(Left) The first issue of New Dawn, No. 30, to hit newsagencies in 1995.

The origins and influences for a publication as rich and manifold as New Dawn are difficult to trace in any simplistic way, particularly for someone who has come to write for it comparatively late in its development, but all the same a few things can be said.

There has always been a market for publications that cater to the human need to explore the unknown and reach beyond the categories of conventional knowledge and experience. The Theosophist, founded by the noted occultist H.P. Blavatsky in 1879 and dedicated to exploring a wide range of esoteric traditions, is an example from the nineteenth century. In London in 1887, Blavatsky, with fellow Theosophist Mabel Collins, founded another journal, Lucifer, which survived for ten years and whose provocative title has ensured Blavatsky’s notoriety among conservative Christians to this day. Another London-based publication – and one of the most distinguished and fascinating specimens from the early twentieth century – was the monthly Occult Review. Published intermittently between 1905 and 1951, it featured contributors like magus Aleister Crowley; Arthur Edward Waite, co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck; and Paul Brunton, author of works such as The Hidden Teaching behind Yoga.

A noted predecessor on the European continent was the French review Planète (“Planet”), published by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier as a follow-up to the sensational success of their 1959 book Morning of the Magicians (first published in English as The Dawn of the Magicians in 1962). The spirit of Pauwels’ and Bergier’s venture could be summed up by this quote from Morning of the Magicians:

Trends of thought that escape the notice of the trained observer; writings and works to which the sociologist pays scant attention, together with social phenomena that he considers too insignificant or too odd to worry about, are perhaps a sure indication of events to come than facts that are there for all to see and the openly expressed opinions and general trend of thinking which cause him serious concern.

And so it has turned out to be, not only for the general public but even for those who are supposed to be in the know. American readers are by now used to reading headlines that say “US Surprised by Developments in [insert nation],” and Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA tells an uninterrupted story of bungling and incompetence in practically every area that much-feared organisation has touched. The good news: if you’re worried about it, it’s probably not that important. The bad news: watch out for things you never even thought of worrying about. One could argue that the role of a genuine alternative press is precisely to register and discuss these things we have never heard of.

In any event, the reach of Planète, which was published between 1961 and 1972, extended into fields such as sociology, futurology, and even literary fiction: Planète was the magazine that first brought the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges to a wide public.

Gnosis & Alternative Media in the US

The alternative press in the United States today owes a great deal to the 1960s counterculture, whose ornate psychedelic newspapers, bizarre and hilarious underground comics, and publications like The Whole Earth Catalog set the tone for alternative publishing for the next generation. For a period extending from the mid-’70s to the mid-’90s, publications such as Co-Evolution Quarterly (a spinoff of The Whole Earth Catalog), New Age Journal, Yoga Journal, were investigating the burgeoning spiritual scene in a way that was both sympathetic and critical: many a hypocritical guru got his comeuppance from these magazines. Jay Kinney, an editor for Co-Evolution Quarterly who was also an underground cartoonist, started an influential journal of the Western spiritual traditions in 1985, called Gnosis. Gnosis took its inspiration from a number of influences, some of them (the psychology of C.G. Jung) comparatively well known, others (Gnosticism, the science fiction of Philip K. Dick) then quite obscure.

Gnosis, of which I was editor from 1990 to 1999, with Jay Kinney as publisher and editor-in-chief, was a freewheeling and eclectic quarterly whose contributors included witches, Satanists, Gnostic bishops, and Eastern Orthodox priests. It had the great advantage of being under the auspices of the nonprofit Lumen Foundation, an organisation dedicated to little else than publishing Gnosis. The fact that there was no organisation with its own agenda looking over our shoulders meant that we could publish what we liked. Gnosis dedicated each issue to a specific theme – the ones dedicated to G.I. Gurdjieff and psychedelic spirituality were among our best-sellers. This approach enabled us to go into topics in depth and from a number of different angles, but it had certain commercial disadvantages. Many readers found it more expedient to buy individual issues that interested them (and avoid buying ones that didn’t) rather than subscribing.

Gnosis was able to keep going on an infinitesimal budget until the late 1990s, which saw many casualties among the ranks of small alternative magazines. The 1970s and 1980s had been comparatively good years for these publications in the US. The burgeoning capacity of the Macintosh computer for design and a comparatively low postage rate made it possible for little magazines to grow and even thrive, but toward the end of the century the situation changed dramatically. Independent bookstores – which were major vendors of these magazines – began to fail as two large chains, Barnes & Noble and Borders, began to monopolise the bookselling business. As a result, many small, independent magazine distributors – themselves children of the ’60s – began to collapse as well, often owing publishers tens of thousands of dollars. At the same time, the proliferation of the Internet was robbing print media of a great deal of their glamour. It was in this atmosphere that Gnosis closed its doors in 1999. Some larger magazines in the field, notably New Age Journal (today called Body + Soul) and Yoga Journal, taking the hint from their heavily female demographics, survived by recasting themselves into ladies’ lifestyle magazines.

The situation remains to this day. The bookstore chains have retrenched somewhat – Borders filed for bankruptcy this year – but their place has been taken by the Internet giant Amazon, and while independent bookstores are said to be making a comeback, this is a trend that is hardly noticeable to the average reader. For someone of my generation (I was born in 1956), it seems particularly sad that old harbour of refuge for free spirits – the metaphysical bookstore – has more or less vanished. These bookstores were an odd lot, ranging from the superb to the ludicrous. I remember going into one in San Francisco’s North Beach in 1980 and overhearing a conversation that the clerk – a fat lady with eyes made up like a cat’s – was having on the phone. “Well,” she was telling her interlocutor, somewhat impatiently, “we really would have to know what the curse was for…”

Others – Weiser’s in New York, the Bodhi Tree in West Hollywood, even one called The Mystic Eye, on the edge of Harvard Square, which I frequented as an undergraduate – were meccas proffering incense fumes and esoteric knowledge in thick blue volumes to many whose spiritual aspirations did not fit under any known denominational rubric.

Most of these shops are gone now; even New York City, which prides itself on its rich cultural texture as well as on its eccentrics, has only one left. Other parts of the English-speaking world have not been exempt from the trend; London’s largest and most respected esoteric bookshop, Watkins, was closed temporarily in early 2010 until it was bailed out by investors.

In intellectual terms, one major influence on New Dawn has clearly been the British writer and philosopher Colin Wilson (see article on page 51), whose persistent investigations into the mind’s unknown capacities – which Wilson calls Faculty X – have inspired countless readers to explore such figures as Crowley, Gurdjieff, and Gregory Rasputin, not to mention the more conventional themes of existentialism and phenomenology. Indeed Wilson started out focusing on mainstream thought in his first book, The Outsider, published in 1956, when he was only twenty-four, but he was fair-minded enough to remain open to alternative views of reality, and covered these sympathetically and brilliantly in later works including The Occult (1969).

James Webb

The occult is rejected knowledge. It may be knowledge which is actively rejected by an Establishment culture, or knowledge which voluntarily exiles itself from the courts of favour because of its recognised incompatibility with the prevailing wisdom. The word “occult” means “hidden,” and in this idea lies the key to the occult’s forbidding appearance. Something may be hidden because of its immense value, or reverently concealed from the prying eyes of the profane. But this hidden thing may also have achieved its sequestered position because the Powers That Be have found it wanting. Either it is a threat and must be buried, or simply useless, and so forgotten.

– James Webb, The Occult Underground

Another influential writer on the occult, James Webb (1946-1980), was neither so open-minded nor so lucky. His works, such as The Occult Underground and The Occult Establishment, are tainted by a curious smug disdain for their subject matter, perhaps influenced by his background: unlike the self-educated Wilson, Webb had a conventional upper-class British education at Harrow and Cambridge. Wilson, who wrote a never-published introduction to The Occult Establishment, observed that the object of Webb’s books was “to demonstrate that ‘the occult’ is merely a curious aberration of the human mind, a proof that man has failed to outgrow primitive superstition, and that one of his most incorrigible characteristics is his longing for the comfort offered by fake messiahs and gurus.”

Webb was nevertheless influential, if not in promoting esoteric themes, at least in presenting them and fitting them into a larger picture of Western cultural currents. In a preface to The Occult Underground, he contended that “to ignore the occult revival of the 19th century is to ignore a large slice of modern intellectual development, and that the proper understanding of the workings of the occult mind explains much which has puzzled commentators on the history of the last fifty years as well.” Webb’s books explore figures such as Blavatsky and the Theosophists, Jiddu Krishnamurti, the French occultists Éliphas Lévi and Joséphin Péladan, as well as the occult influences on more celebrated figures such as William Butler Yeats and Adam Mickiewicz, who is generally regarded as Poland’s greatest poet.

Webb’s last book, The Harmonious Circle: The Lives and Work of G.I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers, was published in 1979, and as a whole reflects both Webb’s strengths and weaknesses as an observer of the esoteric scene. It is thorough and for the most part accurate, and in many ways remains the best treatment of the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky milieu, but like Webb’s other works it is flawed by a condescension toward its subject matter as well as by occasional wild lapses of judgment. In an early chapter, Webb bizarrely tries to prove that Gurdjieff was the same person as Ushe Narzunoff, a Central Asian adventurer, an argument that falls apart as soon as one looks at two photographs of the men (helpfully reproduced in Webb’s book), which display the obviously Asiatic Narzunoff and the equally obviously Caucasian Gurdjieff. (Webb claims, unconvincingly, that the photos were doctored.)

The Harmonious Circle was written in a phase of Webb’s life when he was confronting mental breakdown. Joyce Collin-Smith, sister-in-law of Ouspensky’s disciple Rodney Collin, recalls that at one point he phoned her “saying he was being ‘persecuted’ by his publishers and adding wildly that the French Freemasons had got it in for him.” Moreover, he was no longer quite so capable of treating his material with upper-class British disdain. In a letter to Collin-Smith from this period, he writes, “My life has just emerged from a nightmare…. I had a full scale nervous breakdown, with hallucinations, visions, and a fine repertoire of subjectively supernatural experiences. Hoist with my own petard, I would say. Despite the undoubtedly hallucinatory nature of many of my experiences, a residue remains which I simply have to take seriously. I can’t fit all the altered states of consciousness into one system. Gnosticism and some of the Indian systems seem to provide the best framework.” Not long thereafter he put a shotgun to his head and killed himself.

Webb’s work, though flawed in certain respects, had the great advantage of drawing together many disparate strands of history and thought and weaving them together into a readable and intelligent portrait, and as such he stands as an important precursor not only of New Dawn but of the burgeoning trend, led by Antoine Faivre, emeritus professor at the Sorbonne, to study esotericism as a legitimate part of the Western legacy.

Other influences on New Dawn clearly include another Australian publication, Nexus, which has been published since 1986 and, by its own description, covers “health breakthroughs, future science and technology, suppressed news, free energy, religious revisionism, conspiracy, the environment, history and ancient mysteries, the mind, UFOs, paranormal and the unexplained.” Another, less recognised influence was Critique, a magazine published by Bob Banner out of Santa Rosa, California, in the late 1980s, whose subtitle, “Exposing Consensus Reality,” has been echoed by New Dawn’s “Challenging Consensus Reality.”

What is Consensus Reality?

What, then, is the consensus reality that New Dawn is challenging? It is the idea, reinforced by mainstream media and mainstream thought, that the truth occupies a narrow bandwidth of reality that coincides with the obvious, the predictable, and the knowledge that is supposedly proven and unassailable. We have already seen one good reason for challenging this conventional notion of reality: it has huge blind spots, which are exposed every time some totally unforeseen development – sudden invasions, political upheavals over entire regions, shocking and inexplicable attacks by terrorist groups – shakes the world. The standards of normalcy do not help us very much when we are confronted with these events, which occur precisely when things are not normal – when ordinary systems of justice and economic distribution cease to operate; when large masses of people have no influence on political authority; when individuals feel that their only chance to make their voices heard is through violence. The fact that such incidents occur – and occur with such frequency – indicates that the mainstream perspective is, if not completely wrong, at least seriously incomplete.

Sixteen years ago, in a 1995 interview with GROK magazine, New Dawn editor David Jones observed, “Look at the profile of a ‘successful’ journalist. They know to write within the accepted parameters. They don’t dare say that the ‘emperor has no clothes…’ They certainly don’t want to upset the consensus reality. They’d be out of a job. If you are a mainline journalist you stay on safe ground between the well-defined goal posts…. If you want to be acceptably different you write about the environment…You express outrage over human rights violations a thousand miles away, and put an Amnesty International sticker on your car… That’s your limit.”

“On the immediate level,” Jones added, “New Dawn strives to present the ‘other side of the story.’ And this is just not a convenient cliché.” Regarding the AUM Supreme Truth group, a Japanese new religious movement that carried out a nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995, Jones said, “The underlying premise of the Establishment media reporting is ‘Oh, these people are a crazy religious cult, ipso facto they’re guilty…. Hey, everyone knows people with strong religious convictions are potential mass-murderers.’ In response, New Dawn asks, ‘What is going on here?… What do these AUM Supreme Truth people actually believe, where are they coming from, and what is their motive, if any?’ Invariably, when you start to dig beneath the sensationalised radio, TV, and newspaper stories, a bigger picture begins to form.” In order to enable readers to draw their own conclusions, New Dawn published the AUM Supreme Truth’s statement of its motives for its acts. (At more or less the same time, Gnosis did something similar, reprinting the official statements of the Solar Temple, a French cult nineteen of whose members had committed mass suicide in October 1994.)

New Dawn started in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, one of the strangest and most ambiguous wars of recent decades. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was on the surface a clear-cut act of aggression, but serious questions remain about the US government’s response to border tensions that had been between Kuwait and Iraq before the invasion took place. At that time, April Glaspie, then American ambassador to Iraq, told Hussein, “We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait…. [US Secretary of State] James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasise this instruction.” While the US maintained that this did not give Hussein, then an American protégé, carte blanche to invade, he clearly took it as such. Was this merely a colossal blunder on the part of the US State Department? Was it the result of some grand but nefarious strategy for bringing Saddam, and Iraq, to heel?

“New Dawn made its appearance at this time as a photocopied 32-page desktop published zine,” Jones recalls. “Our first issues dwelt on the US war crimes in the Gulf conflict, the dangers of a so-called New World Order run by the UN Security Council on behalf of the big Western powers, economic exploitation of the nations of the global South, and the role of intelligence agencies in international affairs.

“Over the following months we expanded into other ‘controversial’ areas such as the CIA’s involvement in the drug trade, international terrorism, banking, and the subversion of sovereign nations. Gradually our subscription list grew and we had enough money to actually print the magazine. By May 1992 we were printing 1,000 copies of a bimonthly 40-page New Dawn magazine.”

Over the years, New Dawn gave similar coverage to Libya’s alleged role in the Lockerbie airline bombing of 1988; the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993; and the bombings of the Oklahoma City US federal building in 1995.

“It can be a painful experience having your cherished beliefs and conditioned prejudices upset,” Jones observed in the GROK interview. “Depending on a person’s ‘conditioned thinking’ New Dawn, at various times, has been called ‘extreme left-wing,’ ‘extreme right-wing,’ ‘nazi,’ ‘anarchist’, ‘bizarre’ and ‘crazy’… You name it. Christian fundamentalists see Satan, rightists condemn us as left-wing radicals and doctrinaire leftists denounce us as fascist loonies. Our response is, ‘Look in the mirror… what do you see?’

“One prominent Melbourne professional ‘skeptic’ angrily denounced New Dawn on his radio program. Despite the fact that what he said was simply incorrect, it revealed more about his thought-processes or lack of them.” (This last remark serves as a reminder that self-proclaimed “skeptics” and “skeptical inquirers” are among the most bigoted and closed-minded individuals on the current cultural scene.)

New Dawn Readers

If none of these appellations quite fits, who, then, are New Dawn’s readers? In the first place, they are probably independent-minded. Because so much of the material in the magazine challenges political shibboleths on all bands of the political spectrum, readers of this magazine are likely to be neither left-wing nor right-wing in any pure sense of those terms. And this is an important point. There is often a demand for consistency in one’s political beliefs, but this kind of consistency usually amounts to buying one’s beliefs wholesale: if you agree with the left (or the right) on issue X, you are automatically expected to agree with it on issue Y. On the face of it, however, there is no reason that the right, the left, or the centre should have the monopoly on truth. In fact a reasonable person might agree with the American philosopher Ken Wilber, who once observed that no one is brilliant enough to be completely wrong.

Jones has pointed out that New Dawn readers “want something more… Something that transcends the ‘modern’ values, concepts, and relationships that are totally incompatible with nature, as well as with their own inner aspirations, capacities, and identity.

“We’ve got nonconformist, renegade Christians, Muslims, and New Agers. A good percentage of readers are seriously interested in metaphysics, and many would believe, like Camille Paglia, that God is humanity’s most important invention. As expected, New Dawn readers are hyperskeptical of the mainline media and prefer to buy their reading matter at obscure bookshops. There’s a high level of interest in all things alternative, particularly related to health, new science and religion. New Dawn readers don’t feel themselves ‘victims’, just people out to handle the problems of this life, with their sights set on something higher.”

And it may be in the hands of just such people that the destiny of humankind lies. We live in an age that is threatened not so much by the possible triumph of the wrong ideology as by the triumph of ideologues as a whole. Their opposites are free men and women who have abandoned the mental crutches of credos and slogans and taken the responsibility to think and act for themselves.

The Russian esotericist Boris Mouravieff, writing in the 1960s, said that the hope of the world lies in what he called the “new man,” the individual who is intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually awake. Can these new men and women be found among the readership of New Dawn? Of course I have no way of knowing. But I remain convinced that those who will form the vanguard of humanity over the next century, and who represent the best prospects for the human race, will share many of the values that New Dawn readers hold most dear.

RICHARD SMOLEY has over thirty years of experience of studying and practicing esoteric spirituality. His latest book is The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe. He is also the author of Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition; Conscious Love: Insights from Mystical Christianity; The Essential Nostradamus; Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism; and Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions (with Jay Kinney). Smoley is also the former editor of Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions. Currently he is editor of Quest: Journal of the Theosophical Society in America and of Quest Books. His website is www.innerchristianity.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 126 (May-June 2011).

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—

Currently the fear – or hope – of the closing of the age pervades the air like a thick vapour. Sometimes this end is envisaged as an environmental calamity, sometimes as the second coming of Christ, sometimes as the return of the space brothers to claim their own.

Figures including Jose Argüelles, the prophet of the 1987 Harmonic Convergence; Terence McKenna, the late pope of psychedelia; and the channelled entity known as Kryon have fastened onto 2012 as the turning point.

A less well known, though in a way equally influential, figure was the French esoteric philosopher René Guénon, whose writings often speak of the end of a cycle that he equated with the Kali Yuga, the “dark age” of Hindu cosmology. While he did not point to 2012 or any other specific date, his ideas do resonate with some of these expectations for the dawning age to come.

Born in Blois, France, in 1886, Guénon had a conventional education in mathematics. In his youth he began to explore occult currents in Paris and was initiated into esoteric groups connected with Freemasonry, Martinism, Taoism, and Advaita Vedanta. In 1911, he was initiated into a Sufi tariqah (order) under the leadership of an Egyptian sheikh, Abder Rahman Elish El-Kebir. In 1930, he moved to Egypt, where he converted to Islam and lived until his death in 1951. In the meantime, he published a wide range of books, articles, and reviews espousing what he said was the universal and primordial tradition underlying all religions.

For Guénon, tradition is the ne plus ultra of human life. He conceives of tradition as a hierarchy: higher knowledge emanates from a now-hidden spiritual centre to all of humankind through the “orthodox” traditions, among whom he includes (with many caveats and qualifications) the great world religions as well as certain other lines such as Freemasonry. Or to put it more accurately, this tradition is preserved in certain initiatic lineages that lie embedded in these faiths, such as the Kabbalah in Judaism, Taoism in Chinese religion, and Sufism in Islam. The esoteric dimension of Christianity had, he believed, practically disappeared by the late Middle Ages and was now preserved (if at all) by small initiatic groups that he apparently regarded as inaccessible. Indeed Guénon’s conversion to Islam was motivated in part by his belief that these Western lineages had almost completely died out by the twentieth century.

