Friday, July 27, 2012

Da'at Night

The focus of this blog is not only the symbolic analysis of the many "occult" events occurring presently, but to also examine the historically unprecedented phenomenon of a multitude of web researchers all presenting their own unique interpretations of these events, sharing ideas, locked in debate, their ideas feedbacking into the events themselves.

I write this just hours before the Opening Ceremony for London 2012, come what may, but the event I'd like to focus on happened a week prior -- the start of the last week of the 70-day underworld journey. I'm referring, of course, to the mass shooting, resulting in 12 dead and 58 wounded, during the premier The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado. Certainly an occult event.


As is now almost commonplace, there is commentary from the usual sources linking the shooting to mind control programs, reports of other people involved, speculations about it being a "false flag" event, examples of "predictive programming", etc. The fact that this type of conspiratorial analysis happens so close on the heels of such an event, and that skepticism towards the "official story" is so widespread and direct, is itself a fascinating phenomenon. It is hard to imagine such a reaction even ten years ago. There has been a change in public consciousness.

In addition to this, though, is even a deeper layer of analysis. This second, perhaps we can call it synchronistic or even "synchromystic," layer is now growing at a faster rate than traditional conspiratorial theorizing and, while complementary to some degree, it really threatens to supplant the first entirely.

When an event like this occurs, individuals across the globe and throughout the web automatically scour the available facts on the lookout for "coincidences", better termed as synchronicities. As strange as it might seem, it is natural for these researchers to look for, and inevitably find, syncs linking the Aurora shooting with the London Olympics. It is interesting to look both at these syncs and also the whole phenomenon that determines them.


I'll summarize some of these syncs here and then I'll examine others more connected to the discussions of this blog. Finally, I'll move into the real subject of this post -- where is this all headed? What is this underworld or Abyss that we are collectively passing through? Where does it lead? This will be the first of likely several posts on the hidden sephirah of Da'at. But first the Dark Knight.

A synchronicity on the first level of analysis is the uncanny fact that a high level medical school, in a nearby suburb of Denver, was giving drills to medical students on how to deal with just this type of mass shooting at a theatre. The drill, the only of its kind in the country, occurred on the same day as the shooting.

 "The irony is amazing, just amazing," said Rocky Vista Dean Dr. Bruce Dubin.

This type of coincidence can easily be assimilated into the conspiratorial model. It matches the well-known pattern of similar drills happening at the same time, and concerning the same type of attacks, as 9/11, 7/7, etc. The drills themselves, and the analysis explaining the "MO" of the drills, have become predictable.

The other synchronicities, especially those which link the shooting to London 2012, are not so easily explained. A weird one is that witnesses were brought a few blocks away by police to Aurora's Gateway High School which proudly boasts to be "the home of the Olympians". Did the Illuminati plan this as well?


Web researchers also noted that in the trailer of the new James Bond movie, Skyfall, which is being shown in theatres immediately before Dark Knight Rises, there is a prominent centre skyline shot of the Aurora building in Shanghai. Immediate predictive programming?


Other researchers discovered that both the words "Aurora" and "London" equal 444 in English gematria. That's a weird enough connection, but a closer look shows that "Christ", "Lucifer", and "Messiah" also equal 444. This is resonant with the last post in which the ambiguity of Christ and Lucifer was shown in their relation to Venus, the morning star.

One researcher pointed out that Dark Knight Rises allegedly includes a bomb plot where a nuclear device is set to go off 23 days after it is activated. Having not seen the movie yet, I can't confirm this, but if this true, as he or she warns, 23 days after the explosive premier on 7/20 would be 8/12 -- the day of the closing ceremony for London 2012. It's interesting, as pointed out here, that 8/12 is also the date of the heliacal rising of Sirius over London. 

Does Aurora, which means "dawn," symbolically refer to the dawn of Sirius?

 

Among all the syncs uncannily connecting the Dark Knight shooting with the London Olympics, the one that really stands out, and it is one that seems to have escaped notice up to this point, is the fact that the alleged perpetrator shot 70 people (12 killed and 58 wounded) -- exactly the number of days in the Olympic Torch Relay, and exactly the number of days Sirius was traditionally said to journey in the underworld. One victim for every day in the Duat?

What is going on here? Why should any of these syncs appear? And why should they be discovered in the way they were? Is this just a matter of apophenia -- arbitrarily finding meaningful patterns in places where no such meaning exists? Clearly, though, if these things are not mere coincidences, then they point to something far more bizarre than even the spells of the most adept of masonic sorcerers. In short, if taken as being significant, they point to the limitations of conspiratorial analysis.

The excellent and fearless researcher, Goro Adachi, makes exactly this point in a recent article on the Aurora shooting:

The Olympic ceremonies are a "mega-ritual," no doubt about that. So many people out there are shouting: "Oh my god, alien invasion! Project Blue Beam! False flag attack!" It's understandable but most are just new at this. I've been at this for more than a decade. I was heavily into this before 9/11. I can point to the fact that I wrote an article on the 9/11 attacks in October 2001 from a multicontextual perspective that's not so different from what I talk about today... including Mars.

From experience I can say that foresight is not something easily attained. Our reality is not static, it's dynamic. The future is fluid and influenced by what we do, see, and are aware of in the present. The future reacts to our actions and perception so as not to "reward" the unworthy with the gift of foresight. The more purely you align with truth, the more you are "worthy", that is to say, the more you resonate with the future (unrealized possibilities).

Most "conspiracy theorists" don't have this quality in them which requires a great sense of balance, lots of self-examination and ego-control. That's why 99.999% of the time they can't foresee anything correctly. Their uncontrolled ego magnet screws up the truth compass. If you can't start from a place of no assumptions and no preconceived worldview, you won't get far. If you go "I'm a Christian" or "I'm an atheist", or "I'm looking for conspiracies by the NWO, the stinking Illuminati!" for instance, you're immediately done right there before you even start, a dead-ender. Talk about self-sabotage. It's so easy to contaminate our reality/future vision with our conscious and subconscious preconceptions.

