Oct. 30 - How Long Will Our Sun Remain Quiet and Cosmic Rays Increase?‏

Dear Friends,

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http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1635&category=Science

Love and Light.

David

How Long Will Our Sun Remain Quiet and Cosmic Rays Increase?

© 2009 by Linda Moulton Howe

“We don’t have records prior to 1874 that give us details about the sun.

Compared to the past 130 years, our sun now is unprecedented as far as how slow this Solar Cycle 24 is taking off - or not taking off!”

- David Hathaway, Ph.D., NASA Heliospheric Team Leader

NASA'S Advanced Composition Explorer satellite (ACE) launched August 1997 to study solar particles and galactic cosmic rays. It has nine instruments onboard that helps it track solar wind and galactic cosmic rays from interstellar space beyond the heliosphere. ACE serves as a space weather station while in orbit. ACE can provide a one-hour advance warning of any geomagnetic storms that are caused by coronal mass ejections.

Strong solar coronal mass ejections can disrupt radio, TV and telephone communications on Earth. Logo by NASA.

October 30, 2009 Huntsville, Alabama - For twelve years, NASA has had a satellite positioned a million miles in front of Earth with the sun about 92 million miles beyond. Its mission has been to study particles that come near Earth from our sun, the solar system and the galaxy. The satellite is called Advanced Composition Explorer, or ACE, and some of the highly energetic particles ACE has been monitoring are cosmic rays.

The number of cosmic rays reaching Earth are lower when the sun is active and has a strong, turbulent magnetic field that interferes with cosmic ray travel. But when the sun is not active, more cosmic rays reach Earth. The sun is supposed to be in an increasingly active period of Solar Cycle 24 with a solar maximum originally expected in 2011 to 2012. But the sun has been abnormally quiet. Scientists have not seen such a persistently low sunspot number for at least a century. Further, the magnetic field of the sun is at the lowest strength measured in at least 50 years.

Beginning six months ago, ACE satellite data showed a rise in cosmic rays reaching Earth from the Milky Way galaxy. By now, cosmic ray intensity has increased 19% because our sun is so quiet that its reduced magnetic field isn’t deflecting cosmic rays like it has the past few decades. If our sun remains quiet, there could be a 30% increase in cosmic rays reaching Earth in the next year or so – an intensity not seen since 1960. Increased cosmic rays can damage electronic systems and even DNA in living creatures.

Galactic cosmic ray intensities are 19% higher for all elements in last half of 2009. Graphic by Richard Mewaldt, Cal Tech.

What has happened to our sun? NASA’s Heliospheric Team Leader, David Hathaway, says he cannot find another solar minimum in the past that has acted quite like this one that has put out only a few sunspots since Solar Cycle 24 officially began at the end of 2008. Our sun is so quiet that solar physicists from around the world gathered in September to discuss whether we are entering a period similar to the Maunder Minimum of 1645 to 1715, when for 70 years the sun was spotless and there was a mini-ice age. There was no ACE satellite then, but measurements of beryllium concentrations in ice layers indicate that during the Maunder Minimum, cosmic rays were 2.5 times what they are now. Dr. Hathaway points out that Earth scientists did not start measuring cosmic rays until the beginning of the modern Space Age in the early 1960s, and that for the past five decades, our sun might have been unusually active. Also see: 100609Earthfiles

Between 1645 and 1715, the Maunder Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures. During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to a more typical 40,000–50,000 sunspots in modern times. Graphic by NASA.

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Interview:

David Hathaway, Ph.D., NASA Heliospheric Team Leader

David Hathaway, Ph.D., Heliospheric Team Leader, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama: “In the 50 years or so we’ve been making the (cosmic ray) measurements – yeah! this is by far the highest level of galactic cosmic rays that we’re seeing at Earth and we know exactly what is causing it. It’s the sun’s weakened magnetic fields and weakened solar winds that are all related to this Solar Cycle 24 minimum.

Beryllium is produced in the Earth’s upper atmosphere by cosmic rays striking nitrogen in particular and you find it in ice cores. If you look back at the record, there are significant changes. But, the amount that you see also depends on the strength and variations of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Periods like the Maunder Minimum occupy about 15% of the time. If you looked over thousands of years of Beryllium 10, it looks like 15% of the time, the sun is in this quiet state where it’s not producing sunspots. Given that, we’re about due. And I think that’s what comes up and why people are actively talking about grand minima like the Maunder Minimum is that if you go by percentages and the fact it has been so active, then we’re about due (for a long minimum).

We don’t have records prior to 1874 that give us details about the sun. Compared to the past 130 years, our sun now is unprecedented as far as how slow this Solar Cycle 24 is taking off - or not taking off!

Understanding the Peculiar
2008 - 2009 Solar Minimum

The number of days in 2009 without sunspots as of October 29, was 232, or 77% of the time the sun was blank.

WHEN YOU GET TOGETHER NOW WITH YOUR SOLAR AND HELIOSPHERIC COLLEAGUES, DO YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT THE ODDS ARE RIGHT NOW THAT WE COULD BE GOING INTO ANOTHER MAUNDER MINIMUM?

It comes up in conversations all the time! (laughs) There is no doubt about it - it’s in the back of our minds!

Certainly the Maunder Minimum comes up. We recently had a meeting of 60 or 70 solar and heliospheric physicists from around the world who met on Mount Desert Island in Maine back in late September.

September 2009 gathering of solar and heliospheric physics from around the world on Mount Desert Island, Maine, to discuss “Understanding the Peculiar Solar Minimum.”

The title of the meeting was “Understanding the Peculiar Solar Minimum” – meaning this one! (laughs) The interesting thing is that at one point during that meeting, we took a vote amongst ourselves about how many thought that this Solar Cycle 24 is so peculiar that it would have a name attached to it, like Maunder Minimum or Dalton Minimum. It was a small minority that thought that it was that peculiar.

The vast majority felt that this is a significant minimum. It’s smaller than anything we have seen in the 50 years of the Space Age. But it does look like you can go back 100 years or so and find other similar minima.

Now, science is not done by voting! (laughs) So, it remains to be seen about what actually does happen in this Solar Cycle 24.

