by Jay Weidner
But looking for subtle forces emanating from the center of the Galaxy that are capable of aligning the solar ecliptic takes us far away from mainstream astrophysics. One of the only thinkers who seemed to entertain anything close to our hypothesis was the radical psychoanalyst and biophysicist Wilhelm Reich. In Cosmic Superimposition, published in 1951, Reich developed his theory of sexual tension and release into a cosmological hypothesis based on the interaction of spinning systems. This superimposition of spin, in Reich’s view, creates matter and gravity, implying a steady-state or constant-creation model of the universe.
Reich postulates that this constant superimposition of orgonic creation going on in the galactic core generates a radially flowing orgone stream that organizes the location and coherence of the solar systems of the galaxy. He suggests that the image of a spiral galaxy, such as ours, is the “most impressive picture of cosmic superimposition.” After coming very close to uncovering the Abrahamic astronomy of ecliptic alignments we described in chapter 4, Reich concluded: “The ecliptic, accordingly, would be the result of a pull exerted upon the planetary system by the galactic Orgone energy stream, making its course deviate from the equatorial plane by 23.5 degrees.”1 He even goes so far as to declare that this cosmic orgone energy stream causes all gravitational effects.
Reich defines orgone as the “primordial cosmic energy; universally present and demonstrable visually, thermically, electroscopically, and by means of Geiger-Müller counters.” In living bodies orgone is the “biological energy.” This suggests that Reich was close to the alchemical secret on an energetic level. Alchemy lurks just around the edges of his words in Cosmic Superimposition, but never quite emerges as a subject.
But he was close, on several levels. “Orgone” sounds a little like the “Force” of the Star Wars films, but the description has the virtue of explaining an astronomical fact that modern astrodynamics seems reluctant to face. But as support for our hypothesis, and in providing an origin for the catastrophe, Reich’s work, brilliant as it is, fell far short of our needs.
MESSAGES FROM MANY SOURCES
As we worked on this book, answers and suggestions about certain portions of the mystery kept emerging spontaneously from other researchers. The importance of the center of the Galaxy, and our alignment to it, is one of the best examples of this synchronicity. We knew of the significance of the galactic center through our connection with Moira Timms’s work on the Djed pillar, through Santillana and von Dechend’s book Hamlet’s Mill, and through Terence and Dennis McKenna’s The Invisible Landscape. But in the summer of 1996, several people published articles or presented papers on the upcoming Great Cross of the equinoxes and galactic center in the years from 1998 to 2002. While none of these perspectives fit our Hendaye framework, or explained its importance, the idea was part of the cultural zeitgeist.
Around this same time, John Major Jenkins, one of the foremost scholars of the Mayan calendrical system, began to suggest in various articles that the end date of the Mayan calendar, the winter solstice of 2012, was chosen because of its precise alignment of the galactic center with the rising sun. The Mayan astronomers, as Jenkins has demonstrated, have much to tell us about our ancient philosopher’s stone cosmology. While Jenkins’s work supports our thematic interpretation of the ancient astronomical vision, he had no better suggestion than Reich about the catastrophe itself.
In “The Message of the Maya End Date,” the last chapter in his Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, Jenkins asks the question: “What does the 2012 alignment mean for human beings on earth?” He tries to answer this by pointing to another factor involved in this rare precessional conjunction.
The Galaxy’s equator is the center of the Milky Way itself, and by 2012 the solstice meridian will have crossed over this galactic equator. Jenkins postulates that the earth’s equator delineates distinct field-effect properties common to all spinning bodies. Water in a drain, the spin of tornadoes, and hurricanes flow in opposite directions in each hemisphere. So too does the Galaxy. That would make the period from 1998, when the solstice meridian hits the exact center of the galaxy, and 2012, its heliacal rising, a sort of field-effect null zone, “much like the calm eye of a hurricane,” Jenkins tell us, which “balances the surrounding chaos.” Jenkins calls the shift a field-effect energy reversal.2
He doesn’t predict any catastrophes from this energy reversal, but instead focuses on the psychological aspect. Jenkins sees the “2012 field-reversal as a moment in which the human spirit can emerge from unconscious patterns and blossom.” He mentions the idea of a literal pole shift, so beloved of New Age doomsayers, but weighs in as leaning toward a pole shift in our collective psyche. He ends the chapter with a reference to ancient cultures such as the Magdalenian in eastern Europe 19,000 years ago, but refuses to speculate on what happened to end that Golden Age.
