by Freddy Silva
The analysis was fascinating yet hardly earth shattering. Why should the Watchers wish to commemorate our past achievements in aviation?
One plausible theory was that by providing a freeze-frame of the sky and linking it to two notable historical events, the design might be communicating a future date, not least because the sixty-seven year span between the two events coincides with the number of ‘asteroids’ in the design, placing the next conjunction in 2038. But still the nagging thought, why was the Earth missing? Was the glyph’s appearance in the middle of June, amid the second Taurid stream, more than a coincidence?
WHEN THE SKY FALLS
If the earlier chapter on the Taurids kept you awake at night, perhaps you might consider reading this part in daylight. Perseverance shall be rewarded with a potential happy ending.
Unlike others of its kind, the Taurid stream is filled with massive chunks of debris hurtling through space at phenomenal speed. Among the kamikaze rocks of this dross is a 3-mile wide remnant of comets Encke and Rudnicki, along with a volatile Earth-crossing projectile by the name of Olijato, first observed in 1876. These are accompanied by “one to two hundred asteroids of more than a kilometer in diameter.”11 As the astrophysicists Clube and Napier bluntly point out, “this unique complex of debris is undoubtedly the greatest collision hazard facing the Earth at the present time.”12
If all this makes for sombre reading then consider that Clube and Napier’s research further reveals a 19-mile wide behemoth orbiting the heart of the Taurid stream, invisible to optical equipment due to its current inert behavior, and will remain so until gases building up inside are released, making the object visible once again. Large fragments accompany this giant, all of which pose extreme danger to Earth. To quote Professor Emilio Spedicato, a mathematician with a passion for celestial mechanics: “It is predicted that... around the year 2030, the Earth will again cross that part of the torus that contains the fragments, an encounter that in the past has dramatically affected mankind.”13
This brings into sharp focus the reason why barely a month goes by without space agencies issuing press releases announcing a new asteroid, a meteor or some other near-Earth projectile, the irony being they now share the same obsession with the sky as did the gods of old.
We are hardly clueless to near-extinction scenarios. There exists evidence in support of devastating meteorite impacts in 7600 BC, 4400 BC, 3150 BC, 2345 BC, 1628 BC, 1159 BC, 207 BC, 536 AD and 1178 AD;14 there is additional mounting evidence of extraterrestrial plasma events which sometimes occurred in tandem with impacts. These electrical events are caused by gamma ray outbursts from stellar phenomena or by mass coronal ejections from the Sun. They cause extraordinary displays of light phenomena, intense heat, incineration of flammable material, melting of ice caps and vaporization of water. One incident known as the Carrington Event occurred as recently as 1859 and damaged 130,000 miles of telegraph cables throughout Britain; some operators were electrocuted, while others were able to operate equipment without power due to the extra induced current.
And that was a relatively minor outburst.15 In 1989 a billion-ton cloud of gas and plasma ejected from the Sun with the energy of thousands of nuclear bombs. Within hours, six million people in Canada found themselves without electricity. They should consider themselves fortunate, in earlier times one particular strike was so intense it vitrified stonework, buildings, even entire ancient cities. Some well-researched cases can be seen in the so-called hill forts of Scotland, Wales, Germany and Turkey,16 many of which were used as sacred places as early as 8000 BC. Evidence suggests such an intense burst of heat would have been made possible by a bolide, an incoming projectile blowing apart in the atmosphere, generating destruction over wide area, as was the case in 1908 above Tunguska which, incidentally, took place when the Earth again crossed the Taurids. A similar incident in the 6th century altered the climate sufficiently to cause crop failures, plagues and devastation that ushered the Dark Ages in Europe.
THE END OF THE WORLD IS (MAYBE) NIGH
By now it should be crystal clear why antediluvian architects were obsessed with the sky and why they built megalithic structures engineered to withstand ten thousand years of pillage and politics, into which they poured the sum of their experience, reminding future generations of the importance of understanding not just a shared evolutionary journey, but also the Earth’s place in own celestial drama.
It seems to me the gods also wished to warn of the danger of complacency. They experienced global upheaval — twice — and enough individuals survived the second to promulgate the knowledge that rekindled human civilization, reminding us that nothing in life really dies, it merely reconstitutes and reinvents itself. The non-event that was the end of the world on the winter solstice of 2012 served one useful purpose beside promoting prophets of doom: it demonstrated why the ancients marked time in great cycles. The most important feature of the misinterpreted Mayan Calendar is not a firm date for global calamity, but rather a pivotal moment within a sixty-year window stretching from approximately 1982 to 2042 — coincidentally spanning the dates calculated by professors Hawkins and Spedicato, and indicated by the crop glyph. It merely reflects the motion of one cycle as it dissipates into another. During such periods the Earth falls under the influence of changes taking place in the machinery of heaven, when order turns to chaos and chaos returns to order, much like the change in tides at the beach. One such mechanism involves the Earth overturning on its axis, "the earth turned upside down,"17 as the Egyptians say on the Harris and Ipuwer papyri. As tragic as this may have been, it is reassuring to know that although the only constants in the universe are order and chaos, the higher the level of chaos the greater the potential jump to a higher level of order.