These were some of the world’s experts in these areas that concluded – yes, this is a deep solar minimum, but at this point, we’re not quite ready to say this is so weird that we need to give a name to it – that it’s something we haven’t seen in 200 years.

HOW DID YOU VOTE?

I didn’t think it was that peculiar. The only peculiar thing I see about it is that it’s so reluctant to get going.

Others are talking about the cosmic rays are through the roof. The number of spotless days is more than we’ve seen in a hundred years. The sun’s poles are weaker than we’ve seen in 30 years. Boy! We have a lot of things we’d like to do that require sunspots on the sun to help us understand how the sun and solar activity work. And without sunspots, we’re kind of shut down! (laughs)

And we also know that at some point, the sun is going to go into another minimum like the Maunder Minimum, but predicting when – I’m not sure I’m ready to go out on that limb. (laughs)

What Happened to 2006 Predictions
of Huge Solar Cycle 24?

ISN’T IT ESPECIALLY STRANGE FOR YOU BECAUSE THREE YEARS AGO, ALL THE PHYSICS OF THE SUN THAT YOU AND NASA AND EVERYBODY ELSE WAS USING WERE ANTICIPATING THAT THIS COULD BE THE BIGGEST SOLAR MAXIMUM ON RECORD?

There were indications back then. I am writing a paper – it’s on my computer as we speak (laughs) – basically saying that I made a big mistake – myself and Bob Wilson – when we wrote a paper in 2006, suggesting Solar Cycle 24 was going to be a huge cycle based on conditions at that time. The problem we had with our prediction was that it was based on a method that assumes that we’re near sunspot cycle minimum.

We had just previously gone through three or four sunspot cycles that had been only ten years long each, so for the one in 1996 to 2006, it seemed like a reasonable assumption. But as we now know, we were off by at least two years. And if we take conditions on the sun now, it’s a completely different story. The conditions now – using even that same technique from 2006 – says that the next sunspot cycle is going to be half what we thought it was back in 2006.

Another big prediction in 2006 was based on a dynamo model – a model for how the sun produces magnetic fields - and it suggested a huge cycle.

But there also were people back at that time saying otherwise. A group of colleagues led by Leif Svalgaard, Ph.D., were looking at the sun’s polar fields and saying even at that point, the sun’s polar fields were significantly weaker than they had been before and those scientists back then predicted it was going to be a small cycle.

How Small Will Solar Cycle 24 Be?

Sunspot 1029, a Solar Cycle 24 magnetic disturbance, grew from October 24 to 29 and has reached about 32,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) end-to-end as it heads around to the back side of the sun.

According to Spaceweather.com, the number of days in 2009 without sunspots as of October 29, was 232, or 77% of the time our sun was blank.
Image courtesy SOHO/MDI.

I’ve come around to that view now. I think there is little doubt in my mind now that we’re in for a small cycle. The big question now is how small? I think most of us are predicting small cycles. I think even the techniques I’m using now are suggesting HALF the size of the last three or four solar cycles, but my fear is that even that might be too big just from the fact that it’s taken so long for this Solar Cycle 24 to really get off the ground and start producing sunspots.

I have no doubt at this point that it’s going to be a little cycle. My current prediction is that it’s going to be about half of what we’ve seen in the last four solar cycles or so. But in my gut, I feel it’s going to be smaller than that! (laughs) It’s just so slow in taking off and the indicators that we see – both the polar fields and the geomagnetic indicators are lower than anything we’ve seen before.

No More 2012 Solar Maximum for Cycle 24?

ISN’T IT IRONIC THAT THERE HAS BEEN ALL THIS ANTICIPATION OF 2012 BECAUSE OF THE CLOSING DOWN OF THE MAYAN CALENDAR AND THE EXPECTATION THAT POSSIBLY SOMETHING ON OR FROM THE SUN OR RELATED TO THE SUN MIGHT IMPACT THE EARTH DURING SOME LARGE SOLAR MAXIMUM IN 2012. BUT RIGHT NOW, DOES IT SEEM LIKE THE SUN WILL BE ESPECIALLY QUIET IN 2012?

Indeed. In fact, when we came out with the prediction of a big cycle back in 2006, I got lots of emails from folks. If it was going to be such a big cycle, it should have started in 2006 so by 2012, it ought to be at its peak.

And at this point, it looks like, ‘No, I don’t think so!’ (laughs) Not at all! I think it’s going to be a small peak and it’s not going to be in 2012. It’s going to be in 2013. So, I think any connection that people might try to make between solar activity and the end of the Mayan calendar cycle is problematic.

IN FACT, IN 2012, THE SUN MIGHT BE THE QUIETEST IT HAS BEEN AT A SOLAR MAXIMUM FOR 130 OR MORE YEARS?

Yes, indeed! It might be. The Mayans never said there were going to be disasters. It’s just that it’s the end of that cycle and you start another one.

IS IT FAIR TO SAY THAT THE SUN IS BOTH PECULIAR AND UNPREDICTABLE?

Yeah, I’d buy that! (laughs) Most definitely!

Our Variable Sun

WHICH IS KIND OF EERIE FOR EARTH LIFE DEPENDENT ON THAT SUN.

Yeah, the good thing is that when you look at what we really depend upon, which is the radiant energy from the sun – even over the full extent of the sunspot cycle, that only varies by 1/10th of 1%. So, we’re lucky in that regard. It’s a small change. If it were big, I think in terms of evolution, we wouldn’t be here talking about it. But the fact is when it comes to variable stars, our sun’s variability is tiny. Any big solar variations could really wreak havoc on our climate and survivability.

Our Middle Age Sun Is Getting Brighter

In fact, in the much longer picture looking over billions of years, the sun is getting brighter. The sun now is some 30% brighter as far as the energy it puts out than it was 3.5 or 4 billion years ago. This is just part of how stars work. As they burn up the hydrogen in the core to make helium, the core starts to collapse a bit and heat up and that expands the outer layers and makes the sun brighter.

IN THE EVER-INCREASING BRIGHTNESS OF OUR SUN, IT IS HEADED TO BECOMING A RED GIANT AT ITS DEATH, ISN’T IT?