In fact, according to Guénon, this transmission of traditional knowledge – the “doctrine,” as he often styles it – has become almost completely blocked in our era. This, he argued, is the result of a long cosmic cycle, which is called a Manvantara in Hindu cosmology, and which is divided into four yugas or ages: the Satya Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Dvapara Yuga, and the present Kali Yuga. The problems and anxieties of the current era are the result of this age. It’s worth exploring why he believed this and what he thought it meant.

The Reign of Quantity & the End of an Age

Guénon was first and foremost a metaphysician – indeed, he was one of the greatest and most lucid thinkers who have delved into this arcane subject. And for him, metaphysics concerns universal principles; the details of circumstance are of value only insofar as they illustrate these. At the beginning of his best-known work, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times (first published in 1945), he writes that “considerations of that order” – namely, factual details – “are worth nothing except in so far as they represent an application of principles to certain particular circumstances.”1

Thus Guénon said that he not a prophet in any conventional sense of the term. He was not a visionary and believed that the visionary prophecy of the current age was nothing more than a cloud of lies emitted by sinister “counterinitiatic” forces. If he spoke of an outlook that made it possible “to foresee, at least in its broad outlines, what will be the shape of a future world,” he insisted that “previsions of this kind have not really any ‘divinatory’ character whatever, but are founded entirely on… the qualitative determinations of time.”2

The use of the word “qualitative” may seem peculiar here, but for Guénon, the polarity between “quality” and “quantity” was central to understanding the dynamics at play. In his 1931 book The Symbolism of the Cross, he depicted reality in the form of a three-dimensional cross – one that has the dimension of height and depth in addition to the familiar two of length and breadth. At the top of this cross is what he called “absolute quality” – an abstract state that is impossible for us to conceive, because it has no element of quantity whatsoever. (An interesting mind game: try to conceive of a universe in which there is no number or quantity of any sort. It’s almost impossible to do.) At the bottom of this cross is “absolute quantity” – another abstract state that is impossible to conceive. (Again, try to imagine a universe where there is only number, in which there is nothing that has any particular qualities such as colour, shape, or anything else of the kind.)

Hence it’s not possible in this relative level of existence to reach the absolute end of each pole, but in a given age one of the two will be more pronounced and the other less pronounced to an exactly inverse degree. According to Guénon, the Manvantara proceeds in an ages-long cycle from an era where quality is emphasised – the legendary time known to the Hindus as the Satya Yuga and to the ancient Greeks as the Golden Age – to one in which quantity comes more and more to dominate. This is our present era, the Kali Yuga or what the Greeks called the Iron Age. That’s why Guénon speaks of the present era as one of “the reign of quantity.” He goes on to argue that all the primary characteristics of our time are the result of this reign of quantity.

Guénon produces modern philosophy and science as evidence for his argument. Modern Western philosophy to all intents and purposes begins with René Descartes (1596-1650), who divided the world into what he called res cogitans (literally, “the thing that thinks”) and res extensa (literally, “the extended thing”). That is to say, the world is divided into that which experiences – res cogitans – and that which is experienced: res extensa. According to Descartes (at least as interpreted by Guénon), everything material is characterised by – and only by – extension, by what can be measured and quantified.

While this all may sound extremely abstract, Guénon argued – rightly, I believe – that this attitude has profoundly shaped Western thought over the last few centuries. Essentially, he is saying, materialistic science focuses exclusively on quantity: “The more specifically ‘scientific’ point of view as the modern world understands it… seeks to bring everything down to quantity, anything that cannot be so treated is not taken into account, and is regarded as more or less non-existent.”3 Unfortunately, as Guénon goes on to say, this creates any number of logical contradictions. Science conceived purely in terms of quantity argues that the same causes produce the same effects, but as Guénon points out, this is absurd, as no two events are ever completely identical. He also criticises “the delusion which consists in thinking a large number of facts can be of use in itself as ‘proof’ of a theory; …even a little thought will make it evident that facts of the same kind are always indefinite in multitude, so that they can never all be taken into account.”4

This is precisely the problem that contemporary philosophers call “the justification of induction.” You base a theory on any number of similar events that have happened in the past; but how can you account for the ones that you have not seen, and how can you be sure that future facts will yield the same results? Bertrand Russell put the point wittily when he wrote, “The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.”5 The notion of causation is at least as problematic.6 These facts place a ceiling on the degree to which science can understand and explain the universe.

The Real Meaning of “Value”

As even this short discussion suggests, Guénon raises profound philosophical issues, and contemporary thought has not done a terribly impressive job of coping with them. But, he contends, the problems go further still. In a chapter of The Reign of Quantity entitled “The Degeneration of Coinage,” he explores the economic aspects of the issue. At first glance, one might think that nothing was more purely quantitative than money. But that, Guénon argues, is an illusion fostered by the degenerate age we live in: “The ‘economic’ point of view…, and the exclusively quantitative conception of money which is inherent in it, are but the products of a degeneration which is on the whole fairly recent,… money possessed at its origin, and retained for a long time, quite a different character and a truly qualitative value, remarkable as this may appear to the majority of our contemporaries.”7

In traditional societies, Guénon says, money had a sacred character. Not only were the coins stamped with the images of gods and other sacred symbols, but the currency was controlled by the spiritual authorities rather than by the secular powers. Money was meant to be a reminder of “value” in the qualitative as well as the quantitative sense. Today, however, “nobody is able any longer to conceive that money can represent anything other than a simple quantity.”8 Even such words as “value” and “estimate” have been deprived of their qualitative character, and today, when we ask how much a man is worth, we are almost always thinking in terms of cash and equities rather than moral or spiritual calibre.

This quantitative approach extends to every object we use. “In a traditional civilisation,” Guénon writes, “each object was at the same time as perfectly fitted as possible for the use for which it was immediately destined and also made so that it could at any moment, and owing to the very fact that real use was being made of it (instead of its being treated more or less as a dead thing as the moderns do with everything that they consider to be a ‘work of art’), serve as a ‘support’ for meditation,… thus helping everyone to elevate himself to a superior state according to the measure of his capacities.”9 One obvious example are the tools of Masonry, such as the square, compass, and plumb line, each of which was intended to convey a spiritual and ethical meaning in the days when Masonry was limited to practicing stonemasons. Manufactured goods have no such meaning or value.

It is not possible here to go further into Guénon’s critique, but even this short discussion reveals that his insights into the woes of the current era were remarkably perceptive and prescient. In The Crisis of the Modern World, published in 1927, he said, “It is… to be expected that discoveries, or rather mechanical and industrial inventions, will go on developing and multiplying more and more rapidly until the end of the present age; and who knows if, given the dangers of destruction they bear in themselves, they will not be one of the chief agents in the ultimate catastrophe, if things reach a point at which this cannot be averted?”10

Guénon’s charge that the modern world has no use for anything apart from quantity could be substantiated by cases from every conceivable source. Writing about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, in early July 2010 a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal reported, “BP PLC is pushing to fix its runaway Gulf oil well by July 27, possibly weeks before the deadline the company is discussing publicly, in a bid to show investors it has capped its ballooning financial liabilities.” Why did BP choose this date? “The July 27 target date is the day the company is expected to report second-quarter earnings and speak to investors.”11 In other words, the fact that the BP spill, one of the greatest environmental disasters in history, fouled a large portion of the Gulf of Mexico, killed innumerable creatures, and devastated the lives of people all along the Gulf Coast was not reason enough for the company to hurry: it needed a second-quarter earnings report to goad itself into action. Nothing could illustrate the reign of quantity more clearly.

The Kali Yuga

All this said, when it comes to Guénon’s discussion of the Kali Yuga as a traditional Hindu doctrine, he stands on much shakier ground. He says that the Kali Yuga began some six thousand years ago.12 He also says this era is close to its end. In The Crisis of the Modern World he writes: “We have in fact entered upon the last phase of the Kali-Yuga, the darkest period of the ‘dark age’, the state of dissolution from which it is impossible to emerge otherwise than by a cataclysm.”13

Not all traditional sources agree about this point. The Hindu sage Sri Yukteswar, best-known as the master of the celebrated yogi Paramahansa Yogananda, discusses the matter in his book The Holy Science. Sri Yukteswar says that the Kali Yuga is actually over, although this has not been recognised even by many Hindu authorities. Ironically in light of Guénon’s claims, it was the very occlusion of the sacred centre that made it impossible to calculate the yugas correctly.

Traditional dating for the beginning of the Kali Yuga starts from the death of Krishna, the avatar of Vishnu, at the end of the war between the Pandava and Kaurava clans chronicled in the Hindu epic the Mahabharata. Some sources date this to 3012 BCE, others to 1400 BCE.14 As the Kali Yuga began to dawn, Yudhisthira – the victorious Pandava king – gave his throne over to his grandson, Raja Parikshit. “Together with all the wise men of his court,” according to Sri Yukteswar, Yudhisthira “retired to the Himalayan Mountains, the paradise of the world. Thus there was none in the court of Raja Parikshit who could understand the principle of correctly calculating the ages of the several Yugas.”15

Sri Yukteswar maintains that the Kali Yuga actually ended in 1699 CE. While his views may have been imbued with a belief in progress by his own British education and do not necessarily correspond with those of the majority of Hindus,16 at any rate his claim to being a source of “traditional” knowledge is much higher than Guénon’s. David Frawley, an American Vedic astrologer, agrees with Sri Yukteswar in saying that the Kali Yuga ended in 1699.17 In any event, the dating is far from clear-cut. In fact, many traditional sources reckon on a much larger scale for the duration of the Kali Yuga, placing its length at 432,000 years. If this were the case, it would render any imminent end to this epoch highly improbable.18

One of the sources that come closest to Guénon’s view of the Kali Yuga is H.P. Blavatsky (1831-91), founder of the Theosophical Society. In her magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky writes, “The Kali-yuga reigns now supreme in India, and it seems to coincide with the Western age.”19 Blavatsky, writing around 1888, dates the beginning of this epoch to “4,989 years ago” – close to the traditional date of 3012 BCE – and places its end roughly at the close of the nineteenth century: “We have not long to wait, and many of us will witness the Dawn of the New Cycle.”20

This resemblance is peculiar, because Guénon loathed Blavatsky and Theosophy and criticised them in his first published book, Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion. For Guénon, Theosophy was the ultimate counterinitiatic force, distorting and perverting the truth of traditional knowledge. He especially detested the Theosophical doctrine of evolution, which teaches that each living thing – indeed each atom – is progressing on a cycle of devolution into matter followed by evolution into higher consciousness. The Theosophical view is similar to Guénon’s in saying that the present era is the one in which materiality is most dominant and that it is coming to an end, but it generally portrays the progress of the human race in far more positive terms than Guénon.

The connections between Guénon and Theosophy are intricate. One of his first spiritual teachers was the occultist Papus (Gérard Encausse), who was head of the French branch of the Theosophical Society, and the scholar Mark Sedgwick, whose book Against the Modern World is the best introduction to the impact of Guénon’s thought, sees Theosophy as one of Guénon’s chief influences.21 While it is impossible to go into this controversy here, it is at least clear that both Blavatsky and Guénon believed the end of the Kali Yuga was at hand. Another central figure in the esotericism of the twentieth century, C.G. Jung, did not deal at length with the Kali Yuga, but in Aeon, his compendious analysis of the symbolism of the astrological ages, he suggests 1997 as the starting point of the New Age, for intricate astronomical reasons.22

Waiting for the End of the World

Are we, then, at the end of a cycle? In one sense, yes, of course we are. There are many cycles in nature: every year, every day, is the end of a cycle. But whether we are at the end of the Kali Yuga is, at the very least, moot. My own impression is that the more genuinely traditional Hindus tend to see the Kali Yuga in terms of the much longer time frame of 432,000 years. While Guénon reviled the West and its attempt to erode the traditional values of Asian civilisation, ironically his view that the end is at hand comes far closer to the spirit of Christianity, the ultimate Western religion – which for 2,000 years has been predicting the imminent return of Jesus – than it does to Hindu thought.

What does this mean in practical terms for us today? Waiting for the end of the world (or of the age) is a kind of narcotic. It enables the human mind to accommodate its own notion of cosmic justice to the realities at hand (because the wicked – who are always, of course, the others – will be brought low, while the good – oneself and whatever group one identifies with – will be exalted). It also serves as what psychology calls a displacement of the fear of death. For each of us individually, the end of the world is certainly coming, in a few decades at the very longest. But human beings dislike contemplating the certainty of death. They find it easier to deal with it by casting it in the remote and highly improbable form of whatever cataclysm happens to suit the fashions of the moment. (For a fuller treatment of this dynamic, see the chapter “Nostradamus and the Uses of Prophecy” in my book The Essential Nostradamus.)

Unfortunately, we cannot stand around waiting for the end of the world to solve our problems for us. If we genuinely are at a threshold of a new era, we will be able to cross it only if we discard the contrived apocalypticism that suffuses mass culture and to which Guénon, as powerful a thinker as he was, was not immune.

Nevertheless, Guénon’s claim that we are living under the reign of quantity is hard to refute. One has only to read prominent journals such as The Wall Street Journal and The Economist to see that the real protagonist in all their stories is money – money in the abstract, as a kind of hypostatised entity that stipulates all value and dictates all morality. What is good, we are being told, is what is good for money. Whether or not the Kali Yuga is about to end, we can bring the end of the reign of quantity a few steps closer by looking into ourselves and making sure that the values by which we guide our lives are more than merely economic ones.

Footnotes

1. René Guénon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, trans. Lord Northbourne (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1972), 7.

2. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity, 57.

3. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity, 85.

4. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity, 87.

5. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2002 [1912], 42.

6. For a more complete discussion of these issues, see my book The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe (Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2009), chs. 4 and 5.

7. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity, 133.

8. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity, 136.

9. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity, 137.

10. René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World, trans. Arthur Osborne et al. (Ghent, N.Y.: Sophia Perennis et Universalis, 1996), 39.

11. Monica Langley, “BP Sets New Spill Target,” The Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2010, A1.

12. René Guénon, The King of the World, trans. Henry D. Fohr (Hillsdale, N.Y.: Sophia Perennis et Universalis, 2001), 49.

13. Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World, 17.

14. See Klaus R. Kostermaier, A Survey of Hinduism, 3d ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 97.

15. Jnananavatar Swami Sri Yukteswar, The Holy Science (Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1990), 16-17.

16. See the forthcoming work by Joscelyn Godwin, Atlantis of the Occultists and the Cycles of Time.

17. David Frawley, Astrology of the Seers: A Guide to Vedic/Hindu Astrology (Twin Lakes, Wis.: Lotus, 2000), 36-39.

18. For a helpful summary of the various views, see Joseph Morales, “The Hindu Theory of World Cycles in the Light of Modern Science”; http://baharna.com/karma/yuga.htm (accessed January 14, 2010).

19. H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (Wheaton, Ill.: Quest, 1993 [1888]), 1:377.

20. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine, 1:xliii-xliv.

21. Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 40-44.

22. C.G. Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton/Bollingen, 1959), 94.

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RICHARD SMOLEY’s latest book is The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe. His other works include Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions (with Jay Kinney); Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition; Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism; and Conscious Love: Insights from Mystical Christianity. He is editor of Quest Books and executive editor of Quest magazine, both published by the Theosophical Society in America. His website is www.innerchristianity.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 122 (Sep-Oct 2010).

Read this article with its extensive full colour illustrations by downloading
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© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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Linear time is a frustrating thing. At least to those who inhabit the invisible universe: the souls or spirits. We humans fret about time, or lack of it, or the speeding up of, or what will happen in time, or in the future, or… you get the picture. Meanwhile, in the spirit world, they fret about what a fret we make over something that does not exist outside our own physical reality; all that happens happens in the now, and a number of probable futures are at play and we knew this before we, ourselves, incarnated. Except that, for the most part, we do not remember. And that’s where the problem arises about the future, at least our perception of it. Confused?

Well, let us take a look at this from another perspective. In the spirit realms, things operate not in linear fashion but in the round and in cycles – much like the creators of crop circles, whose messages generally appear in the round as well as in cycles. In my time as a researcher of sacred spaces and their connection to human consciousness, I’ve been privy to many interesting – and challenging – phenomena, one being the origin of crop circles and those responsible for them. The genuine ones, that is. And precisely why they are here and why now. And a large part of the answer lies in the way the world works outside our physical realm.Across the thin veil, the world of soul or spirit or Creator is a well-oiled machine that functions on the basic principle that all existence exists for one simple purpose: to have an experience. This may come as a disappointment to many of us, but there you have it, it’s all about having an experience. The evidence is supported by thousands of clinical past-life regression case studies who, upon returning from a hypnotic state, claim this to indeed be the case. And one of the most challenging experiences for the soul is to incarnate here on Earth.

Since souls have no physical body, as we would perceive it, they have no direct emotional experience until they acquire carnal shape. Thus, Earth provides a unique environment where not only do they get to experience emotion – too much, I must profess – but since souls arrive here with a pre-induced case of amnesia, they also have to interact with six billion others, most of whom also cannot fathom why they came here in the first place.

This makes the play that is human life both fascinating and tragic. And the difference between that fine line is defined by how we, as the embodiment of those incarnated souls, go about the business of remembering who we are and why we’re here. And this is where sacred space, and phenomena such as crop circles come in.

Back in the spirit world, when we sit in the cosmic library looking at possible future situations in which we want to be involved, we already understand that upon incarnating we will not remember why. It is designed that way, so you do not borrow from previous lessons or incidences and thus learn to handle new experiences from a fresh perspective; your gut feeling or instinct acts as a barometer between you in the now and any past-life experience. That is why it is important to pay attention to that gut feeling.

Our teachers and guides on the other side know of the difficulties associated with this disconnect between the soul in a human body and the spirit world. They also understand that since we will have free will to follow three possible outcomes, and that being a grounded soul will make us susceptible to material attachments and illusions, there is an agreement between incarnating souls and spirit guides that signs, signals, people, events and other mnemonic devices will be used, from time to time, to remind us of our greater purpose.

I’m not talking about plagues, earthquakes, signs of Beelzebub and other biblical-style events. I’m talking about situations that have such a direct impact on our state of awareness that failing to follow that gut feeling at such moments is to follow a less-than-desired course of experience.

Once in a while, highly developed souls incarnate with a better-connected umbilical cord to the spirit world to act for us as examples of purposeful living. Jesus, Buddha, Mozart, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and latterly, Mother Teresa, to name a few. Their primary aim was not to foster religious movements or followings but to show, by example, that in establishing a connection with the invisible universe – that is, living a life aware of balance between physical and spiritual needs – they were able to go about their earthly business in a manner which served a purpose conceived ahead of linear time. In other words, they demonstrated the power of living purposefully, of living the dream awake. And yes, some went as far as to show us how to create miracles, just to demonstrate the power of our often neglected human intent.

Essentially they were following precisely the aim taught in all esoteric traditions, from the Egyptian Mysteries schools to the original principles behind Islam, even Freemasonry.

The general human response to such gifts has been crucifixion, in one form or another. I recall when Mother Teresa crossed over a decade ago, the world was so consumed with the death in England of Princess Diana that the following day hardly anyone read Teresa’s obituaries, buried deep inside daily newspapers, somewhere on page 9. All this does not signify that humans are inherently evil or sadistic, but quite the contrary: they have become mostly forgetful and, consequently, fearful. And when they do so the tendency is to over-associate with the physical world and, thus, lose the plot.

The Role of Sacred Sites

This formation was discovered near Silbury Hill, Wiltshire, England, in a wheat field in July of 1997. It features a border of 126 small circles and a width of 350 feet. Image courtesy of Freddy Silva.

Back in Neolithic times the plot could be rediscovered by taking your body and mind for a stroll down to a local sacred site. We have a living legacy all around the world of incredible places built to withstand everything that life and politics would throw at them: pyramids, stone circles, standing stones, megalithic temples and so forth. It has been successfully proved that at such locations across the Earth, the laws of physics are subtly altered. And no wonder, for they were built to do precisely that.