So, while listening to folks like Alex Jones might initially help you deprogram yourself from the mainstream unquestioning mindset, constantly listening to the endless stream of their version of "I hate my parents, they ruined my life, bahhhh!" day in and day out, well, now that's just another worldview programming, another religion, yes, "mind control." It's very unhealthy. You need to stay balanced so as not to get stuck in a fixed line of thinking. That just makes you a robot.

In other words, reality is far stranger than even the conspiracy theorists will allow for and, in a way that is threatening for dogmatic theorists of any stripe, the observer in his very act of observation alters what he is observing. The theorist's own self will, unwittingly or not, enter into the body of his theory. The deeper down the rabbit hole we go the further we sink into the depths of our own shadows. The process of gathering Knowledge, especially of this esoteric caliber, is itself a journey through the Abyss.

This is what needs to be explored more thoroughly before any of these "occult" events can be understood.

Finding Nemo


The story could start anywhere, but for fun I'll start it a long way in both space and time from London 2012. Let's begin with ex-Harvard psychologist and LSD advocate, Timothy Leary, in the desert of Algeria. Leary had been busted out of prison in 1970 by the Weather Underground and had been smuggled away to Algeria under the "protection" of the Black Panther Party.

According to Leary's friend, the writer Brian Barritt, the story goes that after in turn escaping from the Black Panthers, Leary and Barritt eventually ventured out into the desert at Bou Sadaa in 1971. Here, in the desert, the two had a life-altering acid trip together.

 
They later found out that they had tripped in almost exactly the same location where the magician Aleister Crowley and his poet friend, Victor Neuberg, had tripped on mescaline and performed the important crossing the Abyss ritual in 1909. Crowley himself considered that he and his partner were just continuing in the spirit of the English Renaissance magus, John Dee, and his partner Edward Kelly by employing the Enochian magic that these men had developed. Barritt writes:
Tim and myself tripped for the first time together in the same area in which Crowley and Neuburg dropped mescaline and performed a magical ceremony using Dr. Dee's script!
The new information shakes and impresses us both. It's not reincarnation we are thinking of so much as recurring cycles with different representatives each time around. We feel we are riding the same current that powered Dr Dee and Edward Kelly in the 16th century and Crowley and Neuburg at the beginning of this one. I see a similarity between Kelly, Neuburg and Barritt paralleling the one between Dr Dee, Aleister Crowley and Dr Leary.

The synchronicity involved in this understandably blew their minds, to the point where Tim began to identify himself with Crowley.

There are synchronicities and synchronicities, this is no Jungian beetle crawling over a window sill, this is international! The mysterious force that brought Tim to Bou Saada had to get him out of prison in the States first, fly him across the Atlantic and drive him out of Algiers itself by using Eldridge Cleaver. Was it the same unconscious directive that scooped up Aliester and Victor sixty years ago and deposited them amongst the cones of sand? They seem to have had no more idea of their mission than we had.

 


Crowley himself writes about his experiences in Algeria in his book, The Vision and the Voice in which he talks about the crossing of the Abyss working he conducted with Neuberg. This ritual working would become a major initiatic milestone in Crowley's magical system. He later wrote: 


This doctrine is extremely difficult to explain; but it corresponds more or less to the gap in thought between the Real, which is ideal, and the Unreal, which is actual. In the Abyss all things exist, indeed, at least in posse, but are without any possible meaning; for they lack the substratum of spiritual Reality. They are appearances without Law. They are thus Insane Delusions... Now the Abyss being thus the great storehouse of Phenomena, it is the source of all impressions.

 

The Abyss is the gap between the real and unreal, the noumenal and the phenomenal, and to successfully pass through this gap the initiate was required to destroy his ego. If this did not happen the life, or at least the mind, of the initiate would be destroyed. Crowley first performed this ritual in the desert at Bou Sadaa, and there are some who argue that even he did not successfully cross and that this is why things went badly for him at the end of his life.

To pass through the Abyss Crowley always cautioned that the magician must fully shed his ego to attain his Higher Self. He must become Nemo (Greek for "no man"). To ensure that the magician has done this, or to prevent the success of those who do not become an egoless Nemo, the initiate must must also deal with Choronzon, the Guardian of the Threshold. 

This demonic being is really the last, most shadowy, vestiges of our ego made solid and monstrous by its will to perpetuate itself. It was Choronzon that Dee and Kelly also encountered in their experiments with Enochian magic.

 

 

Guardians of the Gate


Choronzon is really the archetype of various Guardians of the Threshold which can be found in the mythology and temple architecture of cultures across the planet. In every case, these beings protect sacred areas or zones of being from the defilement of the base Self or ego. This they do through fear, repulsion and the threat of violence to the body and the soul.




One of Crowley's successors, Kenneth Grant, claimed that we can find a similar Guardian of the Threshold entity in the fiction of horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft. The Lovecraftian Old One that Grant most associates with Choronzon is Yog-Sothoth. Here Lovecraft describes Yog-Sothoth:

Nor is it to be thought ... that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or than the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and when they shall break through again...
 

We should keep in mind that Lovecraft calls Yog-Sothoth, the gate (Gateway High School?) The gate, or the door, has turned up in this blog previously as related to the Oak, or Duir -- the Celtic letter which corresponds to the Greek Delta or the Hebrew Daleth. Daleth is the initial letter of Da'at, which we will soon discover is the true Door to the Abyss.

It is also very fascinating that Grant works out a whole, very complex mythology whereby Yog-Sothoth/Choronzon is equated with the star, Sirius. This blog will slowly make its way into these murky waters. It is helpful first, though, to examine some other Guardians of the Threshold.

