Fishing for Compliments—or a Living

INSECURE WRITERS’ MONTHLY SHARING CORNER or
EMPATHIZING with the UNSUNG aka Fishermen

Crescent City, CA marina April 2016 without boats, photo courtesy Tom Lesher F/V Jumping Jack

Crab Fisherman’s Lament 1991-1992 & 2015-2016
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the hall
all the fishermen sat at the Conference Call.
Their boats, they were nestled all snug in the Bay,
in hopes that tomorrow would be opening day.
Bud with his checkbook and Vince with his pen
were just sitting down—they had done it again.
They had to come up with some new kind of story
“Well you know guys we’ve got way too much inventory.
“The most we could possibly pay you’s a buck.
“If you want more than that, well, you’re just out of luck.”

In all of the ports there arose such a clatter
people jumped out of bed to see what was the matter.
“All right guys, calm down now, you’ve vented your spleen.
Perhaps we could gove you a dollar fifteen.”
“Enough of this bullshit—we’ve had it to here—
“We’re not goin’ fishing, we’re not setting the gear.”

Crab cemetery—dying to get in

So we tied up the boats, put away all the bait,
and we all settled down for a long season’s wait.
In Fort Bragg and Eureka, ‘Come hell or bad weather’
Crescent City and Brookings ‘We’re stickin’ together’
And even in Trinidad, Port Orford, too.
But we just didn’t count on that bad Newport crew—
“We’re not sittin’ around, nah, we’re setting the gear,
“The rest of you go stick a squid in your ear.”
Well, the wind it was calm, and the ocean was placid,
But then came those fatal words: domoic acid.
For some weird sort of chemical found in the guts,
They’re closing the season. Those guys must be nuts.”

We ranted and raved, but ’twas to no avail
‘cos the Feds and the bureaucrats always prevail.
After twenty-some odd days, we finally did go.
And over both shoulders some crabs we did throw.
But there weren’t too many—at a pretty poor price.
For a lot of us Holidays weren’t all that nice.

Well you knew things got screwed up. Now you know the reason.
So ‘tight lines’ to all—and maybe next season.
Tim Harkins F/V Maria Concetta, Trinidad, CA

Empty Marinas, Oceangoing on Hold

Rancho Chualar cropcircle December 30th, 2013, highlights the 1. 9. 2. and π 3.14159265359 ad infinitum

Pacific coastal fishing has been on hold since December last year. Ports in California and Oregon—Pacific Northwest—are hurting. Empty marinas everywhere—as in Crescent City photo, top. Bureacratic delay in decisions has affected a little-known segment of the food-provider chain—fishing boat captains and their crew—with their wives, families, dependents.

Government procrastination is only one aspect. Final pay-out—if any—of compensation to the fishing fleet is mostly eaten up in overwintering expenses, without income. Crew members are not covered by Fish & Game authority or Federal handouts. Generosity to deck hands depends solely on captains who have themselves reached near-crisis point.

In an election year, farmers with drought problems—e.g. Salinas CA last year—Chualar Crop Circle at left—and misfortunes of our Pacific hands-on fishing fleet in small coastal ports—may seem like small potatoes. Not high priority television news.

Business, Balance Sheets and the Biosphere
Tonight, however, and for two more evenings in the run-up to Earth Day and Earth Week—April 20— Humboldt State university-influenced Arcata Playhouse will feature a presentation and film screening by EPIC of TREE-SIT: THE ART OF RESISTANCE followed by discussion with HSU environmentalists who may have found a way forward amid conflict with business, balance sheets and the Biosphere.

Survival of the human race may not be on our minds as writers who document or fantasize our way on to people’s reading list. But previous reminders by our ocean, our farming hinterland, our rising temperatures—80ºF today in NoCal—have been persistent—witness 2015 as hottest year on record.

And there’s more to come. I’m sure even our fearless leader, Alex, and his sci-fi acolytes would find a way to squeeze our plight into readable form, so we can pull out the stops together—even while we struggle with April A-to-Z challenge, we writers might make a difference.

It’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Getting through this together.
©2016 Marian Youngblood

Happy Independence Day: Chill with IWSG

Monthly IWSG gets a Chill Pill

Guy Fawkes Night at Windsor, 1776: blasting off fireworks to celebrate GF’s foiled attempt to blow up the Palace of Westminster, London (in 1605). Fireworks have since been a tradition both in the homeland and the colonies. Print Paul Sandby, courtesy BritishLibrary

Firstly, may I wish all my American cousins, writerly, IWSGy or not, a stupendous Independence Day for 2012; I can’t help but notice that in the 236 years since you began this great celebration of your freedom—from the shackles of your colonial rellies—us Brits—relations between us have remarkably improved.

—Two cultures divided by a common language—
Geoerge Bernard Shaw

Although this time of the month I usually reserve for bloghopping, whispering our creative woes, or rejoicing in support of Alex J. Cavanaugh‘s regular bloghop/blast-off by insecure writers, IWSG, our fearless leader—with two sci-fi bestsellers in the bag; his third a WIP—has given us a reprieve*. Independence Day is, he believes, such a national holiday, a day of celebration, that it is worth setting aside any commitments or prior promises, and instead get out there and …er … blast off in another direction: with fireworks.

*Alex knows us writers well; technically, he gave us the option to post either today or tomorrow 🙂

Yeah for the grays: ET has rights, too

In Britain, ‘health-and-safety’ concerns make it illegal now to shoot fireworks, except on the anniversary of November 5th, when in 1605 Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament situated in the medieval Palace of Westminster, London. It seems in our shared nature that we like to explode spectacular visual patterns on our consciousness and feel good when we do it.

So I thought that, instead of having a monthly moan, or catching you up on my latest literary contest rejection, I would use this month’s bloghop as an excuse to have a bit of visual fun—a mini slideshow— with the new images appearing in the (mostly British) cornfields; It’s my way of contributing to the US holiday; and isn’t it interesting to explore why certain images, like going to the movies, make us feel good. It works, however much or little we understand about the phenomenon.

Catchup for Beginners

Disneyland Crop Circle, Stanton St. Bernard, Wilts June 29th, likened to the Abbey of Westminster Palace

Quick resume for total newbies: Cropcircles—designs of multiple forms—appear in English (& other countries’) barley and wheatfields in the summer months. Those considered ‘genuine’ are ones made—in a matter of minutes—where the light/energy creating them heatseals the stems into forming wave-like and woven patterns within an overall visually-exciting motif—when viewed from above. While there are still a few farmers who believe their fields are being ‘vandalized’ by locals with ropes and planks—some field designs have been cut out within hours to stop people visiting—the majority of Wiltshire farmers display honesty boxes, and are laidback about it. Because in the case of microwaved stems, the plant continues growing, some have even made beer from CC-anointed grain—on sale at the local croppie hostelry, The Barge Inn at Honeystreet. The Barge was built in 1810 as a stopping point on the newly-constructed Kennet-Avon Canal which still runs past the beer tables. It is croppie hub.

By far the most-favored fields are those in the ancient neolithic kingdom of Wessex—Stonehenge and Glastonbury come to mind. Mostly confined to a small portion of chalk—limestone—ridges and fields in central Wiltshire, whose underground aquifers measure highly as an electric/energy current conductor, crop circles have in recent years appeared to highlight their surroundings, manifesting in the vicinity of ancient sacred centers like Avebury stone circle and neolithic Silbury Hill—largest man-made mound in Europe.

Crop circle points to Silbury Hill

It is true that more people have become aware of their ancient heritage through following the cropcircle trail… And wasn’t it the Native American who advocated following the route led by Nature into the Sacred Ways of the Ancestors?

You Americans did well to burst out in your independence. We Brits are still culturally guilty of too much criticism and cynicism. Maybe the crop circles are telling us to lighten up. And it has not escaped anyone’s notice that we are now midway through the year predicted by the Ancestors as a year of ‘signs’—eclipses and Venus transit included.

Flower-of-life Crop circle near neolithic Avebury appeared July 1st within the ancient sacred precinct

While previous years have focused on dimensional and coded designs, it is too early to tell which way 2012 will go—both the flower-of-life and Disneyland palace have precedents—but the season is hotting up. There were fourteen English crop circles in June, and July usually doubles that number. For a more in-depth view, read my main consciousness and crop circle blog at Siderealview.

A couple of anthropomorphic designs—’alien mother’ and her babies—have gotten people excited into anticipating a heavy ET element. The internet has much speculation on UFOs and ETs creating the circles, particularly in Mexico and Italy, where more formations have appeared this year than ever before.