Yeah – we’ve got a long time to wait for that – another 4.5 to 5 billion years! But the sun is quite erratic and really hard to predict. I know from very personal experience!” (laughs)

Solar scientists are trying to understand how changes in sunspot activity and other solar events can affect Earth in ways that are indirect, but can have a significant impact. Image courtesy NCAR.


From: Earthfirles.com Science
http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1635&category=Science
Author: Linda Moulton Howe

Oct. 30 -

Dear Friends,

http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j44/lachman.asp?page=1

Love and Light.

David

2013: Or, What to Do When the Apocalypse Doesn’t Arrive

by Gary Lachman

Gary Lachman

Bio & resources

The belief in a coming end of the world as we know it may seem understandable to people living in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but a look at history shows that it has been part of Western psychology from the beginning.

The central figure of Western religion, Jesus Christ, told his followers that the end was nigh, and most people who accepted Jesus believed that the cosmic last call would come in their lifetime. Yet Jesus worked within an age-old Jewish tradition that looked to the coming of the Messiah, a religious and political leader who would set the world to rights and, incidentally, free the Chosen People from whomever it was who had conquered them at the time. As Jesus didn’t free the Jews from the Romans—nor seemed able to free himself from them either—the Jews who denied him seem justified in their disbelief. To them, and to the Romans, the Christians who preached a coming Day of Judgment were rather like the urban oracles who inhabit most major cities today, ranting on street corners and pestering passersby to repent.

Post-Jesus, the Jews didn’t give up their anticipation of a Messiah. They merely pushed back the date of his arrival, a tactic the Christians soon adopted as well when it became clear that Jesus’ Second Coming—after his crucifixion and resurrection—was delayed. The last major claimant to Messiahdom was the Turkish Jew Sabbatai Zevi, who, after gathering a huge following, ignominiously abandoned his call in 1666 when threatened with impalement by Sultan Mehmet IV. As did later students of eschatology (the study of the end times), the early Christian theorists were adept in cooking the books and explaining why their own final curtain hadn’t yet fallen. Nevertheless, against all the evidence, the belief in some once-and-for-all denouement remained strong. In 156 AD, for example, a Phrygian named Montanus declared that he was the incarnation of the Holy Spirit and that, in accordance with the Fourth Gospel, he would reveal “things to come,” such as the imminent arrival of Christ’s kingdom, which would physically descend from the heavens and transform Phrygia into a land of saints. Understandably, thousands of Christians flocked to Phrygia to await the Second Coming. Yet again, the expected kingdom’s failure to arrive did little to dampen the belief that it would eventually show up. After Montanus, there were several other false alarms, all of which ended in the same way.

Ironically, the Church itself soon became a strong inhibitor of apocalyptic thought. By the time it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, with the emperor Constantine in the early fourth century, the idea of a coming apocalypse was more of a threat than a promise. The Church was the second most powerful organization in the empire, and that it would lose this status because of the end of the world wasn’t appealing. Drawing on the work of the third-century theologian Origen, it shifted the emphasis from a historical apocalypse to a spiritual one and developed an eschatology of the individual soul. This idea caught on with the more educated and socially well-situated Christians, but the more spectacular theme of a “real-life” apocalypse remained part of the common people’s worldview and has been so ever since, as anyone aware of the enormous popularity of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels, based on a selective reading of the Book of Revelations, knows. Titles like The Rapture, Tribulation Force, and The Mark don’t show up on the New York Times bestseller list, but millions of readers with a taste for Christian fundamentalism buy and read these books—well—religiously, as page-turning guides to the coming end times. The overarching theme of Left Behind is the fate of those who are not right with the Lord and who face a gory retribution come the last days. A gateway to paradise for the faithful few, for the disbelieving many, the millennium is their worst nightmare.

As the historian Norman Cohn argues in The Pursuit of the Millennium, millenarian scenarios share some basic ideas. Salvation is collective, involving everyone, although not everyone will be saved; it is to be experienced here on Earth, not in some afterlife; it is on its way and will arrive suddenly; it will be total, effecting a complete transformation of life as we know it; and it is to be achieved through supernatural forces. As Cohn argues, by the Middle Ages, grassroots expectation of the millennium was rampant. With a corrupt Church, the common folk sought salvation through a cleansing apocalypse. This led to some remarkable developments, like the Brethren of the Free Spirit, a loose community of radical Christians circa 1200 who, because of the coming end times, believed they had become free of sin and acted accordingly. Wandering from village to village, they rejected private property—which meant they took whatever they wanted—and devoted themselves to hedonistic pleasures, including “free love” and drunkenness, rather like medieval hippies. Less driven by theology, this and other millenarian sects sought to escape the deprivations of their lives by envisioning a coming cosmic reversal that would set the righteous lowly at the head of the table, with the worldly powerful at best receiving scraps.

The motivation for many of these sects isn’t difficult to grasp. Socially and economically disenfranchised, they resented the generally fine living many monks and priests enjoyed, and understandably wanted some for themselves. If it took an apocalypse to bring this about, so be it. This aspect of millenarianism informed the secular varieties familiar to the modern period, and while the French and Russian revolutions lacked the supernatural forces common to most millenarian movements, they both shared the other criteria admirably. The storming of the Bastille inaugurated the Age of Reason, and the Bolshevik murder of the Romanovs announced the dictatorship of the proletariat. Hitler’s National Socialism was perhaps the most millenarian modern movement of them all, celebrating a Third Reich that would, it claimed, last a thousand years. (Thankfully, all it managed was twelve.) Yet just as the Church did, the leaders of these secular apocalypses soon clamped down on any who felt these events weren’t quite apocalyptic enough; and in all three cases, for many the end times only brought new oppression. Another example of secular millenarian belief was the hoopla in Europe that accompanied the outbreak of the First World War. Many believed that by the end of the nineteenth century Western civilization had become rotten, and they looked to war as a way of clearing away the old world in preparation for the new. It was not until the reality of trench warfare took hold that those expectations dimmed and the war was seen as yet another example of the very thing it was supposed to eliminate.