The term Nemo, or "no man," that Crowley is using to title the egoless adept who crosses the Abyss comes from Homer's Odyssey. In the famous story Odysseus uses his wits to escape the cave of the Cyclops, Polyphemus. He tells the monster that his name is No Man, and then later gets Polyphemus drunk and blinds him. When the Cyclops cries to his neighbours for help they ignore him as being mad when he complains that "no man" is attacking him.

 

Odysseus uses his wits to escape the Guardian, but he can only do so by giving up his identity and his ego. He does not pass through the Abyss successfully, however. After leaving the cave he reasserts his sense of self by boasting of his name and heritage to the blinded Cyclops, who in turn curses him. The full extent of the selfish folly of Odysseus, or Ulysses, is not revealed until Dante sings of the hero's last and tragic voyage. I'll return to this in another post.

Gates of Eden


Another key example of this type of Guardian, and this time from the Bible, is the Covering Cherub who with a flaming sword prevents humanity's premature re-entry into the Earthy paradise of Eden.




The Covering Cherub plays a large role in the poetic cosmology of William Blake. Blake combines the symbolism of the jeweled New Jerusalem, or Zion, which returns in the sky in Revelation, with the description of the terrifying but glittering Cherub of Ezekiel 28. Here Lucifer is identified with the Covering Cherub with the fiery sword.
13 You were in Eden,
   the garden of God;
 every precious stone adorned you:
   carnelian, chrysolite and emerald,
   topaz, onyx and jasper,
   lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.
Your settings and mountings were made of gold;
   on the day you were created they were prepared.
14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
   for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
   you walked among the fiery stones.
In Blake's theosophy it is necessary to overcome the Cherub, which ultimately he identifies with the Self or Ego, in order to regain entry into Paradise. This entirely matches with Crowley's teaching and, as we'll see, with the Kabbalah. Blake also notes that this Cherub also appears, with its double, on the Ark of the Covenant. Generally these Cherubim are viewed as being Michael and Gabriel, but Blake makes a good case that in the original mythology these two are Michael and Lucifer -- two opposing aspects of the same being.

This agrees with the Hero Twin stories we've been looking at. The Covering Cherub blocking entrance to the gates of Eden, the Guardian of the Threshold, is both Christ and Antichrist. The symbols are all ambiguous. Blake viewed the Bible as being circular and not linear. It begins in the Garden and ends with the appearance of the City of Zion, the final revelation. But in a way the cycle repeats with a Fall from the City into the Garden and from there into this fallen Mundane Shell.

 

The fierce, iridescent Guardian is also, from another perspective or state of consciousness absent of ego, the vision of the New Jerusalem -- the true Zion which awaits us all. Christ and Antichrist return together.

Before returning to the Garden, and from there to the City, we must overcome the Cherub who is assigned, we should remember, to prevent humanity from eating of the Tree of Eternal Life having already sinfully partaken of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is in these two trees, and the Fall associated with them, that the solution to the greatest mysteries are found.
 
 

It was knowledge that really condemned Adam and his offspring. Eve and Adam, like most of us, attempted to know something that they weren't really ready for. In short, they attempted to cross the Abyss without first ridding themselves of ego, without first gaining the eternal life of selflessness. This is quite explicit in the mythology. Knowledge in Hebrew is Da'at and this is what the tree is named.

Know in the Biblical Sense


Da'at means knowledge. It can be found in Proverbs 24:4:

 Da'at fills the rooms with precious things.

Apparently the rooms here refer to the 6 chambers of the heart. In the Kabbalah, Da'at is the union of the Wisdom of Chokmah and the Understanding of Binah. This in turn has been viewed since the time of the Zohar as being the sexual union of Father and Mother. This is knowledge in the biblical sense of "And Adam knew his wife Eve." Here is the place of hierogamy, divine marriage, where in union separate egos are melded and dissolved in love.

In the Kabbalah the two trees of Eden are united as one, the Tree of Life, which consists of three pillars and ten centres of emanation, or sephiroth. The middle pillar of the Tree of Life also contains the hidden 11th sephirah, Da'at. In Crowley's system this sephirah is also the location of the Abyss, which the adept has to cross to reach the higher centres. 

On the Tree of Life, each one of the sephiroth became identified with one of seven planets, the elements or the zodiac. The hidden sephirah of Da'at, really the union of all of the other centres, much later became identified with Sirius. 

We should keep in mind the full symbolic equation (although this is all approximate): Da'at=the Abyss=the Guardian of the Threshold=Choronzon=the Covering Cherub=Yog-Sothoth=Sirius. 



The Twin Pillars


The two pillars of the Tree of Life are symbolically also the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, of the Temple of Solomon. These pillars later go on to become major symbols in Freemasonry. Solomon's Temple, though, is most well known as being the house of the Ark of the Covenant. It houses the great mystery of God.


The second Temple, based on Solomon's construction, enters largely into the story of Christ. Gentle Jesus famously kicked out the money lenders, but in a more esoteric sense, and this is also Blake's sense, Christ embodied the Temple. The two thieves he was crucified with also represent the two pillars (and the three make XXX).



One thief asks for Mercy, and is forgiven and granted Heaven, and the other scornful thief faces his Justice in Hell. Mercy and Justice are exactly the equivalents of Jachin and Boaz. The parallels become undeniable at the time of Christ's death. The Temple veil is rent in two from top to bottom. The mystery is finally revealed for all to see.



The story of Christ, then, is another example of the crossing of the Abyss. His Cross is another representation of the Tree of Life.

On this Tree there are the ten sephiroth but there are also 22 paths connecting these ten. Each of these 22 paths are assigned one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It may be necessary to get deeper into this at a later stage, but for now it is important to note the thirteenth path, the path of the letter Gimel.