‘Mother Alien’ and her baby tadpoles: twin designs in 2012 crop circles in Wiltshire heartland

It is encouraging that several Facebook groups, some serious, others critical, do much to keep concensus and interpretation at a high level.

Like Alex’s wonderful IWSG initiative here, where through his intention and focus to get us together, he has built up a lovely group mind among us, encouraging us to stretch out the hand of friendship, to share, and help each other out; so, an element of cohesion or group consciousness can be seen developing in embryo form within the most dedicated groups in the croppie world.

And, besides, having fun has always been a good way to recharge our batteries. So I hope my little bit of holiday divertissement adds a cultural twist to what I’m sure has already been a roaring success on the other side of the Atlantic.

Besides, we may indeed be enjoying our way into a better future. There’s …..hope for us all.
©2012 Marian Youngblood

Crazy Cozy Spoof Pitch

Blogfest Crazy Cozy contest to celebrate Alyse’s launch

My friend and fellow author Hart Johnson (Tami Hart) is celebrating today because she has been officially launched~ as new “name” Alyse Carlson in the wide world of readers of cozy mysteries. Her Azalea Assault is published today by Berkley Press. Yet, true to form, she isn’t crowing from the rooftops about her newfound fame, but is sharing the honor with her friend and (longer-term) professional author Elizabeth Spann Craig, who also launches today, though not for the first time: her new ‘Quilt or Innocence‘ is released today by Signet.

So it is not surprising that some of us were asked to make the occasion a little more crazy (than it already was, and it is jolly: see other participating pretenders) by sharing in a Crazy Cozy Spoof Pitch: setting out the bones of a Cozy Mystery and letting the authors choose the zaniest.

So here’s mine—all apologies for uproarious laughter or convulsions subsequently induced—accepted.

CRAZY COZY SPOOF PITCH:
Protagonist: My detective is an amateur crop circle photographer, Colin, camping overnight with his girlfriend and accidental witnesses to what they believe is the manifestation of a light orb in the making of a crop circle.

Sidekick: his girlfriend, the lovely Linda; who has ideas of her own about who is making the patterns in the cornfields.

Manton Drove crop circle June 2nd, 2012, first CC in barley: “all the Cees”

Theme: you guessed it—the crop circle season has begun! endless imaginary designs conjured up to keep the croppies hoppy! er, happy.

Victim #1 and Victim #2: found together next morning in the middle of a newly-formed crop pattern: #1 is local rope-&-plank circlemaker Dave, known to brag about his alien connections; #2 is the lifeless corpse of a small, gray large-lidded alien. Their bodies are aligned to face an ancient burial cairn and passage grave on the distant horizon.

Killer: Locals suspect Dave’s partner Doug had been jealous of his partner’s ability to make board-and-stomp patterns in the wheat better than him; but when more “alien” circles start to arrive and they know they didn’t make them, they decide to split up and see what’s going on.

Aliens making crop circles? who would’ve thunk it?

But our trusty sleuth and the dedicated Linda have other ideas, when they camp out the following night and witness another ball of light descend and pick up the gray body, deliberately left to see if they could film any developments…

aha: the culprit… or do their eyes deceive them…?

Oh, yes: The real killer is the driver of the second “light orb” ship, who thought by sacrificing his colleague and the earthling, they would learn more about Earth jealousies. After all, they have full capability aboard to resuscitate his co-pilot and resume their mission…
©2012 Marian Youngblood

…and a postscriptum for the serious matter of the day:
If, by now, you haven’t figured out what a Cozy Mystery is—think Daphne duMaurier, Agatha Christie, rather than Blade Runner, Alien Resurrection—if you see what I mean…

And it may interest you, bloghop reader, to know that even Alyse’s publisher, Berkley, knows that she’s loopy; because this is their cover blurb for her:

“Alyse Carlson is the pen name for Hart Johnson who writes books from her bathtub. By day she is an academic researcher at a large midwestern university. She lives with her husband, two teenage children and two fur balls. The dust bunnies don’t count. This will be her first published book.”

Don’t you just love it? How can she fail? Go, Hart: woot woot.
Lots of love.

Azalea Assault is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other good book stores, June 5th.

Focusing Calm while the Storm Outside Rages

What to do during a Grand Cross

Phoenix Haboob over July 4th weekend, 2011: Signs of the Times

“During such intense time acceleration, chaos breaks out everywhere, since chaos is always part of new creation. The reorganization of the fractal fields creates exceedingly unexpected new things in our lives.”
Barbara Hand Clow

We in this blog have commented on celestial Grand Crosses and Cosmic Crossroads before now. Last year’s was pretty bad.

But, if seen in the light of current crises, world drama and, combined with the personal pain and grief we have all been through in 2011, it may seem mild by comparison.

Last (2010) June’s Grand Cross was only a taster. One would be forgiven for thinking the world-as-we-know-it has taken a giant tumble since then.

The horror of March 2011 earthquakes brought repercussions within world charitable organizations which turned a disaster into a desire to share human resources. By the following month — April, end of the tax year — world agencies were predicting a calmer year ahead.

Spring equinox brought new hope. In the northern hemisphere the season was seen to have started well. Mother Nature lulled us into believing maybe the signs weren’t all bad. The month of April was, in Britain, the hottest and driest on record. Abundant rain filled the waterways of Spain, Italy, the Rhein, North and South Carolina and the American Midwest. Snow lingered on hills in the US Eastern Seaboard, in the Alps and in the Caucasus. Even North Africa and Afghanistan had respite from drought.

May and June were unbelievably sweet: suitably decked with blossom and birdsong, English fields grew abundant with a brand new (higher dimensional) version of the 2011 Crop Circle.

Summer solstice came and went. Despite a flurry of internet speculation on the imminence of Comet Elenin, and a record number of three successive eclipses, most northern hemisphere activity progressed as normal: English Ascot, horse-racing in Virginia, mountain climbing in the High Sierras, even hotair balloons in New Zealand — to get away from the heat. One astrological chart for solstice week featuring the longest day was likened to music of the spheres — all heavenly bodies were singing, if not in harmony, at least in tune.

… by the time I get to Phoenix she’ll be rising…
And then July arrived. With a jolt.

While America was revelling in its July 4th weekend celebrations, a Sahara-style Haboob — a massive dust storm — went raging into Phoenix… and engulfed this manmade miracle in the desert, the Arizona city with its six million-plus inhabitants. The fuzzy-looking dust-bunny with its huge friendly-looking paws caused electronics breakdown, electrical shorts, water pollution and breathing hazard.

…and there was more to come…

Barbara Clow is an author and respected astrologer, as well as being a devotee and proponent of Carl J. Calleman and his view of 2012 from an accelerated viewpoint. In their opinion, the December 2012 ‘end’-date has already speeded up and Humanity is now facing its nemesis, its ‘Fate’, its comeuppance — depending on your Judaeo-Christian/EarthFirst concept of End Times. Ms Clow and Dr Calleman believe the end of Mayan calculation happens nearly one year early — on October 28th, this year.

Ms Clow is particularly intrigued by the way events playing themselves out on the 2011 stage seem to hark back, almost mystically, to the astro chart for 1776 when America’s founding fathers set it all in motion.

Cherhill Whitehorse peace-pipe crop circle, Calne, Wiltshire July 27th, 2011 in same location as 1999 9-point star

July moved into August, and we were relieved to be distracted by a stream of hyper-dimensional messages in the corn. Crop circles in Wiltshire — and other world sites where they have a tendency to show up just before harvest — delighted a world audience. The croppie following was by now thoroughly split into the camp of believers (anomalous substances, pristine formations, untrampled and beautifully-layered grain) and board-stompers (unbelievers and those who use the phenomenon for their own agenda). While a plethora of inspired and inspiring designs made their presence known to a visual audience worldwide, business and media coverage turned into a circus. This continues in the present with the current series of conflicts — as the Grand Cross builds once more. It seems we are not to be spared an iota of pain until we navigate our way through this tunnel…

‘…the problem is not the good-natured heart of the people, but the outmoded mindset of the controllers…’ BHC

And the abundance brought by August fulfilled the prophecies of July. There was indeed more to come.

Ninth-century saint Swithun, Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Winchester also predicted weather from his niche in Stavanger cathedral!