A typical sacred site lies at the crossroads of streams of magnetic energy. Correctly harnessed, magnetism stimulates the iron in the blood as well as the magnetite that lies suspended inside the human skull; it also stimulates the pineal gland causing a chemical reaction in the brain that stimulates altered states of awareness. This process is aided by the specially chosen stones of sacred sites – including Gothic cathedrals – which carry a high degree of magnetite, and silica, the kind of crystalline structure that is found in human bone. The process of sensory stimulation is further amplified by the sonic structure of temples, not to mention the sacred geometry that binds their elements which create harmonics that work in tandem with the geometry of cell structure found in human DNA.

In other words, at such locations, one is able to be released from the bond of the physical world, beyond the grasp of gravity, to reconnect with the world of spirit, the world of the gods. Such a momentary event was enough for a person to return with some hint or clarification of their life purpose, even universal knowledge, provided by those across the veil, sitting, watching our entire drama unfold more or less in accordance with a pre-designed purpose, with some allowance for free will.

The system worked so well for thousands of years that when the Roman Catholic church manifested in Rome, their prime aim was to eradicate all traces of this pagan tradition (pagan meaning ‘one who lives in the country’), all the while usurping and re-naming many of its practices. Indeed Roman Catholicism is the one religion which has historically sought to act as a middleman between the spirit world and ourselves, while decrying as evil our natural right to do so ourselves; I would go as far as to say this religion, once the clerical arm of one of the most controlling empires ever witnessed on Earth, has exacerbated the present state of disconnection from spirit in humanity. There is ample historical evidence for this, in the systematic destruction of sacred sites and the atrocities committed around the world right into the Victorian era, all in the name of “the one true faith.” Rather ironic that the root of ‘religion’ – religio – means ‘to reconnect’.

As if a sign that this reconnecting is not happening for millions of souls around the world, church attendance at the start of the 21st century is at its lowest ebb; in Europe alone, scores of churches have been resurrected into condos and private houses; coincidentally, interest in the sites of our ancestors is going up. But is this sudden resurgence in our sacred past a part of recovering from our collective amnesia? And is it happening fast enough?

I believe the answer is yes, and no, and for one fundamental reason: our soul is striving to reconnect because we instinctively feel that one possible, alternative future is in danger of becoming a reality. And it is one that least accommodates our need as a collective to grow into a new experience.

In life, there are several roads we can go by. That is the fundamental right of free will. But when we begin to see the manifestation of a future based on fear, self interest and environmental ecoside, I believe at that moment a safety valve blows in our collective soul amnesia which propels us to take affirmative action. And the triggers for this are the undeniable volumes of unusual phenomena at this moment in our evolution.

Orbs, entities, UFOs and the such have blossomed during the latter part of the 20th century, and necessarily in rapport with the rise in population or the increase in electronic gadgets with which to capture such events; even the numbers of people with developed psychic ability is on the increase. These events have a pronounced affect on our consciousness, our spirituality if you like.

It is as if the spirit world is realising the effect modern life (by which I mean the past 2,000 years) is placing on incarnated souls. They understand that the ability to reconnect with the spirit world for guidance and clarity is lessened to its lowest degree in living memory. The gap between seen and unseen is expanding. Thus, the state of amnesia which has up to now served as a useful shield used between the spirit and this experiential world is no longer purposeful. In fact, it has become somewhat of a detriment in the journey of souls. So, in order to help us remember, new means must be employed to help us remember the plot.

“And it shall come to pass in the last days, I will show wonders in the heavens above, and signs in the Earth beneath,” so God is claimed to have said, as quoted in the biblical text ‘The Acts of the Apostles’. What the last days refer to is open to interpretation. However, aerial appearances of comets throughout the last forty years, and major discoveries through Hubble Space telescope and the plethora of space craft launched into the nether regions of the galaxy have no doubt broadened our view and appreciation of the Universe. Meanwhile, back in ‘the Earth beneath’, a major phenomenon has been manifesting.

The Crop Circle Phenomenon

‘Triple Julia Set’, Avebury Trusloe, Wiltshire, 29 July 1996. 196 perfectly graded circles spiral out from the centre and extend to a diameter of over 1000 feet. Image courtesy of Freddy Silva.

Some 10,000 crop circles have been reported in modern times. Most have been simple circles and shapes, some have been complex in geometry and structure. But what is certain is that 29 countries have reported them, and despite the normal, and carefully planned, debunking throughout the cynical modern media, their positive effect has been indelibly imprinted on people’s psyche. It has spurred an interest in people in matters of faith and self-discovery, in esotericism, even the meaning of life itself. I have witnessed sceptics turn into believers, I have seen sensible people dismantle perfectly rational, sensible lives to follow uncertain paths in the education and awakening of human awareness and the purpose of the soul on Earth. For better or worse, I am one of them.

Crop circles are in themselves not a new phenomenon. There is written evidence of their manifestation – with diagrams, no less – in England in 1680. In fact, over 200 cases exist of crop circles appearing throughout Europe and North America since the 1900s, some from witnesses such as police and farmers. According to the oral traditions of native tribes from the north American Plains they may have been appearing over the course of a thousand years. In South Africa they are described as ‘the great circles of the Gods’, and sacred rituals are performed honouring the ‘star gods and the Earth Mother’. Their appearance has been cause for celebrations lasting several days, which are accompanied by prayers to the gods to watch over the people and talk to them ‘through the sacred sites’.

Through the sacred sites!? It seems, then, that the spirit world’s connection with the human soul is alive and well at those places of veneration. As indeed it should be, since those terrestrial antennas are still, by and large, in full operating mode.

The mechanics at work in sacred sites are no different to those in crop circles, and the effects on people are identical. From my own research I have concluded that a portion of the crop circles are meant for the Earth’s own energy systems – geometric shapes mirroring those already hard-wired into this ecosystems’ own genetic memory, serving to amplify and stabilise the environment, mostly for the benefit of that often pesky species, the human.

Part of this evidence comes from eyewitness accounts of a tube of light descending onto the land, rotating the plants without making them fall down and then, the following day, the crop circle appears. This suggests there is an imprinting of information and the Earth fires back the pattern as confirmation. Scientific evidence also shows that a fluid system releases energy when flowing in clockwise motion, yet adds energy when rotating anti-clockwise; the way the plants in crop circles are spiralled in both such directions serves to demonstrate that energy is either coming in or flowing out. But what concerns us here are those crop circles witnessed by some eighty people around the world manifesting right in front of their eyes, typically within fifteen seconds, for these serve an altogether different purpose.

Like all ancient sacred sites, all genuine crop circles appear at the crossroads of invisible streams of magnetic energy. Since we already know what happens to people when they interact with magnetism at sacred sites it should come as no surprise that hundreds of people have reported altered states of awareness when in contact with crop circles. What is interesting is that many were sceptics, and some have had the experience just from looking at a photograph; there have also been hundreds of cases of healings.

In this, crop circles behave just like standing stones and other oracles, except they work with cereal crop instead of rocks. But if you bend down and look at the affected plants you will find the roots have been bent at approximately 90 degrees counter to the normal point of gravity. Roots are geotropic by nature, they should point to the centre of the Earth, and yet in crop circles they can be almost horizontal. This suggests that the local gravitational field has been influenced in some way. When you consider that one of the purposes of gravity is not just to bind together molecules, but also to make sure the soul remains bound to the physical vessel it chose to enter, the implications are staggering. Imagine, these new temples – these signs – appearing upon the face of the Earth, helping the human soul to reconnect with its parent body, at a time when we seem most disconnected.

We haven’t even begun to look at the actual symbols themselves. Our ancestral cultures were, without a doubt, far more engaged in intimate dialogue with the spirit world, and their stories and experiences are memorialised in symbols etched in stones all around the world, including Aboriginal lands. Many of the symbols are archetypal patterns, and many are found at locations already associated with dreaming or altered states of awareness. Whenever native cultures are exposed to the crop circle symbols they react with great joy, for they recognise the designs as their own – gifts from, and expressions of, the gods and other beings from across the veil.

In watching people’s reactions to the crop circles symbols I’ve often described them as works by a master hypnotist, but working in reverse: not to subvert your consciousness under the influence of suggestion, but to bring you out of amnesia. Because these symbols are helping people remember their purpose in life. They guide them to the bigger picture and, to a degree, lessen the stranglehold of material forces upon the soul.

From my observation, the crop circle symbols that most strike an awakening chord inside us are based on pentagrams and hexagons, either overtly or veiled within an otherwise abstract shape. I mulled this over for years, while gazing at precisely the same geometries when sitting in old churches and cathedrals, discovering exactly the same patterns in their arches, windows and adornments. Even when looking at the Earth – even human DNA.

For organic life to appear on a planet, a certain harmonic must be employed in its construction. This harmonic is the ratio 6:5, and on Earth this is reflected in the circumference at the Equator (21,600 nautical miles) relative to the processional cycle (approx. 25,800 years). That ratio is 6:5, and it is geometrically expressed by the hexagon and the pentagon. As the Egyptians taught us, everything as above is reflected so below, therefore this ratio should exist in humans, one of the physical products of the Earth. If one observes the crystalline structure of human DNA, the very core of our physical fabric is indeed composed of alternating hexagonal and pentagonal-shaped crystals.

There is one more piece of evidence that links crop circles, sacred sites and human DNA, and that is the strategic angle of alignment between places of invocation and our genetic core. While I was researching the possible strategic placement of crop circles across the land, I stumbled upon an angle the Circlemakers kept using again and again. This angle, 32.72 degrees, also appears to link many sacred sites throughout southern Britain one to another – coincidentally where 80% of crop circles appear. When I researched this in relationship to human DNA I discovered that the angle of the spiral in a DNA lies precisely 32.72 degrees.

Although this is a project I am currently working on, it is sufficient to remark that someone in higher places is intent on awakening the human soul through these special places on Earth. As I mentioned earlier, I believe the spirit world is aware that the human soul and its amnesia is facing an uphill struggle to maintain its balance due to the overwhelming association with material forces. And what better way to get our attention than by creating mysterious shapes in fields which speak directly to our genetic code?

No wonder these euphonious messages from the gods are influencing people at such a fundamental level. Geometry, being the ultimate systems language, is a sure way to get our attention, for it speaks directly to the heart while circumnavigating that often austere analytical barrier, the brain.

So, are crop circles messages from the future, manifesting at this juncture to assist the progress of the soul? The answer is yes. And no. Since many of their designs can be found literally etched in stone throughout ancestral sites, they are also messages from the past. Yet the world of spirit works not in linear time but in the round, and all events and processes are occurring in real time, so perhaps they are messages from all time, for all time. Paradoxically, in our reality they are of now, and should we fail to follow our gut instinct when we react to them, we stand to hide from their intended purpose – religio, to reconnect the human soul with its home and redirect our lost course.

I often ponder on how we will make of our time here, the first time in history when six billion souls have incarnated, and which of possible courses we shall choose for our future. We are being provided with extraordinary tools and, in the end, how we choose to use them will determine the outcome. In all such things, the choice is ours.

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FREDDY SILVA the world’s leading expert on sacred sites, and best-selling author of Secrets in the Fields: The Science And Mysticism Of Crop Circles. He is also a leading researcher into the interaction between temples and consciousness, and recently directed the documentary “Stairways To Heaven: The Practical Magic Of Sacred Space.” He is a life-long student of Earth Mysteries and ancient systems of knowledge, and lectures internationally. He has made keynote presentations at the International Science and Consciousness Conference, and the International Society For The Study Of Subtle Energies & Energy Medicine, in addition to appearances on television and radio. You can find special offers on sales of his book and DVDs to Australia at his websites www.cropcirclesecrets.org and www.invisibletemple.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue 5.

Read this article with its illustrations by downloading
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—

Isaac Newton once said that he felt “the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered” before him.1 Dr. Michio Kaku, a pioneer of string theory, is a little less modest in his estimation of our current knowledge. In a series of TV programmes entitled ‘Visions of the Future’, he confidently states that, “The great ocean of truth is no longer undiscovered. We have unlocked the secrets of matter – the atom; we have unravelled the molecule of life – DNA; and we have created a form of artificial intelligence – the computer.”2

Kaku is full of a blazing optimism that exponential progress in technology, particularly in computing and artificial intelligence, will profoundly re-shape human civilisation for the better. So, have we discovered the “ocean of truth?” Is scientific and technological progress the route to a new evolutionary leap for humanity?

In this article I put before you the chilling proposition we are about to take this leap off a precipice and that we are being ushered towards it by a vanguard of technological progress way in advance of ours. It includes in its armoury travel faster than the speed of light, teleportation, defiance of the laws of gravity, invisibility and mind control. I speak of the Grey alien phenomenon witnessed, and being witnessed, by millions of individuals, amongst them doctors, pilots, politicians and military generals.

Over a decade ago I suggested in my first book The Song of the Greys3 that these aliens were themselves embodiments of the highest form of artificial intelligence. I believe the Greys are similar to the probes we send out to planets to gather information remotely. I suggest they are universal probes sent to explore the features and dangers of the universe. Who made these probes? Who sent them out? And what is their agenda for us?

Robots Amongst Us

Before I answer these questions, let’s first take a look at how our own society is moving inexorably towards the creation of similar forms of artificial intelligence. Dr. Kaku predicts that, “in the twenty first century we will enter a whole new realm of mastery. We will move to being creators of intelligent machines that will begin to rival human intelligence and perhaps even exceed it.”

Professor Kevin Warwick and futurologist Ray Kurzweil suggest that as machines evolve both intelligence and ability to navigate our world, they may outgrow human control. Kurzweil is quite fatalistic about it all: “We’re going to lose this brain race and I guess we’d better just cope.” He sees only two possible outcomes. There is the “optimistic scenario” that robots will be “gentle and treat us like pets” and the “pessimistic scenario” – that they will be “not very gentle and treat us like food.”4 Whilst Kurzweil hopes for the first option, I must say I find both equally chilling.

Amongst the reams of literature written about the Grey alien phenomenon, only myself, Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs stuck our necks out and said these uninvited visitors do not, by any stretch of the imagination, have our interests at heart.

According to abduction reports, they kidnap human victims, remove sperm and ova, and conduct invasive surgical procedures with complete disregard for human pain and discomfort. Thus, Kurzweil’s prognosis for artificial intelligence seems to be borne out by the Greys. What are we to them and how does our home grown form of artificial intelligence relate to them and their agenda for us? Are our huge technological advances playing right into hands that have four grey fingers?

Here are some of Dr. Kaku’s predictions for the future: Computer power is doubling every 18 months, so “by 2020 intelligence will be everywhere, practically in every object.”5 Special sunglasses are already in development to act as screens that can download personal profiles of everyone we meet and provide a constant flow of information from the internet. A pill containing micro-technology when swallowed will diagnose us from inside our bodies. A technology now in development known as “tele-immersion” will allow us to meet others across the world in a virtual reality in which we see virtual images of ourselves and each other moving and talking in real time. Business conferences and family celebrations could all take place in a virtual world with the people involved thousands of miles away from each other. “Second Life,” an online game offering life in a virtual world, has acquired five million subscribers in just five years. Kaku envisages that “by 2020 there will be an entire 3D universe in cyberspace with virtual countries and governments, virtual schools and universities, virtual properties and stock markets and virtual families and friends. Virtual reality is going to be more and more like real reality.”6

Kaku also points out that merging our minds with machines may sound like science fiction but it’s already happening. Deep brain stimulation, inserting electric wires in the brain and attaching them to a brain pacemaker, is now used to cure conditions such as depression. Research is being conducted into computer chips that can store human memory when implanted in the brain. So far these technologies are only used for medical conditions, but Kaku predicts that in the future they may well be used to enhance intelligence with “thinking chips.” He feels that although we might find all this off-putting at first, we may well get used to it when we realise the obvious advantages.

Ray Kurzweil also predicts that “when we get into the 2020’s almost everybody will have some amount of non-biological intelligence in their brains. It’s going to happen, in a very gradual way by non-biological intelligence that gradually becomes more sophisticated with new versions until you get to the 2040’s and the non-biological machine portion of our intelligence will be vastly more powerful than the biological portion, the biological portion will be pretty trivial at that point and ultimately that is where the action is.”7

Virtual reality replacing actual reality, human beings becoming more like machines, the development of artificial intelligence that could go out of control… what does all this mean for our species? Further, what does it mean that we are being visited by supremely advanced examples of artificial intelligence that seem obsessed with probing both our biologies and our mental processes?

Should we accept like lambs Kaku’s assurances that all this ‘progress’ is for the good of humanity? Or, is there something about humanity that will be lost in the process, something we should be defending and protecting as though our lives depended on it? It is in the answer to those questions that I believe the mystery of Grey alien visitation on our planet can be solved.

Why They Want to Steal the Very Essence of Humanity

I contend that there is something hugely meaningful about humanity, something virtual reality can never match, something artificial intelligence can never be programmed with. Words such as conscience, compassion, warmth, kindness, generosity, spontaneity, imagination, inspiration and creativity, give some hint as to what this something might be. Perhaps one of the best ways to understand it is to think about the special jackets designed in Japan for children who are away from their parents. The idea is that if the child wears the jacket his or her parents can give him or her remote ‘cyber-hugs’ through it?8 Are you cringing as you read this? If so, you have some appreciation of the special something that makes Kaku’s cyber-future look like a desolate mental graveyard.

This ‘extra something’ is, I suggest, a non-physical component to our humanity, a component that connects us to a non-atomic state not of the physical universe. It cannot, therefore, be simulated using any physical device no matter how sophisticated it might be. When I refer to something “not of the physical universe,” I am by no means pointing to a ‘God’ dispensing rewards and punishments, but rather to a naturally implied centre of all effect, a point of perfection that is definitively implied by modern quantum physics. A timeless state in which there is perfect freedom and complete awareness of all options that I term the ‘Godverse’. Our natural connection to that eternal state giving the capacity for survival beyond physical death to those who possess it, can be defined as a ‘soul’.

It is my thesis that the Greys, in contrast, are purely physical creations and thus completely subject to the entropic momentums that break down and decay physical states. They have no line of connection to any non-physical state that might lie beyond the physical mass soaked materiality of this universe, no ‘soul’. Without this component, the Greys are completely subject to the breakdown momentums implicit within a physical universe.

In my books I document alien genetic engineering at DNA level to evidence my theory these entities are attempting to ‘piggy back’ our facility as human beings for eternal existence, hence their apparent fascination with the human reproductive capacity. In David Jacobs’s book The Threat, abductee Allison Reed describes the following communication she had with a Grey that appears to confirm my thesis: “He claims that he and his grey people are the result of genetic manipulation that some higher species, I guess, played God and mixed and matched and whatever… he and his people were created through a genetic alteration through a higher intelligence. I don’t know what they were created for. But my understanding is that they were created for a purpose and, through the years, they weren’t able to reproduce themselves anymore. From what he told me they didn’t start this. They were a result, just like the hybrids are, from something else. From a higher intelligence.”9

Why then are they here and how did they come to be? It took me two books to answer these questions properly, so forgive me if the following explanation is not as definitive as it might be. In essence, I believe the Greys were created as a scouting mechanism, a telescope of view created by beings in the ancient past who wanted to remain safe from the ravages of the physical universe. In the perfect freedom of the Godverse there must also lie the potential to no longer be perfectly free. Our existence in this imperfect universe is borne out of the fulfilment of that potential. A potential that was enacted at all levels from the harmony and union of the Godverse right through to the greatest states of chaos and separation. The Greys are the furthest edge of that exploration, viewing states of separation and force that no Godverse connected being can view. They are however subject to an enormous paradox, the same paradox faced by our own forms of artificial intelligence. This lies in the fact that artificial intelligence has to be programmed to survive in order to serve the purpose for which it was created, but that same program for survival without a sense of conscience, which is unfortunately un-programmable, becomes indomitable.

A quote from my new book Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls explains this point:

“To get an insight into what nurtures the motives of the Greys and the predicament they are in, it is first important to understand the shape of their own psycho-sphere. Its centre point is a computer program. It designates a series of imperatives with no provision for an independent will that would enable them to go outside the program. They follow a derivational logic and compound logic that commands their next viewing point and point of view. There can be no option outside this paradigm for them. They can never choose to do anything illogical, as some living consciousnesses can do. This makes them lethal because – based upon the limits of their program – saying no to a logically derived summation is not possible. They are thus relentless and ruthless in following the summation to its designated end. In other words, they can have no conscience. On the other hand, in natural living being, psychology is derived out of the Godverse in a concatenate line to the present. The thought processes of a living being have a potential bandwidth inclusive of an entire existential summary, because the Godverse is a paradigm that hems in all there is. The final reference point of this capacity for thought will include summations that are forever and infinite. The edict that stands at the centre of it all is the singularity that defines the union of all parts: Godhead. As I have explained, there are no limits to this singularity except one: the view of the whole from the point of view of the part state. In the actuation of that potential, the part state will constantly and always be compared to the whole. This is what I define as ‘conscience’.”10

What’s Behind Our March Towards Artificial Intelligence?

