The Taybor Revisited

A couple of years ago, I was brought up short by the realization that Space 1999 might just be more than a shallow, if entertaining, 1970s science fiction vehicle. An episode from the second season called "The Taybor" forced me to give the series a rethink. Specifically, elements of the subtext and imagery, in that episode, point directly to the Tibetan concept of the rainbow body.

I watched "The Taybor" again, recently, and realized that I still hadn't given the episode, or possibly the entire series, enough credit. I'd glossed over a number of details, allusions so direct it's hard to imagine they are not conscious and deliberate.

This analysis of the series addresses the possibility that it's not meant to be taken at all literally – that it only really makes sense if you assume some sort of divine intervention and higher purpose to Moon Base Alpha's unlikely journey across the space.

The idea that the Moon could be thrown from its orbit to drift at speeds allowing it to cross interstellar space in time periods of weeks or months is difficult and often impossible for many viewers to accept. The mass of the Moon is so large and its orbit around Earth so apparently firm and the force of a series of atomic explosions so more likely to obliterate the Moon than to blast it out of orbit, that the imaginations of many of even the most ardent science fiction aficionados were challenged beyond their limit to stretch, despite the fact that the planet Pluto is credibly posited by scientists to have been a satellite of planet Neptune that broke away from Neptune and settled into an irregular orbit around the Sun. And then there is the difficulty that some people have of assimilating the prospect of such an event being caused by human error. Most people prefer to think of future, technological man as incapable of contributing to a disaster of such magnitude.

Tesseract: A Journey Through Art and Time

A Wrinkle in Time was considered essential reading in my home. My mother simply loved this book and, once she'd persuaded me to read it, so did I. It has all the elements: a strong female character that any adolescent girl could admire, a fantastical storyline, and travel to other planets. I've always loved stories about interstellar travel. The book revolves around something called the tesseract which allows the central characters to move through space at light-speed by folding, or wrinkling, time. I'd always assumed "tesseract" was one of those funny, made-up words. Obviously, I was incorrect and I only learned this years later when I began to work with sacred geometry and learned about the hypercube, aka, the tesseract.

The Beautiful Unfoldment of an Episcopal Diocese

"I just stopped believing God was a mystery you could nail down with one book." ~ Keanu Reeves in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

I was contemplating last evening, apropos of nothing, just why I did not become an Episcopal priest. I strongly considered it in my youth and even well into my college years. I knew I was "called" to religious service. But I outgrew the Church. What it came down to, I finally realized, was that as open and forward leaning as the Episcopal Church is, it's dogmatic enough to make me uncomfortable. I still felt too limited by doctrine. I couldn't be comfortable devoting my life to it, and worse, teaching things I really couldn't endorse.

I drifted in and out of the Church for some years. There were so many things about it that I loved but other things that were quite jarring. I vividly remember being at a funeral, after not having been at a service for a year or two, and hearing the "Prayer of Humble Access" as if for the first time.

We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table...

I'd heard it hundreds of times before but suddenly it was like nails on a chalkboard. So shame-based. What possible good could come from such self-denigration? That moment crystalized in my thinking the reason that Christian orthodoxy was just never going to work for me. It probably didn't help that I've always had an inherently mystical orientation. How could we be so much less than God when we we are God, I thought. I began to realize that, in fact, that central belief of mine wasn't actually endorsed by the Church. As egalitarian as the Episcopal Church was, it was also hierarchical. God was "up there" and outside of us. It didn't really make sense to me. So I went another way.

Once Upon a Time There Was a Chymical Wedding

"Stories are medicine. I have been taken with stories since I heard my first. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything -- we need only listen. The remedies for repair or reclamation of any lost psychic drive are contained in stories." ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Women Who Run With the Wolves

I'm a little late to this party -- two years to be exact -- but I have recently fallen in love with Once Upon a Time. Once again I tried to curl up with a little diversionary fluff and was instead abruptly pulled into the heart of the mysteries. As ever with these pop culture creations I am left to wonder if the writers are just randomly pulling these profound archetypes out of their deep subconscious, totally unaware of the implications, or if it's a carefully scripted foray into Gnosis.