The culprit is probably the previous month’s full moon (July 15th in Capricorn) and the potent assistance of long-dead but much revered St Swithun (c.AD800-862) — whose day is usually celebrated if the sun shines and reviled if it rains. It rained on St Swithun’s this year in Britain and, according to the Old Wives, we will suffer for that while full forty days play out — until August 30th. It is clearly not St Swithun’s fault. His heyday was the ninth century, when all weather signs were contemplated seriously, astrology consulted before tackling any important project and the advice of one’s ‘inner voice’ listened to before all rush and noise of the outside world.

But in the 21st century, the outside world has rushed in.

With clamor and clash, we are surrounded daily by images, events, and newsmedia words which heighten our stress levels, draw us in sinuous path, yet oftentimes with success, away from our inner guides. That elusive quality that our ancestors revered and listened to — that still small voice within — is harder to hear. She speaks in silent syllables, but we are too distracted sometimes to listen.

Grand Cross realigns

Grand Cross with all the trimmings -- August Full Moon, Saturday 13th, 2011

So it is not surprising to look at the progressed chart for the August 2011 Full Moon [August 13th] that we see a GRAND CROSS in full flight. Grand Crosses have dogged us since midsummer last year, and they won’t leave us alone for the forseeable few months, so we might as well grow accustomed to them. World events have only intensified since the June 1st eclipse and, according to Clow-Calleman, won’t let up until at least his version of the Mayan Calendar (Calleman preview) end-date of October 28th.

‘We have to end the rape of Earth by nuclear power, corrupted entertainment, and the diversion of our resources to warfare. It is obscene for media to showcase starving people in Africa while not critiquing military expenditure.’ BHClow

When such contrasts surface daily in our lives, it is not difficult to see why there are riots in London and the North of England, drought warnings for nearly half (41%) of the landmass of the United States and nuclear power officials tearing their hair in the (ongoing, continuing and continuous) global disaster that is Fukushima.

August full moon (13th, in Aquarius, the far-sighted) nevertheless brings the power necessary to use the energy window wisely; directing us to focus and not to be drawn off-balance by news of earthquakes in Cheyenne, Wyoming (August 11th) and submarine volcanoes in the axial Seamount off the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate (August 12th) on Oregon’s Pacific coast.

Vedic belief would have it otherwise: that all is solved by releasing tension and disbelief into the hands of the gods. Here is a friend’s take on the wisdom of the Subcontinent. True, if humanity can focus daily on manifesting the best, highest and most calm, we might just get through this time of huge stress — together. But it will take considerable wit and presence-of-mind to keep one’s head above the waters.

Calleman, too, has positive thoughts to see us through the next months. He considers a New World will emerge ‘after the end of the tun-based Calendar’, i.e. after October 28th, 2011. He is promoting a worldwide ‘cosmic convergence’ for the autum equinox.

It is at times like these that heroes are made.

The Glorious Twelfth

3D Starfish crop circle at Knoll Down, Beckhampton appeared with a companion, one field distant, on the morning after the Glorious Twelfth

Meanwhile, the heavenly ‘signs’ have kept on coming. The Glorious Twelfth is one of them. A little tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, since few know nowadays the meaning of the expression. What happens on that date now is a gesture only to the glory of past ‘hunter-gatherer’ activity and is but a shadow. Grouse moors used to open to guns — the occasion marked with picnics and wine and a day in the hills — to peck off the carefully-reared grouse population one by one for hoarding in the larder. Like the royal pursuit of the wolf (last wolf in Scotland shot in 1722 at Invercauld by King ‘Geordie’ the Fat — who had to be trundled to the moor in a wheeled litter to do it), and the English fox-hunting game, their days are numbered…the shooters, that is; no doubt a few more days of respite for the grouse.

Central nest in Windmill Hill-2 crop circle, another sign of authenticity
photo Stuart Dike

A perfect comparison with those outmoded practices can be seen in the work of David White & Son’s Wiltshire farms which include the fields of Etchilhampton and Windmill Hill, both highlighted by ET this year for consecutive crop circle embellishment (July 25th and 26th). The Whites farm organically, use no insecticides in the food they grow and the 1000-acre farming enterprise is a haven for lark, corn bunting, yellow wagtail and turtle dove. It is fitting that these Wiltshire nurturers and guardians of the soil should have their grain amplified by the extra nutrition and enhanced (measurable) vibration provided by two further crop circles this year. The Whites are also finalists in the RSPB Nature of Farming Award where votes will be counted until August 31st.

Our Oversoul seems insistent that we recognize those members of the community who nurture the soil, protect the earth. It is relevant that the Aberdeenshire farmer whose land was chosen August 24, 1995 to display the only crop circle in NE Scotland at Culsalmond, did at the time farm organically — still does — and is now one of the first in this corner of Scotland to drive an electric car.

Crop designs at Etchilhampton (left) & Windmill Hill appeared on consecutive mornings, July 25 & 26, on arable land farmed organically by the Whites who are donating all visitor moneys to Swindon Fluency Trust

Along similar lines, the female nurturer in Barbara Clow gives this advice:

The only thing that matters is how you live your life. Who do you love now? Are you faithful and devoted to each person you are connected to? Are you ready, at a moment’s notice, to go right to those who need assistance from you? Do you trust the grand plan that is unfolding, no matter what will happen in your personal life?

While cutting through a lot of male-dominant bluster featuring wars, weaponry-build-up, space race and political manoeuvering, she does not dismiss these ‘shocking weaknesses’ in aspects of society which have been under the control of ‘outmoded industrial and political systems’. She believes that some may be unable to dissolve their fears and guilt instilled by 5,000 years of organized religion in a second of ‘new time’. But we have to believe we can. We have at least to try.

These concepts are revealed in her book The Mayan Code: Time Acceleration and Awakening the World Mind where successive compartments of the Universal Underworld (March 9 to October 28), broken down into ‘days’ of human spiritual progress and ‘nights’ of terror, mayhem and planetary destruction, are a few of the surprises yet in store for us.

“Remember, you create your own reality, and the events in the outer world are deeply connected and inspired by what’s in your mind. Please take a look at your Spring Equinox intentions, for example, and assess how you are doing now, and also take note of the things that are popping into your life that you didn’t even plan on.” Astroflash

Ms Clow –selflessly– attributes her erudition to many teachers, including José Argüelles, Terence McKenna, Teilhard de Chardin, Carl Jung,
Graham Hancock and, not least, her Cherokee grandmother on one side and her Celtic heritage on the other.

“We are living through a great awakening and we are going to go through a lot of stuff. But I am optimistic. We live in a benevolent Universe.”

Others of her calibre and strength believe so, too. McKenna called the Universal Mind an ongoing process.

“To whatever degree any one of us can bring into focus a small piece of the (Universal) picture and contribute it to the building of a new paradigm then we participate in the redemption of the human spirit. That is, after all, what this is all about.”
T. McKenna, 2000.

It takes courage to face the music and not fail at the final reprise. We have great minds before us on the Path, and many fellow seekers focusing inner intent while the storm rages outside. There’s just a wild chance that — together — we’ll make it.
©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

Writer’s Muse and Humanity’s Oversoul

Om, Omega, Oversoul

VERSOUL: that Unity within which every man’s Being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yesterday was Emerson’s birthday. He and his fellows would have celebrated in style. He and his contemporaries, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and others of the American Transcendentalist movement, believed in

“The writer (in his ‘right state’) as an expression of Man Thinking; in degenerative state as a parrot of other men’s thinking“.

“It is the essence of poetry to spring, like the Rainbow Daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all history” Emerson, Representative Man

A clergyman, but one whose words are sometimes more Gautama than Goethe, Emerson, 1803-1882, had great fondness for the Oversoul, whom he called the Rainbow Daughter of Wonder.

He was first to concede, however, that she is fickle.

Rainbow Daughter of Wonder
Writers have it hard — they have to maintain focus. Whatever is going on in their own private, particular world, they have a daily obligation, an assignation, to tune in and connect with their Muse.

I speak with especial deference to those writers who blog frequently and find consistently interesting subjects to blog about, without losing touch with their own reality. I am in awe, for instance, of the blogger-author-writer capabilities of The Burrow consortium, who blog far more prodigiously than I and have a composite following of thousands. Their 2011 June writing contest, BuNoWriMo –filled with supportive banter and genuine writerly urgings– is imminent (June 1st). I have featured some of their writerly profiles here in the past — and shall again.

For now, let’s take a look at the science behind the Spirit/Muse: They say that as a writer, all you need is a rhythm –the habit– of making time every day to sit down and write. That the Muse, hovering entity that she is, knowing that you are down there, sitting –plodding sometimes; at others racing ahead with ideas pouring from your fingertips– will take pity and come down and join you.

