Tag: Avebury

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Triskele Moon – Solar Eclipse!

We welcome the start of 2011 with an Eclipse of the Sun in Capricorn – ordinarily this would bring our focus towards addressing how power issues and idealogies of leadership are grounded within the body politic, but, there is much more to this eclipse than meets the eye, literally….

Heres a Synopsis of the planetary alignments : being on Capricorn 13.39 this eclipse is at the midpoint between Venus in late Scorpio and Neptune in late Aquarius who are squaring off to within 1 minute of arc – there can be no illusions about the kind of power we are here to manifest, radically different, otherworldly even; for sure, both in the arena of the mundane world, on the big ‘screen’ of global affairs and in our inner sexuality, the politics of power is being challenged – but, with Venus being so strongly and tightly aspected by Neptune (and from other very significant quarters too, as we will see) we are being made aware that sexual power at its higher octave manifests Kundalini, a sacred vision of fusion within divine ecstacy – at its lower octave it becomes lust, usery and sexploitation; abuse of Life as matter seperated from the divine. We know the corruption present in this world is an emination of the latter, and that has been affecting women and men alike for far too long….the masculine too has become subverted by the poisons of patriarchy, so, lets keep with the rising wave of transformative energy and both individually and collectively aim for the higher octave – nothing else makes sense, but, more than this, nothing else will serve us in our upcoming times! And, what of the male players….

Lets take a look at Mars who has now slipped out of sextile with Venus, thanks to her greater speed, and has begun to feel the backlash. There is now radical pressure on the martial misuse of force to under-go a purging – with Mars conjunct Waldemath to within 13 minutes of arc, this spectral Moon will release any demons eminating from the patriarchal paradigm that are sucking in the low side and force them out into the open to be recognised and owned – look out all sleaze mongers and misogynists; wise up all war-mongers and clandestine politicians – for, every time you wave the patriotic flag, declare a holy crusade and/or initiate a ‘necessary’ regime of austerity measures ‘on behalf of the people’ you will be putting yourselves under the increasingly illuminated spotlight of public awareness! And this illumination is growing from within…..

Awareness! The consciousness we bring to our desire for unity must be seen to be an expression of balance in awareness, for without it we cannot live within the truth of the moment and otherwise will be slipping off to one side or the other, away from the fulcrum point in the Now. So, with Saturn donning the judge’s wig in mid Libra and squaring off to this Moon, and with Mercury racing back from Sagittarius to join the fray, heading directly for the action amongst the Cardinals, Captains and Heads in Castle Capricorn once again, the message is – you, Sirs, are heading for the dock, this time for the verdict…..the evidence is being heard by all, and the jury are assembling….

Well, they say that money can’t buy you love, ok……so, while the top brass hang onto control through the currency of fear and scarcity, a coven of earthy wise women, steeped in potent Lunar cunning, are convening to guide the rest of us into this, our ‘right relationship’ within, so that we may reclaim our inner wealth, and thats Love as pure magic, luminous from within! When rising Kundalini enters consciousness she illuminates our whole being with the fire of creation.

We are now entering sacred space, and, as with any ritual that seeks unity with the divine, the purging is a necessary part of this process – this is where the wise women come in……

…..Venus is conjunct asteroid Lilith to within 1 minute of arc – so look out sleazey, here comes the kickback! And don’t mess….this lady is ready to dispose of the whole issue of gender and do it her own way, gratis….sayonara guys! Asteroid Lilith is the goth/punk creative who doesn’t entertain, she demonstrates – and her brand of creativity is feminist, manifesting an earthy vigor that pulls the shadow of Uranus’ transformative charge and Mercury’s trickster approach to initiating change into the base chakra to awaken the coil of kundalini – she’s the horny crescent Moon of the Lilith sistren, and Venus receives her as an energy of radical passion for her womanhood.

And then there is Pluto, the underworld ‘godfather’, still on the scene in early Cap and, having pulled the rug from the balding heads of the political aristocracy, Pluto is going to expose just how naked the big-wigs are and just how phoney the Emperors new clothes really look to us all, and he has brilliant de-sexualised help at hand – Pallas, conjunct the big P to within 25 minutes says “I am the high-ground and I bring you the LIGHT, of higher knowledge!”