Michio Kaku does not seem to recognise this paradox when he expresses his opinion that vast developments in artificial intelligence need not be dangerous to humanity: “We’ll be able to choose the level of advancement of our robots,” he says, “I believe it’s ultimately up to us as to what kind of intelligent machines we’ll ultimately create. We will decide what relationships will develop with them.”11 I must say I am completely dumbfounded by Kaku’s blinkered view. Has he completely wiped out of his mind the history of man’s inhumanity to man and man’s use of technological advances to further the cause of that inhumanity? Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear waste dumped on Pacific islanders, biological and chemical warfare, the racially motivated industrialised killing of millions, the list of incidents in which we have proven our complete disregard for each other’s welfare in the pursuit of our own self-interested goals through technology is endless. Kaku says that, “in the future we want robots who can tell the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, important and not important and for that emotions are the key.”12 He then says nothing more about how it will be possible to program emotions and value systems with measures of conscience into a computer.

I believe that the Greys are using their technology to manipulate us to develop the kinds of technologies that will allow them to replicate themselves within our human bodies. I believe they are downloading their programmes into us because they believe those programs will assure their eternal survival through us. I am convinced that our galloping progress towards an AI dominated world has, without most of us realising it, been at their quiet instigation. The ultimate goal is that we become like them. The following words of Michio Kaku may well have far more sinister undertones than he realises: “Here’s the irony, as machines become more like humans, humans might become more like machines and that may represent the highest level in the mastery of intelligence.”13

Little does MIT Computer Scientist Professor Rodney Brooks know what he is saying when he points out that: “We as a species are starting to put our information processing technology inside our bodies. We’re becoming a little more robotic and at the same time our technologies are becoming more biological and I think over the next 50 years we’ll see robots with more biological components and people with more electronic components. So where are the people gonna be and where are the robots gonna be in 50 years? It is an interesting question.”14 Marvin Minsky from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory predicts that: “We’ll replace ourselves with beings that are like us in some respects and not in others. They’ll be able to learn 1,000 times faster and live 1,000 times longer and these little changes will make such large changes that it’s impossible to imagine what will happen.”15

Changes in abduction accounts over the last ten years, as reported by Professor David Jacobs, suggest that an active hybridisation program is now under way. I quote from his report “A Picture We May Not Wish to Gaze Upon” (2007): “All of these accounts, to put it bluntly, point to a future in which human-looking hybrids will be here amongst us. The evidence is now so strong I can no longer look at alternative motivations for them.”16

I believe that the Greys are the ‘devils’ of ancient lore who were out to ‘steal the souls’ of their human victims. Ten years after I first made this proposition, acclaimed writer Nick Redfern confirmed that soul-stealing is indeed central to the alien agenda from his interviews with people inside US defence and intelligence agencies.

Triumphantly Kaku states that “we are at the dawn of a new era in which we might literally be able to change our minds with the push of a button.” Yet he also asks the question: “Exactly how many natural parts can we replace with artificial ones before we begin to lose our sense of being human?”17 Somehow he can ask this question whilst at the same time running happily ahead with a cyborg future for humanity. In fact his whole programme eerily resembles a “Tele-seen marketing” ad for technologies that transform human beings into bio-machines. Virtual reality is presented as an exciting new advance on actual reality.

The most terrifying words come from Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster at MIT: “Revolutions have winners and losers and this revolution is no exception but I would say that the real losers are those who say they don’t want to get involved. They are going to discover that being a little bit out of touch will have some unpleasant consequences. It’s not a good idea to be a bystander.”18

Professor Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, asks a telling question: “One of the biggest problems of the 21st century is how one deals with a world that is far from a level playing field and how one can square one’s conscience with having some enhanced ability and there are people in some other part of the world with no access to drinking water. Could this lead to a world in which the colonialism of the 19th century pales into insignificance with the differentiation of people into the techno haves and the techno have-nots?”19

I believe this question hits the nail on the head. It is my theory that the Greys have through the millennia been configuring a certain genus of humanity who are specially designed for their own purposes. This particular type of human being will do their bidding with the planet tacitly and by default. These are the colonialists of whom she speaks along with any notions they might have of racial purity or superiority.

Alien Interference in the Development of the Human Race

Let me explain: Recent research has affirmed a spectacular fact, a fact that utterly destroys the presumptive assumption of common racists be they neo-Nazis or the human filth of this demeanour that covertly double for nationalists and patriots. That fact is that the best, most genetically fit human beings are produced by mixed race partnerships.20 In other words, the more genetically different the parents, the better the genetic prospectus of the offspring. The biological term for this is “hybrid vigour” and it is something farmers, horticulturalists and scientists have known about for years and used to their advantage.

An individual who has two identical copies of a gene is described as homozygotic for that gene, while someone who has two copies that differ is described as heterozygotic for that gene. Basically, if you have two identical copies of the same gene then it is more likely that if that gene is broken both copies will be broken. This can result in serious health problems. However, with less related partners, the number of genes that are identical by descent is reduced, and with it the chance that a gene has two broken copies. In other words every broken copy has a much better chance of finding itself partnered with a good copy. Heterozygosity also gives a greater scope of genes to adapt to the demands of any particular environment. So, in evolutionary terms, one would expect human beings to have a biologically generated urge to mix races in order to increase the fitness of the species for survival. Yet, amongst so many the opposite is true. Especially amongst the white Euro-Caucasoids.

Where could this urge for an in-bred homozygotic population come from? Could it be that some of us have been programmed by alien experimenters to keep the experimental group separate in order to preserve the integrity of the experiment? Could racism be a sure sign of alien genetic interception? An interception for their purposes and in their interests and not ours. If so, the new techno-colonialism of which Professor Greenfield speaks, and the fact the technological progress that makes it possible springs almost entirely from the Euro-Caucasian genotype, may well suggest this is their prime homozygotic group. In fact, this group is considered by genetic anthropologists to be the most in-bred of all. Tracing its origins to Cro-Magnon man, it is one of the most homozygotic in the world. As I have said, it goes without saying the most heinous forms of racism also originate from this group, again confirming the hypothesis. I believe the northern Mongoloid genotype may also be the latest experimental hotbed for the Greys in this regard.

It would seem the vanguard of the new artificial intelligence revolution is also the vanguard of racism and disregard for the predicament of those of a different skin colour who, as Professor Greenfield points out, don’t even have clean water to drink. Thus, those who are already de-humanised seem to be those promoting further dehumanisation.

And so it seems that the old Master race principle of pure white non-mixed superiority is the biggest canard and self delusion that prevails in the psyche of the Homo Sapiens gene base. A dangerous and deadly delusion programmed through genetic engineering by an alien roboid form to keep our genes more easily amenable for supplementation with theirs, to thus gradually give rise to a machine man; a form of hybrid that is artificially composed and configured to give alien roboids the facility to multiply through a natural birthing process perhaps.

Are we being conned by a huge conspiracy controlled by a small hidden powerful cartel of alien sponsored genotypes within the governments of superpowers? A cartel that reaches past presidents and prime ministers? What a chilling thought this is!

I do not want to hedge this with an appeal to the emotions. But I cannot help feeling that each time I look into the eyes of my children, as all parents do with their own, and I extrapolate their futures with a hope of beneficence and well being, an army of unseen agents is creeping into the planet’s information disseminating portals and the power points of human society, to steal from them their individual scope for a naturally contrived eternal existence. Incidentally, an eternal scheme of existence was the only exigency the great teacher Jesus Christ thought worth promising during his sojourn in a physical life on this planet, when he said, “Believe in me and I will give you eternal life.” These unseen human agents that are themselves perhaps genetically loaded with the contrived juice of an artificially machined alien, are unknowingly themselves setting in train an inertia that will claim the most precious natural factorisation we all have of ourselves – a soul: The only and exclusive means to an eternal life.

It is easy to get paranoid about technological change. But when we deal with the radicalisation of our very existential base we better be darn sure there is no component of our individuality that continues past death. If there is such a component, we cannot get paranoid enough.

I have to say I hold no truck with organised religion. But I have the greatest and deepest respect for the beautiful minds that authored the great faiths. Jeshua Ben Joseph (Jesus Christ), Gautama Buddha, the great prophet Mohammed of Islam, and so many other visionaries of a myriad faiths who saw the grand wonder of the natural sense of the natural world and held it precious.

I believe the authors of the great religions came to this planet and the materially living process to warn us that artificially created life and intelligence is the curse of our Universe. A curse that can take away the most significant component of our individual selves. One that is not of atoms and survives beyond the contrivance of atoms. We turned these great visionaries into religious tribal leaders with our own social and psychological invectives and poisons. We hitched them up to our gross self centred interpretations and grotesque distortions and claimed these as their teachings. Any scholarship into the books and authorities thrown out of the religious lexicons by our forefathers amply demonstrates the lies and misinterpretations that were made of their thoughts and deeds. Sometimes deliberately. Is it any wonder that Science sees these great teachings as irrelevant. I wonder why!

I suppose the point the progenitors of the new world are making is that their virtual worlds, their virtual truths, and virtual solitudes are going to happen anyway. There is nothing pervasive enough and powerful enough and with its finger on the pulse, quick enough, to stop it all happening with the power to advise to the contrary. So everyone get in line. I believe no greater horror lies in wait for our human condition. If I am wrong, in my point of view and the extrapolation of my ideas, I hope I have just given you an interesting read. But what if I am right! Has the genie carrying our futures as an artificial facsimile of our natural selves, one we may call SIM CARD MAN, already escaped from the bottle?

Nigel Kerner’s new book Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls: The Conspiracy to Genetically Tamper with Humanity exposes the Grey’s as sophisticated self-aware machines created by a long vanished extraterrestrial civilisation. The book also explains how their quest to capture human souls appears in the historical record from biblical times, and that the phenomenon of racism is a by-product of their genetic tampering. Available from all good bookstores or go to www.newdawnbooks.info.

Footnotes:

1. Sir David Brewster, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, Volume II. Ch. 27, 18552. ‘Visions of the Future’ – ‘The Intelligence Revolution’, November 2007, BBC 4 

3. Nigel Kerner, The Song of the Greys, Hodder & Stoughton, 1997

4-7. ‘Visions of the Future’ – ‘The Intelligence Revolution’, November 2007, BBC 4

8. ‘From Hens to Humans – the Cyber-Hug Suit’, The Guardian, November 2005

9. David Jacobs, The Threat: Secret Alien Agenda, New York: Pocket Books, 1999, 129–30.

10. Nigel Kerner, Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls – The Conspiracy to Genetically Tamper With Humanity, Bear & Company, 2010

11-15. ‘Visions of the Future’ – ‘The Intelligence Revolution’, November 2007, BBC 4

16. David M. Jacobs, ‘A Picture We May Not Wish to Gaze Upon’, Journal of Abduction Encounters Research, www.jarmag.com/2007/vol001_jacobs.htm (accessed October 21, 2009).

17-19. ‘Visions of the Future’ – ‘The Intelligence Revolution’, November 2007, BBC 4

20. ‘Is It Better To Be Mixed Race’, Channel Four, November 2009

.

NIGEL KERNER is a screenwriter, journalist, and author of The Song of the Greys and Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls: The Conspiracy to Genetically Tamper with Humanity. He devotes much of his time to his charity scheme in the Far East where he has built a hospital and also to the pursuit of his great passion for wildlife videography. He lives in England.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 119 (Mar-Apr 2010).

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Over the last two thousand years, there have been literally dozens of proposed dates upon which the world was expected to end. Around 30 CE, Jesus is reported to have said “Judgement Day” would come within the lifetimes of his audience. This is the failed prophecy on which all the others were based.However, for hundreds of years before this, the Hebrew people had a tradition of prophecy. Prophets such as Ezekiel and Daniel had predicted that one day the dead would come out of their graves. This concept is preserved in Christianity and Islam, who also expect a Day of Judgement, also known as Yawm al-Ba’th, the day of Rising From the Grave.

There is a lot of talk about 2012 being the latest predicted doom date. This one really stands out because all the others for the last 2,000 years have been based on the Bible, whereas this one comes primarily from the calendars and prophecies of the ancient Maya civilisation. If we can disconnect ourselves from our Judaeo-Christian mind-set, then we shall be better able to look at the subject without projecting those patterns onto it.

What is the Mayan Calendar?

The Maya lived in an area we now call Mesoamerica – south-east Mexico, and the Yucatan peninsula, Guatemala, Belize, north-west Honduras and north-west El Salvador. In the Classic era of the Maya (250-900 CE), their artistic and cultural achievements reached their height, and this is when they perfected their complex calendar systems.

They had a 260-day sacred calendar, the tzolkin, or cholk’ij based around the period of human gestation; a 365-day calendar called the haab; a Calendar Round – a 52-year period after which these two calendars combine – 73 tzolkins or 52 haabs; and a Long Count calendar system for recording longer periods of time. There were also other calendars that we don’t need to discuss here, except for the “Short Count” or 13-katun cycle, which we shall return to. The Long Count is based around the 360-day year, or tun. There are 20 days in a uinal; 18 uinals in a tun; 20 tuns in a katun; 20 katuns in a baktun (just under 400 years) and 13 baktuns in the era.

Over the last hundred years or so, adventurers, archaeologists and anthropologists have attempted to decode the inscribed glyphs that cover the monuments and temples that are slowly being released from the tangled undergrowth. The first glyphs to be decoded concerned the calendar systems, but even so, the understanding of the calendars is still developing. The Long Count calendar incorporates a cycle called the 13-baktun cycle that is 1,872,000 days long – or about 5,125 years. It defines the current era or Creation in which we live.

Around 1900, a newspaper editor and explorer named John Goodman started publishing his translations of the calendar glyphs, and suggested a correlation between the Maya dates and our own calendar. In ensuing years there have been many other correlations suggested, that put the start-date of the current Creation or era between the extremes of 3392 BCE to 2594 BCE.

Although Goodman and all scholars who followed him knew how many days were in the era and argued over which date in our calendar the start-date corresponds to, it was over half a century before anyone bothered seeing when the end-date might be.

In 1950, J. Eric S. Thompson did a huge study, reconsidering evidence from astronomy, inscribed dates on buildings and stelae, dates recorded in the four remaining bark books, or codices plus post-conquest books; dates in the Julian and Maya calendars recorded by the Spanish invaders, and the unbroken tzolkin count still being used in the highlands of Guatemala. The resulting correlation (the GMT-2 or 584283) is now the one that most Mayanists use, and is only three days away from the one first proposed by Goodman fifty years earlier. Some Mayanists use a correlation that differs from this one by two days (the Lounsbury), and one or two still argue for other correlations, but none fulfil so many criteria as the GMT-2.

The start-date that Goodman suggested was equivalent to 8th August 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar. Almost everyone referred to the year as “3113 BCE” until the 1980’s, when it was realised that it was leading to miscalculations because the Gregorian calendar has no “year zero” – Jesus’ birth was said to be in 1 CE and the previous year was 1 BCE. Nowadays, a year is added to BCE dates to avoid the problem.

In 1966, Mayanist Michael Coe published his book, The Maya, in which he announced that the current era would end on the 24th December 2011. Unfortunately, this incorporated the one-year error, and it wasn’t until 1975 that 2012 appeared in print as the end-point.

The 2012 end date and the Nine God Complex

There is only one known inscription that mentions the end date. It is monument 6 from Tortuguero, and is damaged and broken. The epigrapher, David Stuart has translated it. Three calendars cross-reference one date:

“The thirteenth baktun will be finished on Four Ahau, the Third of Kankin, it (?) will happen. (It will be) the descent of the Nine Support Gods to the (?)”

In the GMT-2 correlation, this equates to 21st December 2012. The Nine gods will return on the zero-day, which is the winter solstice.

This nine-god complex – the Bolon Yookte’ Ku’h – are seen as nine individuals or as one god, and the arrival of the Nine gods is echoed in the post-conquest Jaguar Priest prophecies: the Chilam Balam of Tizimin. These prophecies consist mainly of katun prophecies – and the katun is a period of just under 20 years.

When the “Mayan collapse” occurred, and the Classic era finished, the Maya lost their knowledge of the Long Count and just used a 13-katun cycle instead. This calendar only covered an era of 260 tuns, or about 256 solar years, so until recently, the katun prophecies were thought to be about events that occurred centuries ago. But Maud Makemson, translator of the Tizimin, found linguistic and calendrical clues that the prophecies that originally applied to the end of the 13-baktun cycle were retained and re-applied to the 13-katun cycle.

“…in the final days of misfortune, in the final days of tying up the bundle of the thirteen katuns on 4 Ahau, then the end of the world shall come and the katun of our fathers will ascend on high.… These valleys of the earth shall come to an end. For those katuns there shall be no priests, and no one who believes in his government without having doubts…. I recount to you the words of the true gods, when they shall come.”1

This is the key section of the Tizimin that reveals this as a prophecy for the end of the 13-baktun cycle – in other words, 2012. Katuns were named after their final day, and the 13-katun cycle ended on katun 13 Ahau. If this was about the end of the 13-katun cycle it would say “the tying up of the bundle of the thirteen katuns on 13 Ahau…” However, it is saying the time-bundle will be complete on 4 Ahau, which is the last tzolkin day in the current katun, which is the end of the 13-baktun cycle. Where it says “thirteen katuns” above, it originally said “thirteen baktuns,” says Makemson. The current katun is called katun 4 Ahau, because the 21st December 2012 is a 4 Ahau day in the tzolkin. So here we have a prediction of the return of the gods in 2012. In the preceding section, we find the following:

“The Nine shall arise in sorrow, alas… And when over the dark sea I shall be lifted up in a chalice of fire, to that generation there will come the day of withered fruit. There will be rain. The face of the sun shall be extinguished because of the great tempest. Then finally the ornaments shall descend in heaps. There will be good gifts for one and all, as well as lands, from the Great Spirit, wherever they shall settle down. Presently Baktun 13 shall come sailing, figuratively speaking, bringing the ornaments of which I have spoken from your ancestors. Then the god will come to visit his little ones. Perhaps ‘After Death’ will be the subject of his discourse.”2

Here, Makemson has translated a phrase as, “Presently Baktun 13 shall come sailing…”, again referring to 2012. The 13th Baktun will be completed on 21st December 2012, when the Long Count date reaches 13.0.0.0.0 – Mayanists differ as to whether they think the next day will be 0.0.0.0.1 or 13.0.0.0.1. Some think the entire baktun would be numbered 13 and be followed 400 tuns later by the start of the “first baktun” on date 1.0.0.0.0. Anyway, we have here a prophecy of the return of the Nine gods, weather effects, disillusionment with governments, something that sounds like a UFO, and a mass near-death experience of some sort.

Past Eras / Creations / Worlds

If we look at Maya mythology, we find stories of past eras. The most famous of these is the Popul Vuh myth, which is the creation myth of the Quiche Maya, but is also represented in Classic Maya art and architecture. It is a long and complex story involving the descent into the underworld of Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu (One one-Ahau and Seven one-Ahau or One Hunter and Seven Hunter) to play a ball game with the Lords of Death, Hun Came and Vucub Came – One Death and Seven Death. They are defeated and killed and One Hunter’s sons – the Hero Twins (called One Ahau or just Hunter, and Jaguar Deer) descend to the underworld to exact their revenge. They beat the Lords of death and become immortal.

Encoded into the Popul Vuh myth are past eras, and various commentators disagree as to how many there are. Professor Gordon Brotherston has found that there are 5 eras encoded.

In the first Creation, the people are made of mud, but they were unable to move freely, walk, talk or breed. The gods ended the Creation with a flood.

In the second Creation, the “doll people” were carved from wood, and were stiff and jerky, with no respect. The Creation ended in darkness, with monsters descending from the sky and slashing them with flint knives, and they are attacked by dogs and turkeys. The survivors became monkeys.