And then there is the growling anti-Muse: the Musebloc, the Great Doubt. But we won’t go there. I have spent the last month in the arms of Rite R. Bloch. He’s not my favorite companion. I am the first to revel in the relief at the end of the tunnel where light as a chink is merely spied — because at least you know the great black hole of negativity does indeed have an event horizon, a finite edge. The cloud of uncertainty and hesitation is passing. Will soon pass. One can hold one’s head up again.

BuNoWriMo, design by Joris Amerlaan

In the case of BuNoWriMo, I am certain their joint Muse — their Oversoul — is watching and will oversee a hugely productive month (followable on BuNoWriMo”>Facebook) from their respective pens/keyboards. We shall await amazing results.

They say the Oversoul/Muse is energized by positive encouragement. Just like the individual who uses positive affirmation to get out of bed each day, spurring her/himself with thoughts of creating something new, building a world never before imagined; the Oversoul is there –omnipresent– waiting for a chance to pop into our conscious mind and guide us to a more-inspired place.

In Emerson’s sense, then, I may be blogging as the parrot, but I do it with the sincere intent to clear a way for the intellect of one of humanity’s great Men Thinking to come through.

Terence McKenna was a Muse unto himself. Permanently connected to the Oversoul through a lifetime habit of listening to the Voice Within, he had a phenomenal hold on Humanity’s future — and its past. He foresaw the times we live in now –the speeding up of time and all experience; the overwhelming of numbers; the love-hate relationship between science and spirituality; disconnection between Individual and State.

He had himself experienced firsthand the fantasy worlds which the human mind is capable of entering, manipulating, accepting, and reinventing. He had little faith in the machinations of ‘mindless’ men, but he had ultimate belief in the presence of an Entity, an Overbeing/Overmind — his ‘Novelty’ — known to Emerson, Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley and Sri Aurobindo as the Oversoul; and to Carl Jung as the Universal Unconscious.

To McKenna it was both Oversoul and Eschaton: it is the Intelligent Design of the Universal Mind.

In his view it has tricks up its sleeve.

McKenna died in 2000, as world population reached the six billion mark. A year before he went to the Great Amusement in the Sky, the ‘altered statesman’ revealed a semi self-deprecating tale of his version of humanity’s love affair with the UFO phenomenon.

Oversoul as Saucer
“There is building in global society an increasingly intense expectation of the intervention into human history by UFOs: that is very similar in tone to the buildup of expectation in the Hellenistic world in the century before the birth of Christ. The leaders of Roman society might have been caught off-guard by the appearance of Christ, but they had no-one to blame but themselves, as millions of people in the ancient world were expectantly awaiting the appearance of some kind of Messiah.

“So today, science and government poo-poo the idea of world contact with UFOs, but the contact cults grow ever larger and more insistent that contact is about to occur.

“Imagine, therefore, what you may never have seriously imagined before: imagine what would happen if UFOs were to appear. Imagine a spaceship of the Close-Encounters-of-the-Third-Kind variety suddenly appearing in orbit around the earth.

“Television and mass media would carry this image to every man, woman and child on the planet. Governments would be paralyzed, science would be helpless to explain where it came from or how it got here.

“Millennarian hysteria would break out everywhere.

“The UFO would be hailed as savior, and denounced as anti-Christ.
The end of the world would appear imminent. And all this would occur before the contact of more than a visual image.

Saucer cult: 'Science would be helpless to explain where it came from or how it got here'

“Then the UFO would begin its revelation: vast displays of benificent power can be expected; perhaps it would mysteriously neutralize all weapons of mass destruction or it might use some sort of ray to cure all terrestrial cancer. Whatever it does, one may be sure that its actions will be impressive: its actions will convert millions to the UFO religion in a space of hours. Indeed, its actions would be specifically designed to overwhelm us with the reality of its power and presence. That will close the first phase of the revelation.

“The second stage would be the ‘teaching’. Telepathically imparted, the specifics of the teaching cannot be anticipated, but they will urge love, voluntary simplicity, concern for one another, renunciation of war, perhaps the renunciation of the destructive application of science. Whatever the teaching, the UFO will promise immense rewards for those who follow them and dire consequences for those who do not. The teaching will be delivered in so poetically-perfect a way, so rich in understanding, and appealing nuances, that no-one will doubt their origin in a being so wise and good –and immensely superior to ourselves.

“The delivery of the teachings will set the stage for the third and last –and most shocking– phase of the revelation: the departure.

“The saucers, promising vaguely to return, will simply disappear.

“The entire process could take less than a month. If this seems a short time, recall that the entire public career of Christ lasted only three years. Christ’s career occurred in a world where information could move no faster than a horse’s gallop. Yet three years in one small part of the world was all that was necessary to launch a world religion that remained vital for 1500 years.

“In a world of electronic communication the impact of the Saucer’s arrival, miracles, teaching and departure would be incalculable, even if it all occurred within a month. The Saucer would leave in its wake a science utterly unable to provide any answers to the important questions the event had brought on. The vast majority of people would be fanatical converts to the teachings of the Saucers and any institution in opposition to those teachings could expect to be swept away almost overnight.

“The departure of the UFO would create a sense of abandonment, the agony of which would be expected to echo in the human psyche for centuries.

“The only panacea would be the religion of the Saucer, the religion left behind. Science would be discredited and soon abandoned in favor of a thousand or more years of exegesis of the Saucerian message.

“Is this not a familiar pattern we see in our lives with events happening right now?”

“What will never be said in the wake of such an event, and so must be said now –while there is still time for all of the above to occur and yet still be deception — of a non-deception designed to save us from our advanced science and infantile efforts, but a deception nevertheless:–

“The Saucer –no matter how alien the theory, no matter how advanced its demonstrations of power– is not a vehicle from some other star system.

‘It is the Oversoul Of Humanity– up to its oldest tricks.’

“If one knows this, one can live through the revelation and the destruction of our scientific world, and thus evade the immense power of this most powerful of all transparent phenomena, and thereby maintain integrity of one’s own soul and spirit.

“Remember, I am not a debunker of flying saucers or a defender of science. I am a contactee and this is the painstakingly-told story of my own involvement with the UFOs. I am one of those pinpointed as being a carrier of ideas that paved the way for the scenario I have just described.”*
Terence McKenna

“Yet, from it all I have learned that there is no religious revelation more satisfying than the hard-won food of simple understanding.

“And there is no liberation to compare with seeing oneself as the illusions and delusions of the Age in which one lives.

*”I reached these conclusions in my encounters with psylocybin and psychedelic plants. They immerse their users in the world of the Oversoul and make one privileged to have reached at least a part of the tectonics of operation.” TM

“They allow a private dialogue with the Oversoul that is outside the context of the struggle between science and revelation –that leaves no choice between the alienation of the rationalist and the pious formulae of the fanatical believers. These mind-expanding substances hold out the possibility of healing the breach between science and morality at the level of the individual, thus freeing one to evolve, independent of the chaos and transformation the UFOs may seem to bring to humanity.” ©TMcKenna

“[UFOs are], in other words, something which in order not to alarm us has disguised itself as an extraterrestrial being, but is in fact the collectivity of the human psyche signaling a profound historical crisis.” ©TMcK

If you thought that was a tale worth telling, McKenna is capable of much, much more. Along the way, you may have watched part one (above) of his great vision from the Oversoul: Storytime story of how we evolved through science. It is a tale of parallel universes. Here is part two.

The Crop Circle Connection

May 4th 2011 crop circle at Barat Cikarang, Java, photo courtesy Nur Agustinus

Contemporary news reportage worldwide includes UFO sightings over metropolitan areas; with video footage and recordings corroborating each other. Recent disclosure announcements by US government sources relate to alien craft, formerly denied. Indonesian news services speak openly about current and earlier (January 2011) crop circle appearances in ricefields in that country as UFO-related phenomena. This was most recently reinforced when aerial footage of the May 2011 crop design in Cikarang was taken from a small craft whose instruments suddenly failed in the electromagnetic surge over the formation and it crashed.

While this blog was being written, Peruvian television showed footage of a ‘breaking news’ craft in their airspace.

The Sanctuary, Avebury crop image late May in early barley, photo Stuart Dike

Through it all, and curiously, the British crop circle season has been slow to start, its symbols sporadic in appearance and design and leaving the conviction of its followers seriously dented. Some have even suggested the Indonesian designs are more advanced than the British 2011 season, so far.