Mercury, sextile Black Moon Lilith to within 7 minutes of arc, is soon once again going to ping the galactic highway of higher knowledge, the Galactic Center – we will be getting a new message from the ‘other side’, but, first……

BM Lilith herself is busy with her oscilating sister, spinning the energy of their corridor of occult power around Jupiter and Uranus – yes, the dynamic duo J/U are conjunct to within 1 minute in late Pisces for the third and last time in this wave of initiatic expansion and they are feeding their combined power by trine into Venus and her new mate, the goth/punk Little Lilith, full on from within the cauldron – we would be tempted to shout out “GO GIRLS!!” But, we will also want to reprise the intrinsic nature of this energy matrix before we leave J/U to transmute within the cauldron….there’s a storm brewing in there and within no time at all Jupiter will be vapour trailing electric fire as he steps into Aries to expand the initiatic energies anew.

Chiron meanwhile is in shamanic trance…..having been sitting in Neptune’s vision inducing field drenching atmosphere these last, er, how long was it now….he is ready to bring the healing into manifestation; the spirits are calling him from Pisces and he will deliver their transformative power in a great sea-change of the energy field that is upcoming in the next few months…but, more of that in the future.

Last time there was an eclipse Juno was opposite Uranus and Jupiter expressing their expansion of left field awareness through our inner search for “Right Relationship”. Now, like the sacred marraige guidance counscellor she is, first sessions over, she’s slipping her coat on as she stands at the doorway to Libra – Juno now coming out of opposition to Jupiter and Uranus, but, ever the pragmatist by hard won lessons, brings the timely reminder that there are two sides to every story – every drama wears the double mask of comedy and tragedy, Janus faced reality, like two sides of the same coin, but, one coin, nevertheless…..and, this is no soap – the drama is in real time. So, having fleshed out the scene in ‘the field’, lets explore how this is playing out right now and how it can best be put to personal use – for every one of us is now a key to bringing about the ‘Great Transformation’….

…..with a collective of divine wise women, predominantly Lunar in their affiliation, spinning a web of potent subtle energies from within the planetary and star field, this combination of energies carries a qualitative vibration that can manifest in two ways – emergency or emergence – on the one hand there is the purging that will out any ‘shadow’ and its projections that is embroiled in power issues. The wise women are making this power of process available to their sistren to charge the ‘field’ with radical and emanicipating occult wisdom. This will be visible especially wherever controlling patriarchy casts its shadow, and, as with Mars, its demons will be outed and held accountable for – its a purging that is necessary for the balancing of our sexuality within and will prepare us for full engagement with the over-arching zeitgeist of our times – the re-volution of matter as divine. Volution is a circling motion around an energetic center, manifest within spirals and, with the tri-une Lunar energy, this embodies the triskel.

So, on the other hand, however, it will enable anyone who has already engaged with their inner work to entrain with the zeitgeist – birthing the spiritual body. Where the Moon’s cycles and phases throughout the last year, in unison with the eclipses and planetary alignments, have been pushing us to become more awake to our potential within, this Eclipse will bring us into pragmatic appliance of this potential as we begin to birth it into the sphere of incarnation. What we see will be the outward manifestations of this process – however, in order to work with these energies we will have to be ready to fully birth our ‘seeing’, and, in the nature of midwives, the wise women know how to guide and facilitate the birth process – we have been here before and will remember much as the process goes exponential – it has all been fore-seen by our ancestors. Within the prophecies, the sacred calendars, the myths and ancient stories, are the seeds of knowing that will awaken from within, stored within our spiritual DNA.

As we move towards the culmination point of the Mayan Calendar, as our Solar system moves into complete alignment with the radial highways of energy emanating from the Galactic Center, we enter the new reality of a globaly manifesting Cosmic Spiritual Alchemy. But, it will need us to be here for it. Earth will get on quite nicely otherwise. From the human perspective this means that, if we have paying attention to doing our ‘inner work’ and if we are full term in our development as embodiments of the spiritual embryo, we will begin to experience these energies as an emergence. And this too will impact on the mundane levels of life experience.

Where-as the December Eclipse offered us a sharp wake-up call and a way-out of the cultural miasm that has been hijacking our collective energies with such dangerous results, this one in mid-Capricorn will offer a pragmatic way forward, a chance to focus on our personal power that is going to sex-up the world zeitgeist, and this is just the beginning….we are going to see transformation upon transformation enfolding in on top of each other as our outer lives respond to the inner processes now at work – THIS, if nothing else, is the manifestation of a new body politic – it is one that, ultimately, we will fully recognise is sourced  at galactic levels, and, because of this and our current technological status, it is unlikely to be like anything we have ever seen on Earth before…..we are poised on the cusp.