The central plot is clever and entertaining. The evil queen from Snow White, she of the poison apple, takes her revenge by casting a spell that drags a myriad of fairy tale characters into a small town in Maine. There they live trapped in time and unable to remember who they really are. But the curse may be undone by the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, who was secreted out of the enchanted forest before the curse fell and predestined to return at the age of 28. Twenty-eight years later Emma Swan is living a lonely life in Boston until a young boy claiming to be the son she put up for adoption pulls her to Storybrooke. He insists she must fulfill her destiny and break the curse cast by his adoptive mother, who he is quite sure is the evil queen in his very unusual book of  fairy tales.

Each episode weaves together the complimentary narratives of the characters' lives in Storybrooke and their history as fairy tale creatures. It's skillful, if somewhat predictable, storytelling. But it's in the imagery that the creators tip their hand. They speak the language of symbols far too well for me to take the series lightly. From the first episode I was struck by the subtle but brilliant use of sacred geometry, character names, and striking tableaux. 

It is essentially a mystical story employing the most basic numerical code to appeal to conscious oneness.

The Flipping Sun

The sun is getting ready to reverse its polarity, which will put us at the midway point of solar maximum. It has been an unusually quiescent solar maximum, which has gone some way to calming concerns about a potential Carrington Event. Of course it only takes one. A report that we just barely avoided one a couple of weeks ago has been the subject of some dispute. (If this link redirects you, find August 2, 2013)

A little before the one minute mark, there's an image of the Wilcox Solar Observatory at Stanford. I can't help noticing that it strongly resembles a pyramid with a sun at the apex.

DJI Phantom - Wilcox Solar Observatory, Stanford University from Rd on Vimeo.

O Christmas Tower

The Eiffel Tower seems to be trending. Decorative accent sculptures, lamps, candle holders, 3D puzzles and, of course, the traditional art prints -- I've been seeing them in increasing numbers in stores over the past couple of years. But I knew something had really hit critical mass when I noticed a Christmas lawn ornament in front of a neighbor's house.

I've been acutely aware of this particular trend not because I'm so besotted with the idea of Parisian glamor. I don't really have a burning desire to see gay Paris. As with so many things that seize my attention, at this point, my interest is more esoteric.

Many years ago, I went to a shamanic journey workshop. It consisted of live drumming as we all attempted to journey questions suggested by the organizers. One of the questions had to do with finding community. I was a tad disappointed to learn, in my journey, that I have no community and would not have until I accomplished certain spiritual initiations. None of this surprised me, exactly, but it was still a little frustrating. Central in this journey was a kind of mountain... tower... thing. My sense was that I would have to reach the pinnacle of it before I could connect with my community. And my sense was that it would take years. It was a very sharp, elongated triangle, with concave sides. I drew my impression of it when I completed the journey. And I thought, but that's the Eiffel Tower. What on earth could that form have to do with anything? It's not a pyramid. It's not a tetrahedron. It's not any of those cardinal, sacred geometry forms, that I would expect. But there it was. A very rudimentary Eiffel Tower form. For some time, I refused to believe that the shape I'd been shown had anything to do with something that had become, in my mind, a cliche of American Francophilia. But it came up, over the years, in other journeys and meditations. The shape was unmistakable. Nearly ten years later, I gave up on denying that there was some connection to the iconic architecture.

No Tree for You!

Remember the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld? This capricious vendor of very delicious soup would refuse service to anyone he didn't like, telling them, "No soup for you!" Well, it seems we have ourselves a Tree Nazi, except that this one discriminates based on religion -- including Jews... So that's a little creepy.

There seems to be some debate as to whether or not the photo could possibly be real. I for one don't doubt that it could be a genuine article. It looks like another battle line has been drawn in the culture wars. Now they're being fought on the commerce front -- like the gun dealer who's refused to sell to Obama voters.

It's hard for me to get worked up about the possible civil rights violation because the whole scenario is just too hilarious. But then, I'm not a Jew in desperate need of a Hanukkah bush in whatever provincial backwater this sign was photographed in.

Why do I find this amusing? For starters, and I'm not alone in noting this, Christmas trees are Pagan -- not Christian. And the Bible specifically condemns the "heathen" custom. Some of your more serious Christians recognize the Pagan nature of Christmas customs and have taken to waging their own version of the "War on Christmas." But I digress.