Perhaps our communal doubt is being reflected in McKenna’s trickster Oversoul. As he would say, we shall have to wait and see.
©2011 Marian Youngblood

2011 Crop Circle season: Royal Fever or Beltane Ghosts?

Bosschenhoofd, Netherlands, Easter Sunday 2011

The English crop circle season still shows no authentic signs! But there were two appearances over Easter: one in the Netherlands and one in Wales.

Last year, 2010, spring in Britain was ‘late’, as it followed the previous winter’s heavy freeze; so the first crop circle to emerge did not occur in the month of April, but on May 5th (Old Beltane), in alignment with an ancient sacred stronghold (and site of the first Salisbury cathedral) at Old Sarum. Its appearance was eagerly awaited by the crop circle community because the earliest farming crop to start into flower –oil seed rape, canola– was only just out of the ‘green’ stage. Previous years had brought early ripening and, by comparison, the 2010 season had a lot to make up for.

So, it seems, does the summer of 2011. A repeat winter freeze, (human) standstill and a gradual earth-warm-up and then, bam, an April ‘heatwave’. Easter Sunday, April 24th, was the warmest April day in Britain since 1949: the month of April the warmest since records began 100 years ago. Last week, the British geared up for the Royal Wedding and the weather was playing along nicely. So, it might seem, is the sense of humour of the crop circlemakers: Prince William (Wales and Windsor) married on Friday, while one week previously, on Good Friday, the first canola circle appeared in South Wales.

Canola is a plant of the brassica family which often signals the start of the crop circle season, because in Britain nothing else (barley, wheat, maize) is anywhere near its ripening stage at the end of April.

There have been exceptions. Unusually, in 2010 a Somerset bean crop was used on June 7th at Stony Littleton longbarrow near Bath to showcase the double spiral of a traditional clock mechanism, as if perhaps to highlight the concept –or urgency– of time.

Gwent Good Friday crop circle, Severn Bridge, Chepstow, photo courtesy Olivier Morel

Then, lo and behold, the first Dutch formation –on Easter Sunday morning– at Bosschenhoofd, 22 miles South of Rotterdam, appeared in grass.

April dates that heralded the start of a British season in three previous years had already passed–April 15, 19 and 17 for years 2007, 2008 and 2009 respectively. The weather in England has been heating up fast, however, so it was a relief when the first crop circle of this season appeared over the Easter weekend –not in Wiltshire amid the sacred landscape of ancient Saxon heritage– but in an even older landscape with genuine Brittonic origins: Gwent, where this most ancient race has left evidence of human settlement since Mesolithic times.

Coincidentally–the Circlemakers are great on synchronicity–the tight little formation appeared at Innage farm near Chepstow, a stone’s throw across the Severn Bridge from the Oldbury nuclear power plant which featured in a crop image last July and which (with less publicity) vented radioactive steam one month ago, frightening already anxious residents on both sides of the river. Public concern was quelled by nuclear authority spokesmen after locals were understandably alarmed at the announcement of new ‘works’ planned for the nuclear facility, despite the awful and uncontrollable meltdown continuing in Fukushima, Japan after last month’s earthquake and tsunami.

The new Welsh design, in a field of oil seed rape, lies only seven miles southwest of the spectre of last season’s remarkable formation –the July 18th ‘quake-vibration’ crop circle at Woolaston Grange, Gloucestershire. While lying on the same (Welsh) side of the Severn, the 2010 ‘ghost’ technically lies in England, but it also faces diagonally across the river to the nuclear plant. Between the two lies the ancient stronghold of Caes-Gwent, ‘castle of Gwent’, modern Chepstow.

Roman 'Venta', rebuilt in 1069, Castle Gwent-over-Wye is the oldest extant stone building in Britain

In an historical context, Chepstow’s Welsh name, Caes Gwent, castle of Venta, Roman ‘market place’, shows how ancient are its roots and how significant is its position on the confluence of the river Wye (over which the 11thC Castle of Gwent still towers) with the Severn –that great tidal estuary which eventually flows into the Bristol Channel and the Atlantic Ocean. This is the southern heartland of the ancient (pre-Celtic) Brythonic kingdom, where ancient Britons spoke a dialect understood by other Britons of Prydein –Roman Britannia. Their language was understood over the water-bridge in Brittany, throughout Cornwall, Isle of Man, Rheged (ancient Cumbria), Dumbarton and Strathclyde (Dun-Britton), Brigantia (Yorkshire and Northumberland) and northern Pictland (Prydein). Their ancient monuments, aligned with the movements of the heavens and dedicated to their ancestral dead, were generations older than Stonehenge. Avebury’s great circle is their nearest relative in design and in time.

Once again, bang on time, the crop circle phenomenon has drawn to our attention an ancient landscape–full of sacred detail and priceless earthbound wisdom– almost totally forgotten in the 21st century.

But the Circlemakers display yet more layers to enlighten us.

Four-petal lotus of the root/base chakra in the Gwent crop circle, 23rd April 2011

Another coincidence can be seen in the Chepstow design’s similarity to the four-petalled lotus of the Muladhara, the red-hued base chakra design which kicked off the 2011 January season in Sleman, Yogyakarta, Java. At that time, a statement from the Sultanate warned the Javanese–the world’s most populous Muslim country, already steeped in shared knowledge of kundalini and the significance of chakras in the energy body, borrowed from Hindu belief–that the appearance of the ‘base chakra’ presaged

“Nature’s selections (i.e. acts of God) in this country shortly”
HRH Prince Karyonagoro (Kandjeng Pangeran) January 2011.

In Vedic Kundalini the red base chakra is the lowest, most physically-driven, of the body’s energy centres. In recent years many crop circles and spiritual groups have been emphasizing the need for us, the human race, to rise above physicality and elevate ourselves at least through the second and third to the level of the (green) fourth heart-chakra, in order to prepare ourselves for our anticipated move –along with the planet Earth– into fifth-dimensional reality, nirvana, a permanent state of bliss or Ascension.

With the exception of the ‘message’ Crop designs at Crabwood Farm August 2002, Circlemakers do not usually leave us specific directions. They use hints, fractals, energy mosaics, pointers and clues to a mystery which we –in wracking our braincells and stirring up our DNA– seem to delight in trying to solve.

Gwent seems to be hinting…

It is interesting to note that the combination Muslim-Hindu population of Great Britain (England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland) has doubled in ten years, from 1.5million in 2001 to around 3 million in 2011; and outside of Leicester and Harrow, the predominant residential city-satellites for Hindu and Muslim peoples with Indian subcontinent roots (within commuting distance of London on M4 and M48) include Cardiff and Chepstow-on-Wye.

As the Circlemakers are known for their sense of humour, they might just be saying that we, the people of the British Isles, despite introduced Vedic wisdom and several seasons of implicit teachings and clues from crop circle mentors, are–in consciousness–still psychically hanging out around our own base chakra, i.e. our heads are still up our kundalini tail.

Judging by recent seasons, May 1st (Beltane) appears to be the seasonal cut-off date. Beltane means earth festival bigtime for the Circlemakers. Buddhist Wesak celebrates the Buddha’s birth on the first full moon of the Taurus cycle (this year May 17th). But May also means the Baal fire ritual of the Ancients. Once again we are being reminded (implicitly) how our ancient Brittonic ancestors valued –nay, worshipped– the sacred return of Light in the full blossoming of May Day, Beltane, with the Earth’s rise in fertility, the blossoming of trees and flowers, the Earth Mother’s return to full growth and potency. Beltane was more than just a fire festival at 15ºTaurus, the mid-point of the growth season; it was a celebration of renewal and a belief for all Mankind that the Earth was capable once again of overcoming death, dying, winter, moving through budding of new growth into full-blown summer and supreme joy of life.

It is this ancient practice, once a sacred belief system held by our pre-Christian Brittonic ancestors–kept alive in some Druidic and Wiccan traditions so often ridiculed by modern skeptics–that the crop circles seek to remind us: Life is not dead. We and the Earth are alive.

Eight/Infinity crop circle with central lovers-knot, Milk Hill 08-08-08

Looking back, it is easy to spot this recurring theme. The decade of the 1990s had marked a gradual trend towards an earlier start to the season in April; remarkably, 1999 began on April 3rd! But by contrast, the first half of the ‘noughties was marked by late beginnings–mid-May (2001, 2005), even early June (2002, 2003, 2004 & 2006). 2009 began on time (first crop circle on The Ridgway near Avebury/West Overton on April 17th. In 2008, April 19th marked the beginning with a six-armed spiral at Waden Hill, Avebury. It was also the year of the bee (at Honey Street, no less) on July 27th; the first year crop circles were confirmed in the USA and Brazil; and, with synchronicity we are coming to expect, the famous ‘Eight’/Infinity formation which on 08-08-08 graced Milk Hill, Alton Barnes.

