Rest in Peace Marc Bolan

Rest in Peace Marc Bolan (30 September 1947 - 16 September 1977).

Nobody has this kind of sound anymore.

Note prominent mention of Druids in his first real breakthrough single, "Ride a White Swan" (1970).

I used to listen to his albums when I was at West Point in the 1980s. I didn't really know anything about Marc Bolan -- I just knew that his music rocked. Here are a couple other favorites. There are way too many to list here.

"Teenage Dream" (1974).

The Twelve Labors of Hercules

Among the most memorable of all the Greek myths are the twelve labors of Heracles (better known by his Roman / Latin name, Hercules). As a child, I had a reading book for elementary school with very graphic illustrations of Hercules and his labors, battling the Nemean Lion and the Hydra, and visiting the mighty titan Atlas who was holding the arch of the heavens on his shoulders, part of Hercules' quest to retrieve the Apples of the Hesperides. It was by far my favorite of all the reading books we were assigned.

I have previously alleged (following the arguments of Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Hamlet's Mill) that the conventional view about the connection between ancient myths and the constellations and planets is exactly backwards (see for example "God and the gods" or "Mars, Venus and the Pleiades").

The conventional view is that early cultures created elaborate myths in order to explain the natural phenomena that they were too scientifically ignorant to explain otherwise, and that looking up at the night sky they named the constellations and planets that they saw there after the characters in their mythology. However, de Santillana and von Dechend present extensive evidence demonstrating that the myths and legends of the ancients were created to encode a very sophisticated -- even "scientific" -- understanding of the celestial phenomona and the astronomical bodies behind the events in the sky.

While not discussed in detail in Hamlet's Mill, it is quite likely that the wonderful tales of the twelve labors of Hercules further support this thesis. In fact, many observers have put forward the possibility that the twelve labors correspond in some way to the twelve constellations of the zodiac, a very reasonable connection to explore whenever the number twelve features prominently in myth.

This website discusses the twelve labors and argues that they are an illustration of "the passage of the sun (personified as Herakles) through the year and the zodiac." Some of the connections appear to be a bit strained, but in general there is enough evidence to indicate that the myth may indeed describe the sun's annual passage through the zodiac.

The concept of the "sun passing through the zodiac" can be a little confusing, if it conjures up an image of the sun criss-crossing the sky from one constellation to another. After all, when the sun is up, no constellations are visible at all. A better way of phrasing this concept might be to say "the zodiac passes through the sun's rising point."

We have already discussed the reason that the constellations are not in their same locations even if viewed at the exact same hour of the night from one night to the next (see this previous post). The same holds true for the constellations seen in the pre-dawn sky above the horizon where the sun will rise (see this previous post about the concept of "heliacal rising" and this previous post about Orion and Sirius in the pre-dawn east for further explanation). Throughout the course of a year, different constellations will be located in the pre-dawn sky above the sun before it rises.

The constellations of the zodiac are those constellations along the band of the celestial sphere that lies along the ecliptic -- the plane of the solar system -- along which the sun travels in its path across the sky, and which the planets travel through as well. Thus, throughout the course of the year, as the sphere of the sky turns by about one degree per day, all the constellations of the zodiac will at some point be located in that region of the sky where the sun rises when it pops above the eastern horizon. This is what is meant when someone says "the sun's annual passage through the zodiac" -- they really mean the zodiac's annual rotation through the point above the horizon where the sun will appear.

The fact that many of the adversaries Hercules encounters during the twelve labors have clear celestial counterparts makes this theory very plausible. Some of them are quite obvious and have a direct correspondence with a member of the zodiac -- the Minoan Bull, for instance, could easily represent the zodiac constellation Taurus, and the Nemean Lion would obviously correspond to Leo.

Others, however, are more difficult to connect directly with a zodiac constellation, and appear to represent constellations associated with or nearby to zodiac constellations. The article linked above, for instance, argues that the exciting battle between Hercules and the nine-headed Hydra probably indicates the sun's rising in the constellation of Cancer, since the constellation of Hydra has its head near Cancer.