The 13th path runs from the heart sephirah of Tiphareth to the crown of Kether. It is one of the most, if not the most, important paths of the Tree of Life because it passes directly across the Abyss separating the Microprosopus of the lower seven sephiroth, to the Macroprosopus of the upper supernal triangle. The 13th path of Gimel, then, passes across the Abyss and through the 11th (non)sephirah of Da'at. Da'at, as was mentioned, is identified by modern astrologers like Gareth Knight as Sirius.



Here is an image of the Masonic tracing board, based on the Jachin and Boaz pillars of Solomon's Temple seen also in the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah. The middle pillar, and its ladder on the tracing board, leads up to a blazing star between the Sun and the Moon. From the writings of Albert Pike, and others before him, we know that this star is also Sirius. The symbolism is becoming clearer.





The 22 major arcana of the tarot are also corresponded to Hebrew letters in the occult tradition. The card associated with Gimel and the 13th path is the High Priestess. She will become very important later when discussing specific crossing the Abyss rituals. Here she is now enthroned between the two pillars.


 http://lh3.ggpht.com/_0r00qBkmGlU/SbzvyxgPrcI/AAAAAAAAOqk/zGY3zir-VXg/02%20Papesse.jpg

And here is a more modern version of the same set of symbolism:




Over the Rainbow


One more symbol to introduce briefly before wrapping this up is the Rainbow Bridge. The Rainbow Bridge is situated in exactly the same place on the Tree of Life as the Abyss. It spans Da'at and in all cultures, as in the Bifrost of Norse mythology, it is viewed as being a bridge between men and the gods. The meaning is essentially the same.

Once we pass over the Rainbow Bridge, across the Abyss, and become No Man (as Odysseus did for a time) by transcending the ego, we reach the Star. It is between and beyond all of the opposites. Sun and moon, dark and light, good and evil, male and female, spirit and matter. It is also the state of lucid dreaming, between consensus waking and dreaming sleep. In this lucid state we create our own systems, as Blake taught us.

 

The examples of Crossing the Abyss provided here have tended to be individual journeys. It is important to realize, though, that this passage also happens collectively at certain times. Carl Jung in his later book, Flying Saucers, discusses just this sort of passage in relation to the passage from the Age of Pisces (an age of dualism -- symbolized by Christ and Antichrist) to the Age of Aquarius (an age of a more unified vision).  

As we know from ancient Egyptian history, there are symptoms of psychic changes that always appear at the end of one Platonic month and at the beginning of another. They are, it seems, changes in the constellation of the psychic dominants, of the archetypes or "Gods" as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche. This transformation started within the historical tradition and left traces behind within it, first in the transition of the Age of Taurus to that of Aries, and then from Aries to Pisces, whose beginning coincides with the rise of Christianity. We are now nearing that great change which may be expected when the spring-point enters Aquarius.

I agree with Jung that humanity collectively is right now in one of these rapid transformations of the collective psyche -- a shift of the Ages. Whether or not this is occurring exactly in 2012, or whether the shift will be subtle or dramatic are not very important questions. I personally think that it is this year that marks the shift, but in any case the change will come soon.

 



Given this, humanity is once again at a point where collectively we enter into an imaginative space between the Ages. We are all crossing the Abyss together. This is sort of a twilight zone where nothing is fully formed yet everything exists in potential. 

In the Kabbalah this exactly corresponds with the hidden sephirah of Da'at, which can be represented by Sirius on a macrocosmic scale. To be conscious of this shift is to gain access to great power. Awareness allows one to form the emerging Age. This is why those who would keep us transfixed by their Spell want to prevent us from being aware.

By studying the myths of all cultures regarding the shifting of previous Ages, and prophecies for the present shift, we can find valuable symbols and concepts. The appearance of the Hero Twins, the descent into and surfacing of the underworld, the revelation of the New Jerusalem, the crossing of the Abyss, the Rainbow Bridge, the final battle, etc. all return at these points of climax within the cycle. To grasp all of this simultaneously, as one complete vision, is to crack the Spell. 



Prophets not Profit


In all of the occult "mega-rituals" that we witness, one of the biggest about to happen in a few hours, we have the ability to use the Spell against the spell-casters. All of these symbols are ambiguous. The reality engineers have the exact same archetypes to work with as we do. No more and no less. Use their own spectacle to elevate. As the Blake scholar, Northrop Frye, wrote in 1947 almost as if he knew about London 2012:

England has to choose whether to turn its green and pleasant land into Jerusalem or a howling waste of Satanic mills, and Blake is practically the only Englishman who can express the fact that that choice is now before England, and is still a choice. Jerusalem is Blake's contribution to the struggle between the prophet and the profiteer for the soul of England which is England's Armageddon: it is a burning-glass focusing the rays of a fiery city on London in the hope of kindling an answering flame.

In a few short hours, the Flame will light the Cauldron and the underworld journey will come to an end. Sirius, symbolically, will rise from the Duat, just as she will physically at the end of the Games. We do not know what will happen -- whether the prophet or the profiteer will come out on top. We do know the passage through the Abyss is at full pace now. Synchronicities are multiplying, just as Jung said they would be at these times. Things are about to get even weirder.

And speaking of profiteers, London's mayor gave a rousing, V for Vendetta-like, big screen, Buckingham Palace, Torch rally-spectacle speech yesterday in which he said:

The excitement is growing so much I think the Geiger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go zoink on the scale! People are coming from around the world and they're seeing the greatest city on earth.

Zoink! Geiger counter?? Is he just playing with us, or is he really that out of touch?
Is phoney Olympo-mania about to bite the dust? Can Batman save us?

 

Saturday, July 21, 2012

The Sun Ring, Atlantis, and the Cheese Wheels of Time

During the 70-day London 2012 Torch Relay period, two major astronomical events have taken place. The Venus Transit is the subject of the previous post. Here, I will examine some of the broader symbolism concerning the annular eclipse of May 20th to 21st of this year. Much of this continues to be relevant to the present day, and the study of this symbolism could provide deeper insights into the coming Olympics and the subsequent unfolding. 