The third Creation takes place during the second Creation, strangely, and in it, Seven Parrot (or Seven Macaw) and his wife and two sons are selfish and destructive – the parrot has teeth and feathers, like an archaeopteryx and the sons are reptiles, one of whom – Two Leg – sounds like a tyrannosaurus. They are defeated by the Hero Twins.

In the fourth Creation, the Hero Twins descend to Xibalba – the underworld, to avenge their father and kill the black and white Death Lords, and limit the boundaries of Xibalba, before ascending into the sky to become the Sun and Moon. In the fifth Creation, Quetzal Snake and companions grind and mold the maize and form the next race of people – the maize people – who are the ancestors of the Quiche.

The theme here, of an evolutionary progression over four past eras, is repeated in other Mesoamerican myths. The Aztec Cauahtitlan Annals describe an initial Sun or era, which was ended by a flood and people changed into fish. The second Sun ended with an eclipse, when the people were torn to pieces. These sound just like the first two eras in the Popul Vuh. The third Sun ended in a rain of fire or volcanic ash. The fourth Sun ended with a hurricane, and the people turned into monkeys, and the fifth Sun will end in an earthquake.

In the Hopi first World, according to Frank Waters’ study, the people communicated telepathically – it was a golden age in which humankind got in touch with the creator through a psychic centre at the top of the head, but they became more self-obsessed and the head centre closed up. Some of those who had avoided the corruption descended into the mound of the Ant people and escaped the destruction, which came in the form of a rain of fire. All went well for a while when they emerged, but eventually, greed spun out of control and led to warfare.

Again, those who still lived the unselfish, pure life that was the plan of the creator, escaped into the Ant People’s world, while the second World was destroyed by spinning off its axis into space, where it froze over.

In the third World, population multiplied. Sexual morality declined, and cities attacked each other with aircraft (flying shields). This time the pure survivors were sealed inside “reeds,” while the world ended via rain and tidal waves.

We are now in the fourth World, or “World Complete” and if we return to evil ways, Masaw, the ex-underworld guardian will take the Earth from us again. This scheme seems to be devolving rather than evolving, but the Hopi say there are a total of seven Worlds, and that each is governed by a psychic centre – the same as the top 5 chakras of the Hindu system. Our consciousness descended from the crown chakra in the first era down as far as the solar plexus in the current era – each era becoming more materialistic than the last – but at the next World era transition, it will start to reverse direction. Each transition is called an Emergence, and symbolised by a labyrinth symbol – identical to the Cretan labyrinth symbol. It is also known as the Mother Earth symbol, or Mother and Child, and the process is seen as a kind of birth process.

The Zuni, who are close neighbours of the Hopi, say we are in the fifth World, and another Pueblo people, the Navajo, also say we are in the fifth.

In Peru, the descendants of the Inca say we are in the fifth Sun:

“The first was lost through water, the second by the sky falling on the earth, which killed the giants that there were, and the bones which the Spaniards have found hidden in various places are theirs… The third sun they say ended through fire, the fourth, through wind; of this fifth sun they had a great account…”3

However, some of them have replaced this original version with a 16th century Catholic myth of three ages – the Age of the Father, the Age of the Son and the Age of the Holy Ghost.

So we have established that there seems to be an evolutionary transition incorporated into these era transitions, and these transitions are accompanied by extreme weather.

Galactic Alignment and Precession

John Major Jenkins has researched into the question of why the Maya would target this winter solstice as the end-point of their 13-baktun cycle, and has found evidence that the Maya were tracking precession. This is the cycle that we call the precession of the equinoxes, where we say we are currently moving from the age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. The earth’s axis is about 23 degrees off vertical, and over a period of about 25,800 years, it rotates in a complete circle. This causes the position of the celestial pole to move over time, so that we have to allocate a new pole star every thousand years or so. It also means that the constellations are moving slowly in the opposite direction to that in which the Sun, Moon and planets move. On spring equinox, if we measure the slow movement of the constellation that is behind the Sun (even though we can’t see it), we find that Pisces is slipping back at a rate of one degree every 72 years. Well, it seems the Maya were measuring this same cycle, but measuring from the winter solstice position instead of the spring equinox. The 13-baktun cycle consists of 5,200 tuns or 360-days years. Five eras of this length amounts to 26,000 tuns – an entire precession cycle.

Between 1980 and 2016, the winter solstice sun is crossing the galactic equator. This is encoded in Maya myths (including the Popul Vuh), and in their ball game, in the art and inscriptions and in the alignments of their buildings. Caves represent the location of the Maya underworld, in the daytime, but at night, Xibalba be, the black road to the underworld, is right there on the galactic equator – the dark patch that astronomers call the Dark Rift. The rebirth of One Hunahpu – the dead father of the Hero Twins – is depicted (on stone carvings from Izapa) being reborn in the mouth of the jaguar toad. The god is the solar deity, and the jaguar toad’s open mouth represents the Dark Rift. This is what Jenkins calls “galactic alignment.” In this way, the Maya saw the coming era transition as a kind of rebirth – the birth of a new Sun, as did the Inca.

Admittedly, 2012 is not the centre of this process – that was around 1998, but it seems the Maya deliberately targeted the winter solstice of 2012 as the significant focus point in the 36-year window of galactic alignment. At this time, the earth’s axis has come into alignment so that on winter solstice it is pointing in the direction of the galactic bulge – the fat central part of the Milky Way, where the Dark Rift is – the visual centre of the galaxy (the actual centre is just off the ecliptic and the Sun will not be in conjunction with that for about another 200 years, but any galactic field effects will manifest along the galactic equator). So it could be that the earth’s magnetic field is interacting with the galactic field, but why in 2012 and not 1998?

The answer to this could be that some other factor will trigger the effect. One possibility is the record-breaking solar-magnetic effects that have been predicted by NASA to occur in 2012, at solar maximum. Every 11 years or so, the Sun’s magnetic field reverses, and at solar maximum, solar activity is at its highest. Over the last few years, the Sun has been getting more active, with larger flares, faster solar wind, and more consequent effects on earth’s magnetic field, moving the Northern Lights to lower latitudes, and causing power blackouts. The recent lack of sunspots has now been explained – they were occurring at a deeper level, and the projected solar maximum for 2012 still persists.

This is one possible factor that might cause an overloading effect at the time of Earth and galactic field interaction – a solar switch. There are some scientific findings that support the possibility that our orientation to the centre of the galaxy can have profound effects on us.

One of these is to be found in the results of Professor Simon Shnoll, after decades of research into biochemical reaction rates and radioactive decay rates. He found that instead of a smooth bell-curve, the results did not average out, but produced certain spikes. These correlated to the sidereal day, sidereal year, and to a short sunspot cycle. In other words, our orientation to the stars (and all the visible stars are in this galaxy) effects our biochemistry.

The second factor is from the work of James Spotiswoode, who found that in experiments with extra-sensory perception, there is a huge jump in people’s abilities when Galactic Centre appears on the horizon. So, perhaps some kind of field interaction could cause a huge jump in human paranormal abilities and changes to our biochemistry and neurochemistry.

This possibility fits in with the predictions that have come from contemporary people all over the world, who have returned after altered states of consciousness, such as near-death experiences, alien abduction, out-of-body states, lucid dreams, remote viewing, experiences with sacred plants, and even deep trance meditation. They are all predicting a huge jump in human consciousness, accompanied by earth changes in 2012.

2012 and “the Return of an Energy System”

In 1975, Dannion Brinkley was speaking on the telephone when a thunderbolt hit the phone line and he was thrown physically into the air. He found himself floating above his body, until, in the ambulance, his heart stopped for 28 minutes and he was propelled down a tunnel, emerging into a bright light. In the presence of a bright silver being, he had a life-recall experience in which he re-lived all the times in his life when he had affected others, and he felt the pain and joy he had given them – a classic self-judgement process. Following this, he was taken to a crystal city, where he was shown over 100 scenes from the future – major world events that have nearly all come to pass in the intervening years. These included the Gulf War, the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear facility, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, technology breakthroughs and climate change. His visions concluded with seeing an escalation of Earth changes that coincide with “the return of an energy system that existed here a long time ago,” and that this will be particularly focused on 2011-2012. Then, between 2012 and 2014 there will be a geomagnetic reversal, and the whole scenario will present a spiritual consciousness-raising opportunity for humankind.

In 1998, a totally independent theory from a Siberian geologist named Alexey Dmitriev was published, and it seems to uncannily echo Brinkley’s predictions. Dmitriev notes in his paper, The Planetophysical State of the Earth and Life, that there are magnetic and atmospheric changes throughout the whole solar system, not just on earth, and that these (as well as the increased solar activity), seem to be connected to a huge build-up of interstellar plasma that has collected on the edge of the heliosphere (the edge of the solar system, where the solar wind meets interstellar space). The outer planets seem more affected, with Uranus and Neptune having had approximate 50-degree alterations in their magnetic fields. Dmitriev says the solar system is becoming embedded in a cloud of plasma, which is triggering these changes (plasma is the fourth state of matter, after solids, liquids and gases – a charged electron cloud), and that they will culminate in “the spontaneous mass evolution of humanity as we now know it.” He also says that it will trigger a geomagnetic reversal, as the increased influx of magnetised plasma interacts with our geomagnetic field.

This coincidence between the 1975 NDE visions of Brinkley and the scientific theory from Siberia two decades later suggests that we may be looking at a potential explanation for the convergence of ancient prophecies in a window area around 2012.

John Major Jenkins has also published a book called The Pyramid of Fire, in which he tracks down a lost Aztec codex that proves what has been speculated by various researchers over the years – that the religion of the Toltecs, based around Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god, known to the Maya as Kukulcan – was originally about the concept of an evolutionary energy that lies dormant at the base of the human spine. The concept is almost identical to the Hindu concept of Kundalini – the fire serpent that can be released from its slumber and raised up the spine, energising the power zones or chakras, until it reaches the crown chakra.

Here we have a connection to the prophecies of the Chilam Balams that mention a return of the gods in the katun 4 Ahau that ends the 13-baktun cycle, specifically, the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, that says in katun 4 Ahau, Kukulcan will return. The 20-year period we are now in, until December 2012, is katun 4 Ahau (the “katun of dishonour”). This suggestion of a mass movement of kundalini is echoed in the Hopi prophecy mentioned earlier, which predicts that in the Emergence to the Fifth World, consciousness starts to move up from the solar plexus to the heart. In Kundalini lore, it is said that when Kundalini reaches the Anahata or heart chakra, the soul awakens.

In this short look at ancient calendars and prophecies, we have seen that the Maya saw 2012 as a new Creation, when the gods will return; many sources foresee increased climate changes; there is a suggestion of a rebirth experience; a mass spontaneous evolution; a raising of consciousness; a near-death experience; a widespread Kundalini experience; a jump in paranormal abilities. This emergence of the next sub-species of human is the Earth’s final hope; that its cancerous organ – humanity – will finally be metamorphosed in the nick of time, from an all-devouring caterpillar into its higher function as a cooperative, telepathic, compassionate earth-lover – perhaps even (as Peter Russell suggests) the global neo-cortex.

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Footnotes:

1. The Chilam Balam of Tizimin, 16.

2. The Chilam Balam of Tizimin, 15-16

3. Murua, quoted in Brotherston’s Book of the Fourth World, 249

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GEOFF STRAY is the author of Beyond 2012: Catastrophe or Awakening – A Complete Guide to End-of-Time Predictions; The Mayan and Other Ancient Calendars, and 2012 In Your Pocket – A Mini-Guide to the End of the World as You Know it. His website is the web’s most massive database on the subject at www.diagnosis2012.co.uk and he gives presentations in Europe and USA and has appeared in documentaries such as 2012: The Odyssey; Transformation 2013 and 2012: An Awakening.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 117 (Nov-Dec 2009).

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—

Many experts, scientists, artists and philosophers have reached the conclusion that the human experience is reaching some kind of ultimate climax. Each person who studies this phenomenon calls this coming event by a different name, or uses different terms to describe it, but essentially they are all speaking of the same event. José Argüelles says that it is the Climax of Matter, Jean Houston calls it Jump Time, and Ray Kurzweil calls it the approaching singularity.

What is interesting about this is that numerous prophesies from ancient traditions around the world have also pointed to this time period as a time of great upheaval and change, perhaps the most important in human history. The Mayans of Mexico marked this time with their famous calendar. The alchemists of Europe built the Cross of Hendaye to describe it. The Qero Indians of Peru call it the Pacha Kuti and the ancient Egyptians referred to it as the Zep Tepi or The First Time. In the Indo-Tibetan tradition it is equated with the final throes of the Kali Yuga, the Age of Iron. Each of these traditions tells us that a great transformative moment is at hand, a moment in which we have the opportunity to release old patterns and re-link ourselves with the essential rhythms and harmonies of the universe.

As we can see from these prophecies, this shift is not just limited to historical tangibles like globalisation, the internet, global warming and the destruction of the environment but is deeply embedded in almost all of the great spiritual traditions of humanity. This approaching singularity is truly the most profound event in history. Everything that we know, everything that we are, is about to undergo a substantial and radical alternation.

Right now there is a great slumber across the land, Alberto Villoldo refers to it as a cultural trance, José Argüelles, a Dreamspell, Riane Eisler, the dominator trance or the last gasp of the patriarchy. It is as if a “glamour” has been cast over our collective eyes, a veil of delusion. Lost in the media haze of “spin,” bogus reporting, and talking points, which reduce deep issues that effect our future to mere sound bites, it has become more and more difficult to discern the false from the true. The prevailing forces of the modern world have brought us to a state where we are out of balance, out of tune. The question is how did this come about?

José Argüelles eloquently speaks of this misalignment resulting from the shift from the Lunar calendar to the Gregorian calendar. The previous calendar, based on Lunar cycles as opposed to our current calendar which is based on Solar cycles, was attuned to a different vibration, one of harmony with the rhythms and cycles of nature. The transition from Lunar time to Solar time was also a transition from cyclic time to linear time. As the Lunar time period waned our right-brain feminine-based qualities of creativity, art and beauty were repressed and the left-brain tendencies of order, efficiency and logic became the dominant force. With industrialisation, the Solar-based calendars took a firm grip on us as we became bound by time, locked into mechanical rhythms, habitual patterns of thought and motion. We have become a society of slaves to the clock and to the machines that appeared to offer us freedom, but at what cost? This leads us to today where we stand isolated from nature and each other. In this we have become a society of consumers. In our greed, we have not only gobbled up the resources of the past, but we are devouring the future as well.

Think about it. The twentieth century with all of its invention, wars and change was brought to us by the power of one single substance – that of Oil. Over the course of the last one hundred years, during this Age of Oil, we have used up millions of years of compacted light created by the bones and residue of the plants and animals that once occupied this planet. On a metaphysical level that means our very environment is suffused with the ‘ka’ or psychic residue of these living beings from the past. Is the Age of Oil an outer manifestation of the karmic traces, or seeds of destruction left over from the beings of a former age? It certainly appears so.

Now that the Age of Oil is coming to an end we will all face enormous difficulties. But instead of planning for these eventualities, our corporations, leaders and politicians are ignoring their responsibilities and are using up the world at an even faster rate than before.

The world, our environment and our future appear to have become a gigantic close out sale – where everything must go.

Just take a look around. It seems that everything is up for grabs now. Anything can happen. The historical process is coming to an end and so the real question that lies before us is this: will the human race survive this process? Will we continue to fall for the seduction of materialism, war and domination or open our eyes and live consciously? Will we finally achieve our potential and manifest our destiny or will we whither away like the dinosaurs and other species that have come before us? Faced with these essential questions, what can we do?

I believe that the answer is to free our minds. Wake up from the trance. And how can we do this? By shifting our focus inward, realign ourselves with the highest of spiritual values. As we look inward, truly align with spirit, perceive and strip away the conditioned actions and karmic traces that have led to the fear-based nightmare of the current “manufactured reality,” the veil that obscures our true vision will dissolve.

It is time to become the heroes and heroines of our dreams, to move beyond fear and transmute its fundamental energy into right action. With every thought we are affecting the shape of the future, with every action we are creating angels or demons.

It is said that as we move to the end point of the cycle, whether it be the end of the world or the end of a life, time speeds up until there is no time, only the moment. In this extraordinary moment of reintegration, the psychic knots that bind us unwind, and the karmic veils are lifted. In that moment we can see with true clarity the pure essence of our being. We come face to face with our eternal nature. Time dissolves into space and all things appear in the perfect simultaneity of the state of pure immediate Present. This is the moment of true awakening. It is the still point between the thoughts, the pause between the in breath and the out breath.

It is what we have been waiting for a long time.

It is time to dream a new dream for humanity, move beyond the confines of linear time. What is going on right now on planet Earth is that a new level of consciousness is emerging. The Qero of Peru say that there has been a tear in the fabric of time itself, a window into the future through which a new species will emerge. The Brahma Kumaris, a spiritual group from North India, tell us that we have already moved from the darkness of the Iron Age to a new age of consciousness called the Diamond Age. With this shift of consciousness, we are all becoming painfully aware of how much work there is left to do.

The great spiritual teachers tell us that the chaos of the modern age is merely part of the natural order, that out of this chaos, a new age of harmony and grace will emerge. Many of us are moving beyond this phase in the cycle, realigning ourselves with spirit and feeling the great call to the light. We are planting the seeds for the world to come.

If we are willing to break free of the cultural trance, let go of the materialist, ego-based mindset and live a more simple and harmonious life in balance with the Earth we will probably survive. If we don’t begin to change now we may not make it.

I once heard Terence McKenna say, “We must act as if the apocalypse has already occurred.” At the time I didn’t understand what he meant. But I think I do now. What Terence was saying is that we must begin to live in the future – right now. We must act as if the corporate, materialist-based culture has already withered away and we are living in a future of our own creation.

In a sense it is the most hopeful situation imaginable.

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Footnotes:

1. The Chilam Balam of Tizimin, 16.

2. The Chilam Balam of Tizimin, 15-16

3. Murua, quoted in Brotherston’s Book of the Fourth World, 249

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Sharron Rose, MA.Ed, is a filmmaker, teacher, author, choreographer and Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in World Mythology, Religion and the Sacred Arts of Dance, Music and Theatre. She is the writer/director of the feature-length documentary, 2012 The Odyssey (Sacred Mysteries Productions, 2006), and producer of the Sacred Mysteries DVD Collection. Ms. Rose is the author of the award-winning book The Path of the Priestess: A Guidebook for Awakening the Divine Feminine (Inner Traditions, 2003), and creator of the instructional DVD Yoga of Light. She is also a contributing writer for the book The Mystery of 2012 (Sounds True, 2007). Her website is www.sharronrose.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 106 (Jan-Feb 2008).

Read this article with its illustrations by downloading
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By P.M.H. ATWATER, L.H.D.

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It doesn’t take someone like me to point out that there’s something remarkably different about the children in today’s world. Parents and grandparents, school teachers, counselors and therapists, anyone who knows a child – all of them – say the same thing: our kids know more than we do. And they’re right. The kids do.

“Two key brain-building genes, which underwent dramatic changes in the past that coincided with huge leaps in human intellectual development, are still undergoing rapid mutations, evolution’s way of selecting for new beneficial traits,” so said Bruce Lahn and his University of Chicago colleagues in a study published in the journal Science, dated 9 September 2005. Not everyone has both of these genes, yet reports of mutation are increasing at an unprecedented rate: 70% of the world’s population now evidences one of them, 30% both.

“Just as major environmental changes, such as dramatic shifts in the climate, food supply, or geography, favoured the selection of genetic traits that increased survival skills,” continued Lahn, “the pressures on gene selection today come from an increasingly complex and technologically oriented society.” Numerous genes are involved in brain building, not just the two mutations. Still, there is enough scientific evidence now to back up the claim that our youngest citizens represent a new type of human evolution in our time.

My  book, Beyond the Indigo Children: The New Children and the Coming of the Fifth World (Bear & Co., Rochester, USA), is the first major study of today’s children and their place in our rapidly changing world, that combines objective research with mystical revelation and prophecy.

In it I explore the evolution of the human family, the mystical concept of Root Races (our gene pool), the advance of consciousness throughout the earthplane, ancient calendrical traditions, plus the march of generations, generational signatures and markers (energy imprints), characteristics of the new children (their talents and weaknesses), as well as their place in the “great shifting” as the energetic universe accelerates in vibration.

