Imbolc

Noosphere Day Image -  digital - Tatiana Plakhova
(Click to enlarge.)

"By her many graces I call to Brigit who graces us this day;

Grace of eye and grace of hand,

Grace of word and grace of will,

Grace of caring, grace of birthing, grace in mourning,

Grace of carriage, grace of courage,

Comforter and mother,

Brigit of the Blessings I name the one

Who blesses us this day!"

- Brigit Invocation from A Solitary Imbolc Ritual, Rob Henderson and Kami Landy, 1999

"Even after the Roman Catholics banned all Pagan ways, She was so firmly and permanently beloved, She was absorbed into Christianity as a saint. But the Wheel turns and we once more give honor to the Sun Goddess Bride (pronounced “breed” or “breej”), Brigit, or Brig(h)id. She is the Fire Goddess of Healing, Poetry, and Art. You can see Her embodied in the bright stars of the constellation we call Orion.

For millennia at Her temple at Kildare, Her priestesses, and later, the nuns of Her order, tended an eternal flame in Her honor. Although it was extinguished during the Burning Times (the Inquisition), in 1993, Sister Mary Minehan boldly re-lit St. Brigid’s flame in Kildare. It was lit again in 1997, in the square at Kildare by Ragny Skaisten, a member of the Norwegian Brigidine Sisters, at the opening of Her feast day, Feile Bhride."

- from Blessings of Imbolc!, Beth Owl, 2010*

There's sort of "Land of Milk & Honey" vibe about the pagan holiday of Imbolc (pronounced EEM bolg), also known and/or confused with the Christian holiday of Candlemas. While the actual date of the holiday varies, you can begin to see it in the change of light that occurs around this time. While winter isn't exactly over, it's possible to react like our ancestors must've reacted, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief: finally, a flicker of of hope on a previously desolate horizon.

The Merkabah and a Sixth Sense - A Practical View (Annotated)

"The idea or reality of the esoteric chakra system may or may not be relevant to the phenomena I am referring to - from what I gather, the chakra centers are considered symbolic and psycho-spiritual and have no apparent physiological manifestation - but, as I am not aware of any other "maps" at my disposal, contemporary "subtle energy" diagrams provide one place to begin the inquiry.

In the tradition of the Eastern mystics - and Western alternative healers - the chakras (Sanskrit for "wheels") are basically 7 main energy vortices or focal points that lie along the spinal column and skull. The uppermost point, and the one that concerns us here, is generally known as Sahasrara, the seventh, or "crown chakra". In some systems, the seventh chakra lies directly at the top of the head, but in others it lies above. In some systems there are a number of energy centers above the head - the uppermost, and the one that corresponds to my sensory zone is sometimes referred to as the "transpersonal point". In all chakra literature, the crown chakra's primary function seems to serve as a conduit for consciousness, generally of the "cosmic" or collective variety."

- From a web article "Non-Local" Causes and Effects on the Human Body (Tactile Sensations from a distance), Dia Sobin, uploaded 2007 (see: .pdf).


(Added June 9th 2020):

"I can't explain the science behind it, but I just tried it for myself - raised my hand to above the top of my head, and I could feel a sensation like the hairs standing on end - only in a small spot, nothing dramatic, but a definite tingling. I don't think I was imagining it because I can still feel the tingling now."

- A comment left on Posthuman Blues post in 2007 by "Bumble," a female reader of Mac's. His post links to the original web article mentioned above, although the link is now broken. I just found this comment recently and it made me smile. From her description, It seems the woman did, indeed, find the epicranial occult locus.

***

No, it's true, I wasn't lying. I am "exiting the blogosphere." Unfortunately, I spent so much time laying Post-Mac Blues to rest, I haven't had time to deal with Trans-D at all. Meanwhile March has arrived. It still looks like January where I am, mind you, and, yet, it could always be worse... it could look like war. But, as is apparent (and not out-of-character), I was a bit premature when designating "Imbolc" as the "last post". There will be this post and one more to come. I'm aiming for exactly 90 posts. It's a matter of symmetry and symbolism.  Esoterically, the number 9 is the perfect place to tie up loose ends and let loose the finished "product" - ones little spaceship careening towards the galaxy's edge.




How poetic.

But then, my muses - and/or my unconscious self - have/has an agenda... and, generally one I can't figure out till the last phase of a project. The agenda of this post started innocently enough. My urge was to post another scan. On a whim I had scanned into this machine a small crystal Merkabah - a recent birthday gift from my friend, Moo. As we know, I love minerals, and scanning them sometimes provides startling results. So, allow me to explain the scans above and to your left.