On a less prosaic note, I can't help noticing that the Christmas tree graphics used in that sign have a very noticeable benben. For a detailed explanation of the sacred geometry represented by the Christmas tree, see here. But here's the shorthand:

For so many reasons, that discriminatory sign is as risible as the yearly tempest in a teapot that is the "War on Christmas." But at least this bold move to defend the tragically beleaguered, nay endangered, Christendom, puts the focus back on the real meaning of Christmas: Retail.

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Full Circle

I've written before about my near obsession with this basic form. First it possessed my inner vision, so that I seriously considered doing a giant, and I mean giant, canvas... except that I don't paint. Then I began to recognize it in a variety of contexts, penultimately in the giant obsessional painting of Battlestar Galactica character Kara Thrace. And it slowly dawned on me that it appears in a great deal of spiritual iconography. Now it's taken to stalking me.

Rightly or wrongly, Dan Brown calls the stripped down version of this symbol a circumpunct.

Brown has this to say in his novel [The Lost Symbol]: "In the idiom of symbology, there was one symbol that reigned supreme above all others. The oldest and most universal, this symbol fused all the ancient traditions in a single solitary image that represented the illumination of the Egyptian sun god, the triumph of alchemical gold, the wisdom of the Philosopher's Stone, the purity of the Rosicrucian Rose, the moment of Creation, the All, the dominance of the astrological sun, and even the ominscient all-seeing eye that hovered atop the unfinished pyramid. The circumpunct. The symbol of the Source. The origin of all things."

. . .

It is true that the circumpunct symbol has been around for millennia, albeit more often known as "the circle with the dot in the middle". It can symbolise everything from gold in alchemy to a European road sign for city centre. It is commonly used as a solar symbol and reputable sources date this to ancient Egypt, where the symbol has its origins in Ra (or Re), god of the midday sun. In fact, the circle with a midpoint, plus a vertical line is the hieroglyph meaning "sun".

So how did an Egyptian symbol rise to shine again as a token of the ancient mysteries among 21st-century Freemasons in Brown's novel? Langdon's exposition is as follows: "The pyramid builders of Egypt are the forerunners of the modern stonemasons, and the pyramid, along with Egyptian themes, is very common in Masonic symbolism." Very neat. Well done, Brown.

Brown is frustrating to read. I keep expecting there to be more of the depth hinted at by the subject matter but it's never forthcoming. And even in this case, the assigning of lineage and intrigue does nothing to address the pull this symbol has on the imagination or its underpinnings in sacred geometry. But it does flesh out a little context.

The symbol is also immediately recognizable as a human eye... or the Eye of Jupiter if you're a Battlestar Galactica fan. I was reminded the other day of that solid bit of conventional wisdom: The eyes are the windows of the soul. Eyes tell you everything you really need to know about a person. They are what many people report recognizing during past life regressions as belonging to people they currently know. Creepy eyes warn of malice and even psycopathy. I've learned through hard experience that if I don't like someone's eyes, I don't like them. Note that both Robert D. Hare's Without Conscious and Martha Stout's Sociopath Next Door feature eyes on the front cover.

Eyes are made up of vesicae piscis and circles. And that geometrical interplay between the sphere and the vesica piscis is, as I said here, the gateway in and out of manifestation. So it stands to reason that it is associated with the soul's migration. But it also seems to represent various levels of spiritual expansion and possibly even ascension.

My point is this. We are not drawn to that form because it looks like an eye, as when Eye of God mania swept the web. The eye is shaped like that because the eye is a significant portal in the body and one associated directly with light.

"In our circles, in our circles, in our circles, in our circles..." ~ Madeline Kahn, The Carol Burnett Show

For over a week, I've been awash in synchronicity, and much of it has revolved around this repeated geometry. I've been reading William Henry's Secret of Sion and it's just brought one epiphany after another. Like much of his work, it has me pulling out journals that date back over a decade, because it clarifies and validates things I've been seeing in my head for years. Henry, of course, associates various iterations of concentric circles with the opening of stargates. And I realized at a certain point that as I moved through the concluding chapters of the book, I began seeing the symbol everywhere.

The issue moved into sharp relief on Thursday when I noticed this amusing juxtaposition on my Facebook homepage. The photo is by my old friend Andy Cohen who is a simply exquisite photographer. The geometrical synchronicity is by universe.