Omens and Portents


The Olympic Torch arrived in the UK on May 18th, and its 70-day journey through the underworld began on May 19th and will come to its conclusion next Friday. So far, it has been a wild ride.

May 18th was the same day on which the G8 (=Gate) Summit started in Camp David. The G8 Summit was originally scheduled to be held in Chicago prior to the NATO Summit on the 20th.

5/20, then, marked the beginning of the Chicago NATO Summit. Many of you will remember that the internet was abuzz, as they are now about the Olympics, about the possibility of a false flag terror attack on the summit. A sample of the kind of discussion many had concerning the potential of a terrorist event/natural disaster/police state takeover in Chicago can be found here.

Nato summit: Chicago crowds

Thankfully, that while the police did get fairly nasty with protesters, nothing so extreme actually took place. Whether or not an event was prevented or preempted by this type of discussion/warning is another debate, but one surely worth having as very similar dire predictions dog the London Olympics. I'll leave that to others.

Much more interesting for the purposes of this blog is that May 20th/21st also coincided with an annular solar eclipse.

Combined with the Chicago summit, this eclipse attracted a lot of attention. Apparently, for some, it figured into a couple of Nostradamus prophecies, an alignment with Alcyone in the Pleiades, and a significant crop circle. An article summing up these correspondences can be found here.

It's revealing to examine these one by one. The connection of 5/20 with the Nostradamus prophecies seem clear enough. Here's a better translation:

Sun twentieth of Taurus the earth will tremble very mightily,
It will ruin the great theater filled:
To darken and trouble air, sky and land,
Then the infidel will call upon God and saints.
And:
A very mighty trembling in the month of May,
Saturn in Capricorn, Jupiter and Mercury in Taurus:
Venus also, Cancer, Mars in Virgo,
Hail will fall larger than an egg.

The Alcyone alignment is also fascinating if correct. According to this reckoning this particular alignment occurs approximately every 52 years. This corresponds to a Calendar Round of the Mayan Calendar, which was discussed in the last post. Finally there was the crop circle which for many also pointed toward the annular eclipse on May 20th.


The fourfold mandalic geometry is notable in the circle. As we've seen with much of the symbolism being examined here, the number 13 is again prominent as bars in the central circles which multiplied by 4 gives us 52.

Beyond the Pillars of Hercules


Before knowing about the eclipse, and the deeper significance of the day, it was a synchronicity involving the number 52 and Christopher Columbus that got me looking into 5/20.

I was flipping through Finnegans Wake for a bit of bibliomancy (which it is perfectly and intentionally designed for, as we'll see in future posts), and I turned to page 513. Pages 512 and 513 have back to back references to Sirius, along with other material that is personally resonant.

Anyway, when I took another look I found two direct mentions of Christopher Columbus, one on each page. This got my attention because I had been thinking about the 520 years since 1492 as a kind of "great year" of 52 week/decades (2012-1492=520). For this reason it was surprising to find written, "with his fiftytwo heirs of age!" on page 513. This marks another direct connection between Columbus and 520, or 52, in a place already loaded with meaning for me.

All this led me to look up Columbus and I found that he died, weirdly enough, on May 20th. This in turn led me to discover that an annular eclipse was occurring this 5/20, and finally I found the information outlined above. Naturally this fed back into and amplified my original sync about Columbus and 1492.



William Blake was also interested in Columbus' "discovery" of America, but for reasons that concern poetry far more than history. Although, for Blake, as for this blog, poetry always trumps history.

The passage from the Eastern shore of the Atlantic to the West symbolized for Blake the reunion of Atlantis. Unlike Plato, Blake did not think Atlantis had sank but, as we see by examining the matching coastlines of Europe, Africa and the Americas, that it had been sundered into opposing hemispheres. Blake saw Columbus' discovery of America back in 1492 (a "discovery" at least in a public, exoteric sense) as marking the first step by which the two shores of the Atlantic would become united. "Atlantis" would rise again.

 

The year 1492 is interesting for several reasons beyond Columbus. The Jews were expelled from Spain that year on the very significant holiday of Tisha B'Av, a holiday on which both Temples were earlier destroyed (as I'll get into later). 1492 was also the year 7000 in the old Byzantine calendar and millennial sects across Russia were convinced that the end of the world was at hand. Some Russian Orthodox believers now say that 1492 did represent the coming of the age of Antichrist: America. 


  

Blake also believed that the creation of the United States of America represented the next step in the return of Atlantis. He thought the Revolution of 1776, promising the Atlantean values of Liberty and Happiness for all people, would eventually sweep across and transform the world. The Revolution would ultimately become the Revelation in a process that is culminating presently. In this way Blake agrees with Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, and with later writers like Manly P. Hall and David Ovason, on the occult significance of America.



Thus wept the Angel voice & as he wept the terrible blasts
Of trumpets, blew a loud alarm across the Atlantic deep.
No trumpets answer; no reply of clarions or of fifes,
Silent the Colonies remain and refuse the loud alarm.
On those vast shady hills between America & Albions shore;
Now barr'd out by the Atlantic sea: call'd Atlantean hills:
Because from their bright summits you may pass to the Golden world
An ancient palace, archetype of mighty Emperies,
Rears its immortal pinnacles, built in the forest of God
By Ariston the king of beauty for his stolen bride,

Here on their magic seats the thirteen Angels sat perturb'd
For clouds from the Atlantic hover o'er the solemn roof.

According to Plato, Atlantis was located beyond the Pillars of Hercules. These two pillars have become identified in occult circles with the two outer pillars of the Tree of Life. These in turn are identical to the famous pillars, Jachin and Boaz, of Solomon's Temple. A voyage through the Pillars and across the Atlantic is another way to symbolize the crossing of the Abyss. Atlantis is slowly rising from 1492 to 1776 to 2012 in a great year of 52 decades. 