There is no script for this…in the theatre of Life we are in improv territory, but, all we have to do to play the part is be ourselves truthfully, and make all of our gifts available for the spirit to manifest through. Sound like a fairytale? Well, yes, this New Moon has a fairytale ending for sure, its all a question of which wing you entered the stage by and whether you can play the part and are ready to be part of the action – and, at the end of the last New Moon post, we were waiting for the curtain to rise on Sleeping beauty, knowing that we are both in the audience and in the cast! This is  everyones story. But, there is something about this particular fairy-tale that is disturbing…..in Sleeping Beauty the popular version has it that the handsome Prince comes to the rescue and through the agency of Love, brings Beauty out of the comatose grip of the evil spell, and everyone in the land wakes up with her – this fairy-tale, mind you, like so many others, has been doctored with!

In our past we had access to the archetypal energy field that our myths and fairy-tales helped us to understand in real ways – it was important to our health, wealth and very survival that we keep these tales alive as they provided portals to the other-worlds, the higher dimensions of innate knowledge and indigenous wisdom, always the agencies of our evolution. They too are our heritage and empowerment, and we knew it – they still are….and, within the Sleeping Beauty story we can clearly see how the agents of magic are the women. This is key…

….so why is the 13th fairy evil – well, actually, she isn’t; the story was changed to make her so – it served the purpose of elevating the masculine energy to that of saviour , and how the rising patriarchy loved that! And, thats not all – where-ever we encounter the man as the knight in shining armour we might just also have cause to smell the proverbial rat. The 13th fairy, the Lunar wise woman, was subverted through projected patriarchal fear to embody that fear, the ‘shadow’ of its own power. She may have been eclipsed, temporally, however, she still has her own power, but, it has itself been deemed subversive and so Beauty is denied her rightful blessing as a woman coming into her own power as a creatrix. She is put to sleep and made to forget…..more fool the patriarchy. Claiming the moral high-ground has its consequences….

Just as asteroid Lilith expresses the shadow side of Uranus, her asexual energy parallels his – he was castrated through jealousy for his power by his off-spring Cronus (yes thats Saturn before he emigrated to Italy) who sought to usurp and overthrow him, and Lilith is reminding us that this is a masculine fear, the male wound, emasculation at the hands of competition. At its higher octave we could say women’s creative wisdom is incarnate, a shared power within the self, literally embodied as creative matrix, and Lilith has kept the faith with this wisdom, in all her forms. We have been led to think of this power in the Liliths as occult, that is to say both esoteric, latent and eclipsed, in the shadows….the resonances are all there – shadow and light are not mutually exclusive, its how they are percieved, and our perceptions were changed when our stories were changed….

For us now the world is deeply embedded within a process of reclaiming the unity of this apparent polarity, according to, you guessed it, ‘right relationship’….we are looking to the fusion of right and left hemispheres, inner partnership, individual and collective empowerment, above and below, within and without – we are moving inexorably towards an experience of singularity as an expression of divine unity, present within the heart, just as it is present within the heart of our galaxy – our challenge is to embody it and live the truth of our experiences and perceptions of this. And it was foreseen….amongst the people, for example….

When the Mayan daykeepers, for example, began to record the Mayan Calendar, they initiated an understanding of the calendrical processes of our precessional cycles and the relationship that these expressed between the planetary and the galactic planes – they were able to calculate with great accuracy the stages and culmination of the process, a process that embodies awareness of this relationship as evolving consciousness – time, both linear and cyclical, itself appears as the agent of this process, but, we will return to explore these aspects in upcoming posts as the planets play out the star seeded potential we are here to embody!

There is a parallel appreciation of this process encapsulted within both the Mayan Calendar and the apparent division of spirit and matter…..both offer us the opportunity to realise that while we each have our own soul purpose we are ourselves enfolded within a greater purpose that flows from the ‘dreamtime’……in an earlier post, “Climate Change, the Megaliths and the Stars”, we heard of how Hunbatz Men, a Mayan Elder, Daykeeper and calendrical shaman, on visiting Avebury and interpreting a crop circle he saw there, expressed the view that Earth was ‘out of position’ – it is very likely that he was giving warning that without correct alignment within the dreamtime, the old duality will persist – the calendars tell us that now the old duality can evolve into holographic awareness – a synchronistic expression of diversity within wholeness maybe, but, our challenge remains and our calling is very much in the present. On whatever basis we live our lives the stars continue to guide us towards awakening as Seers…..