While I’ve been lucky enough to have missed anything like the French or Russian revolution and the First World War, my own lifetime has been peppered with quite a few millennial expectations. Growing up in the 1960s, through the media I was aware of the modern Brethren of the Free Spirit in places like Greenwich Village and Haight-Ashbury. I was also aware that something called the Age of Aquarius either was on its way or had already arrived (the jury is still out on this). Linked to this was the idea that the fabled lost continent of Atlantis-—which I read about in comic books and fantasy paperbacks—was due to surface sometime in 1969. Both were heralds of a coming golden age, when “peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.” By the early seventies such anticipations had fizzled, but in 1974 they were briefly revived when comet Kohoutek sparked new interest in apocalyptic beliefs. A Christian group called the Children of God—who, incidentally, advocated “revolutionary lovemaking” (read: promiscuity)—distributed leaflets announcing doomsday for January of that year, which my friends and I read with interest. Predictably, Kohoutek fizzled as well. That same year, the science writers John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann published The Jupiter Effect, a bestseller predicting the devastating results (earthquakes, tidal waves, etc.) of a curious alignment of the planets on one side of the sun. When the alignment took place and nothing happened, they wrote a second book, The Jupiter Effect Reconsidered, explaining what went wrong. Not surprisingly, this sequel didn’t sell as well.

There were other millennial dates too. Remember the solar eclipse of 1999 and Y2K, the millennium bug? But the most significant millennial date so far in my lifetime surely was 1987, the year of the Harmonic Convergence—another planetary alignment—which was seen as the kickoff for the most anticipated apocalyptic event in recent years, the year 2012. For those unaware, proponents of 2012 argue that an ancient Mayan calendar—combined with permutations of the I Ching—predicts that tremendous changes will take place in that year and that, as one advocate expresses it, a “singularity,” an event of unprecedented ontological character, will take place and, as the saying goes, transform life as we know it. Recalling Norman Cohn’s criteria for millenarian belief, from everything I’ve heard about 2012, it fits the bill nicely.

I first heard of the Harmonic Convergence in 1987 when I was working at a well-known New Age bookshop in Los Angeles. Although items like crystals and other spiritual accessories were already big sellers, I was intrigued by the flood of people gathering metaphysical paraphernalia in preparation for some major event. I was informed that like Kohoutek, Atlantis, and the Aquarian Age, the Harmonic Convergence marked the end of the old world and the beginning of the new. There would be some disturbance, yes, the Harmonic Convergers I spoke with informed me; the shift into the new time would not be smooth, but I shouldn’t worry. Apparently, the bookshop was one of the safest places on the planet and I would be protected. This was, I admit, a relief, and as my apartment was just a block away from the shop, I wondered just how far the protection would reach.

The sources about the coming event were José Argüelles’s The Mayan Factor and, later, Terence McKenna’s writings on his “time wave” theory in The Archaic Revival and other books. I read Argüelles but wasn’t impressed, and when a later book, Surfers of the Zuvuya, appeared, it just seemed silly. I was also not taken with his apparent adoption of the role of avatar, an identity other proponents of 2012 seem to embrace easily. (I did, however, find an earlier book, The Transformative Vision, to be a profitable study in cultural philosophy.) I found McKenna more interesting and a better writer, but I still wasn’t sold on the idea. I heard McKenna speak, and without doubt the man had kissed the Blarney Stone, but after an entertaining ninety minutes I left the lecture no more convinced than when I arrived. The fact that he banked a great deal on a liberal indulgence in hallucinogens also made me question his seriousness. I had had my own experiences with psychedelics, and while some were interesting, for the most part they seemed more a distraction than anything else.

Much has been written about 2012, pointing out both the value and the flaws in Argüelles’s and McKenna’s interpretations. I don’t intend to repeat those here. The strangeness of the ideas did not repel me. At the time that I came across them, I was reading Rudolf Steiner, who had his own prophecies concerning the third millennium, which, to be honest, were rather vague. I had also already spent some years in the Gurdjieff “work,” so odd ideas were not a threat. What troubled me then and today is what I call the “apocalyptic gesture,” a point I raised recently on the Reality Sandwich website, much of which is dedicated to the 2012 scenario. The desire for some once-and-for-all break with the given conditions of life seems, to me at least, to be embedded in our psyche and is a form of historical or evolutionary impatience. Social, political, or cultural conditions may trigger it, but in essence it’s the same reaction as losing patience with some annoying, mundane business and, in frustration, knocking it aside with the intent to make a “clean start.” While in our personal lives this may result in nothing more than a string of false beginnings and a lack of staying power, on the broader social and political scale it can mean something far more serious.

In essays like “The Destructive Character,” “Critique of Violence,” and “Theologico-Political Fragment,” the German-Jewish cultural thinker Walter Benjamin, who combined an idiosyncratic Marxism with an equally eccentric understanding of the Kabbalah, argued for the need for apocalyptic violence in order to bring about the Messianic Age. Whether it was the class war or Jehovah’s righteous wrath, Benjamin believed in the necessity for some final conclusive event that would restore the fallen world to paradise. The violence of divine intervention and a sudden eschatological change informed Benjamin’s view of history, which he famously saw as a “single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage.” This hunger for some decisive action to clear away the detritus of the postlapsarian world informed Benjamin’s personal life too, and in 1940, trying to escape from the Nazis, he committed suicide, enacting upon himself an apocalyptic violence he had long contemplated.

In mentioning Benjamin, I’m not suggesting that believers in 2012 advocate violence. I am saying that the anticipation of a singularity associated with 2012 is a manifestation of what may very well be a Jungian archetype, the archetype of the apocalypse. And while violence may not be part of the prophecy, it can easily become part of the anticlimax when the apocalypse doesn’t arrive and disappointment sets in. Recent history suggests this. The “Summer of Love” in 1967—which by many accounts wasn’t as groovy as believed—quickly became the year of “Street Fighting Man” in 1968, when the “generation gap” promised to turn into something like revolution, and dangerous slogans like “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” promoted a simplistic us-or-them scenario. Yet by 1969 the hopes of an Aquarian Age had been severely battered by the gruesome Charles Manson murders and the Rolling Stones’ disastrous concert at Altamont, when Hell’s Angels murdered one man and terrorized hundreds of others, including the Stones themselves. (I tell the story in Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius.) Exorbitantly high hopes can often lead to very deep depressions, and in a microcosmic popular sense, within a few years the peace and love unreservedly embraced by the flower generation became the “no future” of the punks. Cynicism, jadedness, and pessimism often constitute the hangover from the intoxication of excessively high expectations. No one rejects ideals more vigorously than a bruised romantic.