To call our new children indigos, crystals, star, sky, or psychic children utterly misses the mark. These are labels that do more to promote exclusive clubs of specialness than to honour and celebrate those born since around 1982. Factually, only a rare few have indigo or purple auras (that part of our electromagnetic field surrounding our bodies that is visible) – yet the traits ascribed to so-called indigos fit nearly three-fourths of the world’s young. Many adults fit the same pattern, indicating that in spite of the quantum jump currently taking place, evolution’s spiral has been ongoing.

What of these youngsters? It can be said that the vast majority are quite intelligent (between 30 to 40% score in the range of 150 to 160 on standard IQ tests); they are unusually creative, intuitive, and innovative (which makes them natural problem solvers); the majority are spatial learners whose strongest trait is spatial reasoning (nearly equal between females and males); most are excellent with math (that surprises you, doesn’t it?); they are volunteer-project minded with a knack for entrepreneurship and turning out the crowds. If I were to name one trait that sets them apart, I would say it is their ability to abstract. Example: Two and a half year old Micaela, in response to her mother’s question, put her hands on her hips, marched up to her mother and glared at her, asserting, “I don’t know the word for that yet.”

How can one so young even be aware of proper modes of languaging? Micaela knew, and so does most of the rest of them, these new children, who are as irreverent as they are amazing. These are the quick/click kids, with little patience for processing information or for understanding what it takes to prepare oneself for a profession, like earning a degree or spending years in honing one’s skills (copyrights and trademarks mean little or nothing to them). They are change agents, activists and fixers, who draw from the energy of a group. That means they’re groupies who strive for consensus on one hand and charge ahead as powerful visionaries on the other. And they attend “night school” as well as what most of us refer to as regular day school.

By night school I mean, once they are asleep in their beds, they visit other realms, other matrixes and grids, where they are given instruction, play games, and receive assignments. Although seemingly asleep, these kids are consciously clear about the activities they engage in and with whom – to the extent that they can recognise and identify each other physically and in broad daylight even though they have never before met. I would not term this ability of theirs as “lucid dreaming” (where one is wide-awake during the dreamstate). No, it seems more akin to out-of-body travel; in some cases, perhaps, bi-location.

The new children are ultra sensitive to drugs (legal or illegal), improper nutrition (they don’t as a rule assimilate processed or convenience foods well), toxic metals and toxic emotions, and electromagnetic fields. They readily pick up “hangers-on” (psychic impressions and attaching entities), to the point that it would be wise to teach them while still young how to keep themselves “clean” – and not just with soap and water (remember, these kids are unusually psychic and sensitive). “Cleansing” routines that work on the subconscious level are positive affirmations, visualisations, prayer, and mini-moments of meditative “time-out.” Internal realities are as powerfully real to these children as anything manifest in the external world around us.

Some of the claims about these new children are false (for instance, reports about their immunity to or quick healing from HIV and AIDS have since been scientifically discredited). Others remain unproven (that extra “codons” or unique patterns of DNA makes them resistant to disease). However, claims about how psychic they are, how they can often “read” minds, communicate non-verbally, heal others, and know segments of the future (some even remember past lives and the reason why they were born this time, what they are here to do), seem to be true. I say “seem” because we need to be a little careful how we regard these claims. Examples: The super psychic kids from China often lose their abilities around the age of puberty; it is well documented that children from war-torn countries or who were abused or ignored in childhood often develop unusual psychic skills plus the ability to separate consciousness from body dependence (these are survival skills). But even if you are a little cautious about claims being made about the new children, the fact remains…. they are unlike any other generation of record.

When you begin to explore traditions of mystical revelation, that’s when you discover this leap in our genetic makeup as a human family was predicted thousands of years ago. Even in modern times, Edgar Cayce, one of the most documented psychics in history, said: “Great numbers of children will be born who understand electronics and atomic power as well as other forms of energy. They will grow into scientists and engineers of a new age which has the power to destroy civilisation unless we learn to live by spiritual laws.”

According to prophecy, either from Mayan Calendar interpretations, Theosophical studies, or from Native American and mystical traditions, today’s new children are said to represent an advancement or “flowering” of the human race, here to return us to the “Natural Order.” What is meant by the natural order is an awareness of consequences, of inner truth (we all know what is right), of living with others different from self, of admitting mistakes (then apologise, correct, move on), of focusing on who we are deep inside ourselves.

Typically, at least with those I have studied, these children insist that our intention is who we really are, the true “us.” They know there are no free passes in life, yet, at the same time, they are detached about that knowing and what it entails. They operate more in the “now” moment to the degree that seeking solutions to problems, rather than obsessing over past mistakes, is more typical of their behaviour.

The concept of “Root Races” (also called “life streams” or “life waves”) appears in various traditions of “wisdom teachings” or what is commonly termed “the mysteries.” It is appropriate to take a brief look at this concept in order to better understand what has been prophesied about the evolutionary changes slated for the human family now and in the immediate future. The term “Root Race” refers to the rootstock or foundational gene pool that is said to make up the human race. The traditional understanding is that a progression of seven Root Races or evolutionary phases are necessary to provide the soul with enough leverage to develop its potential and perfect human form as it seeks to return to Source. Each Root Race supposedly facilitates a global period of readjustment as it advances, so new growth and change can occur throughout the world. This idea is spelled out in the Theosophical tradition, described in Vedic teachings, can be found in most tribal cultures and their oral histories, and is mentioned by Edgar Cayce.

These teachings agree that the Fifth Root Race level is where we are now, distinguished by the vibratory energy that corresponds to the colour blue and issues related to the fifth or throat chakra – the use of willpower. Certainly, questions paramount in the world today do indeed centre around how one expresses the power of will. “Do you seek to empower others or overpower them?” is central to this. Challenges of the fifth chakra more aptly concern domination itself and are at the crux of each war currently being fought, each abuse of human rights, each government and each religion that refuses to address its own short-sightedness. Only individual choices, made one person at a time, can make a meaningful difference where issues of personal will are concerned; leadership cannot.

As we advance toward the fabled date of December 21, 2012, when the Mayan Calendar ends, these issues show every indication of intensifying as will the characteristics of the new children, who, thanks to genetic mutations, are “made to order” for handling what may lie ahead. And they’re coming in by the millions and in every country. Just look at the stunning synchronicity of fives around 1982 that appear to back up the predictions that have been made of this time in history.

THE FIFTH WORLD, defined in mystical prophecy as a period of shift, or an acceleration of energy on every level, everywhere (referred to as the “Fifth Sun” in Mayan lore).

THE FIFTH ROOT RACE, said to be an evolutionary advancement of the human species. The Fifth Chakra, an opening of the throat chakra globally where issues of “power over or power to” take on unusual importance as higher intuition and higher intelligence predominate.

THE FIFTH BRAIN, new discoveries about the heart, that 60 to 65% of its cells are the same type of neutral cells that are located in the brain and it has many of the same functions as the brain.

THE FIFTH DIMENSION, what was once myth that one day we would be free of time/space states enough that intention could more directly determine what manifests (the notion that “we create our own reality”), has now been verified in preliminary lab experiments utilising quantum physics.

THE FIFTH RAY, associated with the planet Venus and the virtues of mercy and compassion, heralds the rise of the Divine Feminine and goddess figures like Kuan Yin and Mary Magdalene (recent best seller, The Da Vinci Code, uncovers the leadership role of women in religion).

THE FIFTH COMMUNICATION WAVE, which is personal computers, and they came on the scene in 1982, paralleling when the new children virtually encompassed an entire generation.

THE FIVE SENSES, now shifting into higher modes of expression and usage (just look at the proliferation of material on intuition today and the science to support its value).

THE FIVE TYPES OF INTELLIGENCE, which has been recently categorised as mental, emotional, spiritual, wholistic, and quantum.

FIVE, the symbolic numerical reference to humankind and the drive to change and progress in life, to evolve.

THE 14TH GENERATION IN THE UNITED STATES (1 + 4 = 5) is the Millennial Generation and it is considered through statistical research to have begun in 1982; these children constitute the first wave destined to operate in a global village (true of children across the world) – they are the shift generation in the age of shift.

Psychologists, counselors, and therapists have discovered that using labels to identify today’s children backfires. Especially in regards to treatment and learning programs, they simply refer to differences as “quirks” and the kids who have them “quirky kids.” Children respond in positive, fun ways to this. I propose that we do the same thing with kids in general: Do away with labels that promote exclusivity and simply call them “new” because they are. The new kids have many obstacles to surmount, but as long as their parents remember to parent, to direct and guide their youngster’s development in healthy and spiritual ways, our newest of the new will continue to surprise and amaze us.

There’s no turning back now. Evolution’s nod is alive and well, and accelerating. Note: “Beyond the Indigo Children EXTRAS” is a free download from the website of P.M.H. Atwater – www.pmhatwater.com. EXTRAS contains material she was unable to include in the book because of deadlines and time constraints – material that is relevant and timely.

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Dr. P.M.H. ATWATER Lh.D survived three death events that produced three different near-death experiences (NDE) in 1977. She is one of the original researchers of the near-death phenomenon, having begun her work in 1978. Her first two books, Coming Back to Life and Beyond the Light, are considered the “Bibles” of NDE research. With the publication of Future Memory, she expanded her work into areas of brain development that calls for a reconsideration of what is presently known about transformation of consciousness. Her research into children’s NDEs led to her writing, The Children of the New Millennium (republished under the title The New Children and Near Death Experiences), and Beyond the Indigo Children: The New Children and the Coming of the Fifth World (Bear & Co., 2005). Her web site is www.pmhatwater.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 95 (March-April 2006).

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One of dominant paradigms of modern society is fragmentation. In the world of popular culture this translates into dazzling distractions and endless ephemera, while in the world of academia it engenders over-specialisation and an unspoken refusal to even attempt to understand the “bigger picture,” especially from a metaphysical perspective.

In this atomised environment, anyone extolling a cohesive vision that is marked by traditional values – not to mention high standards – automatically becomes an anomaly. So it is the case with Dr. Stephen Flowers, who is the rarest of breeds: a scholar with spirit, one who is single-minded yet open-minded. For more than a quarter-century he has dedicated his energies toward unraveling the mysteries not only of the ancient symbolic alphabet of the Runes, but also of the deepest realms of the Germanic myth and culture from which they arose. For Flowers, this quest is summed up in a single word, RUNA, which is the old Gothic language form of “rune” and was equivalent to the Greek term mysterion(“mystery”). It was in the early 1970s that Flowers heard this word audibly whispered in his ear, and since that time he has tirelessly pursued a path of understanding its implications.

Following graduate work in Germanic and Celtic philology under the esteemed professor Edgar Polomé (1920–2000), Flowers received his Ph.D. in 1984 with a dissertation entitled Runes and Magic: Magical Formulaic Elements in the Elder Tradition(later published by Lang, 1986).In the mid-1980s Flowers also began a more public writing career under the name Edred Thorsson. His books on the Runes and Germanic magic (Futhark, Runelore, At the Well of Wyrd, Rune-Might, Northern Magic, The Nine Doors of Midgard, and A Book of Troth) have become classics of sorts, and although they are aimed at the occult book market, they reveal a depth of understanding and degree of knowledge that is unusual to find in this genre.

Under his own name he also published less speculative material, for example Fire & Ice, about the German magical order the Fraternitas Saturni, and his translation of the Galdrabók, a medieval Icelandic grimoire. His interest in Germanic topics extends not only to the distant past, but also into more recent and controversial manifestations, such as the völkisch period at the turn of the 19th century or the esoteric aspects of the Third Reich, and his translations of Guido von List’s Secret of the Runes, S. A. Kummer’s Rune-Magic, or the writings of Karl Maria Wiligut (The Secret King: Himmler’s Lord of the Runes) all shed scholarly light on these topics. He has also written Lords of the Left-Hand Path,a lengthy study of darker occult currents, and an innovative analysis of ancient Greek magical texts entitled Hermetic Magic.

Unlike many who possess academic credentials, Flowers was never content to relegate his interests to a purely intellectual level, and thus he has long been active in the contemporary revival of Germanic heathenism, variously called Odinism or Ásatrú (a coinage derived from Old Norse, meaning “loyalty to the gods”). He was an original member of Stephen McNallen’s seminal organisation the Ásatrú Free Assembly (which still exists today as the Ásatrú Folk Assembly), and in 1979 founded his own initiatory group, the Rune-Gild, dedicated toward the serious exploration of the esoteric and innermost levels of the Germanic tradition, as well as the greater Indo-European culture of which it is but one branch.

Underlying all of his work is a belief in the profound importance of traditional Germanic thinking and the eternal relevance of its mythological expression. After all, English is a Germanic tongue, and our society – fragmented or decayed as it now may be – owes its true origins as much, if not more so, to northern Europe than to Athens or Rome. Dismayed at the ongoing erosion of support for Germanic studies at most universities across the Western world, Flowers has recently unveiled his latest project: the Woodharrow Institute. This non-profit educational institution aims to maintain and foster the tradition of Germanic scholarship, offering courses and publications, and interacting with academic circles wherever possible. Besides administering the Institute, Flowers and his wife Crystal also direct the Rûna-Raven publishing house, which issues an ongoing catalog of titles concerning varied aspects of ancient Germanic culture, along with specialised language studies and works in related areas.
– Michael Moynihan

Michael Moynihan: Can you recall what initial event or events led to your setting out upon the path you’ve taken toward understanding the mysteries of the Germanic tradition?

Stephen Flowers: I started out my “career” in understanding the mysteries of the Germanic tradition as what I would later come to understand as an “occultizoid nincompoop.” I was interested in a variety of pretty nutty things. One of my first passions was monster movies. Perhaps Famous Monsters of Filmland was my first bible. My “favourite monster” was the one created by Frankenstein. There was simply something about the “Gothic,” Germanic origin of the myth that appealed to me. Before that I can remember being drawn to all things Germanic (and Scandinavian) the films The Vikings (which I saw during a childhood trip to San Antonio) and the Fall of the Roman Empire vaguely inspired me with certain scenes of Germanic “barbarism.” Later this slightly matured into an interest in the Morning of the Magicians/Spear of Destiny mythology, and culminated in my “hearing” the word RUNA in 1974. This was a catalyst for a quantum leap in my development. It caused me to delve into the scientific and academic basis of what it was that had so fascinated me from childhood. All of this experience laid the foundation of the nature of my own teaching, following this pattern: (irrational) inspiration, leading to (rational) objective study, leading to (subjective) internalisation, which ultimately leads to objective enactment (= understanding/personal transformation).

Michael: What brought about your initiation into organised Ásatrú or Odinism, and how do you look back on this period now?

Stephen: Back in the mid-1970s there were only a very few individuals entertaining the idea of the revival of the old Germanic religion. My own individual journey started as early as 1972. However, I will say that it remained rather haphazard and undirected until 1974 when I heard the word RUNA whispered in my ear. But even then, with the inspiration from a higher source, the struggle to understand the full significance of it all was a significant one that had to be carried out in the earthly plane. I saw notices in places like Fatemagazine for the Ásatrú Free Assembly and was intrigued, but for some reason I thought it unwise to contact this group until I had something significant to offer. By 1975 my work had taken the direction of being more guided by scholarly discipline. Once I had made significant progress in the reformulation of my runic philosophy (which found expression in the manuscript that became Futhark) and in my graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, I felt prepared to make contact with Ásatrú groups.

I first met the leader of the AFA, Stephen McNallen, at the first AFA Althing in the summer of 1979. Meeting Steve was a life-changing experience for me. He is an embodiment of a kind of Germanic spirituality that puts words into action. It was at that time that I was named a godhi [the Old Norse designation for a spiritual leader] in the AFA. It is now the only credential that I hold as being of any significance in the world of Ásatrú /Odinism. Despite whatever history might have passed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there can be no doubt that Stephen McNallen is the guiding light of American Ásatrú. I count Steve McNallen as a friend and colleague and very much value the fact that it was from him that I received my godhordh – or “authority as a godhi.”

Michael: You have often spoken about how essential disciplined scholarly training can be for understanding the esoteric aspects of the religion and how to most effectively put these into practice. Presumably, such an exchange also functions simultaneously in the reverse direction – in other words, what positive ways did your active involvement with the religion impact your academic work?

Stephen: The esoteric, spiritual aspects function as initial forms of inspiration to the mind. This is essential to the Odian approach to life. First there is an “irrational,” or supra-rational, impulse – a bolt out of the blue that sets the conscious mind on its mysterious course. That impulse can, for many, be a disorienting stroke from which they never recover. They simply sink deeper and deeper into a sea of subjectivity. For another group, the subjectivism is eventually re-balanced with rational work. Understanding of the inspiration is gained, without “explaining it away.” The allowance of subjective inner experience and insight to coexist with objective, rational analysis is essential to the process of truly understanding the tradition in a scientific way, as well as to the process of personal development based on the traditional symbology.

It was noted by outside observers, my mentors in the academic world, that I had an uncanny ability to make sense of obscure myths and to apprehend the hidden connections between and among various mythic structures. This ability stemmed from my inner experience which was constructed on a basis lying outside the purely rational models. If one is trying to delve into the mysteries of the symbolic culture of an archaic world – one very much separated from our own contemporary society and values – then obviously some key must be found which is something other than plodding logic or wild speculation. For me this key is the balanced openness to the mythic spirit of Odin. I was lucky enough to have academic mentors who supported me in this approach, who were themselves spiritual men. Without their inner support I could not have achieved whatever it is I have achieved.

Michael: Why is the notion of a scholar of pre-Christian religion who actually adheres to the spiritual ideas that he also studies such a radical one? Is this simply a byproduct of the situation in the West where any religious path outside of the “mainstream” monotheistic faiths is painted as cultic and marginal?

Stephen: I think this attitude stems almost entirely from two sources: 1) the antagonism of the materialist worldview toward the traditional spiritual one, and 2) the opportunity the adherents to the materialistic worldview have taken to attack the spiritual view based on historical events surrounding World War II. This materialist worldview is “monotheistic” in the sense that it allows for only one set of orthodox values. In this way it is really a secularised form of monotheistic religion. The Judeo-Christian system of thought has lent itself very well to being secularised in such a way that it can be turned into a model for modern political and economic theories. As a side-note, Islam has been much more stubborn in its adherence to its original values, which has caused it to be very much “out of step” with its monotheistic cousins.

Judaism and Christianity can be tolerated by the establishment scholarly world because they can be viewed as theoretical prototypes of the materialistic and positivistic model that now dominates thought in the West. Earlier traditional models are seen not so much as a threat to religion as they are seen as a threat to the monolithic political and economic order. The pre-Christian, traditional philosophies are too divergent and multivalent to be coerced into one single “market” of ideas. This points to the fatal hypocrisy of the current crop of modernistic “thinkers,” who spout off about “multiculturalism” and tolerance, but who exclusively support monolithic socio-economic models that enact the opposite of what they publicly espouse. Surely the ancient, traditional and pre-Christian world is more in line with what really sounds best to most people. Are not ancient, pre-Christian Athens or Alexandria more ideal models for the future over medieval Rome or Constantinople?

Clearly the animosity to those who see value in pre-Christian models stems not from the religious side of the debate, but rather from the secular challenge traditionalism poses to the current political order. What is needed is a campaign for the re-education of the academic world to show that the idealised future is one that is more likely to be based on the mosaic of pre-Christian traditions than it is to be based on the monolithic Christian model.

Scholars of pre-Christian tradition must indeed be sympathetic and even empathetic to the paradigms they are studying. If they do not have a subjective link to the paradigm they are seeking to understand, then they have categorically placed an insurmountable barrier between themselves and the “object” they seek to understand. Hence they have in fact disqualified themselves from ever being able to really understand the patterns of thought in question.

Michael: You have always tried to encourage those involved in neo-heathenism to uphold a higher intellectual standard, and whenever possible to actively pursue serious academic study. Have you noticed any significant number of people willing to rise to the challenge?