Milk Hill June 2009 crop circle overlay on 08-08-08 ghost

Circles arrived even earlier in 2007, with the Oliver’s Castle seven-arcs on April 15th. 2007 was famous for its ‘Om’ design of 07-07-07–at East Field. This remarkable formation began a trend in croppie thinking of assigning special meaning to specific numerical sequences: a simple form of numerology or gematria. That said, 2006 was a disappointment to many who waited until 21st May for the first sign in East Sussex. According to crop-prophet Freddy Silva, that year was atypical because it was jinxed by a high number of ‘hoax’ cropcircles. By contrast, it was famous for its first-time 3D-special effects formations. They have been entrancing us ever since.

“The Measure of a Man and of an Angel will be the same in the New Jerusalem”
Revelation of John 21: 17

Wayland's Smithy '12 Towers' crop circle, reminiscent of the blades of a combine harvester, arrived 08-07-06, photo courtesy Steve Alexander

The world’s first 3D design at Wayland’s Smithy, Oxfordshire, left, –combination skyscraper-overhead, 12-towers and Florence Nightingale’s Rose Diagram–appeared July 8th 2006: 06-07-08. Its proximity to Wayland’s Smithy neolithic burial chamber is not accidental, as it implies a connection between the ancient Saxon god of metalworking and the future of the human race being forged now. The British–as mythologist Barbara Clow has stated bluntly–are not exactly known for their knowledge of their own sacred beginnings. She implies (the reality of) America as a God-fearing race; while the British have no tolerance for the sacred. Many of the most emphatic crop markings of recent years have emphasized this lack of sensitivity to our ancient wisdom and essence of the sacred. Designs have increasingly been sited in close proximity to primeval sacred sites or places of ancient wisdom whose meaning and context have, in general, been studiously ignored.

The Twelve Towers, as the Waylands formation became known, has been likened by crop circle veteran Joseph Mason to the final reckoning of the New Jerusalem in the Revelation of John: Jerusalem was said to measure 12×12=144 cubits, a sacred number meaning ‘Light’, often represented by the cube. His exposition is worth reading for its incisive content and extreme intuition. Wayland’s inate spiraling form has reappeared many times since that year, as a kind of reminder of its End-of-Days message. One also sees in it the ‘Rose Diagram’ of Florence Nightingale–the first time a woman effectively cured an epidemic by alerting the medical community (and the world) to iatrogenic deaths in foul hospital conditions in the Crimea. She made her presentation via a diagram her superiors could visualize, and her visual method changed the way humanity looked at health. In that sense the crop circle message may be our own health warning, an alert that our world may now be in imminent danger, as a result of our own pollution of earth’s fragile systems.

2006 may have been an odd year — no crop circle 06-06-06; a short season that ended abruptly on August 14th. But it did deliver some amazing pieces of inter-dimensional wonder. And from that year onwards, the world croppie audience began sitting up and paying attention.

Seasons come and go and we are learning to expect bigger and more explicit messages. What surfaces above all is the sense of wonder they impart, to thousands who have never actually sat in one or experienced the sense of ‘community’ they intuitively bring to the fields. Many have only seen them from above: the photographic message, shared so willingly and selflessly by dedicated crop circle pilots and photographers and website volunteers. In a gentle, unobtrusive way, it seems that the symbols in the fields are encouraging us to reconnect with our own sense of community–and our own sacred selves.

Vibration and Frequency and Form
All matter is in essence a group of particles vibrating at a common frequency, (a current scientific theory) and it is understandable that we human beings, made up of particles vibrating at a certain frequency, are affected by other vibrating particles–positive or negative–depending on the interaction.

This is inkeeping with current spiritual group ethos: raise your vibration to create your own mastery. The idea resonates well with the crop circles. Some see them as ‘temporary temples‘ for a modern age that has lost its sense of the Sacred. As huge, geometric temples, they seem to inspire our psyche towards wonder, a higher sense of reality and awareness. It is documented that many people feel compelled to enter formations in the fields from quite a distance away, and afterwards describe feelings of peace and wellbeing while inside the ‘sacred’ space. Many attest to lives profoundly changed in some capacity–psychologically or spiritually– by the experience.

Savernake forest 'wormholes', July 6th, 2006, photo courtesy Steve Alexander

Over the years it has become commonplace for circle visitors to experience an energetic ‘flow’ within its precinct. Video cameras malfunction, batteries suddenly go dead, compasses fluctuate wildly. The electromagnetic field which circles produce has been likened by some dowsers, empaths and sensitives to the static they feel inside the oldest stone circles. Again, it seems synchronistic that the crop circles and the stone circles of Wiltshire and North Britain share a mystical connection in location, effect on ground water and subsoil. Samples taken for scientific analysis by non-profit agencies such as BLT Research confirm this. In 1980 the Dragon Project measured a miraculous surge of radiation within the precinct of Rollright Stones, Oxon at the moment of sunrise. Stonehenge visitors (for midsummer sunrise) confirm similar rises in energy. Both these stone circles are reasonably complete in construction. By contrast, dowsers who have visited ‘restored’ stone circles –a notorious one in Aberdeenshire at Strichen–experience sickness and have to leave because of the disruptive energy fields created by misaligned or substituted stones of the ‘wrong’ geological composition. It seems our Neolithic ancestors had a sense of ‘knowing’ where to place stone circles on the earth’s electromagnetic nodes–and within widely electrically-conductive aquifers of chalk or limestone– it worked like a dream.

In the magical situation created by an overnight crop sensation arriving via light, heat and sound in a ripening field, the essence of electromagnetic currents seem to be retained by the very bounds of the design’s circumference. According to BLT’s research, only gradually over a period of days–probably with traffic generated by visitors along paths leading in and out–does the energy level dissipate. There are some field formations where the energy appears so potent that its influence lingers not only through the winter after harvest, but, remarkably, for several subsequent seasons.

… as a ghostly reminder of what once was…
These are the famous crop circle ‘ghosts’.

Silbury Hill 2010: crop spectre of 2009 'Beetle' ghost

It was standard archaeological procedure throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to try to examine (from the air, via balloon and subsequently from helicopter or light plane) any area of ‘archaeological significance’ where it was suspected there might have been structures on or below ground which had been ‘lost’ in modern development, carelessness or just plain ignorance. In the (hot) summers of 1949, 1976 and 1996 major advances were made and documentary evidence added to British archives of ancient sites where structures showed up in the dry landscapes of a few arid summer months as ‘cropmarks’. Little did the archaeologists know then that something similar would become the focus of world attention in the second decade of the next millennium which would give an altogether different meaning to the expression ‘crop formation’. It is this ephemeral ‘ghost’ –an appearance within the soil itself after all vestigial reality of structure or form has been removed– which the crop circles have in common with some neolithic (and mesolithic) structures. The vibration of the form itself creates a lingering impression in the earth which –under certain conditions– can be witnessed once more. The spectre of the form lives again.

It is not just their physical form which has a remarkable effect on the humans attracted to enter crop circles. Their ghosts do as well. And, seen from the air –as we are now treated to, courtesy of the generosity of volunteers like Olivier Morel, above– crop circles are making their mark on the civilized world.

It may still be considered an ‘alternative’ world, a ‘loopy fringe’ by some, but even the media is coming around to the idea that the human race is jointly heading for some kind of quantum leap –either this year or next.

We are being treated to something in accelerated time: a reminder by Spirit of the Sacred which many of us seem to have forgotten. It is something quite wonderful, infinitely fulfilling and much needed, in order to bring our lives back into some kind of perspective. Because it is a little beyond our grasp, there is a thrill associated with this achievement. And it is well overdue.
©2011 Marian Youngblood

Java Crop Circles highlight Earth Changes

Mount Merapi in Java, Indonesia: constantly active, the stratovolcano last erupted November 5th 2010

Surprise appearances of near-‘twin’ formation crop circles in ricefields in two districts of Yogyakarta near Mount Merapi, Java last week have recruited Indonesians to the crop circle phenomenon and prompted a statement by the Sultanate whose palace, the Kraton, in Sleman district (central Yogyakarta) lies within one kilometer of one of the designs. It appeared two days after its companion, a complex vortex-like mandala figure arrived overnight in a southern suburb of the same city, six kilometers to the south of the Palace. Many believe they predict an increase in earth’s volcanic activity.