Again, in mentioning this I’m not saying that the many crises that lead some to look to 2012 as a solution are not real. Clearly they are. We all know them, and it would be tedious for me to roll off a list. But anticipating an apocalypse or singularity is only one response to crises. There are others. And a radical shift in the nature of things is only one possibility.

Three Possible Futures

An interview with Joel Garreau, author of Radical Evolution

According to Joel Garreau, Washington Post reporter and author of Radical Evolution, humans are at a precipitous turning point in history, one in which our accelerating technological capacity has made us the first species to have significant control over our own evolution. Citing trends in four major technology sectors—genetic, robotic, informational, and nanotech—Garreau says that the world could look very different in the not-too-distant future. The unanswered question is: Will it be utopian, dystopian, or something in between? We asked Garreau to give us his vision for our technological destiny.

The way I see it, there are three scenarios: heaven, hell, and prevail. In the first, heaven, all of these marvelous technologies come online rapidly. We conquer pain, suffering, stupidity, ignorance, and even death. Essentially, it looks indistinguishable from the Christian version of heaven. And it could happen. You see amazing headlines in the paper every day.

The second is the hell scenario. That’s the one in which these new technologies get into the hands of madmen or fools. Believers in this outcome suggest that if these technologies are used for ill, the whole human race could be wiped out within the next twenty years. And this is also a credible scenario.

The trouble with both the heaven and hell scenarios is that they are technodeterministic. In other words, both perspectives hold that technology drives history. They say that humans are pretty much along for the ride, and there’s not much we can do about it.

As a humanist, I’m pulling for a third scenario, which I call prevail. To understand this scenario, imagine a graph with two curves on it. One curve represents society’s increasing challenges; the second represents our potential for adaptive response. If our response curve stays more or less flat while our challenges rise exponentially, then we’re obviously in trouble, because the gap just keeps on getting wider and wider. But suppose our responses are also going up at a similar clip. That’s at the heart of the prevail scenario.

You can see an example of this in the Middle Ages. Looking at the future of the human race from the perspective of that time, you could be forgiven for thinking that we were pretty much toast. You’d be seeing marauding hordes and plagues and all sorts of evil stuff. You’d probably be thinking, “God, this isn’t going to end up well.” Then all of a sudden, in 1450, along came the printing press, and there was a new way of storing, sharing, collecting, and distributing ideas that was previously unimaginable. This led to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which gave birth to science, democracy, and eventually to the world we have today. What’s interesting is that all of this change was beyond the imagination of any one king or country. It was the collective action of millions of humans organizing themselves in a bottom-up way. They didn’t wait for the leaders to tell them what to do but changed their world to produce things as best they could.

We see this prevail scenario again on 9/11 with the fourth airplane that never made it to its intended target. A couple dozen people onboard, empowered by their cell phone technology, diagnosed and cured their society’s ills in a little under an hour. Was it a perfect solution? Obviously not, because they all died. But it was good enough. They were ordinary humans who didn’t wait for their leaders to come up with a solution but did it themselves. So the heart of the prevail scenario is the idea that humans can act collectively to produce astonishing change . . . and we’ve been doing this for a very long time.

Joel Garreau is a reporter for the Washington Post and author of Radical Evolution.

From: EnlightenNext Magazine
Author:Gary Lachman
http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j44/lachman.asp?page=1

Oct. 30 - Update From Goro‏

Dear Friends,

Latest update from Goro...Click the link if you don't receive the images/can't access the links.

http://www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/updates-oct09.htm#102909

Love and Light.

David



ARCHIVED UPDATES
From Oct 24, 2009~
[earlier archives]

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Oct 24: I'm thinking ~November 4th should be interesting. There seems to be a convergence of patterns around there... with an apparent theme of 'political deep impact'. Not sure what that implies.

[Permalink]

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Oct 24: Ready? Here we go...

'V' premieres November 3rd
Michael Jackson 'This Is It' documentary in theaters
October 28 through November 11

Michael Jackson's own 'V' pose ...

This is the Moonwalker Resurrection - symbolically interchangeable with the death & rebirth of (princess) Diana the Moon goddess (as discussed in 'The Moonwalker Prophecy')...

... who is in 'V'.

Curiously:
Actress Morena Baccarin who 'resurrects' 'Anna'/'Diana' in 'V' is best known for her role as 'Inara Serra', a sacred prostitute (elite courtesan), in Firefly/Serenity. Now starring in 'V' - which is a 'Grail'/womb symbol popularized by The Da Vinci Code - Morena becomes a bona-fide 'Mary Magdalene' meta-character. This year MM and Diana moon-goddess are particularly interchangeable thanks to a total solar eclipse - the Moon occulting the Sun - coming precisely on the feast day of Mary Magdalene (July 22).

Now...

Flying Saucer

Oct 15: 'Balloon Boy' incident
Nov 03: 'V' First Contact

The road leads to Roswell and Genesis...

...collectively whispering 'Solar Impact'.

- Balloon Boy father (main hoaxer) reportedly obsessed with 2012 Solar Impact doom scenario

- NASA Genesis was returning from the Sun with solar wind samples onboard (9/8/2004)

- Roswell UFO/balloon crash came in the year of the biggest sunspot on record (1947)

[Biggest sunspot on record in 1947 - source]

A scenario straight out of Knowing (2009)...

The end of the world by a solar 'super flare'...

...featuring Lunar Impact.

One of the main characters 'Diana' killed in a car crash - just like Princess Diana.

Her bloodline survives through her offspring with some help from whispering aliens.

Knowing = First Contact

November 3: 'V' debut
November 4: 'V for Vendetta'
(original release date/changed)
November 5: Guy Fawkes Night

Based on actual Nov 5 (1975) UFO incident	UFO/ET/abduction film released Nov 6 (2009)

Once again - an upside down circumscribed Pentagram!

V for Vendetta much like V is about a fascistic world filled with media manipulations.

This is Palingenesis - literally meaning 'born again' or 'rebirth' but politically denoting fascism.

That's the dark side of the theme of the Death/Rebirth of Diana - personified by Sarah Palin...