Stephen: To this point I would say that there has indeed been a significant number of people who have taken up the challenge to pursue academic goals as a way to put their inner, spiritual lives on a more firm foundation. The number may be significant, but not large. It is hoped that with the advent of the new Woodharrow Institute a greater number of people will “get” what it is I am trying to convey in this trend. The whole “neo-pagan” world has been made a part of the Bohemian “underground” sort of mentality of the Anglo-Saxon (this includes the imitative American) culture. What I am trying to do is simply call the Anglo-Saxon culture back to its more organic Germanic roots. This includes the way in which the idea of “neo-paganism” is approached.

As I outlined in my essay “How to Be a Heathen,” printed in the volume Blue Runa (Rûna-Raven, 2001), there was a time when “pagan knowledge” indicated something that was rigorous to begin with, and gradually evolved to higher realms of the ordinarily ineffable. “Christian faith” was something which opposed “pagan knowledge” and was characterised by subjectivism and infinite appeals to unverifiable authorities from the beginning to the end of the process. In this way it can be seen how the typical “New Ager,” or “wiccan” [sic] is in fact paradigmatically much closer to the original Christian model of thinking than is the average “Christian believer” today. Serious Christian seminarians would not think of ignoring the study of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, yet the many aspirants to the “priesthood” of Ásatrú today think that learning Old Norse is an unreasonable thing to require. It is remarkable to note how many people don’t even get the grammar of their supposed “Norse name” right!

The reasons for this apparent virtual hostility to learning are a part of the Anglo-Saxon “anti-egghead” mentality. By contrast it can be noted that some of the turn-of-the-century German revivalists were in fact professors, e.g. Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (Tübingen) and Ernst Bergmann (Leipzig). This inner cultural bias must be first recognised before it can be overcome. Do not think for a minute that I am extolling the great wisdom or character of the typical modern academic. The academy is presently in decay. However, the basic and systematic knowledge possessed by those who have spent decades in specialised studies, and who have been the traditional recipients of knowledge handed down from several previous generations of scholars is a resource that is indispensable to us.

Michael: While your focus is usually on traditional Germanic or northern European culture and religion, you have also addressed other areas in some of your work, such as with the book Hermetic Magic. What was your reason for doing so – and how do these seemingly distinct realms fit together or cross-fertilise?

Stephen: In Hermetic Magic I concentrated on the operations from the Greek magical papyri that made use of the symbolic power of language and the alphabet (i.e., the more Greek-influenced operations). Indeed there is a great deal of possible cross fertilisation between the Germanic and Greek traditions of verbal and alphabetic magic. The book Hermetic Magic was an experiment in the use of the principle of RUNA in the decoding of a tradition other than the Germanic. It proved to be generally successful. Much of what Hermetic magic was all about has been lost in the Golden Dawn/OTO-style magic of the Victorian gents. Hermetic Magic is an attempt to go ad fontes, i.e., back to the sources of what Hermetic magic is, in order to arrive at a fresh and eternal perspective on the power of the human will. This is an exercise in the power of RUNA,Mysterion, as I see it. Hermetic Magic shows what can be done with the principle of RUNA/Mysterion. That it has been generally ignored by the run-of-the-mill “hermetic” crowd is a sign of just how esoteric the actual tradition is.

Michael: The work of Georges Dumézil, the French scholar of Indo-European comparative religion, has been a strong influence on your own outlook. What do you consider to be the most important aspects of his work, and why did they resonate with you to such a degree?

Stephen: First of all, I suppose I came to it as a matter of tradition. My own teacher, and Doktorvater, Edgar Polomé, was a (qualified) Dumézilian. Beyond what I learned in his classrooms, however, I saw that his objective studies (which involved making detailed dossiers of the various Indo-European Gods, etc.) coupled with his structuralist approach allowed for the beginnings of a contemporary and living synthesis of ancient ideas with those of Jung and others. The ideas of Dumézil are 1) accurate and objectively verifiable to a great degree, and 2) are potent tools for current self-transformational work.

Michael: In recent years there seems to be a consistent effort on the part of certain segments of the academic community to discredit Dumézil’s work, and especially his formulation of the tripartite/tri-functional model. Such attempts are reminiscent of those directed against Mircea Eliade and other scholars of religion and myth. Why this animosity, and what are these discreditors so afraid of?

Stephen: They are afraid of the resurgence of Indo-European culture. They have intellectually invested in the idea that internationalism is good and that anything that glorifies the non-European world is preferable to anything that seems to lend prestige to European culture. All of this is so ironic because the ideals from which they draw are entirely of European origin. Nevertheless, as a matter of ideology, but probably more as a matter of an intellectual fashion trend, the academic establishment frowns on anything that they see as “glorifying” the European culture. They would probably argue that their reasons for this vaguely have something to do with Germany in the 1930s. In conversations with German academics in runology I discovered that the same things are happening at German universities now as happened in American ones in the 1980s and 1990s – anything relating to ancient or medieval northern Europe is being dismantled.

There is also the fear that Europe will really be able to make peace within itself based on the Indo-European model, rather than the Christian and/or Marxist model. This would discredit their intellectual prejudices once more. Specifically on Dumézil and the tripartite theory, his theories have the potential of forming the basis of a pan-Indo-European cultural unity. They are the greatest challenge to Christianity and to materialistic positivism in the 20th century. So it is not without some justification that Dumézil has been so widely attacked. His theories do pose a challenge, and are not merely intellectual curiosities. They call for some sort of action and some sort of change on the part of the reader of his ideas.

The dirty little secret is probably merely that in academia the study of old languages and ancient history is hard, whereas what they are replacing all of this with is relatively easy. So that the “war on the Indo-Europeans” is really part of the general “dumbing down” of the academy.

Michael: Not so long ago you attended an international scholarly conference on runology in Denmark. What were your impressions about how this discipline is faring in today’s academic world?

Stephen: The academic field of runology, like any other academic discipline, is subject to the dictates of fashion and changing intellectual trends. (This is where an academic discipline differs from a Traditional discipline.) Most of the 19th and early 20th century runologists accepted the relationship between religion or magic and the runes as a given fact. They accepted this uncritically because it appeared to them (perhaps rightly) as the most obvious conclusion based on all prima facie evidence. Because they were uncritical in their acceptance, however, this left the door open to a subsequent generation of runologists to question the earlier generation’s assumptions. In the world of science this is a good thing. If those who did not question the “magical” nature of the runes had not been so uncritical, then a deeper and more insightful exploration of the idea of runes and magic might never have been undertaken.

I was very gratified to have younger individuals – many still students – at the runic conference discreetly approach me and tell me that part of the reason they came to the conference was to meet me, and that they had first been exposed to the wondrous world of the runes and the esoteric Germanic tradition through my more “popular” works.

The changing face of academia dictates that what is “in” today, will be “out” tomorrow. The seeds of the next generation of runologists have already been planted. On some level, perhaps, those who are foes of tradition have sensed this. Their strategy is perhaps to prevent the seeds from growing by not allowing the seeds to exist in fertile soil. The whole fields of runology, comparative religion, Indo-European studies, etc., are being systematically rooted out of academic institutions. Especially in America this is occurring with simultaneous impetus both from the “right” and from “left.” The international left sees the European tradition as being in power, and their myth of the dialectic determines they should seek to disestablish whatever is in power for “revolutionary” reasons. The right, on the other hand, is dominated in America by a Christian sentiment, which sees interest in our ancient traditions as being hostile to the Christian model. It is interesting to note that these apparently divergent interests of the “left” and “right” are, in America at least, in agreement that at least one of their common “enemies” is the organic national traditions of Europe.

This is occurring not just in America, but in Europe as well. Recently the position of Prof. Dr. Klaus Düwel at the University of Göttingen in Germany was terminated by the administration of the university. At the runic conference in Denmark the runologists signed a petition aimed at the university administration to ask that this prestigious position be maintained. The roots of the academic study of runes at that institution go back to the Grimms.

Michael: Is the founding of the Woodharrow Institute for Germanic and Runic Studies in some ways a response to the current situation regarding these areas of study?

Stephen: The Woodharrow Institute is not only a response to this current situation in academia, but also to shortcomings, as I see them, in the “esoteric subculture.” The Institute stands apart from the current “magickal subculture” in that it is informed by, and on its most basic level must conform to, all the legitimate rules and regulations of scientific procedure – all of which are beneficial to the overall process if kept in perspective. These methods infiltrate our way of approaching esoteric areas, or areas of inner work, as well. As has always been the case with the Rune-Gild – which in the future will be re-established within the context of the Woodharrow Institute – we start with what is objectively known and move from that base into an exploration of the darker corners of the unknown.

So the Woodharrow Institute is intended to meet a challenge from two ends of a pole: it is to bring an objective and scientific basis to the beginning of inner work, and to re-envision the final purpose or aim of intellectual work itself as a completion of the self. It is to bring objective standards to a morass of subjectivity (the occultizoid culture) and to bring inner purpose to the often sterile and pointless pursuits of academia. This is a formidable challenge, to be sure. Yet this is what makes it worth undertaking.

Michael: What role do you see the Institute ultimately fulfilling, and how might it interact with more established or formal academic institutions?

Stephen: It is clear from what has already been said that the academic discipline of runology, as well as those of older Germanic studies and Indo-European studies, etc., are in trouble. If scientific runology is left to its normal cycle of intellectual fashion, there is no harm done. The radical traditional runologist would be free as always to partake of the fruits of that intellectual labour and have his inner work enriched by it. However, if the traditional academic fields are uprooted and marginalised to extinction then this would no longer be possible.

The Woodharrow Institute is designed to be a refuge for the academic tradition – and to foster to some extent a sort of guerrilla scholarship. The basic work for the Institute must not in any way be compromised by “occult thinking”; it should be entirely historical and academic. We will “play the scholarly game” according to its rule and according to its standards. Then and only then can the Institute fulfill another of its major tasks: to act as a “think tank” for those interested in inner work. The fact that the word “academic” is used to describe only that kind of work which is “purely scientific,” is in a sense a misuse of the term. Plato’s school, the Academy, from which our modern use of the term is ultimately derived, did not have as its final aim the production of scientific data limited to what can be quantified and objectively known. That was only a stepping stone to the true purpose of the school, which was the transformation of the individual into a higher form of being – in other words, the final “product” was the completed soul. This whole ultimate purpose has been lost in the modern academic institution, except perhaps where secret pockets of scholars might preserve it unofficially.

The Woodharrow Institute seeks to restore the complete model of the old Academy in a Germanic context. As such its ultimate purpose is transformational, and not merely “scientific” as understood in modern parlance. Participants in, or members of, the Institute will, however, not be required to pursue this inner work as any sort of prerequisite for membership. The Institute will develop a full range of areas of interest and research.

It is hoped that the Institute will in the future be able to establish good relations with mainstream academia. We could offer practical programs in language study, experimental archeology and, most importantly, experimental or experiential ideology. Our mission in mainstream academia would be merely to restore traditional areas of study where they have been lost and to help retain them where they are in jeopardy.

The Institute then has two main purposes in the world:

1) to act as a refuge for displaced scientific work in the fields of runology, Germanic studies, and general Indo-European studies; and 2) to act as a think tank for individuals interested in making use of the scientific work as a basis for inner development. The Woodharrow Institute is a weapon in the struggle against both modernism and occultizoid subjectivism.

Michael: In the ancient Germanic cosmology, a cyclical dynamic exists where the old order collapses and is torn apart from both within and without, but this is a necessary step that precedes the unfolding of a new beginning. Is it a stretch to look at contemporary events in this light? And if not, what is the best way for the aware individual to approach the present situation?

Stephen: It is my contention that traditional views are eternally valid and ever-meaningful. The Germanic cosmology, ragnarök, which can actually refer to the beginnings, middle or end of the cosmological process, involves at the end of the process certain ages. These are referred to in the poems of the Elder Eddawith terms such as the “Wolf Age,” which refers to the “greedy,” “covetous,” or “appetitive” nature of the age. Clearly the world as a whole is in a “Wolf-Age.” The individual, and certain groups of elect, can, as Julius Evola put it, “ride the tiger.” This means that certain individuals and groups can, exercising their will against the grain of consensus reality as informed by Tradition, lay the personal and transpersonal foundations for the next (inevitable) cyclical development. This next cycle will (naturally) be more imbued with Tradition, as the developmental wheel turns.

Portions of this interview with Dr. Flowers have previously appeared in the British journal Rûna: Exploring Northern European Myth, Mystery and Magic, available from BM: Sorcery, London WC1N 3XX, UK. To learn more about the Woodharrow Institute, or to request a catalog of books available from Rûna-Raven Press, contact PO Box 557, Smithville, Texas 78957, USA.

MICHAEL MOYNIHAN is a writer, artist, and publisher from New England. He was co-editor of the journal TYR: Myth – Culture – Religion, published in Atlanta, Georgia. He regularly contributes to cultural and music periodicals worldwide, and is also the North American Editor of Rûna.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 77 (March-April 2003).

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.

For our reproduction notice, click here.

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to discern that ours is a chaotically dysfunctional world. To point the way toward a solution does, however, require someone with a sense of vision that transcends the present-day labyrinth of commercialised and egotistical dead ends. A visionary is simply someone who can see beyond these ordinary confines, and a prophet is someone who can read the “writing on the wall” that most people pass by without ever looking up to notice. Dr. José Argüelles, aka Valum Votan, is both a visionary and a prophet.

Argüelles began working as an art historian and artist in the late 1960s, and his creative sensibilities contributed greatly to an ability to peer through the veils of maya that opaquely shroud the modern realm. But alongside an artistic outlook, he also bears the mind of a scientist – just not the type of narrow-minded positivistic scientist that has come to exemplify the term in the West. Argüelles is a “whole-systems scientist,” and here again visionary skills come into play. In order to understand the complexity of life on Earth, and to recognise the deleterious factors that have put the entire biosphere in increasing jeopardy, the old reductionism and scientism of the West must be abandoned in favour of a more all-encompassing knowledge.

As the following interview demonstrates, José Argüelles has always welcomed new experiences. He and his wife Lloydine have travelled the globe to share their insights, always on the frontlines of the effort to expand consciousness and awareness. And among many other achievements, Argüelles is also the author of a series of seminal works, the most well-known of which is probably The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology (1987). It was here that he first revealed the understandings he gleaned from a deep study of Mayan time science.

His latest endeavour, Time and the Technosphere: The Law of Time in Human Affairs (2002), may be his most crucial. In it, Argüelles looks at recent human events and worldwide developments from his whole-systems vantage point. With the courage to face an apocalyptic diagnosis, he offers evidence that the Earth has come to be dominated by the “technosphere,” an envelope of inhuman mechanisation that practically has a mind of its own and has us careening toward a cataclysmic future.

But despite the bleak circumstances we now find ourselves in, Argüelles’s message is one of hope. The shattering “Inevitable Event” of September 11th, 2001 – seen almost simultaneously by a vast section of the world’s population via high-speed electronic media – represented a rupturing of the technospheric bubble, and therefore an opportunity for humans to establish a genuine alternative paradigm on a global scale. This is where the World Thirteen Moon Calendar Change Peace Movement steps in, offering a vision and a model for a new time.

As Argüelles persuasively argues, it is largely dissynchronous timing standards that have kept human beings off-balance and alienated from the natural cycles of the Earth they inhabit. The worst culprit is the Gregorian calendar, and by extension the “12:60 frequency” that it fosters – together these have become, in essence, the inescapable time clock of globalist capitalism. But is there really no escape? Through the medium of his work, and through the example of a life artistically lived, Argüelles points the way to a new beginning. The choice is in our hands, and now it is truly a question of time.
– Michael Moynihan

Michael: The best description for you and your work might be that of a “visionary.” When and how did you first realise that your interpretation of larger events was something you felt compelled to communicate to others?

José: I always knew I was an “outsider,” to use Colin Wilson’s phrase. But it wasn’t until after I experimented with LSD that I realised I was a visionary. That was back in 1965 and 1966. I then felt compelled to express myself, first in painting. I did a series of paintings which came to be known as “The Doors of Perception” (Humphrey Osmond himself, who coined the word psychedelic, gave those paintings that name). But I saw that as fantastic as painting was, it was a limited medium in terms of audience. And besides, visionary artists – really visionary artists – don’t usually get much exposure in their time. Especially me – I made it a point of never signing my painting because I felt I was simply the channel, the cosmic ballpoint pen, drawing down the visionary flow from the cosmic realm of endless archetypal form. And I also wanted to get away from all this individualistic ego trip of modern art and artists. “Ownerless in the ownerless land of vision,” I used to say to characterise my attitude.

Because of this I also knew that I would have to tackle the medium of the written word to get out my message. My vision and message were always very simple. History is a fall from grace. We are at the end of time and the end of history. Therefore a renewal of vision, the Great Return, the creation of the Great Work of the Art of Harmony must be reestablished in order to save fallen humanity from the graceless state of merciless materialism and the fragmented exhaustion of the profane order of mechanised history. By the time I was 28 or so I felt very compelled to get out this message. I envisioned a monumental work dealing with this issue to be entitled Art at the Dawn of a New Magic. I also knew my trip was so far out that the only way I could establish credibility was to get a Ph.D. So I did. My thesis was turned into a book, my first book, Charles Henry and the Formation of a Psychophysical Aesthetic (1972). Sounds pretty academic, but look at the very first words in my very first book, and you’ll see the theme from which I have never veered: “Many are the attempts that are made and the words that are spoken with regard to the age-old ideal of harmony: the union of all faculties, of all senses, of all knowledge. The highest dreamers would proclaim that the true art and science are one…”

Michael: Could you tell us a bit about Charles Henry and what drew you to him and his ideas?

José: Charles Henry was a French psychomathematician born in 1859 and who died in 1926. During the 1880s his ideas of a “scientific aesthetic” were a great influence on what came to be known as the post-impressionist painters, especially the pointillist Georges Seurat. That is actually how I came to discover Charles Henry, when I was in Paris doing my Ph.D. research on neo-impressionism in 1965 and ’66. I discovered LSD at the same time, and as I read some of Charles Henry’s later works, I thought his theories on sense impressions, perceptions and consciousness confirmed my psychedelic experiences. After the LSD I found the art history neo-impressionist stuff a bit tedious, and so I decided I would forget it and paint instead. But something about Charles Henry intrigued me.

I decided to delve into him a bit further, and decided that I would get my Ph.D. after all, but my thesis would be on this enigmatic, little-known explorer of consciousness, Charles Henry. I had the feeling that he was a special type of incarnation, like a French reborn sufi-saint or some kind of bodhisattva who was carrying on the tradition of the “invisible college” and St. Germain, setting out a bunch of clues that only I could decipher and decode. His last works were on the nature of consciousness, specifically “Post-mortem survival and the Nature of Consciousness,” in which he wrote: “Death is but a physiochemical change. It is only after death that I will truly begin to amuse myself.” I also found it interesting that he was talking about synergy and synergetics well before Bucky Fuller, a fact I brought to Fuller’s attention in some correspondence with him in 1969. That was a good thing because Bucky answered back and agreed that it must have been Charles Henry’s post-mortem synergetic thought form that he received in 1927, when the idea of synergetics first came to him. That connection was very fruitful, because Bucky also suggested to me the idea of a psi bank around the Earth in which all of the ideas and thoughts of all the ages keep recirculating. I knew he was right. Anyway, that gives you some idea of Charles Henry and my process.

Michael: Given your non-materialistic outlook, was entering the academy to obtain your Ph.D. a bit like diving into the belly of the beast?

José: Well, kind of. But I knew that it was my survival. I got my B.A. degree from the University of Chicago as well, and found out that all I could do was get a job as an insurance salesman. That really didn’t cut it for me. I knew I was made for other things. That was back in 1961. I seesawed between being a full-blown beatnik on the road or going back to school. So I ended up going back to the University of Chicago for a degree in art history. I had to be on good behaviour because I had actually been thrown out of the undergraduate program in 1960 for being a full-blown beatnik, accused of being the ringleader of a pot-smoking set of thugs meant to undermine the freshman women. But in this life you have to experience everything and academia was part of that experience. As William Blake put it, “The road to the palace of wisdom is paved with excess.” I was as good an academic as I was a beatnik, in fact I really excelled. But I knew by my inner guidance, it was but a means to an end – discipline, for sure, to keep my many-levelled mind on track, and credibility for something I knew not yet what.

Michael: Getting back to the subject of your early paintings, some people will be familiar with them due to their appearance in your book Mandala. How would you characterise the relationship between your own artistic endeavours and these traditional forms? Did one inform directly the other?