Click to Enlarge

It does not escape my notice that the photo is of a sunflower and the circumpunct is, among other things, the symbol for the sun... and gold.

Later that day, I went to Target. Nothing to do with the power of suggestion. My daughter needed something and it's close. But having discovered the night before, while sitting by the pool, that it was definitely time to retire my very old iPod nano, I did something a little impulsive. I bought myself a new iPod. It's a purchase I've been planning but I could have gotten it a little cheaper elsewhere. It was, to put it oh so gently, not a good day, so I went straight for the instant gratification. I don't regret it... at all. And it was only later that I realized how truly flawless the timing was.

And, of course it came home in a Target bag because I bought it at Target.

Much later in the evening, I kept finding myself brought up short by my husband's viewing choices. I'd glance up at the TV just in time to see things like Alton Brown on the Food Network talking about the perfect form of the donut.

And then by these electric blue crested worm-things that were supposed to represent yeast... or something.

A little later, I noticed he was watching the Keanu Reeves remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. I looked up just in time to see this stellar scene.

And, of course, the reticulated python moving towards the sphere.

Sitting by the pool Friday night, listening to Hildegard von Bingen on my new iPod, I finished reading Secret of Sion. The concluding chapters of this book contain too many ah-ha moments to recount. But you really could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw his concluding image. The White Rose by Gustave Doré is a plate from Dante's Divine Comedy: Paradiso.

"In fashion then as of a snow-white rose displayed itself to me the saintly host..."

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No, It is Not a Vagina

I like Cracked. They're fun. And they do set the record straight on many commonly accepted canards. But on this one, they're just wrong.

Apart from the cross, the most ubiquitous symbol of Christianity is the ichthys, known to us as the Jesus Fish, and today it appears predominantly in its natural habitat -- car bumpers. The ichthys actually dates right back to ancient times, when Christianity was still an obscure sect, and considering that fish and fishing were frequently used as symbols in the Bible, you could argue that it's a more appropriate symbol for the teachings of Christ than the device used to torture and kill him.

. . .

It's a vagina.

One of the names given to the pre-Jesus Jesus Fish is the vesica pisces (vessel of the fish), and it was used as a symbol of every female fertility god ever, from Atargatis (the Syrian fertility goddess), Aphrodite/Venus (the goddess of love and sex) to the pagan Great Mother goddess, where it symbolized her life-giving vulva. Basically, whenever you encountered an image of fish in the pre-Christian world, it was probably an opposite-of-subtle metaphor for lady parts.

No one loves Goddess mythology more than I. And I can truly understand the temptation to tweak sexist, paternalistic, patriarchal, evangelicals by telling them they've put vaginas on their bumpers. But it's a gross oversimplification of a very rich symbol.

And, no, it's not really about Jesus making "fishers of men," either. (Matthew 4:19)

The symbol is, indeed, a vesica piscis. And it is the shape of the vaginal opening. But it is also the shape of the opening of the penis. And the shape of the eye. And the shape of a myriad of other things. It is a seminal shape in sacred geometry, replicated over and over, particularly associated with acts of creation, where things are birthed -- transitioned between planes of existence.

While it is not simply the vagina, it is the mother, or womb, of all manifestation. As one divides into two, the spheres overlap and form the vesica piscis. And from there a plethora of geometric forms become possible.

In A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe, Michael S. Schneider explains:

The "parents" of numbers, symbolized by the Monad and Dyad, one and two, point and line, when united as a vesica piscis generate the mathematical "root relationships" underlying the shapes and patterns of the natural world. When the distance between centers is one (unit) then the relationships reveal themselves. They're responsible for the basic two-dimensional shapes, the triangle, square, and pentagon. When constructed on paper the shapes may be folded to make the five equal divisions of three-dimensional space known as the "Platonic volumes."

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And as Robert Lawlor explains in Sacred Geometry, that spirit into matter symbolism is quite reasonably tied to the Christ myth.

Jesus as the center of the Vesica carries the idea of the non-substantial, universal 'Christic' principle entering into the manifest world of duality and form. The Piscean Age has been characterized as that of the formal embodiment of spirit, manifesting a deeper penetration of spirit into form, with a concurrent deepening of the materialization of spirit: the Word becomes flesh.