  
Blake coupled together the two mythologies of Atlantis and the New Jerusalem. For the poet, the two were symbolically the same. He equated the rising of Atlantis with the coming of Zion or the New Jerusalem, and both as metaphors of the turning of the Age. Blake viewed this process as happening gradually. The first step in the rising of Atlantis, really the coming together of the sundered continents of Europe and America, was Columbus' "discovery" of America in 1492.

Is 2012, 520 years after the voyage of Columbus, the culmination of this process? Will Zion come to Earth? Will Atlantis rise again? Will apocalyptic revolution sweep the planet?

It's interesting that some of what is seen today appears to provide an affirmative answer to these questions. In an earlier post, we have seen how the London Olympic Park is assuming the previously fictitious postcode of E20 (or 520). And on July 2nd, well within the 70-day "underworld" period, it was widely announced that diver-scientists had discovered "Britain's Atlantis" in the North Sea.

How the North Sea grew and the land-mass shrunk

Is the whole world following Blake? The global revolutionary wave of 2011 is only slightly diminished at the moment, and there are signs from all over that it is on the rise again. And by now almost everyone is aware of the connection between London 2012 and Zion.

Destruction of the Temple


Another strange link with both Zion and 1492, though, is that several researchers have pointed out that the Opening Ceremony of the London Games coincides with the Jewish holiday of Tisha B'Av.

Tisha B'Av is actually on July 28th this year, but this day will mark the beginning of most of the actual competition. In any case, these last few weeks of the "underworld" Torch Relay perfectly coincide with the traditional Three Weeks of mourning which always precede the Ninth of Av.


As noted above, Tisha B'Av is the most sinister date in the Jewish calendar. The destruction of both the first and second Temples occurred on this holiday as well as many other terrible events, including the expulsion from Spain in 1492.

The destruction of the Temples is resonant with the tearing of the Temple veil during Christ's death. All of the events signify moments of revelation. Once again, this date marks the passage across the Abyss. It is obvious that this holiday, while happening at different dates due to the lunar calendar, generally occurs during the Dog Days of summer when Sirius rises with the Sun, finally emerging from the underworld.

 

Lord of the Ring


The dire and millennial predictions involving 5/20 did not come to fruition, and with this perhaps people will caution those making bold statements about what will happen at London 2012. Reality is a trickster.

We should not be surprised that these predictions of the doom-mongers and bliss-cravers did not happen. There were no great earthquakes, no obvious returns of feathered serpent spirits, and no falls of hail larger than eggs. This does not mean, though, that nothing happened as we'll see. At this late stage, researchers should be well aware of how gradually things precede and how subtle the signs are.

It was cloudy in the morning on the day of the eclipse where I live, so I was able to see the full ring of the eclipse, the moon perfectly centred, with my naked eyes. An incredible experience.



Beyond the immediate and beautiful spectacle in the sky, however, is its significance. The annular eclipse appeared towards the very beginning of the 70-day Torch Relay. Like the relay, it formed part of a sequence of astronomical events -- the partial lunar eclipse on June 4th, and the transit of Venus on the 6th. There is an ambiguity involved in adapting any of these as symbols. They have multiple meanings and very subtle nuances.  It is informative to turn to Venus again to illustrate this symbolic ambiguity.

 

Twins of the Morning Star


Venus, in addition to being identified with the goddess Aphrodite, is also called the Morning Star (as well as the Evening Star). In the Bible, both Christ and his adversary Lucifer are described as being the Morning Star. How can this be? Are they not total opposites? Is Venus, then, a good or an evil symbol?
 

As with similar heroes in many other mythologies, however, perhaps these figures are not as adversarial as they first appear. Throughout the world we find stories of heroic twin brothers who are both rivals and comrades. Only within Christianity are these two separated to the point where any co-dependent relation between them is entirely denied.

By adopting a largely dualistic stance in our research, we miss out on the bigger picture which tends to be very subtle, complex, and in constant flux. To bring a rigid dualism into this is to invite great confusion.



As in Mayan mythology, where we see the journey of the Hero Twins, Hunahphu and Xibalanque, to the underworld at the end of the Age, perhaps both Christ and Antichrist appear at once, and perhaps acting together, at the shifting of this Age. Dualistic rigidity could break us in this storm of change.

 

 

Precession of the Cheeses


To return finally to the annular eclipse on 5/20. No, we should not be surprised that what we anticipated did not happen, either the good or the bad. And we should also not be surprised that our prognostications for the Olympics or for 2012 in general will not come to pass as we imagine either.

By now we should know that reality is far more subtle, far more ambiguous, far more mysterious and far more playful than anything we can imagine. Doom or bliss may well be in the cards, but even the highest of the occult elite do not hold all of these. This in itself is empowering, and sometimes we get things right.

The fact is that there was an earthquake on 5/20. It happened in northern Italy. Although alarming, most researchers conceded that this could not have been the one allegedly predicted by Nostradamus. It caused damage, but it was not catastrophic in terms of death and destruction. It was also almost certainly unrelated to the eclipse. The fact, though, that it was a big event -- an earthquake -- made me think that it would be symbolically relevant. It was.

Of all of the intense media coverage, two points were repeated endlessly: the destruction of national heritage, and the damage to the local parmesan cheese industry. The first was captured iconically in the image of the tower split in two along its clock face in Finale Emilia.  




This Reuters photo was endlessly reproduced throughout the media. I saw it on the front page of the Financial Times with the caption "Fractured time" printed below it. There are a few things to explore in this image, but the most obvious message is that time has ended. The wheel of time has been fractured. This is the first symbol.


The second involves the cheese. This appears in an Associated Press story that got taken up by hundreds of media outlets about an Italian cheese producer who woke up to the roar of 30,000 86-pound WHEELS of parmesan cheese crashing to the floor. 