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the Stars beneath the Earth

 

Long long ago, once upon a time before time……there was a great well-spring in the midst of the deep forest. No one knew how it had come to be there – some say it was the entrance to another world that the ancestors had come here by, for on clear nights their fires could be seen burning in its depths; others said that it was all that remained of a forgotten people who knew the secret of eternal life, for it never ceased from flowing and gave the land its beautiful clear waters, healing and life giving – all knew that it was magical, a very sacred place, and, being such, they kept the old stories about it going, to make sure the young ones did not go near; for only the women elders knew the secrets of the old well….and they would tell no man of those secrets so long as they were its guardians!

And thats how it remained for many generations, until, a great catastrophe came upon the land in the form of a dark fiery dragon that appeared out of the eastern sky and swept across the face of the Great Mother Erdda, shaking her body with a fearsome roar and plunging all into darkness and endless biting cold…the people were forced to flee south across the wide valleys and left their homelands and the ancient well to memory.

The land slept beneath a blanket of frozen tundra and eventually became covered in a monstrous creeping wall of ice, two mountains deep – for what seemed an eternity the people remained exiled from their homeland, and found themselves fighting for survival – unsure anymore of the Great Mother and her wise eternal ways, all seemed to have been thrown into discord…..

Amidst the people the dreamers kept their trist with the spirits and went to the Earth Mother asking her to remember them, to keep their dreaming alive – and she gifted them with visions that they saw within her, emerging from her womb – so, in this way she was able to help the people find their ways, to follow the animals and know which plants to eat and which to use for medicines – and as she provided for them, they were moved to record their visions within the caves, her womb, to fashion likenesses that held the magic of her gifts in the bones of the animals, the fibres of the plants and the clays and pigments of her own body, and they did so that they might always have Her power with them……so it was that a new way of storytelling came about….

…but, some of the old stories stayed alive within the living memory of the people – there remained within their midst the wise women, with their ancient tales and there steadfast knowing….and the women, well, they kept track of the flowing times and wisdoms that went by the cycles of the Great Sister Luna – for she, of all the ancestors, was seen to have held to her ways…..so it was that, together, through the stories and their wisdoms, through their initiations and workings with the otherworlds, and thanks to the gifts of Erdda’s children, the people survived…

In time new people, tribes and families from far off places, who also had stories of the dragon and the ice giants, came together – and as they got to know each others ways they began to realise that they shared the same stories, held the same wisdoms and that there was a thread that bound them together as one people…..

all loved the Great Mother above all others, and, all prayed with the spirits for her return – so, as they did so, the stories began to change, and to tell of the coming of the great dragon, how its freezing hands had touched the Great Mother, covered her in a mantle of darkness and put her to sleep beneath the ice – within the stories time itself seemed to have stopped and the people felt cut off from the eternal life that She had once given them – but, they knew that their stories and prayers were their life blood, keeping both them and the magic alive, in the hope of being answered with a return to the old ways

and there did indeed come an answer….only it was the ancestors themselves who sent it and it was not as the people had imagined it might be, for the dragon returned once more…

this time it came from far far away so that they could see it approaching, clothed in a flaming cape that trailed back amongst the ancestral fires….the people did not know what to do – some said that it was the anger of the ancestors that had been raised by their Earth Mother, others that the old women themselves had angered the ancestors, prefering to keep to the old time and the ways of Luna secret….but, the dragon swept down upon them and forced them into panic – some fled further south and set out across the great waters, others fled into the heart of the Great Mother and stayed below ground in the caves and sacred places….all were afraid

when the fiery dragon finally arrived it fought with Erdda and with a fearsome wrenching roar span the Great Mother, scouring a wide wound across her skin in the north – she lost her balance and few survived

when the few surviving people did emerge again they found the world in chaos – for a while the Sunna was darkened and now seemed to be dancing in the sky – the very fires of the ancestors themselves had now become displaced, their familiar patterns were no longer where they should be, no longer following the old tracks that described their dreaming – even Luna, who once again held her rhythms, nevertheless seemed to have changed her course – and there was a new bright ancestral fire that rose in the east before Sunna