We have already seen how the Maya inherited complex calendars from people who’d acquired long-term observation of the cycles of the heavens and the benefits and harm such motions bring. According to the Maya, the previous age was destroyed by flood, and this present cycle is predicted to close with global destruction by fire and earthquakes. The clock began ticking for this age c.3114 BC, a date roughly coinciding with a comet or plasma event c.3150 BC that impacted climate worldwide. By the same token, the previous cycle began around 8240 BC, coinciding with the ‘sudden’ global outbreak of agriculture and civilization.
Another mechanism at work is the geomagnetic reversal of the poles, the last one having occurred around 10,400 BC,18 the period commemorated by a number of the world's oldest monuments. The next is expected to take place around 2030.19
If the expression May You Live in Interesting Times is anything to go by, the third decade of the twenty-first century is shaping up to prove it.
Ancient cosmologies mark the passing of each age and its associated catastrophe with the symbol of a new Sun. The Maya refer to these as Fire Sun, Hurricane Sun, Earthquake Sun, Water Sun. By comparison, Nahua tradition lists Chicon-tonatiuh or seven Sun cycles forming an annular cosmic drama,20 as do the aborigines of North Borneo;21 Buddhist scriptures, whose six previous Suns were each brought to an end by water, fire or wind, state that this present seventh sun will end with the Earth breaking into flames, a view shared by the aborigines of Sarawak.
The Visuddhi Magga and the Bahman Yast, two books of the Avesta claimed to span hundreds of thousands of years, similarly describe seven cycles,22 each beginning with the cosmic mechanism winding itself up and unravelling at each close, accompanied by "signs, wonders, and perplexity which are manifested in the world at the end of each millennium."23
Avestic Aryans of ancient Iran state in their scriptures how the original homeland Airyana Vaejo was destroyed at the close of an age defined by a devastating lowering of temperatures that brought ten months of winter across the Earth and with it a period of glaciation. Predictably, a man of high renown — whose wife also happens to be his sister, naturally — was instructed by a god to ride out the snow and bitter cold inside a large underground enclosure, after which built a boat t
o house all manner of species.24 The story appears to depict climatic conditions at the onset of the Younger Dryas, and is reiterated by the Toba people in the border region of Paraguay and Chile, who recall the same difficult cold period when the Sun was barely able to warm the Earth.
AN OUTCOME NOT SET IN STONE
The Hopi have been foreseeing the future for over a thousand years: people speaking to each other across great distances via spider webs (telephone wires), the riding of wagons without horses on black ribbons (asphalt roads), the gourd of ashes falling to the Earth and burning people (the atomic bomb), the End Times people living in the sky (International Space Station). Given such a track record it would be unwise to ignore their knowledge of world ages. The Hopi speak of three previous worlds and are very clear in their description: “The first world was destroyed by fire that came from above and below. The second world ended when the terrestrial globe toppled from its axis and everything was covered with ice. The third world ended in a universal flood. The present world is the fourth. Its fate will depend on whether or not its inhabitants behave in accordance with the Creator’s plans.”25
Indeed Sótuknang did remind the Hopi at the onset of this current world, “what you choose will determine if this time you can carry out the plan of Creation on it or whether it must in time be destroyed too... You will have help from the proper deities, from your good spirits. Just keep your own doors open."26 Taken at face value, the advice offered by this Watcher implies the destruction of this current world is a potential rather than a foregone conclusion. And this is where the good news comes in.
On my travels around the world I meet countless people keeping their door open in the face of relentless negativity about the current state of world affairs. I am encouraged by what I see. At any given moment 95% of the world is at peace, a vast improvement from two hundred years ago. Every week inspired people bring new ideas to fix the environment, from ocean plastic-eating machines to wind powered devices that make drinking water out of thin air. And yet, paradoxically, there is no escaping the brutal fact we are living on borrowed time. At the time of writing, by early August humans will have consumed more of nature than the planet is capable of renewing in a whole year. We now find ourselves in a situation where the human population is consuming 1.6 planets a year and the date falls back six days with each passing year.27 For the first time in living memory we as a society have forsaken the natural order and embarked on the suppression of nature, abstractionism and mathematical analysis at the expense of observation and empathy, and a divesting of personal responsibility in favor of artificial intelligence. In short, we are at the threshold of progressive innovation whilst undermining our biological viability. The balance can tip either way. Since we are an inherent part of nature, when we abuse this connection, nature sends unmistakable warning signals. By way of analogy, when we work our own body in ways it is not meant to operate, the muscles and bones turn on the host and cause incalculable pain.
It is no different for this biological organism called Earth, and the warnings are loud and clear: overpopulation, environmental degradation, resource depletion and famine, to which NASA and other space agencies add near-Earth asteroids, comets and other projectiles that could spell the end of this Fourth World, ironically prophesied by the very cultures who, in little over a century, have been almost eradicated at the hand of ‘advanced’ society.