Vesica Piscis is universal. It is woven into spiritual symbolism from faiths all over the world in the form of fish and eye symbols, and sometimes in its simple, clean, geometrical form. It can be neatly and repeatedly excised from the Flower of Life, the symbol of manifestation that has been found in temples all over the world. It can even be seen on ancient Jewish ossuaries which have been tangentially linked to the time of Christ.

In the following video, the wonderful Charles Gilchrist demonstrates with an artistic journey through the geometry of the vesica piscis.

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O Christmas Tree: A Contemplation

I love Christmas trees. Always have. Many of my warmest, childhood memories are of decorating the Christmas tree and waiting for Santa to bring me a Barbie, some Silly Putty, or an Easy Bake Oven. That's because I was raised in a Christian home. Pine trees and magical, gift giving elves were beloved by the baby Jesus. Remember? In the stable when Joseph and Mary were visited by the three wise men and Santa Claus, with his reindeer, and they all sang "O Tannenbaum?" Okay... Maybe I have that wrong.

So, how did the Christmas tree come to be such an integral part of Christmas? Like so many of our beloved Christmas traditions they derive primarily from ancient, pre-Christian, pagan cultures. Historically, they have an uneasy relationship with Christianity; alternately rejected as pagan artifacts and claimed vehemently as Christian rather than secular. Many Christians would probably be surprised to learn that the ancient pagan practice of decorating tree cuttings, which occurred in parts of the Middle East long before the birth of Christ, is specifically condemned in the Bible.

"Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." ~ Jeremiah 10:2-4

The use of evergreens has a specific symbolic appeal in the dead of winter. Many scholars of paganism and goddess worship will tell you that pine trees represent eternal life because they remain vibrant throughout the dead of winter. I read about this in far too many books when I first started exploring goddess traditions, many moons ago, for me to source and cite them all. Here is a good overview from Religious Tolerance.org.

Prince Charles On Sacred Geometry

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Well, color me gobsmacked. I've just added to my bookstore, of all things, a book by Prince Charles. I never thought I'd see the day. But this headline on The Huffington Post caught my eye: "Prince Charles Reflects on 'Sacred Geometry.'" Not only does he demonstrate a solid knowledge of sacred geometry but he is speaking to something that I have been saying for years; that if we constructed things according to the principles of sacred geometry, we would have far more efficient and durable systems. It's something that drives me mental, actually, on a daily basis. Little things like the way shampoo bottles tip over in the shower because the structure and weight don't account for changing center of gravity as you use up the shampoo. And, of course, on a grand scale everything from urban planning to architecture to farming would benefit from following the laws and principles of the natural world instead of fighting them. These greater world problems are what Prince Charles is addressing his book Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World.

Examining some of the past wonders of human achievement, Charles highlights a "sacred geometry" which stands in sharp contrast to the hectic and scattered appearance of modern life. He argues that such principles are not archaic but are, in fact, highly relevant to solving many of the world's current problems.

In this exclusive excerpt, the British heir marvels at his favorite building, the Chartres Cathedral, and the seemingly perfect order of its architecture.

Chartres was begun at the start of the eleventh century. It is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and Professor Critchlow suggests that the symbolism of the entire cathedral is intimately tied up with the medieval development of the cult of Mary - perhaps a renaissance, he claims, of the cult of the Greek goddess of wisdom, Sophia. I can only give a snapshot here of the remarkable scholarship he has achieved, but it is so important that the wider world sees some of what he has uncovered because it demonstrates in physical form the outlook that prevailed in the mood of thought in the Western world 1,000 years ago.

Once again the geometry of the entire building is derived from a circle. Its floor plan is contained within the proportions of a vesica. As the illustration demonstrates, the centre point of the vesica sits at the very centre of the building so that the North and South doors, seen here on the left and right, are exactly positioned. The windows also conform to this shape. The great Belle Verrière window, for example, which depicts the Madonna and Child, sits perfectly within a vesica and thus perfectly within the floor plan of the cathedral, with every significant point in the design of the window corresponding to key positions in the geometry of the rest of the building. Christ's head sits over the Madonna's heart. As Professor Critchlow has shown, the infant Christ's throat, from which the entire Christian tradition was eventually spoken, falls at the very centre of the vesica and therefore at the very heart of the building. The blue jewel in the Madonna's crown falls on the rond point of the cathedral at the end of the choir, which happens to sit immediately below a large weathervane up on the roof in the shape of Gabriel, the archangel who brought the news to Mary of Christ's incarnation. The eight stars that circle the Madonna's head, fall precisely on the eight pillars that surround the altar, and her feet rest on the columns of the doorway of the West entrance. And so the precision of this comprehensive geometry goes on.