First off, Merkabah is an esoteric name given to a certain polyhedron - essentially a triakis octahedron and/or a stella octangula... It has a kind of weird shape that combines both the cubic and the hexagonal - in other words, viewed from one angle it looks square, from the other it resembles a 6-pointed star (hence the "stella"); this is a result of the fact that it is comprised of two interlocking tetrahedrons. Kind of like physical reality. My aim was to capture both angles via my flatbed scanner. To this end I taped my Merkabah - with packing tape - to the inside of a shallow box. Posted above are the results. Posted below (and below the jump) are the same scans with the tape digitally removed.

But, it's the light artifacts in the tape which interest me. While its true that cellophane material will create some cool image scans, I was a little startled by the weird effects produced in conjunction with the crystal polyhedron. Let's just say that, optically, light had a field day. One might also be inclined to consider certain myths concerning the Merkabah in a more sympathetic light.

Originally, the word "Merkabah" arose from early Judaic mysticism and referred to the "chariot of God", specifically that envisioned by the prophet Ezekial.  Of course, nothing is so sacred that it can't fall under the auspices of New Age jargon (or, for that matter, Ancient Alien lore). But, kernals of truth are found in the strangest of places.

The Starman & The Swan People (Part II)

"Some Sanskrit mystics locate seven planes of being, the seven spiritual lokas
or worlds within the body of Kala Hamsa, the Swan out of Time and Space..."
- From The Voice of the Silence by H. P. Blavatsky.
(Link to the image above has been lost.)
(All images in this post can be clicked-on for original size.)

"While scientists are still in heated debates about what exactly consciousness is, the University of Arizona’s Stuart Hameroff and British physicist Sir Roger Penrose conclude that it is information stored at a quantum level. Penrose and his team have found evidence that 'protein-based microtubules - a structural component of human cells - carry quantum information - information stored at a sub-atomic level.'

Penrose argues that if a person temporarily dies, this quantum information is released from the microtubules and into the universe. However, if they are resuscitated the quantum information is channeled back into the microtubules and that is what sparks a near death experience. 'If they’re not revived, and the patient dies, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul.'"

- Excerpt from the August 13, 2017 article: Life After Death? - Physicists Says "It's Quantum Information that Transcends from One World to Another." (Inset left: a Penrose tiling)

***

I never could wrap my head around the idea of death; even as a child. Most especially as a child. My first "dead" person was, in fact, my mother's mother. I never really understood why everyone was so dismal when Grandma died. I was, after all, quite convinced she still existed; I could feel she was still there somewhere. In my mind - my primary reality - she just, well, went away. In other words, she went elsewhere, leaving her sick body behind; which was sad (for us) but certainly not tragic (for her). And, really, if she managed to find a better place and feel well again, that was a good thing, wasn't it?

And, to this day, part of me - the part that never "grew up" - still feels the same way. The adult part, on the other hand, is unsure and doesn't know what to think. The adult part mourns. The adult part can't handle death. So, when David Bowie - our Starman - set sail, the adult was devastated and perplexed. Then, one morning - about a month later - I had a strange dream (described in Part I). Or, perhaps, my inner child had the dream. In any case, in the dream the Starman did not die; he "left with the Swan People"... which, in terms of a child's imagination, is not really an odd thing for a Starman to do. Hardly more odd than, let's say, imagining a flock of swans might carry a person to the moon. But, in 1638, Francis Godwin imagined just exactly that...  and wrote about it (inset right). More importantly, nobody even thought he was cracked; some people (Edgar Allen Poe, for one) thought he was ingenious.

(Very obviously) a young swan.

Now, had my adult self merely accepted the dream and moved on, this post would not have been necessary. Instead, "self" felt compelled to google "Swan People," forgetting that, when researching on the web, one invariably gets sucked down a rabbit hole. Call it "obsessive research disorder," a syndrome peculiar to cyberspace where information is (too) easily accessible, and what begins as innocently clicking on a link leads to a dizzying minefield of other links, each a tiny rabbit-hole all in itself.

So, the Starman and the Swan People - originally intended to be merely one (fairly short) post - somehow morphed into three separate posts. Sorry about that, but I can't seem to wrap things up in a lesser number. Could it be a Tesla kind of thing, that is, the Rule of Three? Maybe. Not that it did Tesla any good...