Everything now had a new rhythm – Luna’s rhythms no longer seemed to hold the power of regeneration that they once had, except, that is, with the women and on this they kept their council for…..now Erdda herself seemed to be dancing with Sunna – and she herself became transformed…..it was as if Erdda in her dance with Sunna was remembering the great dragon, and had begun to go through cycles of birth, death and rebirth – the very cycles that Luna had once held secret, that had belonged with the women and were enshrined in their mysteries

the fire dreamers knew that they needed to anchor the new rhythms of the ancestral fires, and so they watched for their new tracks in the sky realms and gathered their knowledge through marking their new rhythms on the land – Erdda they now realised was changed for ever and the sacred dreaming places that had once been her gateways to the inner worlds now showed them the new cycles above her – they began to realise that the new fire dancing with Sunna had brought them a great gift; a new measure….of time….

the ancestral fire keepers looked to this new fire and saw that its own dance with Sunna held a rhythm – sometimes disappearing and then re-appearing behind Sunna, only to be swallowed once more by the Great Ancestral Fire, and then to re-appear again, leading the way

and so they established great circles on the land, first using the bodies of the standing ones, the trees and, eventually, the stones, the living bones of the Great Mother, to mark the key points at which the ancestral fires swung around in their dance – and key amongst these was the new fire close to Sunna – this one they came to think of as their saviour, for the ice giants were retreating and the Great Mother was now brought once more into fruitfulness – the forests once again spread, greening Erdda, the animals came alive again and the plants once more covered the thawing ground – Little Sunna had made it so and many of their earth circles marked this

The people began to spread across the land that was opening before them – they saw how the animals accompanied them and how they too reponded to the new dance of life and death – and in this way they felt strong bonds of kinship between them and the four-leggeds, the winged ones, the crawling ones and the swimming ones

As they seperated across the land, the people began to see each other differently – they became defined by their totems – the new time released them into new thinking, and the men knew this power for the first time…..only the wise women, the ones who had kept their connections with the Great Mother and sister Luna, remembered the old stories……and the mysteries of their women’s ways – and so came the beginning of the wound that opened between the men’s ways and the women’s

As generations grew the memories of the ancient times began to become eroded by the new; the old time of Luna, of the women, was becoming seperated from the Sunna time, of the men – as the generations passed a shadow of suspicion began to build around the old time, for men had begun to understand time differently – they too now had the power to keep time…….and as the new time grew in their understanding, so did the foundations of a new way of living

marking the new time on the land held them to places – they had begun to build permenant shelters and the centers of understanding, the great circles, pulled them together around these – and yet, the women kept to their knowing, that within their bodies the old time was still alive – so, there were amongst the women some wise elders who had kept the oral traditions and their powers alive, for they knew that this was essential for the survival of the people – through them, and through the women, the people were renewed, the old ones were given a chance to come alive again – Erdda and Luna still spoke with them

Now, as the men were becoming stronger in their powers they sought to assert their authority – they were now controlling the relationships with Erdda’s children, the plants and the animals, and they had begun clearing the land, disrespecting the old kinships with Erdda – and so some of the wise women sought to protect their powers, the initiatic ways and their accompanying stories and they left the settlements, headed for the mountains, the caves and the forests….and some followed – amongst them young women who wanted to learn of the old ways – and they held true to their learning, but, with a new purpose….

And so it was that the people returned across the wide valleys to the land that had once held the great well-spring amidst the deep forest – and amongst them the initiates of the old womens ways sought out the old well-spring, always looking for Erdda’s signs to lead them home

well, there was one young woman amomgst them who had been taught by one of the great wise women whose initiatic centre was in the northern mountains beyond the wide valley – this old wise woman had a knowing that went beyond the old ways, for she instructed her young women to go back to the people and accompany them in their search for new places to settle and establish their centers – she knew that the Great Mother’s love was still strong and would not only guide them, but, would bring the people together again – if they could marry the old and the new ways as one – she instructed her initaites to look out for Erdda’s signs of this sacred marraige

the young woman Ava was the daughter of chieftains – her medicines were strong and peaceful and she had great influence on the people – for she knew that the Great Mother still loved them and the people felt that love in her, knew that it was meant to become one with the new teachings that the men were now carrying forward – and she found a place, within the heartland of the northern lands, that felt to her heart like home – and in this place there was indeed a wellspring, one with miraculous powers, for along with the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, this spring became dry and died as the dark times came, only to gush forth again as the light began to return – and within the sacred waters Ava saw once again the ancestral fires burning bright