The entrance into the building is through the West front, which comprises two soaring towers, one with the symbol of the Moon upon it and one, a significant number of feet taller, bearing the symbol of the Sun. The height of this spire matches the length of the cathedral: 365 feet. The Moon spire is 28 feet shorter, a number linked very closely to the lunar calendar. And beneath them sits one of the most spectacular of all rose windows, symbolizing the uniting of the apparent duality represented by the symbols of the Sun and the Moon. This unifying process is even built into the way the pilgrim was expected to journey around the cathedral. They would enter the building beneath the Moon, passing from the world of time into the timeless, and then progress along the left wall, reading the story of Christianity in the windows of the North side of the cathedral. There are in fact three great rose windows in the body of the cathedral and they were also intended to be read in sequence, along with all of the other layers of symbolism built into the fabric of the architecture.

For instance, there are two gateposts on the building, one on the North door and one on the South. The Northern gatepost carries a statue of St Anne, who, being the mother of Mary, is traditionally the figure in whom the Old Testament ends. After progressing through the building, following the course of Chartres's famous labyrinth with its central chamber containing twelve petals on the floor (exactly at the point, incidentally, where Christ's feet appear in the Belle Verrière window), the pilgrim would pass the Southern door, above which is the image of the fully grown Christ, enclosed within a vesica. On the gatepost of that door Christ is depicted again, carrying in his hands the book of his message to the world, his New Testament. Even here the architecture is full of symbolism. Professor Critchlow points out that the shape of the book is a Golden Rectangle and that it is angled in such a way that one corner rests on Christ's 'naval centre', as it would be described in the Indian, Vedantic tradition, while the upper corner rests on his 'heart centre'. Keith Critchlow has also calculated that this book is tilted at approximately 24 ½ º, which is both the angle at which our hearts lie within our bodies and the tilt of the Earth in relation to the solar axis.

Quite clearly not an inch of this entire building is left to chance. Every angle and position conveys symbolic meaning. The medieval Christian architects who designed such a breathtaking structure were following the teachings of the mystics of their age and created what seems to me to amount to a profound prayer to all of creation. They made a building that offers us the direct experience of what the ancients held to be our true relationship with the world. To walk around within its soaring pillars and to bask in the gentle light that pours through its exquisite windows is to experience a sense of participation in the very 'patterning' of the soul. No sense here of being a disconnected observer in a dead and mechanical universe.

I have wanted to pay such attention to the principles of the world's sacred geometry because they stand in such contrast to the predominant way in which we view the world today. I am sure many people will say that you cannot organise 'modern' life around ancient, irrelevant concepts, but the point is that the sheer elegance of a building like Chartres Cathedral and the precision of its geometry was only possible because of the rediscovery of classical knowledge which was born of a tradition of wisdom which is not time-specific and 'historic'. It is timeless and extremely relevant to the way the natural world works today - as it has always been. Nature has not changed her attitude because of fashion.

"Nature has not changed her attitude because of fashion." I just need to repeat that for emphasis. Brilliant.

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Understanding Sacred Geometry... and the Universe

Math is taught all wrong. This has long been my contention. I was a terrible math student and today I can barely balance my own checkbook. Yet, when I first heard the term "sacred geometry" I felt like I was waking from a dream. It was one of the strongest intuitive pulls I've ever felt. It would seem that Michael S. Schneider has a similar take on the problems with math education. Scheider is the author of my favorite and most frequently recommended book on sacred geometry A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe. He has a gift for explaining these concepts in very simple, pragmatic terms. I wish he'd been my math teacher. I'd be better off.

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A Frakking Doodle?!!!

If anyone wants to know why people like Graham Hancock and, oh, I don't know, me, are so frustrated with academic archaeologists, look no further.

Cambridge University experts believe the crudely etched circles are the Neolithic version of a modern office worker's scribbles on a post-it note.

. . .

Christopher Evans, director of the university's Archaeological Unit, thinks the concentric circles were created by one of our early ancestors ''killing time'' as opposed to a work of art.