First crop circle in Indonesia, January 2011, has spiritual community on alert

The first crop circle (January 23rd 2011) in rice near the Palace in Sleman district, central Yogyakarta, is located 30 kilometers south of the 3000-meter (9,000 feet) stratovolcano Mount Merapi which is almost continuously active and last erupted for a whole month in October 26- November 30th, 2010.

The second crop circle (January 25th) lies in the Bantul district of Yogyakarta, 6km south of the center (and the Kraton Palace) in a rural district which suffered severe structural damage and loss of life in May 27th 2006 when a 6.2 magnitude earthquake tore through the village. Bantul is known internationally as an important artist’s colony which produces posters using a technique called cukil, daren kidul and Dono Kerto Turi.

Thousands of Yogyakarta residents and visitors from all over Java thronged to see the phenomenon

Crop circle followers worldwide are struck by the synchronicity of the crop circle sightings — these are unique in Indonesia; the first time crop circles have appeared — with their closeness in date, design and proximity to Mount Merapi’s seismic field. Even local Indonesians are contemplating the coincidence of the two designs’ choice of location as a warning of further earth changes in this volatile region. Within days, thousands of visitors lined up to walk through the rice fields to experience the phenomenon first-hand.

Many had never heard of crop circles nor read of the phenomenon and several reports described the marks in the fields as the ‘imprint of landing UFOs‘.

The Sleman design, close to the Yogyakarta Sultan's Kraton Palace, reminiscent of the base chakra

In a statement from the Yogyakarta Sultanate by Java’s spiritual counsellor, HRH Prince Karyonagoro (Kandjeng Pangeran) the Sultan’s family is ‘taking these appearances seriously’.
However the design of the circles has struck him as very interesting as it appears to replicate the form of the Javanese Muladhara, or the base chakra of the kundalini.

“From the standpoint of  ‘Merging with the One philosophy’, the appearance of the crop circle phenomenon in Sleman, Yogyakarta, in the form of Muladhara symbol means that there will be Nature’s selections in this country shortly, because the symbol is related to the genetical mapping when microcosm synergized with macrocosm waiting for a birth in the third dimensional place and time. I hope my brothers and sisters will be all right in welcoming this pending event. Stay alert!…”
HRH Prince Karyonagoro

Several spiritual groups in the city have indicated they believe the appearances are reminiscent of omens predicting an imminent natural disaster.

Muladhara or the symbol for the base chakra in the kundalini

Yogyakarta, once the capital of Indonesia during the National Revolution (1945-1949), is known for its strong Javanese traditions in art, culture, theater and the crafts of shadow puppetry, batik and sublime dance movement originating in the royal Court. Having gained independence in the 18th Century from the colonial Dutch, Yogyakarta has maintained historical architecture from both its colonial past and its Javanese heritage. It is home to Indonesia’s most prestigious state unversity, the Gadjah Mada University, as well as several other private universities which make their home in the region. Yogyakarta is the only province in the country with Special Administrative Region status (SAR) and is alone in being headed by a monarchy. The prince is also head of the spiritual welfare of the people and for this reason a statement on crop circles from the Sultanate is taken to be of great importance.

Second crop circle in Java: reported January 25th, 2011 in Bantul district of Yogyakarta

The Bantul crop circle of January 25th (6km S of the city center) also appeared in rice, prompting a rash of local media and news reports linking the appearance to a massive 6.2 magnitude earthquake in the same district on May 27tth, 2006 when much of the village was destroyed and over 1000 people lost their lives.

Bantul is known to international art collectors as the home of an artists’ colony which produces unique poster designs called cukil, daren kidul and Dono Kerto Turi.

As much of the population in Yogyakarta are resident students attending universities in the city, the crop circle phenomenon has been a popular diversion, with much international discussion being generated and shared with the international crop circle community on Facebook and other social networks. The appearances in rice come at a time when the northern hemisphere — in the winter doldrums between the end of the 2010 (English) season and the beginning of the next, around April 2011 — did not expect to be surprised. The appearances in rice — along with similar anomalous layering of crop and gentle folding and tufting seen in Wiltshire crop circles — have triggered much interest worldwide.

Some suggest the timing and synchronous appearance of the designs as presaging seismic activity or earth changes within the next two weeks. Other fears suggest that it presages world shortages in the food supply, specifically rice.

Borobudur temple, 40K NW of Yogyakarta set on a 9thC 9-level step pyramid --its lowest level is buried. Crop circle design shows 9 'levels of consciousness', according to Sultanate's spiritual alert

Given recent (European) seasonal pointers to sacred places and ancient pyramid structures, along with inter-faith meetings and ‘convergences’, it is tempting to connect the designs with the 8th/9thC Buddhist temple set on its 10-layer step pyramid at Borobudur, 40k NW of Yogyakarta on the other side of Mount Merapi. The temple’s magnificent ornately-carved 8thC structure was for centuries buried under (Merapi) volcanic ash and only rediscovered in 1814. From above, the pyramid takes the form of a Mandala symbolically depicting the path of the bodhisattva (novice aspiring to enlightenment) from samsara to nirvana. The ten steps of the pyramid signify ten levels of ascension. Compare this with the Sultanate’s statement likening the ‘mandala’ of the crop circles to Muladhara, the base, or primary of the seven chakras in Hindu Tantrism,

‘relating to the Earth, the densest of the seven grades of manifestation.’

The temple’s design is thought to be a recreation of Mount Meru, mythical home of the Hindu gods, called Sumeru i.e the “Great Meru” and a sacred mountain in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain cosmology, considered to be the center of all physical, metaphysical and spiritual universes. It is also the abode of Lord Brahma and the Demi-Gods (Devas).

One Indonesian source —local media— suggested:

“Crop Circles are telling you, in a universal language, of coming events, and we are speaking here not only of physical events, such as the pending pole shift, but spiritual as well. In the past, these simple but eloquent messages were left, with increasing frequency and urgency, leading up to the shift.”

A further —third crop circle— has appeared since this post in the Magelang district which draws the other two into geometric alignment not just with Mount Merapi, but also with Mount Tidar, the mountain known as the ‘Nail of Java’. According to myth, If the Nail does not hold, the Island will blow apart.*

These ideas are sparking a following on several continents.. We will be following volcanic activity in the vicinity of Mount Merapi, (Central Java) and Mount Bromo (East Java) which has also been threatening activity lately.

On the seismic and croppie scene, we shall keep you posted.

*Feb.2 update: Tet and Year of the Cat
Since posting the above, a third crop circle has appeared in Magelang. More on Java circles here.

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

Last week on Friday the thirteenth what may be seen as the swan song of the 2010 Crop Circle season appeared: an Egyptian-style ritual collar with trailing neckgear shining from a Wiltshire field of golden corn. It is the height of the harvest, days before they start wholesale cutting of wheat and barley in the western countryside.

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

Some time in Egypt’s pre-dynastic past the Goddess Hathor came into being, considered a major force in the creation of the world. Hathor was worshipped for over 3,000 years. Alternate forms of her name are Hwt-Hrw, Het-Hor, Het-Hert, Athor or Athyr.

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

She was worshipped as Goddess of Love, Ecstasy and Beauty, and enriched the lives of her followers as Goddess of Music, Dance, Drinking and Joy. She was patroness of Women and Marriage and Protectress of Pregnancy. Hathor ultimately became special guardian spirit for all women and all female animals, and had such titles as ‘Lady of the Turquoise’ and ‘Lady of the Sycamore.’

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

In her association with Sun God Ra, Hathor was granted the title ‘Golden One’, while also sharing the name, ‘Eye of Ra’ with goddesses Sekhmet and Bast. Hathor was Protectress of Horus, the falcon god, and called a wide variety of names in that role. Some attributes appear conflicting and confusing and, as Mother Goddess, Hathor was often confused with both Isis and Nut. What confuses even more is the fact that she subsequently ‘became’ Isis who, in a later period, absorbed and acquired many of the aspects previously attributed to Hathor.

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)

Hathor has represented the erotic in femininity and procreation, and was frequently identified with Greek goddess Aphrodite, Roman Venus. In her role as Goddess of Fertility, Hathor represented Nature’s creativity, and as Goddess of Moisture, she was associated with the annual inundation of the river Nile. In this aspect, Hathor was linked to dog-shaped constellation Sothis (Sirius, ‘dog-star’) which, at its heliacal rising on the eastern horizon — immediately before the Sun — announced yearly flooding of the Nile in July.

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

It is significant, too, that the ‘Hathor crop circle’ at Beckhampton appeared on a Friday the 13th.