This was the marraige of the two ways, the men’s and the women’s, that her teacher had told her to look out for and here she called the people to look to the land for more signs – they found it abundant and scattered with fine stones of great size and qualities that seemed magical, for they held within them flashes of the ancestral fires – the Great Mothers bones seemed be speaking to them to make this a great centre, and the men agreed – here they could build a great wheel, with processional avenues and initiatic sanctuaries into which they could pour all their knowledge and honour the Great Mother’s sacred marraige with Sunna – this place became a center unparalleled in the known world – a place of great pilgrimage within which all the mysteries were taught, both mens and women’s, for the time had come to bring balance back to the ways of the people – all aspects of the birth, death and rebirth cycle were enshrined there in the sacred land and the people flourished as, over many generations, they established their unity once again within Life, celebrating Erdda our Earth, beneath the Stars, the ancestral fires – and what of the sacred well-spring?

Held between the long hall of the sleeping Mother that celebrates her passage into the wisdoms of death and the great Mound that celebrates her renewal, carrying new life in her belly, you will still find the sacred bubbling spring, sleeping through the dark freezing times, awakening with the returning light – its name in our times is Swallowhead Springs and the great center is known to us as Avebury…..Ava’s Stream….

….and what of the old wise woman who had such far sighted and deep understanding, and who had trained her young intiate so well? Well, we might know her by the name of her home in the mountains below the wide valley – for today this still stands at the source of the elven river, the Elbe, flowing out of a mountain near to the borders of Czechoslovakia and Poland….it is known to us today as Snezka…..

……but, in the old days it was know as Schnee Wittchen…..Wise Woman of the Snows, or, Snow White….but, there-in lies another tale to tell…….

Bright blessings of the Great Mother be with us!

dedicated with love to all the Wise Women of Erdda

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Climate Change, the Megaliths and the Stars : an introduction

image by Paul Taylor
“The more we know the more we realise how much we don’t know.”

In a recent article at Funkastrology titled ‘Zodiac Signs, Fixed Stars and Precession’ Jamie Partridge presents a strong case for overhauling popularised practices within astrology that are based on outmoded and misleading astronomical and astrological concepts. The article exposes the imperative need for revision and realism. Without it, divinatory practices, such as astrology, that rely on precision in establishing relationships, measure and values cannot offer full resonance, and therefore, real meaning in their readings. We need to return to the fundaments through our current knowing while moving forward, and the Funks (Jamie and his partner, co-author and astrologer Marina) are certainly going there! Follow the link and take a look at the article for a clear view of the facts and issues involved, as well as their excellent website.

As a diviner, reading Jamie’s article woke up something of an old memory, a reminder that such challenges as we are now facing had raised an absolute necessity for radical change in ancestral times, perhaps even more so than at present and certainly not only for divinatory purposes. The post sparked off a train of thought that has developed into this article – the following comments are where it all began :

“I am with you on astrology and astronomy being one in our past. Navigating by the fixed stars has an instinctive electric ring to it that feels different from the vagaries of the planets. The scientists have been telling us for years that cosmic rays from the stars affects our DNA!

Am also pulled by the idea that adaptation and survival needs brought out the hunter gatherer to agri-culture shifts – in the face of post glacial rapid climate change (theres hard evidence for a fifty year window in which that climate change happened – that’s freaky fast and uncomfortably familiar) – the shamans were there already and I’m sure their roles changed within those shifts………

Heres a goofy idea….

How would it be if EVERYTHING changed back then? Theres plenty of evidence to support the otherwise wacky idea that those rapid changes were set off by an axial shift of this planet – the skies orientation/motion would have changed with it and necessitated upgrading the astrology and cosmology [to something more like that which] we recognise now in the process.

Wouldn’t this have complicated and diversified the already existent astrological arts and call forth the need for a different kind of precision. Is it in that context that fixing everything became more of an issue (including precession – Earth began to wobble)? Next thing you know you’ve got the ancestors of science telling us how it is. (Can anyone explain why Uranus rotates on an ‘horizontal’ axis?).”