Another interesting alleged connection is found in the eleventh labor to retrieve the Apples of the Hesperides, a word which derives from the word for "the west" and refers to nymphs who were the daughters of the titan Atlas. Some commentators allege that Atlas in the myth refers to the massive constellation of Boötes, located near the pole and that his location in the sky is appropriate for holding up the vault of heaven. Hercules had to take his place in order to persuade him to fetch the Apples, which are guarded by a fearsome dragon -- and we note that the constellation Draco is near to his constellation as well, winding between the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper in the vicinity of Polaris.

The English-born theosophist Alice A. Bailey (1880 - 1949) wrote an extensive discourse entitled "The Labours of Hercules" on the connection between the labors of Hercules and the constellations, focusing on the astrological and esoteric aspects of each episode and seeing the Hercules series as representative of every human soul on the path to enlightenment.

Bailey clearly bought into some of the odious racist ideology prevalent in both England and America around the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries (which we discussed in a previous post here), saying at one point in her discussion of the labors of Hercules that "Gemini is predominantly the sign of the intellect and it has a peculiarly vital effect in our Aryan race" (page 37 out of 125 in the online document linked above). However, she does give some cogent arguments in support of a reading of the twelve labors as following the sun's yearly progression "from Aries to Pisces via Taurus" (page 8).

If this is indeed the case, then it is quite likely that the myth of Hercules and his twelve labors was made as a means for imparting knowledge about the sun's annual path through the celestial sphere (or, as we pointed out, the zodiac's annual rotation through the sun's rising point). In other words, it is not likely that the myth came first and constellations were then named after actors in the myth. The myth is a carrier of astronomical (and perhaps esoteric) knowledge.

This is an important point to understand, and it must be reiterated that this is completely contrary to the conventional academic view. That is because the conventional view (which follows modern versions of the same flawed Darwinian theories that led directly to the kind of racist anthropological assumptions on display in many texts from the late 1800s and early 1900s) sees early civilizations, including the early Greeks, as struggling towards a grasp of scientific concepts including astronomy that they did not understand until the first or second centuries BC. However, as we have seen many times before, and as this examination of the Hercules myth illustrates, it is far more likely that the ancient civilizations thousands of years BC had an extremely sophisticated understanding of science, including math and astronomy, and that they knew far more than we currently give them credit for.

The Crisis

In the previous post, we discussed the groundbreaking 1997 work by William Strauss and Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning. In it, the authors discuss the cyclical perception of time and history versus the linear perception of the same, and examine history for several centuries for evidence that generational cycles follow a regular pattern.

While other historians stretching back to antiquity have observed such cycles, Strauss and Howe are apparently somewhat unique among historians (at least since the fall of the Roman Empire) in suggesting that these cycles generally follow the length of a long human lifespan -- roughly one hundred years, which the ancients called the "saeculum" -- with each such period divided into four distinct phases as each "generation" moves into a new stage of life and into and out of control of the reins of power.

The authors cite historians who have noticed that major wars or "hegemonic wars" or "general wars" seem to take place at the end of the fourth such phase (or "turning"), clearing out the previous age and preparing the way for a new start to the entire cycle, saying:

The culminating phase of the saeculum is a quarter-century era of war, upheaval and turmoil. Early humanist scholars called this the revolutio [. . .].

A better word is crisis. Its Greek root krisis refers to a decisive or separating moment. In disease, the krisis is when physicians know whether a patient will recover or die; in war, it is the moment in battle that determines whether an army (or nation) will triumph or fall. [. . .]

The Crisis ends one saeculum and launches the next. 38-39.

Yesterday's post, on the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, stated that such a Crisis had not yet arisen, although the authors of The Fourth Turning believed that one would take place sometime in the period between 2005 and 2025. September 11 does not fit the definition of Crisis outlined above, because it did not indicate or determine whether one side would triumph or fall.

However, the date of the September 11 attack was apparently chosen by the murderous perpetrators in memory of a previous moment of true Crisis, when a decisive battle did determine which side would triumph and which would fall -- the Battle of Vienna, September 11 and 12, 1683.

During that battle, an invading army of Ottoman Turks numbering about 150,000 had laid siege to Vienna, a siege they had initiated in July. The core of the city was held by a small number of Austrian soldiers (about 11,000) plus about 5,000 citizens, and the Ottoman army decided to try to starve them out since their artillery could not breach the walls (a series of mining and countermining operations went on during the siege).