Ultimately we are convinced by his work that the Maya believed that this point marked a change significant enough to be called the zero point of time, but we are left wondering about the mechanism involved. If the Maya were simply extrapolating myth onto a celestial background, then it is possible that the astronomical indications alone were enough to define an end point. This approach ignores, however, the subtlety and sophistication of the cosmology itself. It is not just describing the flow of events in the sky; it is trying to interpret those events down here on earth. As Jenkins points out, the 260-day Mayan short count, based on the human gestation period, is also a factor of the precessional 26,000-year cycle. As above, so below, even in human evolution. But, as always, the question is the mechanism.
By the time Jenkins’s Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 appeared in the summer of 1998, our research was approaching critical mass. His conclusions, coupled with Terence McKenna’s Time Wave Zero research (based on the trigrams of the I Ching and which also pointed to an end date of 2012), suggested that our interpretation of the Hendaye cross was closer to the truth than we had imagined. There seemed to be some connection, at the level of cosmology, between all of these idea streams. The astro-alchemical meme began to look more and more like a survivor from some prehistoric global civilization.
And if that was the case, then we were looking for a catastrophe, one so large that there must be some evidence of it left. Graham Hancock, in his groundbreaking work Fingerprints of the Gods, presented a catalog of cataclysmic events, and concluded that some sort of upheaval and flood occurred around 13,000 years ago. While he doesn’t speculate on the cause of the cataclysm—which in his view resulted in a massive shift of the earth’s crust—he does suggest that it is somehow related to the precessional cycle and its cosmic clock.3 Hancock’s perspective on this cosmic clockwork, however, is lacking a few key elements.
He focuses on precession as the movement of the celestial pole while ignoring the ecliptic pole. He emphasizes the celestial mill and its grinding without ever identifying the point around which it circles. Having missed the importance of the ecliptic pole in defining an unmoving axis, he is also unclear about the significance of the ecliptic crossing points on the Milky Way and thus misses the importance of the galactic alignments.
He does, however, confirm our notion that the catastrophe, whatever its cause, destroyed an advanced global civilization. He even speculates on secret societies: “If the circumstances were right it seems possible that the essence of the cult (the secret of the catastrophe’s timing) might survive, carried forward by a nucleus of determined men and women.”4 Their objective would have been to preserve this knowledge for a future civilization facing the same event. We have seen how the Bahir’s philosopher’s stone and the cross at Hendaye function as just such devices for preserving the secret.
Still, a few pieces were missing. What caused the catastrophe? And could that disaster be related to the core transmutational process of alchemy? We had found that historically they were interconnected, but just how it worked was still elusive. The secret of alchemy and the secret of the double catastrophe, as we would learn from Paul LaVi
olette, are based on the same physics of creation.
EARTH UNDER FIRE: THE DOUBLE CATASTROPHE REVEALED
We met Paul LaViolette at a conference in Boulder, Colorado. He was scheduled to talk about his big bang theories, which, because of their suggestion of a possible scientific model for the alchemical process, were of interest to us. We also knew that LaViolette had determined the importance of the galactic center and had speculated on the nature of the catastrophe that ended the ancient global culture. We were shocked to find, however, that in the course of a ninety-minute presentation, LaViolette apparently solved the problem presented by Fulcanelli’s prediction of a double cataclysm.
Riveted to our seats, we listened as LaViolette ticked off possible solutions to one after another of our remaining problems. Why was the galactic-cross alignment of Leo/Aquarius and Scorpio/Taurus so important to the builders of the Hendaye cross and the Gothic cathedrals? LaViolette shows how this alignment pinpoints galactic microwave hotspots and how the ancients used this information to assign planetary qualities to the signs of zodiac, thus giving us the first coherent explanation for a very esoteric system of attributions.