So much in our times reflects the experience of such a global shift; our concerns in the face of global warming and climate change bring up old fears deeply embedded in our collective memory – increasing earth movements, volcanic activity, tsunamis, flooding, massive damage to our biosphere through ecological disasters and environmental mis-management, wars and political tensions, not even to mention economic meltdown, overpopulation, massively unbalanced distribution of wealth and resources; the list goes on and puts it beyond doubt that this a traumatic and tough time to be alive in – we KNOW we need to change – and so, if our ancestors have survived and thrived through such immense challenges, what can their story and their legacy tell us that will help us traverse these challenges in our times:

First, let us consider a contraversial but persuasive argument – that the post axial-shift culture shock and subsequent changes actually precipitated the development of the megalithic culture as a way of re-envisioning the as-above-so-below thingum – this is supported by indigenous wisdom and collective memory. Megalithic culture reaches back to these times, roughly 13K years, and is a global cultural phenomenon. Post glacial melt has hidden a part of our past and, although in some parts of the globe the land lifted as the weight of the ice diminished, over the first 6k years of this period the sea level rose by over 100 m. Although much is now submerged of the predominantly coastal settlements from the late paleolithic, many sites from the subsequent Holocene period are now found on stable higher ground. Archeo-astronomy shows clearly the astronomical connections of site after site around the world – by the time sites like the Avebury complex and Stonehenge were being constructed this culture would have developed a grounded and in-depth understanding of the new cosmology as well as the technology to embed it – the sites are teleological. Heres a thing, for example……

Avebury Henge

 Avebury is interesting in this respect and demonstrates a profound understanding of cosmological relationships – (call it coincidence if you like, but…) the angle formed by the north south entrances to the circle are aligned at 23 degrees to the true north – this just happens to be the angle of the Earths axial tilt – the inner circles are aligned to each other at a similarly close angle. Infact the whole site displays stone placements that relate to ancient units of global measurement and proportion. On top of this the Avebury site has distinctive acoustic properties as well, and although in our times these only become apparent in the quiet of night, the original configuration of the large stones and the surrounding bank would have enhanced these apsects. This would have added heightened resonance to the space and amplified subtle nuances in the energy field of the inner space, both physical and metaphysical. There are many ways in which the henge would have been used which are no longer obviously visible to us, including astronomical divination. However, without even going into the metaphysical and spiritual attributes of Avebury (we will look more closely at this at a later date) this megalithic site alone gives much food for thought.

Whatever your persuasions……Many researchers have assembled countless pages of data and information relating to megalithic sites that support views, theories and postulations across a wide spectrum of disciplines and interests. Even though many are contradictory and at odds with each other there can be no doubt that collectively they confirm one thing – that the amount of data and skills embedded in these two megalithic centres alone is immense. They were, and still are, obviously open to being used as places of learning, cosmological and terran, and it would be my contention that the mode of learning would have been initiatic as well as technological – we will begin to explore this more in pt 2. They represent a huge investment in the people and their culture – they also represent a living legacy of our indigenous selves.

Let’s take a brief look at this investment for a moment. The effort involved in building these sites must have been immense – it has been calculated, that the shaping alone of the Stonehenge sarsons (and these are big stones weighing up to 50 tonnes or more) would have required 20,000,000 hours of work – that’s five hundred people working for 10 years – and, yes, there are wide variables that could decrease or increase this figure. Some of the stones at Avebury are twice as weighty, and even if not obviously worked, this provides endless speculation and experimentation in just how the stones were transported and located. There are astonishingly accurate measurements and alignments involved in their placements. We are talking here about setting up ‘resonance’, an immensely important function in divination, astrology, metaphysics and establishing an harmonic physical correspondence between the earth and the Cosmos. Resonance here becomes the active state of a gateway to mystery……

And what of the legacy? The building of Silbury Hill, a 130 ft high human made conical mound at Avebury henge also remains a mystery. Many visitors, however, will testify that, with an open heart and mind the place speaks volumes. Avebury can affect us profoundly; just being there can be an elevating and emotional experience, can highten our sensitivities and expand our awareness. In such states astronomical observations naturally transpose into astrological divination. Mayan diviners are famous for setting the precident. And so, it was with great good fortune I found myself joining a small party of people who met up with Hunbatz Men, a Mayan Daykeeper (calendrically divining shaman) when he visited the UK in 1993/4.