[Palin book(s) coming out November 17, 2009]

...who happens to be Princess Diana's distant cousin and her first name means 'princess'. The (re-)birth of Palin is 'Palin Genesis' or Palingenesis. Obviously another allusion to be inferred from the Genesis Impact.

After the 2008 election and especially after her resignation as Alaska governor in July, many thought Palin was done. A goner. And yet here she is still standing and still looking as though she may well run for the White House again in 2012. (How crazy is that?) 'Palin-Genesis'... her 'Mayan rebirth'.

Multicontextually speaking Palin embodies the 'Whore of Babylon' or 'Scarlet Lady'... riding the Beast, as discussed in my article 'Mayan Palingenesis'. If we want destruction and doom, then we want Palin. They're giving us a rope to hang ourselves with. Whispering to us 'do it, do it...' Soon, insidious media propaganda will kick into a higher gear and... well, it will be something to behold.

It's no coincidence that 'November 4' was Election Day (US presidential) last year. Politics appears to be at or near the heart of the unfolding sequence of which ~November 4, 2009 seems to be the next major 'portal' based on some multicontextual timeline analyses. We're already seeing major signals (including 'V') but there's also a real possibility of an actual impact event(s) to express the idea of (political?) 'great flood'.

There's a bigger picture of course, of which the above is merely a subset. Less political (thank god!), a lot more spooky... and 'real'. Stay tuned...

* * *

Related earlier posts:

Sep 08 Pentagram, health care, 9/9/9, Venus orbit
Sep 23 Pentagrammic 9/9/9 Ritual
Oct 06 Pentagrammic Water/Lunar Impact Timecode
Oct 12 M. Jackson 'This Is It' pentagram
Oct 18 Balloon Boy, Roswell, Genesis

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From: Super Torch Ritual

Oct. 30 - November 8, 2009, the beginning of the Sixth night of the Galactic Underworld‏

Dear Friends,

Click the link if you don't receive the images.

http://www.calleman.com/content/articles/nov8_sixth_night.htm

Love and Light.

David

November 8, 2009, the beginning of the Sixth night
of the Galactic Underworld

Before going into the specifics of the upcoming sixth night of the Galactic Underworld, November 8, 2009 – November 2, 2010, I feel I should clarify some of my basic points of departure for understanding the Mayan calendar, since the various ideas that are currently proposed for this vary significantly. There are for instance those that believe that the end date of the Mayan calendar only marks the end of a cycle and the beginning of a new. On my own part I however think that we are approaching something much more profound than just a point in a cycle that again will be repeated. Thus, there is overwhelming empirical evidence that we are approaching a point in time when nine evolutionary levels of the cosmic plan are simultaneously going to be completed. This is in accordance with the only Mayan inscription from ancient times, the Tortuguero monument, which describes what will happen at the end date. This would imply that we are approaching not another cycle or another shift, but the end to all shifts, something that all evolution has been a preparation for and a build-up towards. Only such an end to all shifts would conceivably provide the basis for a harmonious eternal peace on Earth.

What is about to transpire now is in other words not something that has ever happened before in the history of the universe. Maybe this impending, partially unknown, causes the widespread denial that I feel dominate many people at the current moment. Rather than facing a tremendous change in our socioeconomic relationships (since any change in human consciousness also implies a change in our relationships) many prefer to fantasize about some physical or astronomical event, that purportedly is going to happen on some specific date. In reality the Mayan calendar is however not about something that will happen on a singular date, but a description of a divine plan for the evolution of consciousness where quantum shifts between calendrical energies bring about shifts in consciousness. Human consciousness will continue to be transformed step by step in accordance with this plan until we come to the real end date of the process of creation, October 28, 2011. At this date the highest quantum state of the universe will be attained (13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13 13 Ahau) when the shifts disrupting the harmony will come to an end. Obviously, we are not there yet.

In this plan for the evolution of consciousness we are now approaching the sixth night of the Galactic Underworld, the eighth of the nine Underworlds, which will begin on November 8, 2009. If my understanding of the Mayan calendar is correct we will in this coming night be witnessing the most significant transformation of consciousness ever in the history of mankind. What is exciting about this is that a relatively clear picture of how a new world may be born is now finally becoming evident. On the other hand, what is also becoming increasingly clear is that this birth is likely to become very demanding. For this reason it becomes all the more important to understand how some of the difficulties ahead actually serve the delivery of this new world even though it may not always seem that they do in the moment. If people can gain a realistic understanding of how this new world will be born people may be able to keep a hope for the future, which is based on something more than mere wishful thinking. Unfortunately, much confusion reigns about the Mayan calendar and many that present themselves as experts on this deny the ancient Mayan knowledge that there are nine cosmic forces that are about to manifest, and that it is these, and nothing else, that explains why a new world will be born.

Thus, what will happen in the time ahead cannot be understood from the sixth night of the Galactic Underworld alone. The overlapping with the cycles preparing for the ninth, and highest, level in the cosmic evolution scheme; the Universal Underworld (see Figure) with the energy of the sixth night will also need to be taken into consideration. Because of this overlapping, and the speed-up of time associated especially with the latter Underworld, not only do I think that the upcoming period will be unusually intense, but also energetically quite complex.

At the time of this writing (October 26, 2009, 9 Lamat) we are still in the latter part of the sixth day, the period of flowering in the process from seed to mature fruit in the Galactic Underworld, which precedes the sixth night. As I predicted in an earlier article some economists have now started to say that the “global economic recession” (or the worst of it) is already over. There are however certain things currently going on in the world that belies this and are more in line with the prediction I made earlier of a further economic downturn, especially expressed in a fall in the value of the US dollar, as the sixth night begins. (November 8, 2009 is when the quantum shift in energy takes places in the Heavens, but there is always an uncertainty as to when the new energy lands in the world). This prediction was based on the observation that nights, at least in the second part of an Underworld, usually mean at the very least a slowdown of economic growth. An indication of such an impending downturn at this upcoming night is for instance that there has been a rush for gold, which for the first time passed the magical limit of USD 1000/troy ounce. Moreover, an index of insider trading shows that people knowledgeable about the actual basis for valuing US stock tend to think of this as highly overvalued. Most importantly, increasingly higher voices are now raised in almost all corners of the world for the replacement of the petrodollar system and thus also of the use of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. These various indices thus do not indicate that the “recession” is over, but if anything that an intensification of the economic decline, especially in the indebted West, is imminent. It seems that investors are escaping assets in the form of paper or digit values, which is exactly what we would expect from this late phase of the Galactic Underworld, when a shift in consciousness amounting to a shift from abstract to concrete economic values is taking place.