The siege was lifted by the arrival of reinforcements led by the King of Poland, Jan III Sobieski, with about 27,000 Polish soldiers, another 45,000 German and Austrian reinforcements, and 3,300 Polish winged hussars. These hussars were a fearsome force, carrying long lances measuring fifteen to nineteen feet, capable of charging as a unit unlike the single heavy knights that typically operated alone or in only loose formations, and their charges carried tremendous physical and psychological shock effect. The winged hussars were quite used to defeating much larger enemy armies. Their armament and tactics are described here (among many other places on the web and in the annals of military history).

The situation had grown extremely dire for the defenders of Vienna by the time Jan III Sobieski arrived, with food having run out and starvation and weakness taking a serious toll, while sappers from the besieging army had tunneled beneath the walls to plant explosive mines, blowing several holes in the walls during the first days of September, and the beleaguered inhabitants of the city were bracing for the final assault.

The Polish King attacked on September 12, leading his winged hussars in a devastating charge against the center and flank of the much larger Ottoman army, sending the Austrians and Germans to assault on the left. The ferocity and skill of the winged hussars, as well as the personal leadership and tactical plan of the experienced Jan Sobieski, was clearly decisive to the battle's outcome.

An interesting aspect of the feared winged hussars of Poland is the allegation by some historians that the practice of wearing eagle feathers and "wings" by horsemen of the Hungarian steppes (where the Polish originally learned to employ cavalry in this manner) originated with the shamans of Asia. Feathers are one of the most characteristic clothing items that distinguish a shaman, whose job description entails flying to the successively higher (and sometimes lower) worlds of the shamanic cosmology, as described in these previous posts here, here, here and here. Instead of actual feathers, long tassels or fringes sewn along the arms and legs of the shaman's clothing could also be used to represent feathers (these were seen among the shaman of the North American Indians as well as in Asia, and still appear on clothing items in modern times, although most of their wearers are unaware of their original magical significance).

Another important aspect of the Battle of Vienna, particularly in light of the fact that the civilization-attacking barbarians of 2001 apparently drew their inspiration for a September 11 attack date from the defeat of the Ottoman army at that decisive battle, is the grievance-mongering that so characterizes the most dangerous enemies of civilization.

We have discussed the grievance mentality that sees the success of one group as the cause for the ills of another group in previous posts -- see here and here, for example. The Nazis under Hitler clearly exhibited such grievance-mongering, placing the blame for any perceived economic injustice or perceived humiliation on the Jews, as many of their descendents in the grievance industry around the world continue to do to this day. The Communist ideologies of Marx and Mao Tse-tung were identical to the Nazis in their identification of the source of all problems and grievances with a certain class or group, although the groups they identified may have been based more on social roles than on religion or ethnicity.

In all these cases, such grievance-mongering has led directly to the idea that violence is justified and that the seizing by force of property and even the perpetration of violence and murder against the supposed "oppressor" is condoned and even encouraged, just as apparently happened on Easter Island.

As we examine the forces who condone violence and theft in the name of such grievances, forces both within and without, so to speak, it is important to be aware of the cyclical nature of history and the fact that civilization and learning has been catastrophically lost before -- that history is not a story of relatively unbroken upward progress, in spite of the just-so stories we are traditionally taught in school.

The perspectives and terminology offered by the authors of The Fourth Turning are invaluable in trying to sort out the forces which appear to be building towards another existential Crisis point.

The Fourth Turning and cyclical time and history

The remarkable 1997 book The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, by William Strauss and Neil Howe, argues that the familiar linear approach to history taught by most of Western education and academia is actually a fairly recent paradigm and one that contains dangerous flaws. They argue that seeing history in terms of recurring cycles provides insights which the modern linearity obscures -- "one year's (or one saeculum's) winter is more like the prior winter than like the autumn that came right before it," they explain (21).

The authors argue that by perceiving these cycles, we can perhaps become more aware of impending change, and point out that linear thinking often causes its adherents to be completely blindsided. Using American history as an example, they point out that as late as December of 1773, the idea that the American Revolution would begin in the near future would have seemed nearly impossible, and the same can be said about November 1859 (about the start of the American Civil War, which broke out in 1861), or even about the beginning of October 1929 (when virtually nobody was expecting the sudden end to the Roaring Twenties caused by a catastrophic crash of the stock market, beginning on October 24 ["Black Thursday"] and accelerating on October 29 ["Black Tuesday"])(Fourth Turning, 5-6).

