Welcome to Gallery VI – Click here to return to Gallery I
Click here for the start – Gallery I – Chiron’s Museum of Marvelous Memes
Welcome to Gallery VI – Click here to return to Gallery I
Click here for the start – Gallery I – Chiron’s Museum of Marvelous Memes
We’re in transition, that’s for sure. By that I mean the rate of change around the globe–climate, business, education, technology, etc.–is cracking along at a wildfire pace: in our faces. We’re moving decidedly toward some new state of life.
To add to the wealth of speculation about what some qualities of that new state may be, I offer yet another descriptor–one with mythic unifying attributes: the Age of Flowers. The concept qualifies as an aspect of deep agroecology.
But rather than lay the whole tale out a second time on this blog, I created a permanent page on this same website. Here’s the link. Give it a click and it will whisk you along to the page with the floral essay.
Note: I wrote this material in the mid-1990s as a facet of Legend of the Rainbow Warriors, an exploration in nonfiction mythology. Now in the summer of 2024, it feels relevant and worthwhile to publish it online and to thereby make it more widely accessible. – S.M.
“All the prophecies of the world, all the traditions, are converging now. There is no time for games…High magic is at work on both sides, the light and the dark.” – Carlos Barrios
At precisely 1:00 a.m. on December 5, 2022, America initiated an act of nuclear fusion. That act within the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California signaled a historic breakthrough for science. It may also have signaled, both metaphorically and experientially, the ongoing process of a breakthrough for human spiritual development.
In that dark December hour after midnight, in less time than it takes to blink an eye, the scientists in charge of the fusion experiment applied 2.05 megajoules of laser energy to hydrogen atoms, thereby fusing and transforming them into the element of helium (Atomic number 2, abbreviated He – from the Greek word for the Sun, Helios).
At that same instant, as part of the fusion process, the atoms released 3.15 megajoules of energy and heat—a net gain.
Fusion is the process of liquefying a material substance by applying heat. Fusion also denotes the merging of different elements into a union—the fusing of diverse, distinct, or separate parts into a unified whole
Scientists, policy makers, and corporations have high hopes that the scientific fusion breakthrough will open pathways for advances in “clean energy,” and thereby help ease the rate of climate change, while strengthening national defense.
NOTE: About three months later in early 2023 a US-Japanese team of researchers announced a successful pilot test of an innovative nuclear fusion technology that uses no radioactive materials whatsoever, and is calculated to be capable of providing power on an industrial-scale.
The Time In-between
The headline news of the scientific breakthrough in fusion put me immediately in mind of an interview I conducted in Santa Fe, New Mexico some 20 years ago, the autumn of 2002. I spoke at length with Carlos Barrios of Guatemala. As he explained, he was born into a Spanish family, and over the course of his life he became a historian, an anthropologist, and ultimately a Mayan Ajq’ij (spiritual guide).
Barrios talked with me that day about fusion, and about spiritual developments in the Americas as he saw them. The story I published was soon widely plagiarized. Still, years later when writing chapter 8 of my nonfiction soul*sparks book, Tales of the Whirling Rainbow, it felt important to include segments of the interview.
Carlos Barrios died July 5, 2020. His words from 2002, however, carry resonance into the present moment, especially in context of the fusion breakthrough.
As we talked two decades ago, Barrios said that from the time of a 1987 date noted in the Mayan calendars, we’ve all been living in an era when the right arm of the materialistic world is disappearing, slowly but inexorably.
“We’re no longer in the World of the Fourth Sun,” he said, “but we are not yet in the World of the Fifth Sun. We are in a time in-between, a time of transition.”
As we pass through transition, Barrios observed, there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth changes.
Emergence
Meanwhile in the midst of this transition, Barrios asserted, the emerging era will steadily bringing attention to a much-overlooked element. Whereas the four classical elements of earth, air, fire and water have dominated various epochs in the past, there will be a fifth element to reckon with in the time of the Fifth Sun: ether.