How did the ancient scientists know the location of the exact center of the galaxy? LaViolette suggested that perhaps it was much brighter because it was actively erupting. By the end of the lecture, we were somewhat in shock. LaViolette’s new book, Earth Under Fire, suddenly became the book of answers, and the question of Fulcanelli’s warning attained a new level of significance. What had up to then been speculation on our part about an esoteric eschatology became a specific cataclysmic scenario with none of the vagueness of notions about disruptions in the orgone flow or galactic-equator field reversal. LaViolette, it seemed, had penetrated the alchemical meme to its core and seen the double cataclysm pointed out by Fulcanelli and the cross at Hendaye.
LaViolette’s Earth Under Fire opens where his previous book, Beyond the Big Bang, left off, with an examination of the zodiacal cipher in the sky and a warning of a galactic core explosion. LaViolette points out the importance of the four fixed signs, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius, and how, in the rearranged creation pattern, these are the only signs that retain their location on the ecliptic. He notes that Leo and Aquarius, which are opposite each other in the zodiac, “appear to be indicating a temperature polarity in space.” He points to the traditional attribution of the Sun to Leo and Saturn to Aquarius as indications of this temperature gradient, the Sun of course being very hot and Saturn very cold.
He goes on to discover that the attributions of the planets to the signs and to parts of the body also follow this temperature pattern (see fig. 12.3). LaViolette speculates that “since the lore of astrology redundantly encodes essentially the same Leo-Aquarius temperature bias using entirely unrelated sets of symbols (planets and body parts), we are led to conclude that these symbol systems are being used to call attention to the temperature gradient features that both share.”5
This is truly amazing when we consider that the microwave background radiation coming from deep space has precisely this kind of temperature gradient running across the heavens from the hot pole near Leo to the cold pole near Aquarius. It is almost as if there were a microwave “sun” in the direction of Leo.
The University of California at Berkeley team that discovered this temperature gradient in 1977 concluded, however, that it was produced by the solar system’s motion toward the region of Leo. Because of our system’s orbital motion around the galactic center, and the galaxy’s bulk motion through space, we are moving toward Leo at a speed that is twelve times that of our orbital motion. The precessional rising of Leo on the equinox, then, becomes a measure of alignment with the motion of the galactic spin.
Figure 12.3. A. A sky map showing the temperature gradient of the universe; the hottest spots are near the constellation Leo. B. The relationships among the zodiacal signs, the temperature gradient, and the parts of the body. From Paul LaViolette, Earth Under Fire (New York: Starburst Publications, 1997)
But what of the Scorpio/Taurus alignment? LaViolette argues that the symbolism of Scorpio and Sagittarius not only locates the galactic center but also pinpoints it as the place of continuous matter/energy creation, and therefore the possible source of a catastrophic energy outburst, the sting, as it were, of the Scorpion (fig. 12.4). Such galactic outbursts have been the subject of speculation since Edwin Hubbell demonstrated that spiral nebulae were actually distant galaxies. In the 1960s, evidence emerged suggesting that the core of a galaxy could shine brighter than all the stars in the galaxy itself. Called Seyfert galaxies after their discoverer Carl Seyfert, some have been known to shine more than 100,000 times brighter than the center of our own galaxy. On average, one in five to seven galaxies is observed to be a Seyfert type.6
Figure 12.4. LaViolette’s map showing the constellations of Scorpio and Sagittarius as they appeared in the distant past. The trajectory of the archer’s arrow shows that it would have intersected the galactic center 15,000 years ago. (From LaViolette, Earth Under Fire)
“Astronomers have come to realize,” LaViolette tells us, “that galactic core explosions occur in all spiral galaxies, even in our own, and that the majority of galaxies that have a normal appearance with no sign of core activity are simply galaxies whose cores happen to be in their quiescent phase. The statistics suggest that a galaxy core resides in this quiescent phase about 80 to 85 percent of the time. It spends the other 15 to 20 percent of the time in an active state, with eruptive episodes lasting from hundreds to several thousands of years.”7 In this sense, galaxies go on and off like the blinking lights of a Christmas tree.