Writing in 1997, and based upon their observation of generational cycles occurring every four generations going back through history literally for millennia, the authors predict that the current mood of pessimism and disillusionment is typical of a certain point in the cycle, and will precipitate a major crisis beginning sometime between about 2005 and 2025. They write:

Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire. Yet this time of trouble will bring seeds of social rebirth. Americans will share a regret about recent mistakes -- and a resolute new consensus about what to do. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II. 6.

Reflecting on these words on the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, it is clear that many of these predictions are coming true, particularly the prediction that "political and economic trust will implode." It would appear, however, that so far no "great Crisis" as momentous as the Revolution or the Second World War has yet been sparked. The two authors' warnings that those living in 1929 or 1859 or 1773 did not see the impending Crisis of their age should give us cause for concern that such a Crisis may yet be around the corner, and cause to pay attention to the cycles that the authors outline in their book.

Whether you agree with all of the conclusions and predictions in The Fourth Turning, one of the most noteworthy features of the book is the way it reveals the peculiar modern faith in linear progress as something of a historical anomaly. They find evidence that "nearly all non-Western cultures accept the periodic regularity of time" (as opposed to a view that time is linear rather than cyclical, which is a relatively modern development in their analysis) (32).

Authors Strauss and Howe argue that this modern linear view of time really took hold during the Enlightenment, during which it grew into "a complementary secular faith [. . .] -- the belief in indefinite scientific, economic, and political improvement" (9). They argue that this faith in linear progress reached its height at the end of the nineteenth century, and that it has always been strongest in America, where a widespread belief developed that mankind had finally broken away from "any risk of cyclical regress" (10).

They state: "Triumphal linearism has shaped the very style of Western and (especially) American civilization. Before, when cyclical time reigned, people valued patience, ritual, the relatedness of parts to the whole, and the healing power of time-within-nature. Today, we value haste, iconoclasm, the disintegration of the whole into parts, and the power of time-outside-nature" (10). These are broad generalizations, and any book of this nature will test the reader's patience with such sweeping categorizations, but these broad generalizations do appear to capture some truths worth considering.

Interestingly, this very belief in unbroken linear progress which has gripped Western thought since the Enlightenment is reinforced by the dogmas of Darwinism and the conventional teachings on mankind's ancient history, which supposedly progresses in a generally unbroken upward line from primitive ape-men to modern humans, who then progress from early hunter-gatherers to simple villages to increasingly complex civilizations.

As we have discussed numerous times in this blog, and as is discussed in greater detail in the Mathisen Corollary book, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that this linear timeline of human history is completely incorrect. In fact, compelling evidence supports the conclusion that mankind was extremely advanced in the distant past (long before ancient Greece and Rome) and for some reason fell into relative ignorance for millennia thereafter -- a very nonlinear view of ancient history.

Almost every previous post deals with this radically different view of mankind's ancient past, but posts which are especially pertinent to the linear / cyclical thesis offered up by the authors of The Fourth Turning include this one, this one and this one.

It is quite likely that the faith in linearity that Strauss and Howe detail in their book has blinded scholars and others to the possibility of an ancient advanced civilization and created a bias towards the acceptance of Darwinian biological theories, which in turn lead to linear anthropological theories as well.

Interestingly enough, Strauss and Howe note that ignorance of the cyclical nature of time, or even massive attempts to deny these cycles and live as though cycles do not exist does not actually free us from the cyclical nature of time at all. On the contrary, they find evidence which suggests that cultures which embrace cyclical time are less buffeted by the waves of the changing cycles, while cultures which try to suppress the cycles only exacerbate their effects, so that they experience even greater volatility, which is all the more painful because it is unexpected (unlike the cycles experienced by cultures who expect and respect the cyclical nature of time) (33-35).