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

The Old Goddess was commonly pictured as a crone or aged woman, and origins of her veneration are lost in the mists of time. While goddesses of ancient ethnic cultures have unique qualities, they share traits, a deep international genetic root. Old Goddess is like the weathered Earth, ancestor of all, a tangible presence in forests, grottos and fountains. In her infinite guises she manifests countless forms: as females of various ages, she shapeshifts to tree, serpent, frog, bird, deer, mare and other creatures. Surviving the European Reformation, she remained beloved by the common people.

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

The first and last sheaves of corn to be cut had major significance. Grain from the first sheaf (the ‘Maiden’) was made into a sacred loaf of bread while the last sheaf – the Clyack – was reserved for transformation into a corn dolly: symbolic of Mother Earth and the Spirit of the Corn.

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?

Cosmic Crossroads: All Change

Jupiter and Uranus line up in Aries in preparation for June's Grand Cross

On the runup to solstice, June 21st, and the Grand Cross which follows, energies are revving up, allowing us access to a vortex of cosmic influences, both real and surreal which will make us remember the Summer of 2010 for a long time to come.

June promises an intense and powerful experience: something maybe none of us has ever felt in our lives before. During this time, already presaged by the Sagittarian full moon on May 27th, certainly between June 8th and the 26th lunar eclipse Grand Cross stations, old formats are falling away, bringing in new ways of being, beyond the realm of anything we have ever dreamed.

Uranus in Aries is the signature of a wild, rebellious nature. Its T-square with Pluto and Saturn indicates dramatic clashes between the interests of established economic power and the democratic impulse (Uranus, the spontaneous voice of the people ) that those interests seek (via Saturn) to suppress.

To get through this transformative time we’ll have to try to embrace the new energies wholeheartedly and surrender to the new version of ourselves that has been incubating since 1987. This new identity – the self of the heart – knows instinctively how to navigate energy shifts by anchoring one’s heart and highest visions into the present moment.

As Richard Alpert – Baba Ram Dass – has been saying since 1969:

Be Here Now.

I described on another blog recently the Harmonic Convergence of 1987 as a watershed summer. In August that year the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury and Venus stood in exact conjunction in early degrees of Virgo/cusp Leo while, according to astrologers and New Age pundits, they formed a Grand Trine with the other large planets: Jupiter in the last (anaretic) degree of Aries/cusp Taurus, Saturn and Uranus in Sagittarius/cusp Capricorn. This Grand Trine – full of enormous benevolence for humanity – was seen as both a Fire and an Earth Trine – a door in the heavens opening to bless humankind.

We have been building and strengthening our cosmic consciousness since that time.

This summer we are entering the last spiral arm of the penultimate bend on the cosmic rollercoaster ride which will catapult us towards the end-date of the ancient calendar of the Maya on winter solstice, December 21st, 2012.

Butterfly of Transformation, Mayan symbol of humankind's evolution

Dr Carl Johan Calleman, in his deep researches into the Maya numeral system, believes we are going to reach spiritual self-realization, communion with Spirit, by November 2nd this year – on a date fixed by the ancient Maya called ‘Yellow Galactic Seed’.

This new human Self, teaching itself to meditate rather than make war; soaking up solar electromagnetic energy raining in on us right now from the Sun’s most recent coronal mass ejection (CME), opening itself to new ways of thinking, being and interacting with others, is preparing itself to receive humanity’s latest wave of consciousness-upgrades: the June energies will allow the New Human to face his/her first test as s/he learns to ride the phenomenal energetic tides of Summer 2010.

Dr Calleman believes we were given another stepping stone on this journey last weekend. He calls the most recent Sagittarius full moon nights of May 27/28 (Maya 1 Imix and 2 Ik) the ‘second Harmonic Convergence’.

‘This is when, for the first time, standing on the balance that the Galactic Underworld has brought, we will begin to sense the supramental consciousness that the Universal Underworld will bring. For all those seeking to become part of the new species of human beings endowed with an unlimited consciousness, this is a time to absorb the new energies of universality. These dates are placed in relation to the Universal Underworld in the same way as the original Harmonic Convergence, August 16-17, 1987 might be seen to have been a preparation for the Galactic Underworld. May 27/28 2010 (1 Imix and 2 Ik) are the dates for Phoenix to rise from the ashes and for an enlightened world to arise from chaos. A sort of resurrection to the New Jerusalem where life is lived totally in the present moment, with no limits and no separation.’

The Phoenix of Humankind will rise from the ashes of the old regimes and shine

According to Maya Long Count, we are presently completing the last cycle of the Galactic Underworld which began on January 5th 1999 and which ends when we move into the final Universal Underworld on February 10th, next year. As of this weekend, May 2010,we’ve only 926 days to go until we as a race reach the last day of the last Underworld – the climax of their 13 Baktun Great Cycle in December 2012.

Astrological Summer of 2010
Mid May’s cosmic energies sneakily slipped transformer-like upgrades into our human wiring, bringing long-buried feelings to the surface and challenging deeply-held beliefs that probably no longer serve us. We show no more trust in the State knowing best, nor believe that we’re better off letting others think for us. Saturn (old regimes) was given a shake-up by opposing benevolent Jupiter and free-thinking Uranus. Areas involving our purpose and our use of unique talents and resources were given a new look. As a mass, human outrage descended on old corrupt oil interests, questioned government manipulative legislation, and demanded responsible and sensitive clean-up of precious and irreplaceable environments in the Gulf of Mexico. In Westminster, two new young things chose to bring two opposing parliamentary parties together and chopped half the budget of the former draconian system.

Uranus threw in subconscious energies – possibilities, entities, worlds beyond the conscious realm entered into our daily lives. Think Crop Circles!

These energies are now being amplified by the full moon in Sagittarius and Uranus entering Aries. Shortly after this, Jupiter enters the 0° Aries position. Pluto in Capricorn and Saturn in Virgo will form a T-square with the Moon, Jupiter and Uranus. This configuration will set into motion even more change both on the world’s stage and at the personal level.

Astrological giants line up to take earth through her changes

Conjunctions of Jupiter and Uranus occur roughly every 14 years. The 8th June 2010 conjunction at 0º Aries is the first of three in this series. The other two are on 19th September 2010 at 29º Pisces, and again on 4th January 2011 at 27º Pisces. Big changes.

We’ve been feeling lightheaded and slightly ungrounded lately: this stepping into the unknown is a little daunting. We better get accustomed to it. It’s going to be a way of life in the next few months. June 21 solstice will genuinely rock our socks and open up a doorway of initiation into new realms. Between now and then, we have a little time to practice stripping away old veneers, pretences: time to fine-tune our inner listening; put on our cloak of authenticity.

Uranus, planet of change, imagination, herald of the New Age

There’s more to come – but let’s take it one step at a time. Following the June 26 Capricorn Lunar Eclipse the cardinal Grand Cross looms with Sun-Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus and Saturn standing opposed. A solar eclipse in July occurs with the new moon in Cancer followed by August 6th-7th’s renewed cardinal Grand Cross activation between Jupiter-Uranus, Pluto, the Moon, Saturn-Mars and Venus. Finally on August 21st Saturn stands squared to Pluto. So old regimes are in for meltdown, while the imagination rules, dreamtime flourishes.

New paradigm here we come!

It is through our intuition, listening to our heart, and by walking through the doorway of our imagination that we will navigate these new energies best of all. We all know how this is. We practice it with our family and loved ones. Time now to practise it with the world at large.

Old road maps are no longer any help. But our resourcefulness, our presence of mind will serve us. We’ll be able to call on our Uranian ability to ‘think out of the box’ to stay ‘awake’ and watch for daily guidance. The new energies bring out the New Human in us, encouraging us to allow a higher power – higher intelligence, love – to show us the way.

Many have likened the ‘mastermind’ behind the formation of crop circles to a higher intelligence. In my opinion we are being presented with a glimpse into a different dimension. We’re ready for it as a species. We’ve tried everything else.

We now stand on the threshold of a magical doorway which – used carefully and with loving intent – may lead us into a world we have only even seen in dreams.

We have become set in our ways. And, without doubt, as a race we have achieved massively, even in the last decade. it is time to step into our own future: to make that quantum leap. To walk through the door into our cosmic future.

This summer provides the fireworks and momentum to facilitate that leap in consciousness.

This is one of the most exciting times to be alive. The energies unfolding this week offer a glimpse into what crystallizes on the horizon of this summer of change. This is the portal into everything that comes after. Alll we need to do is put that first tentative foot on the step and walk right through.