The current black-hole model of the galactic core has difficulty accounting for these explosive episodes. Black holes consume matter and rarely eject it in explosive bursts as seen in Seyfert galaxies. Even a naked singularity, a rare black hole capable of emitting radiation, would be hard-pressed to match the energy output of Seyfert galaxies or quasars. LaViolette points out that modern radio-astronomy observations of the galactic core region reveal an object that acts more like a massive “mother star” than a black hole. The collapsing gravitational force, which causes a black hole, seems to be balanced by the outpouring of newly created matter and energy from within the supermassive star body, as predicted in subquantum kinetics. This model also predicts that the balance could at times become unstable, resulting in an explosive discharge of energy from the super massive core.8
Something as basic as a galactic core explosion in the relatively recent past should be easy to confirm with our modern astronomical instruments. And indeed, we find plenty of evidence for recent galactic core eruptions. Astronomers have found that gas clouds are moving radially outward from the galactic core like smoke rings from a central explosion.9 A lumpy cloud of molecular gas five light-years out from the galactic center shows signs of massive disruption in the last 10,000 to 100,000 years, as if the central five light-years had been swept clean of interstellar dirt by an explosion. Farther out, around ten to twenty light-years, astronomers have found a literal smoke ring of oxygenenriched gas propelled outward by a galactic core explosion less than 50,000 years ago. Even farther out is a cloud of molecular gas expanding outward at the rate of 150 kilometers per second. Astronomer Jan Oort estimated that it takes the force of 100,000 supernovas to propel this cloud out from the central core of the galaxy.
These pieces of evidence suggest that the microwave background radiation through which the sun is traveling in the direction of Leo was caused by the explosive waves of cosmic rays and gas clouds from the galactic center. Suddenly, the ancient cross of the fixed signs makes perfect sense. The first “beam” on the cross, Scorpio/Taurus, indicates the flow of the radial superwaves from the core explosions, and the other, Leo/Aquarius, indicates our solar system and planet’s angular momentum to that flow. Our Bahiric philosopher’s stone and the cross at Hendaye demonstrate these principles on a symbolic level.
LaViolette’s galactic exp
losion hypothesis can be summarized in four broad points:
Periodically, the core of our galaxy enters an explosive phase during which it generates an intense outburst of cosmic-ray particles equivalent to several million supernovas.
These outbursts recur roughly every 10,000 years or so, and last for several hundred to several thousand years.
Some types of cosmic-ray particles generated in a core explosion, the electrons and positrons, travel radially outward at close to the speed of light. Others, the protons, lag behind the electron front and are mostly absorbed by the magnetic fields in the magnetic nucleus.
A superwave of cosmic-ray particles passed through the solar system toward the end of the Ice Age, injecting large amounts of cosmic dust into the system. This dust affected the sun and substantially affected the climate on earth, bringing on the sudden end of the Ice Age.
The galactic superwave, composed of superhot cosmic-ray particles traveling at close to the speed of light, would appear from Earth as a brilliant blue-white spot of light—about the size of Mars—in Sagittarius, surrounded by a slightly larger and less bright halo. This source, perhaps as much as a thousand times brighter than any other star, would be visible even in daylight.
LaViolette equates this new “sun” with the Hopi legends of Saquasohuh, the blue star spirit, and the Egyptian legends of Sekhmet, the all-destroying Eye of Re. It would remain in the sky as a second sun, or the sun behind the sun, for as long as a millennium, as a herald of catastrophe. Although the energy of this outburst is enough to affect electromagnetic systems on earth and produce weather changes, the real danger is the effect on the cloud of cosmic dust surrounding our solar system. According to LaViolette, the superwave will push massive amounts of dust into our solar system, with disastrous consequences (see fig. 12.5).10