It is also worth pointing out that the analysis of the brilliant R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz uncovered numerous cyclical patterns and harmonies between generations living hundreds or even thousands of years apart (at similar distances from precessional turning points), which he often points out in his own books. In Sacred Science, for example, he notes that:

Since the Middle Ages, our Occident has been blinded, particularly by the cerebration of the Greek Eleatics who preferred reasoning to experimentation. The beginning of this disquieting period of "arguers" can be situated with the Eleatic school around 550 or 500 BC, a school founded at about the same time as the Pythagorean order, of mystico-religious character. Those five centuries before the precessional passage from Aries to Pisces stand in curious correspondence with our sixteenth century, also five centuries before the next precessional passage from Pisces to Aquarius: Toward the year 1500, with the Renaissance, ancient Greece was again raised to honor in the West. 18.

and:

Their [the Stoics'] champion was Zeno of Citium, who lived from 362 to 260 BC, which is about two hundred years before the precessional transition from the vernal point of the sign of Aries to that of Pisces. In the Stoic pursuit of freedom, we find a curious similarity to the ideal of the revolutionaries of 1789, a revolution which was also situated about two centuries before the new precessional transition of the vernal point from the sign of Pisces to that of Aquarius. This brings to mind a similar great revolution which took place at the end of the Old Empire of the Pharaohs, about 2400 BC, two centuries before the passage of the vernal point of the sign of Taurus into that of Aries. 43

In light of these and other seeming harmonies, de Lubicz declares, "The history of the world is strangely cyclical" (30).

It is also worth noting that adherents of the binary model of precession believe that these cycles are influenced by the sun and solar system's relative distance to a proposed binary star to our sun (possibly the Sirius system), just as other cycles on earth are caused by the rotation of the earth (night and day) and the orbit of the earth (the seasons).

While Strauss and Howe seem to indict Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire as primary causes in the adoption of a linear-progressive view of time and history, it is perhaps more appropriate to ascribe this hallmark of modernity to the more atheistic and mechanistic secular faith in progress that began to arise during the Enlightenment and the following centuries (especially as Darwinism took on all the trappings of an intolerant and aggressive cult or religion).

For evidence that Christianity is not inherently or automatically linear, one need only examine the writings in the book of Ecclesiastes, included in the Christian canon of Scripture since the beginning, which contains (among other declarations of the cyclicality of time and history) the famous lines in chapter 3 (which the authors of the Fourth Turning do quote at the end of their discourse):

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

All of these observations are extremely noteworthy, and bear upon the questions explored in the Mathisen Corollary. Special thanks to my good friends Mr. and Mrs. MDS for sending me a copy of this remarkable text as a gift.

The rings and moons of Saturn

This weekend, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be doing a flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan (it has done several flybys of that moon already). The Cassini spacecraft was launched in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004.

The spacecraft successfully delivered its 705-pound Huygen probe to the surface of Titan at the beginning of 2005, and the Cassini orbiter continues delivering stunning images of the ringed planet and its moons. The gorgeous image above is actually composed of 165 images taken almost exactly five years ago, on September 15, 2006 (as explained here on NASA's website). As described in this recent article, the image was taken by Cassini from the dark side of Saturn, so that the sun was blocked by the massive planet, but the sun's light illuminated the incredible rings.

More recently, a video has appeared on YouTube composed of actual HD images from Cassini, and they are similarly breathtaking and unworldly (see below):



The rings of Saturn pose difficulties for conventional explanations of the origin of the solar system and planets. As NASA planetary scientist Jeff Cuzzi has explained (for instance in this article), the rings cannot have been formed 4.8 billion years ago, when conventional timelines place the formation of Saturn and the other planets.

The conventional theories used to argue that the rings of Saturn and the other planets with (less spectacular) rings were leftover from the clouds of dust that supposedly congealed to make the giant gas planets (another phenomenon that is difficult to explain). However, as Dr. Walt Brown has pointed out in his online version of his book In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, more recent data and analysis indicates that the rings could not possibly have survived for so many billions of years and must be attributable to a more recent phenomenon.

In fact, Dr. Brown cites a 1985 article from Sky & Telescope in which NASA scientist Jeff Cuzzi states that the rings of Saturn would be dissipated in no more than 10,000 years! This means that they are either younger than that, or that they are being replenished somehow (or both).