Mr Evans said: ''I think it was a doodle. I don't think it has any deep and meaningful religious significance.

''In this era of the Neolithic period they had a lot of time on their hands. It could show they were quite bored at times, but we don't know for sure.

''We do know when they weren't out harvesting or planting crops they had to find a way of killing time.

''There are Megalithic tombs with concentric circles like this carved into stones - the circles are a form of Megalithic art and typical of the grooved ware pottery of the time.

Esoterica

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There are great many news items I read everyday that I haven't the time or inclination to write about in any depth but still like to pass on to readers. I put them in the sidebar under Headlines but no one seems to notice or comment on them so I've decided to do periodic roundups of the more interesting items.

***********

What do King Tut and Rasputin have in common? Missing penis.

Did someone sabotage the Egyptian king's mummy to hide his less-than endowed genitalia? A new report from The New Scientist presents the possibility of a anatomical conspiracy.

An unknown tribe in Papua New Guinea has been discovered. Once the missionaries and census takers find you, it's all pretty much downhill.

"Their houses are in trees, their life is stone age," said Suntono, head of Indonesia's statistics agency for the Papua region, adding the tribe built ladders to huts in tall trees.

After receiving reports from missionaries, census officials needed to walk for up to two weeks to find the tribe, after travelling by boat from the nearest permanent villages, but still only reached the fringes of their territory.

I always thought it was a little too convenient that Jesus happened to die on a cardinal geometric form revered by numerous pre-Christian and non-Christian cultures.

Jesus may not have died nailed to the cross because there is no evidence that the Romans crucified prisoners two thousand years ago, a scholar has claimed.

A legal setback for the Vatican as the Supreme Court declines appeal.

The Supreme Court won't stop a lawsuit that accuses the Vatican of conspiring with U.S. church officials to transfer a priest from city to city despite repeated accusations that the clergyman sexually abused young people.

And the Pope is bristling at the authorities in Belgium.

Pope Benedict XVI lashed out Sunday at what he called the "deplorable" raids carried out by Belgian police who detained bishops, confiscated computers, opened a crypt and took church documents as part of an investigation into priestly sex abuse.

Excavation of giant henge commences.

A site at Marden, near Devizes, rivalled Stonehenge and Avebury in its day, says English Heritage.

The group is about to undertake a six-week dig at the site close to the village, starting on June 28.

Unlike Stonehenge and Avebury, Marden Henge no longer has any surviving standing stones, but its sheer size is astounding.

Massive new crop circle found Britain's "UFO Capital."

The circular 90m (300ft) design, believed to represent the passage of the Moon and Sun, contains 193 rings, including six key circles and a seventh in the centre.

Secret messages in Plato's text claimed by British scientist.

In an extraordinary discovery, a British academic claims to have uncovered a series of secret messages hidden in some of the most influential and celebrating writings of the Ancient World.

The codes suggest that Plato was a secret follower of the philosopher Pythagoras and shared his belief that the secrets to the universe lie in numbers and maths.

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On Hating Women's Bodies -- Updated

As a personal trainer on "The Biggest Loser," Jillian Michaels prides herself on being able to get anyone into shape. Anyone, that is, except herself should she ever have a baby. Michaels has created a bit of stir by dissing pregnancy in an interview with Women's Health.

"I'm going to adopt. I can't handle doing that to my body," she told the magazine. "Also, when you rescue something, it's like rescuing a part of yourself."

Michaels, who is now 5'2" and 120 pounds of muscle, was overweight as a teen. She said she once weighed 175 pounds but lost the extra weight with martial arts, which she has practiced for 20 years. She is currently embroiled in a lawsuit over the efficacy of her diet pills.

Sure. Let some other gal wreck her figure so that Michaels can experience the joys of motherhood.

William Henry on Egypt, Stargates, and 2012

This brand new Coast to Coast interview with William Henry is an absolute mind-blower. It actually reduced me to tears at a couple of points because it evoked such a powerful sense of memory.  I don't know where the image used by the video maker came from but there's that concentric circle shape again. For added fun, it also contains the "funny looking mountain range" I referenced here.

In a delicious Jungian synchronicity, I learned something new this morning. I have a feed gadget on my iGoogle page for this very helpful nutrition site. The food of the week this week is onions.