The dictionary defines ether as a rarefied element, a medium that permeates all space and transmits waves of energy in a wide range of frequencies: from cell phones and Wi Fi signals to the subtle patterns and colors of human auras, and waves far finer than that. What is “ethereal” is related to the regions beyond earth: the heavens. Ether — the element of the Fifth Sun according to Barrios — is celestial, and lacking in material substance, but is no less real than wood, wind, flame, stone or flesh.
“Within the context of ether there can be a fusion of the polarities,” Barrios told me. “No more darkness or light in the people, but an uplifted fusion. But right now the realm of darkness is not interested in this. They are organized to block it. They seek to unbalance the Earth and its environment…”
We are at the cusp of a new era, he said, when peace begins, and people actually do live in harmony with Mother Earth
“…We live in a world of polarity: day and night, man and woman, positive and negative. Light and darkness need each other. They are a balance. Just now the dark side is very strong, and very clear about what they want. They have their vision and their priorities clearly held, and also their hierarchy. They are working in many ways so that we will be unable to connect with the whirling spiral Fifth World.”
“On the light side everyone thinks they are the most important, that their own understandings, or their group’s understandings, are the key. There’s a diversity of cultures and opinions, so there is competition, diffusion, and no single focus…
“The dark side works to block fusion through denial and materialism. It also works to destroy those who are working with the light to get the Earth to a higher level. They like the energy of the old, declining Fourth World, the materialism. They do not want it to change. They do not want fusion. They want to stay at this level, and are afraid of the next level.
“The dark power of the declining Fourth World cannot be destroyed or overpowered,” Barrios said. “It’s too strong and clear for that, and that is the wrong strategy. The dark can only be transformed when confronted with simplicity and open-heartedness. This is what leads to fusion, a key concept for the emerging World.”
“We need to work together for peace, and balance with the other side. We need to take care of the Earth that feeds and shelters us. We need to put our entire mind and heart into pursuing unity and fusion now, to preserve life.”
As we concluded our conversation, Barrios offered a final observation on our era of transition: “The greatest wisdom is in simplicity. Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness. It’s not complex or elaborate. The real knowledge is free. It’s encoded in the whirling spiral of your DNA. All you need is within you. Great teachers have said that from the beginning. Find your heart, and you will find your way.”
N.B. Astrologers will note that the scientific fusion breakthrough occurred in 2022, the year when the USA is experiencing the return of Pluto (nuclear power, etc.) to the exact degree of the zodiac (27+ Capricorn) where it was transiting at the nation’s birth, July 4, 1776.
Dear Readers, I’m pleased to announce a facelift for an old book that is, I feel, acutely relevant to all that’s going on in the world. It’s the slimmest of volumes, but it still goes right to the heart of the matter. As of today the new cover and format edition is readily available as either print or eBook.
Here’s an image of the new cover, and below you will find the updated text from the book’s back cover:
Tales of the Whirling Rainbow is a journalist’s account of some of the key myths and mysteries of the Americas, and an electrifying exploration of how those myths are resounding in real time.
Veteran journalist Steven McFadden weaves the living myths together seamlessly. Like an atom of gold, this wee book radiates deep beauty. It delivers authentic inspiration for our 21st Century souls.
Tales of the Whirling Rainbow conveys critical insights into core wisdom teachings at the heart of North America’s unfolding saga. Respect for these knowings is fundamental to our survival, and to our spiritual development.
As the Sun awakens and Earth changes intensify, our lives attain high velocity. At this time and in this manner, elders across The Americas informed the author, the human beings who are the different colors and faiths of the world will have opportunities to heal their web of relationships with each other, and with the natural world.
In this 2021 summer of fires, smoke, and drought, I’m inspired to publish this meme, Messenger. The substance of the meme was first set out in my book Legend of the Rainbow Warriors. Having been through many editions since the 1980s, the book remains acutely relevant.
This quote from Homer’s Odyssey felt to me to be the right epigram for the conclusion of my freely available, epic, nonfiction saga: Odyssey of the 8th Fire.
Classical Considerations: Musings prompted by the late Harvard Master John H. Finley, Jr. is available as a Soul*Sparks book available via this link on amazon.com
All peoples all nations are on the journey that I’ve come to call the Odyssey of the 8th Fire. It takes courage, endurance, determination, and more to complete the pilgrimage.