I thus believe that what is happening in the world’s economy is something much more profound and fundamental than a temporary recession. What is happening is instead a direct consequence of the particular transformation of consciousness that the Galactic Underworld is bringing. Consciousness in my view is primarily a relationship to the World Tree, which exists on many different levels of the cosmos and causes synchronized shifts on these different levels. What this means is that the shifts in consciousness that give new directions to our lives will also directly affect the world and society at large and how we relate to this. A shift in consciousness is hence not something that only happens in our heads, but also simultaneously external changes in the relationships of the world. If this argument is true we should expect an even further escape from abstract values as the sixth night begins, a shift that may be expected to especially severely hit the western economies of the United States and the United Kingdom, which remain the financial centers of the world and control much of its banking activities. At the present time these nations, and especially the United States, are so indebted that there really is no need to present an explanation as to why there would be another downturn in its economy. All that is needed is something to trigger what is going to happen one way or another. While many things may trigger such a downturn, and the media will place all the emphasis on this trigger, the deeper reasons for a downturn is in my view best understood from the Mayan calendar, since this explains its underlying reasons in how the human mind is influenced by shifts in cosmic energy. From a Mayan calendar perspective the ongoing decline in economic growth reflects a stepwise adaptation to the end of the economic cycles that will be associated with the Mayan end date (or beginning date of a new world if you like).

If the downturn of the economy is part of a process creating the conditions for the birth of a new world a relevant question to ask is how deep it is going to be. Even if it seems clear that the value of paper money, and especially the US dollar, will be hit, it is still somewhat of an open question how far-reaching the consequences of this will be. I think this can only be understood from a study of what might be the nature of the new world to be born. When it comes to understanding this it seems however that there are actually no ancient Mayan sources to consult. The Mayan sources only say that Nine Underworlds are going to manifest as the calendar comes to an end, but there is no ancient inscription, which talks about what will follow upon this. Because of this dearth of material I suggest that we turn to sources from the large Abrahamic religions such as the Bible or the Quran, which do say something on the matter. If we combine these with our understanding from the Mayan calendar I feel we may gain some idea of what is to come.

Hence, the Quran says this in Surah 82:17-19: “And what will explain to thee what the Day of Judgment is? Again, what will explain to thee what the Day of Judgment is? (It will be) the Day when no soul shall have power (to do) aught for another: For the command, that Day, will be (wholly) with Allah.” I believe this disappearance of dominance may refer to the Universal Underworld, which brings a consciousness of oneness and transparency to our whole beings and all of our past actions. If we take this seriously it would imply that all chains to people dominating others would need to be broken before this. The last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation 21:4-5 also describes a new world to be born: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.” This would seem to imply that all chains to the past would need to be broken for the new world to be born. Taken together it would seem that as pre-requisites for the birth of a new earth we would need to free ourselves from the chains to the past as well as from chains to other people.

To some these changes may look so great that it might even be more comfortable to fantasize that the world would come to an end than to go through all of the necessary changes turning our world upside down. Certainly, there is also a tremendous amount of people in power, who do not want to see such a transformation towards equality and harmony coming about. These quotes may however give us a hint about how difficult the economic downturn may become. Will money for instance disappear completely? I think the answer to this is that money will disappear to the extent that it no longer chains the world to the past. In practice, this probably means that all thinking about profitable investing etc seem to be somewhat beside the point, since the emerging new world is not likely to be a growth economy based on the drive for accumulation of abstract values. More likely, the new world is going to be one based on sharing and care-taking of all members of society as the unity consciousness of the Universal Underworld, presumably after much turmoil, eventually is established. The more immediate time period in the sixth night will then be when the practical expressions of this transformation will need to be tested out and implemented. This may from the perspective of the current world seem unthinkable. Yet, we shall remember that there is no such thing as an eternal human nature and that our perception of reality, and what we are propelled to create, always varies between the different Underworlds. The human beings of the Regional, National, Planetary and Galactic Underworlds are completely different in their approach to life and the universal human being that will be created by the Ninth and Universal Underworld will represent the crowning step of the evolution of consciousness. Thus, she is then likely to embody a different perception of the world and different qualities compared to previously.

So how in practice will this transition come about from a human being, who essentially looks after herself to one that sees the unity of all and shares the fruits of creation? Such a transformation of our experience of life may now seem as impossible as the fall of the Berlin Wall once seemed. But similarly to how the fall of the Berlin Wall ultimately was a reflection of a transcendence of an east-west polarity in human consciousness the new world to be born is designed to result from a transcendence of the inner and outer walls maintained especially by the western mind. Thus, my suspicion is that during the first half of the sixth night the world’s economy will increasingly slow down and the consumption of the US population will no longer be able to keep the industrial engines of the world going. Yet, because of the indirect effects of this downturn, no part of the world can expect to be untouched. In this downturn it will then come a point when it will start to dawn on many people that it will never be possible to resurrect the old growth economy and that there will be never be any return to a “business as usual.” At that point very radical socio-economic solutions will need to be explored for people to survive also in a literal physical sense as it becomes obvious that it is the nature of the economic relationships and the chains to the economy of the past that cause this situation. We may for instance ask what will happen if major portions of the population in economically significant countries like will not be able to pay their mortgages? Will these people then have to leave their houses in mass so that countless houses owned by banks will sit empty when people are out on the streets? This is the kind of situation that has already appeared in the some car manufacturing suburbs of Detroit. Hence, this scenario is not hypothetical, but has already to some extent happened on a limited scale.