During a radio interview in which I was making the point between gods, the integrity of temple culture and the uplifting of the human condition, there came a moment in the broadcast when we discussed the coincidence between the fall of temple culture and the fall of civilizations. Uncharacteristically, part of the conversation grew increasingly pessimistic and ended in that most awkward moments on live radio — absolute silence — at which point I began to speak off the cuff, the inspiration just hit me while on air, you could say I had an epiphany. It’s a risk speaking into a live microphone without preparation. Nevertheless I felt compelled.
I recalled the aforementioned quote by Sótuknang — that the future isn’t always written in stone — along with the following flood myth from the region of Viet Nam, Laos and Thailand. Back in the days when celestial beings and humans could travel back and forth to visit one another, when people lived for three hundred years, and the region was named Muang Lum (Lower World), there lived in northern Thailand three unusual lords, Pu Langxoeng, Khun Kan and Khun Khet, earthly representatives of a celestial being named Thaen. All that Thaen required was for people to honor him at meal times and follow the rules set down for good conduct. But gradually the three lords neglected this simple courtesy, they fell out of favor with the heavens, and a great flood wiped out everyone and everything — except the three lords, who built a raft, took aboard their wives and children, and met Thaen in the sky, reassuring him they had learned from their error and from now on they would be more respectful.
Thaen agreed and sent down a messenger to teach people all the crafts necessary upon which to build a civil society.
Soon the Earth became overpopulated and the three lords took to regular intoxication. This time Thaen recalled the lords and replaced them with his messenger Khun Bulom and seven sages. When Thaen was convinced the people could look after themselves once more, he had the bridge to heaven collapsed so that humans could no longer visit.28
The central point to the story is not how it echoes so many other accounts we’ve already covered, it’s the one small detail about Thaen retracting the bridge to heaven. It brought to mind all the traditions in which the Watchers and others of their ilk sowed the seeds of civilization then disappeared across the sea, never to be seen again in physical form, thereafter appearing sporadically or not at all, then abruptly making their presence known at the close of the twentieth century through messages encoded in crop glyphs.29
My point is this. Long ago humans established a relationship with gods who, on occasion, would feed morsels of knowledge in what seems to have been a carefully orchestrated plan to assist human society evolve gradually towards a more civilized state; on occasion they would allow a lucky individual into their world so the person could share a favourable impression with his peers upon return. Looking at the myriad of ancient cultures and their stories, as a species it seems we ultimately relied on outside assistance, perhaps to the point of dependency, especially after each overturning of the world. So my question is, what if the lesson to be learned in this present age is to discover the spark of divinity in ourselves, to recognize the god within? Was Sótuknang daring humans to do better, was he offering us a challenge?
THE POWER OF HUMAN POTENTIAL
What if by losing our connection to divine assistance we discover our own supernatural potential?
Tibetan Buddhist monks are no strangers to the extraordinary, such as using the body to heat freezing water by simply applying the power of thought and intention. Seated in meditation in a drafty monastery one mid-winter, monks took part in an experiment, draped in sheets drenched in cold water despite the air temperature being already close to freezing, and yet, instead of freezing, the monks began to sweat, to the point where the sheets dried within an hour. The Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson monitored the event.30 Such is the ability of ancient traditions like Buddhism and Qigong to place particular emphasis on peak attention and guided intent to achieve the extraordinary.
The energy inherent in thought and emotion has been the subject of recent experiments on the nature of consciousness. A group of scientists working at Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) demonstrated how global collective consciousness had a marked affect on a computer’s output hours prior to tragic incidents, such as the terrorist attack on the twin towers in New York in 2001, as though a psychokinetic effect was experienced by six billion people worldwide. Clearly an event of great magnitude unified world consciousness even before it occurred. The implications reveal important details about human consciousness. First, a collective group appears to have a psychokinetic
effect on any micro-physical process; second, the effect of a greater number of people holding the same intent is stronger than a single person’s, with an impending catastrophe corralling people’s focus and inherent ability like no other. Essentially it was proved that an event of great magnitude is capable of uniting world attention.31
The PEAR experiments were expanded to measure the influence of ancient temples on human consciousness. They revealed that an Egyptian temple by itself is capable of generating an energy field equal to that of a meditating group, and yet the results were highest when such a group interacted with the temple.32 This interrelationship between people and megaliths was further discovered when acoustical analysis of monuments such as the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hypogeum of Hal Safflieni in Malta, and Newgrange in Ireland show each one to have been designed to a specific frequency which is proven to shut down the mental processing area of the brain and switch it towards an active receptive state of consciousness.33 The Followers of Horus, the Anunaki, the People of the Serpent, the Watchers and every other brotherhood would hardly have built such places and described them as locations that transform the individual into a god, into a bright star unless they wished humans to discover their co-creative potential and evolve beyond their perceived physical limitation.
Temples such as Luxor are proven to emit as much energy as that created by a group of people in meditation.
What if intention were added to this equation? A number of high profile cases have shown how intent is capable of affecting a given target. One early peer-reviewed intention experiment involved a group of sixteen volunteers in London who were able to influence biophoton emission in single-celled algae called acetabularia stored in a laboratory run by the scientist Fritz Popp — in Germany.34