 

Now, 30,000 times 86 equals 2,580,000. The traditional length of the precessional cycle is 25,920 years, but the usual modern, more scientifically accurate, figure is 25,800 years. In numerology, 2,580,000 and 25,800 are of equal value.  

Are these wheels of cheese, therefore, symbolically referring to the greater wheel of time? Is this also the message of the fractured clock tower? Is this the message of 5/20? Robert Anton Wilson called this kind of thing a "cosmic giggle" (although certainly nothing funny for the affected people of Northern Italy).

And to really stretch this -- if we look again at the destroyed clock in Italy and imagine the  longer jagged edges along its face to represent the minute hand and the shorter edge as the hour hand it can be read as 11:32.

1132 happens to be the number most recurrent in the prophetic and enigmatic Finnegans Wake. There are a number of theories for the great frequency of 1132 that scholars have offered. Whatever Joyce's real intentions for repeating this number, one other interesting sync is with the traditional Nepali Sambat calendar. According to this calendar this year, 2012, is the year 1132.


 


There's no real indication that Joyce knew of this calendar, although he obsessively informed himself of languages and calendar systems across the globe. He does include, though, the word "sambat" on page 493 of the Wake, where it follows possibly related words like "rupee" and "Hindustani." Is 1132 the year 2012?

The point of all this absurdity is that meaning can spring from places we least expect it. Is this  real meaning? Are these patterns actually there or are we simply imagining them? But do any patterns exist without our imagination? How are certain patterns assigned "meaning" and others dismissed? Isn't there a certain amount of stretching in even the most respectable of pattern identifying? The cheese wheels of time should both humble and amaze us.

Meanwhile, the underworld Torch is on the last week of its journey through the 33 boroughs of London and, after being carried by a marine abseiling down from a military helicopter to the Tower of London, set out from the Royal Greenwich Observatory, the home of the Prime Meridian.



 

The Poetic Epicentre


Just a couple of more related syncs on a personal level before I close. These I hope will show how all of this operates on many layers at once (or it will show how mad I am!)

I'm deep into Dante's Divine Comedy  at the moment and it is fascinating that while the events in the epic take place in AD 1300, Dante started writing the Divine Comedy in 1308 (13:8 again!) Dante's guide through the underworld was Virgil, and it was while I was reading Virgil's Aeneid on 5/20 (the annular eclipse) that there was an earthquake centred near Virgil's birthplace of Mantua. After, while reading the Inferno on 6/6 (Venus transit) there was another rare earthquake in northern Italy. This time the earthquake was centred near Ravenna -- the deathplace of Dante! 



Are these dead poets also involved in the unfolding structure of reality?

The syncs multiply. The world grows weirder at an exponential rate. The dark night rises in horror at dawn. We all need to pay close attention with no preconceptions. Surprises are in store.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Three Games of London and the Venus Transit

 
By now the clamour of voices speculating about what could happen at the London Olympics, and what it all might mean, is becoming deafening. The speculation is becoming almost as much a part of the event as the Games themselves. Could this be part of the plan? 

This blog has also done its part to add its small voice to the general din. The point here, though, is not to offer any conclusions about what will occur, or even to imply knowledge of the correct interpretation of symbolism. The purpose of these posts on the Olympics is to examine what the spectacle of London 2012 can teach us about the particular weirdness of these times.

Previous posts have been about the location of the Games, the Torch Relay, the Opening Ceremony, the patron saints of Britain and how they might relate to London 2012, and possible predictive programming. This blog, while trying to sum up the research of others, has attempted to add new information -- especially information occurring as synchronicity.

This will be the last post directly on the Olympics before the Opening Ceremony. Among other things, it looks into a pretty startling synchronicity involving the three previous Olympics in London and the Venus Transit.


Like the sign says, and what everybody by now knows, London is the first city in the world to have hosted the Olympics three times. She played hostess once in 1908, forty years later in 1948, and now in 2012. Symbolically, another meaning of the XXX of the current games could be the three London Games.

           

 The Rose of Heaven


The last post argued that the 70-day Torch Relay of London 2012 could represent a journey to the underworld. Within this period two major astronomical events occurred which represent in a shorter duration this same journey.

The most significant of the two is the Venus Transit. Venus transits the Sun twice in an eight year cycle. In the most recent cycle, the planet's first journey across the face of the Sun happened in 2004. This year, Venus made its return trip. This has not happened since 1882, and will not happen again until  2117. It is the rarity of this transit that makes it so amazing.

 

Being both the Morning and Evening stars, Venus makes a short journey into the underworld every day, just as Sun does.

 
What is unique about the Transit period, however, is that Venus becomes visible while in the underworld:
From the last days of May to mid June Venus will not be seen in the sky. The most intense period is June 4th – 6th. On the 5th is the exact Transit of Venus. Symbolically speaking Venus is not only in the underworld (invisible to us) but she is exactly conjunct the Sun. She is neither Evening or Morning star. She is truly between the worlds; suspended at that eternal moment after the inhale, before the exhale or possibly after the exhale but before we breathe in. We too are meant to be suspended in those days. Especially on the evening of the 5th.

The eight years separating the two halves of the transit is due to the orbital periods of the Earth and Venus. As Venus is closer to the Sun than our own planet its orbit is quicker and it frequently "laps" the Earth. For every eight Earth years, Venus has already orbited the Sun thirteen times. This gives us the very curious ratio of 8:13, and from the vantage point of an observer on Earth, over an eight year period Venus traces out a very beautiful rose-like pattern in the sky.

  

There is abundant evidence that this pattern has been known by astronomers for a long time, and that the five-petaled, rose-shaped symbol, called the "rose of Venus" or the "cinquefoil", can be dated back to at least Roman times.



 In Dante's Divine Comedy, the rose pattern appears in the sky not in connection to Venus, but as the spiritually higher, Empyrean -- the dwelling place of God. Dante explicitly calls this the Rose. Clearly, the rose-shaped orbital pattern is far more important than even Venus herself.  