The Cassini spacecraft's flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus (and other recent observations of Enceladus) determined that Enceladus is in fact currently jetting water and ice and thereby replenishing Saturn's E-ring. This discovery is consistent with Dr. Brown's theory for the origin and composition of asteroids as coming from Earth during the events surrounding a violent rupture and global flood, some evidence for which we examined in previous posts here and here, as well as in discussions of the water on the surface of Mars far from the polar ice caps in this post here. He explains more details regarding the Enceladus findings on his website here in conjunction with his discussion of the origins of asteroids and meteoroids (some of which have been captured as moons by other planets, including Saturn).

The events described by Dr. Brown's hydroplate theory would also explain the possible source of the organically-produced methane that has been detected both on Mars and on Titan. He notes that the salt water being ejected by Enceladus has a salt content very similar to that in earth's oceans, and believes that the origin of this water is in fact earth. He also believes that the methane found in the solar system originated on earth.

He explains that:

The fountains of the great deep also launched vegetation fragments containing bacteria, so bacteria and their food were in comets, asteroids, and meteorites. Living, but dormant, bacteria have been discovered in meteorites, and it has long been known that comets contain methane. Therefore, besides providing water that flowed on Mars, comet and asteroid impacts also delivered “methane-producing machines” and their food.

Dr. Brown has further predicted that "Bacteria will be found on Mars. Their DNA will be similar to Earth’s bacteria. Furthermore, isotopes of the carbon in Mars’ methane will show the carbon’s biological origin." If similar bacteria or methane are detected on Titan, this would also appear to be supporting evidence that would tend to confirm Dr. Brown's theory and predictions.

These aspects of the amazing planet Saturn and its rings and moons should be kept in mind as further information is sent back to us from the indefatigable Cassini spacecraft.

Every man is an island

The expression, "Good feeling your vibe" is a unique one, and one not heard so often anymore. However, it may contain some deep insights.

As we have discussed in previous posts, John Anthony West in Serpent in the Sky presents extensive evidence, based upon the brilliant insights of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1887 - 1961), that the ancient Egyptians understood the importance of harmonics and vibrations on many levels, and incorporated that knowledge into all aspects of their culture, from mathematics, to medicine, to literature, and of course to architecture and art. For previous discussions of this evidence, see this post, this post, and this post.

If these scholars are correct, the concept of "vibrations" -- as well as the idea of "good vibrations" and "bad vibrations" -- is a very important concept indeed, and one that the ancient Egyptians took very seriously.

In his 1961 book Sacred Science: the King of Pharaonic Theocracy, Schwaller de Lubicz discusses his belief of the importance of this subject to human beings, which he labors to demonstrate was a belief shared by the ancient Egyptians as well. He explains:

The higher animals, as well as the human animal, are totally bathed in a psychic atmosphere which establishes a bond between the individuals, a bond as explicit as the air which is breathed by all living things. In this psychic ambiance, every human can be compared to a radiating energetic source offering a kind of vibration of its own which is received by the other beings. Beings can be more or less aware of this, depending on the degree of their mental neutrality. 153.

Later, he explains the same concept in slightly different language, saying:

In reality, every living being is in contact with all the rhythms and harmonies of all the energies of his universe: The means of this contact is, of course, the self-same energy contained by this particular living being. Nothing separates this energetic state within an individual living being from the energy in which he is immersed, if not the cerebral presence, such as is the case with man. The animal does not lose this contact as it is not yet in possession of this mental "superiority." 163-164.

It is very interesting that de Lubicz expresses this energy source as "a kind of vibration," which in terms of physics could be described as a wave (all vibrations can be expressed in physics in terms of frequencies, which is a method of describing a wave in time, just as wavelength is a way of describing a wave in terms of distance, and wavelength and frequency are related such that knowing one will allow the determination of the other).

The assertion that everyone we meet is "a radiating energy source offering a kind of vibration of its own" brings to mind the wave patterns created by islands in the ocean (see diagram above), and the traditional navigation techniques used by the Polynesian Voyaging Society described in previous posts (see here, here and here). The techniques used by the wayfinders of the Polynesian Voyaging Society were passed on to them by master navigator Mau Piailug (1932 - 2010), whose ability to sense distant islands by the "vibrations" they gave off is described in the 2009 book Wayfinders by Wade Davis:

Expert navigators like Mau, sitting alone in the darkness in the hull of the canoe, can sense and distinguish as many as five distinct swells moving through the vessel at any given time. Local wave action is chaotic and disruptive. But the distant swells are consistent, deep and resonant pulses that move across the ocean from one star house to another, 180 degrees away, and thus can be used as another means of orienting the vessel in time and space. Should the canoe shift course in the middle of the night, the navigator will know, simply from the change in the pitch and roll of the waves. Even more remarkable is the navigator's ability to pull islands out of the sea. The truly great navigators such as Mau can identify the presence of distant atolls of islands beyond the visible horizon simply by watching the reverberation of the waves across the hull of the canoe, knowing full well that every island group in the Pacific has its own refractive pattern that can be read with the same ease with which a forensic scientist would read a fingerprint. 59.

This is a stunning metaphor for the same concept that Schwaller de Lubicz is talking about with regard to human beings, each of whom he says has the same kind of "personal fingerprint of vibrations" that Davis describes above regarding islands in the Pacific. The phrase "no man is an island" comes to mind, ironically, in that according to this view we are actually quite similar to islands in one way, and yet connected by the ocean that carries these vibrations, in which we are all "totally bathed" at all times, in the words quoted above from Schwaller de Lubicz.

Curiously, this appears to be a possible connection between the ancient science of harmonic manipulation which thinkers such as Schwaller de Lubicz and John Anthony West perceive in the ancient Egyptians and the ancient science of deep ocean navigation which the ancients also appear to have possessed (as we discuss in other posts such as this one, this one and this one).

Based on this information, the phrase "good feeling your vibe" should perhaps make a comeback.

100th anniversary of the start of Amundsen's quest for the South Pole

On the 8th of September, 1911 -- exactly 100 years ago -- Roald Amundsen of Norway began the first successful mission to the South Pole.

Amundsen had arrived at the Bay of Whales in Antarctica in January of 1911, and spent the Antarctic winter preparing and improving his gear for the expedition (remember that the summer months of the northern hemisphere correspond to the winter months in the southern hemisphere). In September, as the spring months began in the southern hemisphere (just as the fall months are commencing here in the northern hemisphere), Amundsen decided to begin his quest for the pole.

Amundsen began towards the pole with seven other members of his expedition on the 8th of September after warmer temperatures appeared to herald the onset of spring, but temperatures soon dropped to an unforgiving -60° F and by the 12th of September, Amundsen decided to cache supplies at 80° south latitude and turn back to his ship and base in the Bay of Whales (they had previously created supply depots at S 80°, S 81°, and S 82° in February of 1911 in preparation for their push to the pole later in the year).

Amundsen would wait until 19 October 1911 to set out again for the pole, which they would reach on 14 December 1911. It would be the first time in known history that human beings reached latitude S 90°.

The success of the Amundsen expedition would be largely overshadowed in the English-speaking world by the death of the English explorer Robert Scott and his party, who reached the pole in January of 1912 but perished on the return journey in February and March of 1912.

Amundsen's great achievement and the excellent terrain analysis and mission planning that contributed to his success was revived by the 1979 publication of a book entitled Scott and Amundsen by Roland Huntford. The book was the basis for a gripping six-part television miniseries entitled The Last Place on Earth which aired in 1985 and which I clearly remember watching when it was first broadcast. Huntford's book was later retitled The Last Place on Earth as well.

Roald Amundsen was born on 16 July 1872, which means that if you were born on that date in 1972, you are the same age that Amundsen was when he started his push to the South Pole one hundred years ago. He later reached the North Pole in 1925, and because there is some doubt as to the accuracy of the claims of previous explorers who said they had made it to that pole, it is possible that Amundsen was the first there as well.

Roald Amundsen himself disappeared while on a rescue mission in the Arctic, in 1928, looking for survivors of an expedition whose plane had crashed. His body was never found or recovered.

The story of the quest to reach the South Pole is a thrilling one, and well worth studying in greater detail. It reminds us of the tremendous achievements that human beings are capable of accomplishing.

Further, the continent of Antarctica is incredibly important as a source of powerful evidence about the history of the earth. We have examined some of this Antarctic evidence in previous posts, including:

• "Earth's big roll"

• "Lake Vostok and the deep liquid lakes on Antarctica"
  

• "The subglacial fjords in Antarctica"

and of course,

• "Antarctica"