What likely will happen then is that demands will be raised for a moratorium on all debts, so that people will no longer have to pay to the banks to stay in their homes. Maybe this will be preceded on a larger scale on a larger scale as some nations see it necessary to push for the cancellations of national debts as a means of stabilizing the world. If such a moratorium on debts is instituted it would in fact be like cancelling the power of money as it exists now. It would mean a shift into an economic system, which no longer is enslaved by the past. This would then obviously also mean an end to the borrowing of money effectively creating a break for the growth economy. Instead what would be emphasized is that the needs of people are met in the present moment (returning to the theme of cutting the chains of the past). This of course would be nothing short of a revolution, and most likely a worldwide such, since the worlds’ economies at the current time are so deeply entangled. Most likely this would spread from the US to much of the rest of the world. Such an enormous transformation of the world’s socio-economic system would then be likely to take place in the time period between July 17, 2010 (the Cosmic Convergence)* and the beginning of the Seventh day of the Galactic Underworld (November 3, 2010). Naturally, it would have repercussions for all of the systems of dominance that the world has inherited especially from the National, but also the Planetary, Underworld. Energetically speaking this time period, July 17-November 3, 2010, is created through the overlap of the pre-Universal Underworld and the Galactic Underworld.** What this revolutionary time period most likely is going to amount to is a corresponding decrease of governmental and national authority (not that of any particular government, but governmental authority as such, something which humanity has inherited from the National Underworld). It will seriously come into question what we need governments and national borders for “when no soul shall have power (to do) aught for another.” My vision for the time period from the Cosmic Convergence until the beginning of the seventh day of the Galactic Underworld is thus a total overhaul of human civilization. This then would also be a time to make choices of path individually.

Why would this particular time period, July 17, 2010 – November 2, 2010, bring such a revolutionary transformation? Well, there are two earlier time periods that are noteworthy as parallels to this upcoming one. One is AD 1498-1617, the Renaissance, which in a broad sense meant the overturning of the feudal system that saw the Vatican as the ultimate source of worldly power and the beginning of the modern era. The other is 1986-1992, which carried a revolutionary wave of democracy (including the fall of the Berlin Wall) resulting in a world whose hemispheres were no longer separated. We may also notice that these two revolutionary time periods gave rise to new expressions of spirituality, in the first case the Reformation and in the second the Harmonic Convergence*** that became somewhat of a starting point for the eclectic spirituality of our own time.

I feel it is an open question whether this transformative revolution between July 17 and November 3, 2010 will be violent or not. What seems clear however is that people will be divided as to whether they want to flow with the incoming energies leading towards a new world or if they will resist them and seek to hold on to or go back to the system of the past. How they relate to this change will however also depend on the understanding people have of the Mayan calendar and the cosmic plan, which at the current time only a very small minority is aware of at least in its true form as a manifestation of nine cosmic forces. People at large may in fact never recognize any conscious warning signals for what is to come. Yet, inasmuch as they understand that the large-scale changes emanate from a divine plan this would mean that a spiritual awakening could take place. If this happens they will not be inclined to look at the changes around them as just meaningless chaotic events as they surely will be presented by the dominating media.

Considering that this is all about the participation in a process of evolution of consciousness there is a great danger in people believing that the Mayan calendar is about a singular date (such as December 21, 2012) when some event will happen, whether this is made up as a “pole shift”, “galactic alignment,” “Planet X,” “end of the world” or “shift in consciousness.” This is an incredibly naïve view of an essentially religious, or superstitious, nature where changes are believed to simply fall down upon the human beings from the sky without their active and conscious participation in the processes leading up to a state of unity consciousness. In reality, there is overwhelming evidence that the Mayan calendar describes sequential shifts in consciousness, which will begin to be experienced at an even higher frequency after July 17, 2010 and even more markedly so after the beginning of the actual Universal Underworld on March 8, 2011. Only at October 28, 2011 will the shifts come to an end and a unity consciousness stabilize that will provide the basis for a millennium of peace. This frequency increase incidentally also explains such a tremendous overhaul of all systems of dominance could take place in such a short period of time. A recommendation I would like to make, in addition to ethical living and telling the truth, is to learn to flow with the ninth level (http://www.calleman.com/content/articles/999_and_the_mayan_calendar.htm). Stay in the middle of the river with a focus on the manifestation of the new world!

Carl Johan Calleman
Berlin, October 26, 2009 (9 Lamat)

* In my earlier books I have vacillated when it comes to the duration of the Universal Underworld, sometimes thinking that it will be a tzolkin round of 260 days and sometimes that it would be a twentieth of the Galactic Underworld, which would amount to 13 x 18 = 234 days. As we are now getting close to the final transformation scenario I have come to lean over to the idea that the Universal Underworld will indeed be 234 days long placing its beginning at March 8, 2011 and the beginning of the preceding pre-Universal Underworld at July 17, 2010. The uncertainty with this is that there seems to be no ancient Mayan source describing such a 18 day oxlahunkin time period, even if it would seem to be the logical one. On the other hand the ancient Maya did not have to deal with the transformation scenario into a new world and so may have ignored it, while it still may become very important in our own time. There is however a precedent to how a cycle only became followed by the Maya as its effects became a reality. This is the so-called Short Counts of 13 katuns, which were not observed in Classical Mayan times presumably because their effects were then not yet strongly felt. Only later in Post-Classical times did the effects of these short counts become so strong that they became the dominating cycles followed by the Maya and so came to replace the Long Count as the central calendrical cycle. Thus, if the Classical Maya did not base their calendars on the Short Counts they would have had even less reason to take a 18 day cycle into account, which to them would have an effect only in a very distant future.

** What is played out here is the interaction between overlapping time periods produced by dividing the Galactic Underworld into 13 and 20, respectively, as a parallel to the energetic overlaps of the trecena and the uinal in the tzolkin. If the Galactic Underworld of 4680 days is divided by 13 it generates a day or night of 360 days, but if it is divided by 20 it generates a wave movement totaling 234 days.

*** The Cosmic Convergence called for on July 17-18 is thus a direct parallel to the Harmonic Convergence in the sense that what the Harmonic Convergence was to the Galactic Underworld the Cosmic Convergence will be to the Universal Underworld. This means that the Cosmic Convergence may not only become the beginning of a transformative political period similarly to what happened in 1986, but also the first breeze of a spiritual awakening that will later be fully expressed in the Universal Underworld.

From: The Mayan Calendar

http://www.calleman.com/content/articles/nov8_sixth_night.htm

Author: Carl Johan Calleman