 
The Venus Transit mythologically represents the birth of Venus. It is extremely interesting that Venus/Aphrodite is the mother of Aeneas, who in Virgil's Aeneid also voyaged to the underworld, and therefore the whole line of Roman kings and emperors trace their origins back to the goddess.



Here, Aeneas is shown receiving armour and weapons from his mother, the goddess Venus, before his important battle to conquer the future site of Rome. Accordingly, this mythology is present at the core of Western civilization.



Venus also plays a big role in Mayan mythology. Aug. 11-12 3113, when the 5125 year Long Count cycle is said to have begun, is called "the birth of Venus." The god, Queztalcoatl/Kukulcan, was identified with Venus.
 



  














Mayan astronomers closely tracked the cycles of Venus. The Mayan Calendar Round is 52 years (a number which will take on greater relevance our analysis develops), and two such cycles, making 104 years, was viewed as synching with the larger Venus cycle


Three Games of Venus


With this, we can finally get back to the three London Olympics. 104 is also 8 times 13, the same numbers involved in the 8:13 orbital period ratio of the Earth to Venus. More interesting, though, is the fact that the 1908 London Olympics are 104 years ago. They were held 104 years before this year's return Venus Transit, and 104 years before the third London Games.

Most likely a coincidence, right? It gets stranger, however, when we consider the 1948 London Olympics. These games were 64 years ago. This means that the 1904 Games were roughly thirteen 8-year Venus cycles prior to this year's return Venus Transit, while the 1948 Games were eight Venus cycles before this year. 

We find in the three London Olympic Games the exact 8:13 ratio as we do in the Earth to Venus orbital periods. 104:64 is exactly equal to 13:8.

1908 London Olympics -- 104 years ago, 13 Venus cycles (approx.)
1948 London Olympics -- 64 years ago, 8 Venus cycles
2012 London Olympics -- Venus transit

13:8=104:64

Was this in some way planned? Were the years of the three London Games consciously chosen to symbolically reflect wider patterns in the cycle of Venus, culminating with the Venus Transit of 2012? A question like this appears ridiculous until we consider again that London is the only city that has hosted the Olympics three times, and 2012 is the only year during the history of the modern Olympics which has seen a return Venus Transit (and this happened during the Torch Relay).

If we do the same calculations from the 2004 Olympics in Athens (the initial Venus Transit for this cycle), we can get back to 1900 Games in Paris but the 1940 Tokyo Games were cancelled because of WW2. Neither the cities or the dates line up. Only with the three London Games does the really striking 13:8 Venus ratio match perfectly.

So could this be planned? Upon further research this seems impossible. The 1908 Olympics were only held in London because the Games scheduled for Rome were cancelled due to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 1906.


 
Likewise, the 1948 London Olympics were originally scheduled for 1944, but had to be postponed because of the war. Did the Black Magic Engineers of global events directly cause the volcanic eruption and prolong the world war in order that the London Olympics would sync up with the Venus cycle? Unless we assume, as perhaps some do, that these engineers are the ancient gods themselves this seems fairly impossible.

Are we back to coincidence then? Or is something far deeper and far stranger in play here? This blog is exploring the idea that it might be the latter.

And to further heap weirdness on top of weirdness, in the last post we've seen how the 8000 miles of the Torch Relay is possibly connected to a Dantesque journey through the center of the Earth. The Earth's circumference is roughly 8000 miles, and is rounded off very roughly as 13,000 kilometres. 8:13 yet again! 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/activities/images/3012_elegant_supglobe.gif

There are a couple more relevant connections to the Venus Transit that should be touched upon before looking into the annular eclipse of 5/20.

Dragon Boat of the Underworld


The Diamond Jubilee weekend events of June 2nd to June 5th, including a 1000 boat pageant up the river of the underworld and the lighting of the beacon with a diamond/vajra, occurred in succession with the Venus Transit and the partial lunar eclipse of June 4th. 

 

Again, it would be stretching it to say that there is a definite connection between these two sets of events, but symbolic parallels can be drawn.

The riverboat pageant on the 3rd, which made its way down the Thames passing under several bridge stations where thousands watched, seems to suggest the passage of Venus across the face of the Sun on the 5th/6th.



The Royal Barge, Spirit of Chartwell, carried the Royals with golden dragons featured on its prow sculpture. If we allow ourselves to be culturally promiscuous in assigning symbolic meaning, the dragons could resonate with the red dragon of Wales, the Venus dragons of Mesoamerican mythology, and 2012, the Chinese Year of the Water Dragon. 
 
This Chinese zodiac sign is especially interesting as the last time it was the Year of the Water Dragon was in 1952 -- the year Elizabeth was made Queen. Sixty years, in addition to marking a Diamond Jubilee, also completes one full cycle of the Chinese zodiac.




The other major event of the Jubilee weekend was the beacon lighting, already mentioned in the last post. The lighting of thousand of beacons in succession across the planet on June 4th, the day of a partial lunar eclipse, also gave the sense of a passage recalling the Venus Transit. 




The intrepid researcher, Goro Adachi, has written of the parallels between the Venus Transit and the last voyage of the Space Shuttle, Enterprise, up the Hudson river on the same day. 

I'm not sure exactly what to make of this, but there's a lot of food for thought contained in it. Like the riverboat pageant, like the global beacon lighting, this journey of the Enterprise up the Hudson certainly resonates with both the Venus Transit and the longer journey of Sirius through the Duat. 

A Woman Clothed with the Sun


One last interesting connection I've come across on the web concerning the Venus Transit also involves a queen and a dragon.  
 

Revelation 12

King James Version (KJV)
12 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.


A crown of twelve stars. What does that recall? Does any of this have anything to do with the Venus Transit, the London Olympics, Queen Elizabeth, 2012, etc.? It's easy to accuse web researchers of mistaking poetry for reality, but what if reality is poetry?