He came to Avebury and confirmed that it was a part of the global pyramidal network in which his indigenous Central American culture figures so prominently. He also ‘read’ at least one crop circle while he was there – his conclusion was startling – his understanding told him through the glyph that the Earth was out of position! We will come back to this……

Equinox serpent at Kukulcan
Equinox serpent at Kukulcan

Now, this is going to seem a little more tangential, but, imagine what we could build in our times with the amount of time, energy and insight invested in building Stonehenge – a hadron collider – clean energy technology – or perhaps we already waste that amount of time end energy many many times over on destroying each other and our planet?! If you factor in the global connectivity of our times the latent people-power becomes exponentially world changing. It is no wonder the powers-that-be in our materialistic era have so much vested interest – so long as it is controlled, people-power is the fuel for realising the governing agendas – unleash that power, and this means a radical internal shift, a shift in how we experience empowerment, and what could we achieve – a different world, and just perhaps, a lasting peace…..was this one of the prime movers for our ancestors astronomical efforts?  If they were suffering post-traumatic shock, ‘catastrophobia’ as some have called it, wouldn’t they also want to find equally radical ways of healing  it……

There is some irony in this, as the very nature of the changes that helped develop the megalithic culture to its heights also enabled the transference of power into rationalised structures within communities – so called ‘matriarchial’ societies became, gradually, subjected to ‘patriarchal’ control.

I have wondered many times, after Hunbatz left, if he was simply reflecting on the evidence and feeling of the prevelant culture in the UK – we are unashamedly materialistic. I knew that his journey carried personal significance to him at the age of 52. It is his people’s tradition that in their fifty second year the male elders make their ‘final’ journey out of the village, before they become rooted in the communal role of Elder. I knew he was looking to drum up support for the return of his people’s spiritual practices to their sacred sites, practices outlawed by the governmnent if carried out by Mayans. His ruse was to invite westerners to take the Mayan’s place, offering initiations on the key equinoxial dates, to reactivate the sites. My partner at the time went to the ceremony that re-activated Chichen Itza. I spent three very fresh and remarkable nights on top of Silbury and at Avebury complex connecting in with her – joining the two sites at the calendrical point of balance.

We had exchanged sacred artifacts, and on her return, exchanged them back in a small ceremony on the point where the obelisk had stood within Avebury circle. Now, Chichen Itza’s key structure is the Temple of Kukulcan, a 90 ft high pyramid which itself is cosmologicaly encyclopedic. The active symbol at the equinox is the shadow of the feathered rainbow serpent Quetzalcoatl – it is formed perfectly, on the equinoxial day only, zigzaging down the steps on the northern side of the pyramid to join with a carved feathered snake’s head. Just as we completed our re-union ceremony at Avebury a line of people came weaving in a dancing line between the stones around us – we did not know them, but, they brought the energy of Quetzalcoatl right home to us and Avebury. They were zigzaging a snake dance amongst the stones…..spirit will always show a way for those open to it. And, it is true that for us to find a path of reconciliation with our planet, small confirmations of this kind are made to look somewhat insignificant – indigenous wisdom, however, will tell us that they all count. We need them to count on a vast scale – with our connectivity it is just possible that we may find the crucial homeopathic dose….

I have little doubt that what Hunbatz had seen in the crop circle was a wake-up call and confirmation. I also have little doubt that he subsequently did everything he could to divine and heal this displacement, not least of all as it is the diviner’s prerogative to identify the corrective and the shaman’s to aid its realisation. In respect of this he also knew the meaning of people-power and even had a minimum number he needed to re-activate the sacred places. There is so much that we may think we have lost, and yet, it is all right here if we choose to see it. And is re-activation of our sacred places on the agenda? Will we listen to our diviners and astrologers?

avebury_aerial[2]The legacy, the investment and the corrective are converging in our times at a nexus point of necessity. We are now facing similar threats, on a global scale, to the rapid climate change experienced by our ancestors. We also know that we need a global culture shift that will correct and release us from the shadow of our past traumas and mistakes. Our shamans are still among us. They will no doubt echo back to us the displacement of spirit that our material culture has imposed upon the world and help us transit this time of radical healing – to Hunbatz, as to virtually every shaman I have ever met, to speak of the Earth is to speak of the whole living totality of Life here – and that reaches well beyond the visceral tangibility of our mundane senses. I feel that he was addressing the inner healing of spirit and matter that permeates our culture as a pathological necessity. More people visit our ancient megalithic sites now than ever did so at the time of their building – it is not without reason.

In a perfect way the megalithic cultures, as well as the astro-cultures that we have divided, into -ology and -onomy, are brought back together again in these ancient sites in a surprisingly pertinant way. This is not to voice some atavistic urge – it is to recognise our heritage, our indigenous intuitive and instinctive knowing. Just so long as we are open to recieving, we will also find healing there.

To be continued…….

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