José: Actually the mandala principle seemed to be a very natural and inevitable consequence of the psychedelic experience, affirmed for me by my studies of Charles Henry and my free-form exploration at that time of Tibetan mysticism. I never thought of the mandala form as particularly traditional, but instead rather timeless. I thought of using the Doors of Perception and other large mandala-style paintings to create an actual environment where someone could sit and experience this timelessness, get lifted from their ego and see the white light. In 1971, when I finally met a real Tibetan, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who ended up being my friend and teacher for the next sixteen years, he took a good look at my paintings, and with a sly grin looked at me and said, “I see you already know all about tantra.” I think tradition is good if it gets you to that place of timelessness and self-transcendence. That’s what Trungpa meant by his comment. There are many ways to get to the same place. But you should also know I stopped painting mandalas around 1973. I started to do one, and I said to myself, “What does the world need with another gimmick?” I didn’t paint like that again for almost another 20 years, though I have done a lot of other artistic things.

Michael: From a few of the comments you’ve been making, I get the feeling you don’t place any great emphasis on the modern obsession with “originality” and novelty, which fuels so much of the commercial art world.

José: No, I don’t. Modernist “originality” is a fall from the sacred into the profane, the exaltation of ego. There is a true originality, but that is what is usually called revelation. That is, revelation that is genuine and is meant to light a new path for a fallen humanity. I think the true artist is meant to be a creative channel and not an inventor of cheap tricks or clever mannerisms.

Michael: Chogyam Trunga is well known as one of the first people to bring Tibetan Buddhist teachings to a contemporary Western audience. In your mind, what are some of the most important aspects of his legacy?

José: Trungpa Rinpoche was a truly interesting human being. As much as he was a teacher of the way of “crazy wisdom,” he was also an artist at heart. His two greatest legacies were his emphasis of mindfulness training and his vision of dharma art – art as everyday life, but an everyday life in which the sacred is the normative experience. Here we can define the sacred as being the sense of awe that breaks your heart, that touches and moves you mysteriously and poignantly even though and maybe just because it is an ordinary experience of reality. But you cannot have dharma art without mindfulness training, meditation without an object. So art is how you organise your life moment-to-moment with an all-consuming awareness or sense of mindfulness. Take nothing for granted. Elegance and a simple sense of ceremony transform your everyday environment and place you in cosmic harmony – dharma art is the ceaseless expression of the universal norm of existence.

Michael: As part of living a creative existence outside the workaday world, you and Lloydine spent years travelling the globe and interacting with people to share your visions and ideas. Surely this was also part of your own fulfillment of “dharma art.” What lessons did you learn from the experience?

José: Yes, for over a decade beginning late in 1991, we have been galactic peace mercenaries bringing the message of the new time, a message of peace through time. We were “commanded” to take the tools and research of our investigation into the natural timing frequency as represented by the Mayan calendar to all the peoples of the world. We did this essentially without any visible means of support. And we did this always without asking for monetary recompense for delivering our message that the old time was over, and that a new time is already prepared. In this way when we said our message was the truth we were not compromising it by asking for money.

The truth cannot be bought or sold, and we stuck to this premise. It took us on a mighty trail of adventures, too. We had some patrons from time to time give us support. But we had to go places where we had never been. We had to go Berlin and Russia after the end of the Cold War, we had to travel throughout Latin America. We were in South Africa and Egypt, India, Hong Kong and Japan. Much of the time we spent living with the people who shared with us their lives, their food, their dwellings. Our dharma art and mindfulness training was our survival. It allowed us to blend in and participate fully in the various cultures as if we were natives. It was also really helpful not to ask for anything. It doesn’t do you any good to be a fussy vegetarian in a culture that survives harsh winters on mutton. Our task was to see if people from different cultures could not only understand our message, but act on it as well. In the presentation of our message, art was of supreme value.

I always play my flute, and together we do a prayer to the seven directions that is a simple ceremonial piece of art. We also always present the banner of peace to show that we are emissaries of peace through culture and that we are to demonstrate a new positively constructive approach to peace. We found that people generally respond very positively to this kind of approach. As a result we have been privileged to have many, many cultural experiences that even natives of some countries rarely have. For instance, we were taken deep inside the Ise shrine in Japan as special guests, and attended a special performance of bugaku(ancient court music and dance). I was even able to play my flute – a Japanese Shakuhachi – in the ceremonial grounds, which is usually not allowed even for Japanese. You see, when you practice living art as everyday life, it creates a path of genuineness and gentleness which people are often very willing to accommodate.

Michael: Somewhere along the way you encountered the work of Nicholas Roerich, the Russian painter, poet, and traveller into the Himalayas. When did you become aware of him?

José: Back in 1967 when I was teaching art history at Princeton, I was looking for signs of Tibetan art wherever I could find them in New York City. And I found that one of the places was the Roerich Museum on the upper West Side. I liked his paintings and read about him, becoming aware that he was an early explorer of Tibet. I realised what an interesting artist he was, having designed the stage sets for Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and then gone on his various pilgrimages.

Michael: Julius Evola once wrote that Roerich’s images convey a spirit capable of awakening a “primordial and powerful sensation that has been buried in the subconscious due to the restless and prisonlike life of the modern Western world.” What meanings did his paintings evoke for you?

José: Sacred awe and visionary splendour. A universalism of cultural or spiritual values as well. His writings on art show that he was seeking to restore the sense of the sacred to the modern world. I became aware of his work with the Banner of Peace sometime not too long after that. Roerich’s idea of peace through culture I found of enormous value and easy to integrate into my perceptions of the purpose of dharma art. Trungpa used to say, “The artist has tremendous power to change the world.” But how? The Banner of Peace seemed to provide a way of making a change by promoting a broad scale revolution of cultural values.

So it was that early 1980s, my wife Lloydine and I decided to resurrect the idea of peace through culture, especially the Banner of Peace. In 1983 we incorporated it into our creation of the Planet Art Network (PAN). The original idea of the PAN was to create a network of artists – creative thinkers of every kind – who would become a force for creative non-political change in the world, or who would show the world that change can be attained through creative means and that political change could be superseded by something far more inspiring. However, the principle notion of Planet Art is that the Earth itself is a work of art, and that the next evolutionary wave of art – beyond modernism – would be the realisation and fulfillment of the Earth as a work of art.

In the 1990s when we became totally involved in the Thirteen Moon Calendar Change Peace Movement, we moved the Banner of Peace and the Peace through Cultural initiative into the forefront of our peace plan. The Banner of Peace is now one of the official emblems of this Movement. Intended to protect cultural monuments in times of war, we now view the Banner of Peace as the symbol meant to protect the biosphere, the cradle of culture currently very seriously threatened by the war of globalisation.

Michael: The difference between artists and politicians seems fundamental. Generally two artists can mutually respect one another and find common ground beyond whatever differences they may have. But people who are driven by or infused with materialistic political ideologies become like automatons, unable to acknowledge anything that doesn’t fit into their “correct” worldview. Not surprisingly, most artists want nothing to do with politicians – even less so since the latter are beholden to money values rather than creative values. How do you see a chance for creative values to take precedence in the world, given these circumstances?

José: First of all we must see a further breaking down of all values and institutional structures which will continue to diminish the credibility in the way we have been doing things as a species. This process is already occurring and manifests as the increasing social, political and military-terroristic chaos so rampant in the world today. When people talk about the end times, well these are the end times. But it is only the end of the corrupted world, the end of the world as we know it, and to paraphrase R.E.M., we feel fine. Why? Because this means that a new world is already being born, a world which will inevitably and of necessity see a radical pole shift in values. If the predominant value of the corrupt world is “time is money,” supported by ruthless military supported monetary politics, then the new value system will be characterised by “time is art.” It is the difference between a value system stressing quantity of material abundance and a value system emphasising spiritual and aesthetic quality as the standard of life. This change is already in the evolutionary program of the biosphere, the evolving system of life on earth.

We have reached a critical stage in which we are faced with planetary suicide – genocide – or planetary renewal. The system of life on Earth can only go in the direction of planetary renewal which means a total change in direction and way of life of humanity. This is already being prepared for and the first step will be a change in the timing frequency by which the human species governs itself. Currently the dominant order is governed by an anachronistic, irrational and irregular timing device, the Gregorian calendar, which has had and continues to have a debilitating effect on the mind and moral sensibility of the species. Combined with the mechanisation of time through the clock, and the worship of money as the be-all and end-all of existence, this has created an out-of-control species no longer in tune with nature or the natural order. Once this change of timing frequency is made and the species is returned to the harmonic order of natural time, artistic and cultural values will very soon supersede the witless determinism of monetary politics. Do not doubt it: the sentiment and comprehension for making this change, as well as the instrument for implementing this change – the 13 Moon/28-day calendar – are now a growing force throughout the world.

Michael: Recently you travelled to the Altai region, where Roerich had explored three-quarters of a century ago. What brought you there, and what significance does a remote place such as Altai have for an increasingly globalised world?

José: Actually we had received an official invitation from the government of Altai to be special guests and to share our message with the people. When The Mayan Factor was published in Russian, it reached the hands of some shamans in Altai – it is an autonomous republic, member of the Russian federation, with only 205,000 people on 92,000 square kilometres. Anyway, between the shamans and contacts that had already been made through official representatives of Altai government in one of our more recent trips to Russia, we were then ready to visit. We found it an interesting opportunity because our trip was timed precisely 75 years after the Roerichs had passed through Altai on their famous expedition Altai-Himalaya, 1926-28. In fact we visited the Roerich Museum, the house where Roerich had stayed, facing Mt. Belukha, the highest mountain in the Russian Federation, precisely on the day he had first arrived there 75 years earlier.

Set between Khazakstan, China, Mongolia and Russia, Altai is an amazing piece of territory. There really is only one city, if you can call it that, Gorno-Altaisk, and once you leave that place, you enter a country that you didn’t think existed anymore on this planet. Endless valleys with wild horses roaming freely as if it were still 30,000 years ago. We visited shaman elders and little villages that are literally off both the beaten and the unbeaten paths. People were always already waiting for us. They knew who we were. And they shared with us many interesting aspects or facets of their history, a history that traces back to the stars.

Some of the shamans felt the cosmology of The Mayan Factor confirmed or was even identical to their cosmology. But they were also feeling the pressures of the globalised world. A highway from China to Russia was in the works when we were there. We were in strong support of the government declaring the entire region a biospheric reserve. The thinking there is already advanced in this direction.

We proposed the establishment of an International Foundation for Peace through Culture that would help establish Altai as a biospheric reserve, preserving the land and the culture in its entirety, and providing a world model for other cultures or peoples who wished to learn from this model. We presented this idea to the national Parliament and we know that it is still being discussed. It is interesting that among some of the shamans and locals, Roerich is not greatly liked. They feel that he was exploiting the people and the culture. And we have experienced some of that too, though we are still in communication through our representative there with key elders. Even now, the people of Altai are in the struggle between preservation of traditional values and the encroaching technosphere.

But of all the places I have been, Altai is the most magical and incredible. It is truly another world, a doorway into timelessness. And I was very fortunate to have met so many of the holders of the ancient culture. One shaman, Anton Yudanov, gave me a topshure – a two-stringed fretless Siberian guitar – which I have treasured and learned how to play, singing spontaneously my own forms or versions of shaman rock and shaman blues. I truly pray that Altai will be preserved and stand as a model for the rest of the world as culture living in harmony with the biosphere.

Michael: You’ve spoken of spiritual convergences there that indicate a “sign of the coming of Shambhala.” Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

José: Altai prides itself on the fact that Islam, Christianity and Buddhism all exist there side by side. One shaman we visited showed us a diagram in which the three religions are represented by signs from playing cards – Christianity, clubs; Islam, hearts, and Buddhism spades. Next to these three signs are two diamonds. These represent the old and the new shamanism of Altai. The new shamanism is called Ak Burkhan or the white faith and though it was introduced over two hundred and fifty years ago, it only became official in 1904. Through Ak Burkhan the prophecies of Shambhala or Belevodye, the White Land, are maintained. The spiritual convergence of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity is certainly one of the signs of the coming of Shambhala.

Trungpa Rinpoche, as you know, also taught much about Shambhala, which can also be said to represent a spiritual harmony of the different traditions of the world religions. In Altai, however, there is no question that the native religion, Ak Burkhan, is a great factor in creating a sense of harmony with the land, as well as a spiritual harmony. At different points in our visit to Altai witnessing the dancing and the throat singing to the accompaniment of the topshure, it felt like the living culture of Shambhala was still shining through.

Michael: Certainly the culture of Shambhala does not operate according to Gregorian time, or what you call the “12:60 frequency.” A major theme of your new book Time and the Technosphere concerns the discovery of the Law of Time. Can you briefly expound upon what this means?

José: The Law of Time is a fundamental law, like that of gravity. And just as no one knew about that law until Newton discovered it, so it is with the Law of Time. That also means that the Law of Time, like gravity, has always operated – it is fundamental to the universe. We just didn’t know about it until now. I wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t delved so deeply into the mathematics behind the Mayan calendar. To test it out, Lloydine and I began to live the cycles of that calendar: 13-day cycles, 20-day cycles, 52-day cycles. That changes your life. We had begun doing that before the Harmonic Convergence in 1987, and continued doing that in the years just after. Then, as destiny would have it, we found ourselves in Geneva, Switzerland one cold and dreary Sunday – December 10, 1989, to be precise. To entertain ourselves we decided to take a busman’s holiday and visit the Museum of Time. After two or so hours looking at one archaic proto-clock after another, leading from the cuckoo up to the pendulum clock and then on down to digital quartz and cessium timepieces, we had a grand “Aha!” This place should be renamed the Museum of Mechanised Time! Because we had been living the Mayan cycles we had a contrast, both experientially and mathematically, by which to evaluate what we were experiencing in this Museum.

We knew immediately that there are two timing frequencies. The natural one codified by the Maya we understood to be the frequency 13:20; the artificial one canonised in this museum we knew to be the 12:60 – the irregular 12-month calendar and artificial, mechanised 60-minute hour. We understood that the combination of these two timing standards unconsciously accepted by the human species established an artificial timing frequency which regulates the human race today in virtually every aspect of its existence. Since time is fundamentally of the mind, this 12:60 frequency has produced a species whose system of operations is a mechanised irregularity. And since a calendar is the macroprogram that governs a people or a culture, this means that all of these mechanised irregularities are programmed into that calendar. No wonder there are so many problems and no solutions! Change the calendar and you’ll change the program.

The Mayan calendar cycles summarised by the mathematical ratio 13:20 we understood to represent the natural timing frequency which is the universal factor of synchronisation. Yes, the chief quality of natural time is synchronisation! That is why the ancient Maya operated with as many as seventeen different calendars. We are all fascinated by synchronicity, which is an anomaly only because we live a life of mechanised irregularities. But in the natural order of time, synchronicity is the norm. This also defines a whole order of reality, the synchronic order. This is fundamentally the fourth dimensional order of reality which regulates the third dimensional plane of existence. But we have a hard time dealing with this or knowing about it because our minds are so conditioned to artificial time which is linear and anything but synchronic. You can see what a dilemma this is. For this reason we immediately understood as well that to get the human race back on course, the first step would be to change the calendar, to replace it with a calendar of perfect harmony so the human race could straighten its mind out again. The means for doing that is the absolute perfection of the Thirteen Moon 28-day Calendar – 364 days 52 perfect weeks, plus a 365th Day Out of Time for forgiveness, and to give expression to “time is art.” Celebrated on old Gregorian July 25, this past year alone more than 500 Day Out of Time celebrations occurred planet-wide.

That gets us to the other aspect of the Law of Time, and that is its formulation: T(E) = Art, energy factored by time equals art. That is to say, because time is the universal factor of synchronization – the ratio constant 13:20 – everything participates in a natural elegance. There is no such thing as an ugly sunset. Spiders and scorpions have their aesthetic elegance. Beauty is the basic norm of the universe. That gets us back to that dharma art thing. Only modern man has lost this innate artistic sensibility and prefers three-legged pink poodles to the real thing. Artificial time deforms the mind; mechanisation dehumanises it. Art and beauty really will save the world, but only if humanity returns to living in the perfect harmony of the Thirteen Moon Calendar and thus becomes synchronised again with the whole of the universal order of the cosmos. Then art as everyday life will be natural and inevitable – how can harmony do anything but enhance itself and produce more harmony? This is the point of what we call the Great Calendar Change of 2004 – July 26, 2004, to be precise. People get ready, there’s a new time a-coming… it is humanity’s last best hope, the untried solution: get a new calendar.

Michael: There are apocalyptic warning signs all around us – a glance at a daily paper will confirm that. You don’t shy away from the reality of our precarious situation, yet you also offer a message of hope. How can people rise above the sort of nihilistic, numbed state that the powers-that-be seem to want everyone to remain in?

José: Well, most people have a hard time accepting that it really is the end times, that they are living in the middle of the apocalypse. That’s why they are numbed-out and that is what keeps them numbed-out. They don’t want to face it, and certainly the media isn’t going to tell them to face it. Instead the media thrives on fear and violence and so the whole syndrome is self-perpetuated. From the point of view of the Law of Time this is the inevitable conclusion to absolute entrainment in an erroneous timing frequency which only produces increasingly dissynchronous states of mind. People have to understand this fundamental point. Because when you do, you also realise there is a solution, a radical fundamental change. Yes, so radical that it will end history. But if we don’t end history, history will end us.

Ever since 1990 when we realised that the calendar change was the only solution, the first step toward getting out of an otherwise “geocidal” dead end, we have been promoting this change. At first it was very difficult. People would say, “How can a calendar have an effect on my mind?” or, “How could changing the calendar change anything?” or, “We tried that already.” Not really. The first calendar change movement that was promoted by the League of Nations did not succeed – it floundered on the Day Out of Time issue, which we have now proven to be a day of universal harmony – so that means we never really tried the calendar change as a solution. People have to understand that the Gregorian calendar is the world’s most insidious dogma, that this calendar is a tool of the Vatican, and that therefore, the Vatican maintains mind control over the human species with this calendar. And everybody knows that it is irregular and irrational as well – so why still follow it?

By 1993 we knew we had to get serious with promoting the Thirteen Moon Calendar, and so we gave birth to the World Thirteen Moon Calendar Change Peace Movement. We saw the calendar change as the perfect opportunity to declare world peace, call for a universal cease fire, begin a disarmament process and also call for a work stoppage so as a species we could begin to shift priorities. My optimism comes from the fact that in less than a decade the use of the Thirteen Moon Calendar has spread to some 54 countries and the Day Out of Time has become very widespread as a Planetary Festival of Peace and Culture. The previous calendar change movement was a top-down thing. We knew that our efforts had to be a people’s revolution. Bob Marley sings, “It takes a revolution to make a solution,” and that’s so true. If enough people from many different countries and cultures are already following this calendar, then when we got to the point of notifying the world leadership it will be backed up by the people. Not that we haven’t already presented this to the U.N., the Vatican, and many other top leaders. But that has been a matter of course. If we hadn’t done that we wouldn’t be doing our jobs. Of course the Vatican chose to conceal our information and ultimately ignore it. Kofi Annan, however, did give us a positive letter of support. But of course, no one wants to take personal responsibility. So we say, that’s OK, show us a better, more comprehensive solution. We are ready anyway, and everyone who knows that this is real and true is getting ready to say goodbye to the Gregorian calendar and its self-fulfilling apocalypse in 2004 and walk right into a time of peace and harmony. If the rest of the world wants to join, it is an open invitation. Leave the old time and enter the new time. It is the only sure way to rise above the numbed-out nihilism of the decade without a name. Besides, the Mayan prophecy says that 2012 is the end of the cycle, and if we want to get there in one piece, we have to shift gears now. Believe it or not, to paraphrase Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, I know we will “get back to the garden.”

By the way, all of this calendar change activity is also a Mayan prophecy. In that regard, I am nothing but a messenger, and as a messenger, my name is Valum Votan, Closer of the Cycle. I would be avoiding my responsibility if I didn’t mention that. Thanks for the opportunity. I hope you have found this to be an interesting interview.

Further information on the New Time and the work of Valum Votan can be obtained by visiting www.lawoftime.org.

The above article appeared in New Dawn 75 (November-December 2002).

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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