this waning of electromagnetic force will result in a polar shift is unknown, but it promises to reach a projected ‘zero point’, seen by New Age philosophers like Gregg Braden as a still-point in consciousness representing ‘a rare opportunity for collective repatterning in human expression’.
One of the Deep Space objects now visible to Hubble
The number of wake-up calls is increasing: on the alarmist scale, planetary storms, forest fires, reports of famine and water shortages, statistics of diminishing clean air, ocean pollution, animal species hunted to extinction; on the positive side we reach ever farther out to the stars, create technology never before imagined, see the evolution of our species mirrored in mathematics and quantum theory. Our human consciousness is expanding at a rate previously unknown: Mind absorbing new information so quickly, it makes itself obsolete in seconds. As a race, we are receiving reminders to speed up our personal process of spiritual awakening, to enter the Divine Matrix.
Channelled messages from Ashtar, Sirian High Command, Archangel Metatron and Kryon of the Magnetic Service have been flooding spiritual social internet sites like Humanity Healing’s ning network, encouraging the individual to look within, to contemplate one’s own heart reaction, soul promptings and inner guides in this New Earth.
In some ways 9/9/9 is a beginning. It is also a completion. A different cycle of human endeavour is emerging, seen perhaps best in the person of a black Muslim as president of the world’s most powerful nation, where misdeeds and war-mongering may cease as a means to achieving goals. Instead we are beginning to get our heads around a long-dreamed ability to ‘create our own reality’, actively to allow joy and peace to enter our lives; consciously to become people who ‘pay-it-forward’ rather than offer payback.
It has been said the current financial downturn is comparable with the 1930s depression. Astrologically the same powerful planets, Saturn, Pluto and Mercury, are repeating cycles experienced in the ’30s. But Jupiter is abundant as never before. On a planetary level current generosity and support for causes to save wildlife, feed the hungry, establish more enlightened health care systems are far beyond anything the New Deal ever devised. Yes, you could say the human race is hearing the wake-up call of 09/09/09.
In New Age circles it is said the way to move with the new energies is a paraphrase on the Judaeo-Christian (St.James’) ‘faith-hope-charity’. New Agers express it either as ‘feel it; see it; believe it’; or ‘believe-expect-love’. Either way it’s the expectation that counts.
Maybe we really are waking up this time. On 09/09/09 EXPECT a miracle.
Entering the Infinity Gate
In late June 2009, a series of crop circles in southern Britain began appearing, suggesting cosmic occurrences. One circle in particular, at Waden Hill, seemed to predict a solar flare for July 7. At the date of its creation, the last week of June, the Earth was in solar minimum and had had no solar flares for some months. Then on 7/7, a large coronal mass ejection (CME) occurred. For the next several days – assuming magnetic radiation from the CME takes three days or so to reach Earth, other crop circles in this genre appeared in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire.
In the opinion of some, the ‘aliens’ were sending us messages to guide us through subsequent days. A flurry of blogs on social networks and dot-ning sites brought in ideas from quantum physicists (‘crop circles are magnetic anomalies somewhat like iron filings on paper reacting to the movement of the magnet underneath’), from croppies predicting the end of the world and from Maya-calendar enthusiasts who saw many of the latest designs as Nazca Line developments (Inca) or 2012-inspired (Maya).
Some of the late June designs show superb examples of electronic circuitry, animal and insect lifeforms; they seemed almost like the answer to Carl Sagan’s message sent to the stars in 1969 with Voyager. If we see these new designs as the stars answering, we may be on the right wavelength. Newer circles – and a massive surge in ionic and electromagnetic energies from the cosmos – are now pointing toward the present three-day window leading up to eight-eight (August 8th, 2009) or the Infinity Gate.
The premise is this:
In the year 1900 human civilization had amassed a body of knowledge stretching back 6,000 years to the Sumerians. By 1950, we had amassed a similar quantity of knowledge in 50 years. By 1980 we were assimilating this amount of data every 2 years. Now, in 2009, human consciousness, with the aid of cell phones, the internet and satellite communications, is capable of absorbing this data in one calendar month. We are on a threshold which the Maya called End Times: not because civilization ends, but because consciousness reaches a new dimension of comprehension.
So messages from the stars – or you could see it as our own cosmic consciousness replying to itself – are building as we reach the Infinity Gate: a window of solar light and galactic energy that’s due to open two days from now on eight-eight.
We can walk through, if we wish.
Elders descended from original Maya recently broke their silence of 527 years: the date of 21 December 2012 is an arbitrary one. The stargate through which human consciousness leaps into the ‘New Earth’ [Eckhart Tolle, The Bible] could come any time between now and then. We’ve already reached critical mass. We’ve already passed the million mark of like-minded souls who believe in ‘creating a new reality’.
The summer of 2009 may be remembered for its triple eclipses, a triad of celestial events which made Man look to the heavens. It may go down in the history books as the moment Man changed, pulled on his mantle of awareness, entered the Infinity Gate and reclaimed his God-given image. But Man has not been very good at pulling himself out of his ‘synthetic’ reality (freeways, finance, politics, poverty) and reconnecting with his ancestral roots in the home planet, the mother which has nurtured him during those 6,000 years of civilization. The Maya and the Hopi and the Lakota and many tribes who still ‘remember’ their past predict that only when Modern Man reconnects with the Ancient World – the ancestral matriarchy which saw humans as children of the earth – will he enter the Infinity Gate.
It would be nice if this eight-eight did it for us. Its symbolism alone is intriguing: 8 sideways is the symbol for infinity.
8∞8
If enough of us hold the vision together we could jump-start the New Earth. My feeling is we can. Some of us will. It would be miraculous if a large chunk of humanity were to do it too. Our consciousness is ripe for allowing this to happen. It’s as easy as dipping into a pool of violet light, a lagoon of awareness.
Let’s take a dip: Let’s go for it.
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