The word onion comes from the Latin word unio for "single," or "one," because the onion plant produces a single bulb, unlike its cousin, the garlic, that produces many small bulbs. The name also describes the union (also from unio) of the many separate, concentrically arranged layers of the onion.

Watching Creation

On Zak's recommendation I took a look at Andrew Sullivan's recent blog entries on the Vatican scandal. But I got distracted by this magnificent video depicting how sacred geometry expresses itself through nature. It's an elegant depiction of the Fibonacci sequence and the golden mean. Really lovely.

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Of William Henry, the Capitol Dome, Stargates, and Battlestar Galactica

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Posted below is a fairly recent interview with William Henry. For the discussion of the Capitol dome and stargate metaphysics, skip ahead to video 7. The first six are more focused on the Norway spiral and a somewhat paranoid read on the climate conference. I've discussed Henry's analysis of the Capitol dome and Brumidi's fresco previously here and here. Now that I'm back in the DC area, I'm determined to fight my way up I95 to visit the Capitol and see this for myself. Maybe I'll take the train. Time is a precious commodity.

In this interview Henry also points out that stargate images are turning up in art and sculpture all over the place and suggests that we could be having a collective awakening. I totally agree. But it was when I looked at the image of the dome above, that it clicked for me just how powerful a trigger that image is.

Flower of Life Mandala

Just incredibly cool. I discovered quite viscerally, when I was training in the Flower of Life, that working with this seminal geometrical form is very, very powerful. This meditation video is really well done. Enjoy!

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Horn of Plenty

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When we study sacred geometry, we begin to see the world of form differently. We gradually begin to recognize how these seminal shapes and proportions repeat themselves over and over, in nature. We also look at symbols, religious and otherwise, with new eyes. I had one of those moments of realization this morning, when I glanced at a Happy Thanksgiving post, on a blog. An image of a cornucopia, overflowing with harvest bounty, topped the page. I haven't really thought much about cornucopias since I was in grade school, tracing my hand to make Thanksgiving turkeys, and looking at pictures of happy "Indians," with their pilgrim friends. It had never occurred to me how profound a form the cornucopia is.

This symbol of the abundance, for which we give thanks each November, traces to ancient Greek mythology.

The cornucopia is a symbol of food and abundance dating back to the 5th century BC, also referred to as horn of plenty, Horn of Amalthea, and harvest cone.

In Greek mythology, Amalthea was a goat who raised Zeus on her breast milk. When her horn was accidentally broken off by Zeus while playing together, this changed Amalthea into a unicorn with 17 whiskers. The god Zeus, in remorse, gave her back her horn. The horn then had supernatural powers which would give the person in possession of it whatever he or she wished for. This gave rise to the legend of the cornucopia. The original depictions were of the goat's horn filled with fruits and flowers: deities, especially Fortuna, was depicted with the horn of plenty. The cornucopia was also a symbol for a woman's fertility.

This magic horn, then, creates something out of nothing. It is a tool of manifestation. Like so many objects in mythical context, it is the geometrical form that is significant. Horns have a special place in myth and ritual, as objects of power, because their form is vortical. This vortex is derived from the golden mean spiral. According to sacred geometry, this is the very foundation of manifest creation.

Simply put, the Golden Mean Spiral is a doorway that weaves the ethereal and material dimensions together. In another context I would say that God left us one door of eternal mystery and exploration¾ the Golden Mean Spiral or the door of love.

The vortex unfurls from the void -- the vast potential of the unmanifest -- and animates creation itself.

In studying the Sacred Geometry of Creation, we first understand that creation takes place in what is known as "no time and space," and that it then enters into dimensionality through the intra-dimensional doorway known as the Golden Mean Spiral.

Why do we utilize Sacred Geometry? The purest answer is because it creates for us the frequencies of a controlled place of deep silence, the place of The Silent Watcher, that has no beginning or end. The Golden Mean is the doorway to this place known as "no time and space," where we can interact with Creation. It is the sacred doorway to the intuitive, the space to where we once again are God in action.

So, with our Thanksgiving horn of plenty, we are literally celebrating the divine mystery of creation itself. Through conscious interaction with these geometries and archetypes, we begin to reawaken to our true function as co-creators of the reality with inhabit.



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