The Question of Alignment
and the iconic 2012
Written for students of the New Cosmology
by Thea (Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet)
Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology
January 24, 2009
Certain eternal worlds…are these which have come into being,
their doors are shut to you (or, opened) by the months and the years;
without effort one (world) moves in the other, and it is these that
Brahmanaspati [Brihaspati]has made manifest to knowledge.
Rig Veda, II.24.5.
Something more must be said of the Earth’s axial tilt at 23.20 degrees since it plays a role in the fantasies, if they may be so called, of many new-age groups. If I am not mistaken, even Edgar Cayce spoke of a future re-alignment of this axis at an unspecified time which would cause wide-spread destruction. Over our recorded period of history this 23 degree tilt has been in place – and certainly for an untold number of years before our times. In my view, the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza reveals that the ancients had the tilt on their minds as well. In addition to what I wrote in La Salle du Mensonge, I would like to return to this theme because it explains just why the Earth has been considered only a place to expiate one’s sins; and, God willing, to die and go to heaven. Or else it is a place to learn to lose oneself in an otherworldly intoxication – anything but face what such a tilt signifies courageously, because indeed this tilt can be held responsible for the diminished condition of the human species.
There are various ways to deal with this apparently unredeemable condition that afflicts the entire planet. For the past 2500 years at least we have devised methods to counter this cosmic affliction. If we study the matter deeply on the backdrop of the revelations concerning alignment of the new cosmology, we realise that living on a planet with such a tilting axis imposes certain conditions. In fact, this has conditioned not only biological evolution but the evolution of consciousness as well throughout the ages.
In La Salle du Mensonge I noted that the central issue of the supramental transformation could be described as the Mother has done on several occasions: to have one’s consciousness so poised as if to stand beneath the ray of the midday Sun casting therefore no shadows. The image that comes to mind for students of the New Way is Omanisol of The Magical Carousel seated on the mountaintop absorbed in a special state of consciousness that can be described as ‘the Immobile amidst the Mobile’. She is not, as we would surmise on the basis of the current interpretation of such states, in a meditation that obliterates the phenomenal world we live in; rather this contemporary mythos explains exactly her state by describing that from her mountaintop position all the world is seen at her feet, extending as far as the eye can see; over which she presides. And this condition, again as the myth explains, comes into being when somehow a rectification of this axial tilt is attained, for Omanisol is the reigning Goddess of the tenth sign, Capricorn, the cosmic midday Sun that casts no shadows.
It is precisely the goal of the Rig Veda journey which the Rishi announced as the ‘victory’ for the Warrior in the tenth month (counted from the March/Aries Equinox, the first) who could overcome the perilous crossing we measure as the third quarter of the diurnal and annual ecliptic journey, comprised of the 7th, 8th, and 9th zodiacal signs. The Agni realisation of the Immobile amidst the Mobile that Omanisol reveals is entirely one of axial alignment.
The four quarters, or the four Cardinal Points, do in actual fact refer to the different alignments of the Earth herself vis-à-vis the Sun. All our civilisations from time immemorial have thus been conditioned by the effects this quaternary alignment brings about; resulting externally in the four seasons. We realise by this that in some profound way the question of alignment is a key feature of our planetary existence. This helps us understand the ancients and their emphasis, in one way or another, on alignment – for example, the Rishis of very ancient times as well as those who put so much labour into the very accurate alignment of the Giza Pyramid precisely to those Cardinal Poles.
However, the part that interests me most concerns the condition of our planetary civilisation and how the various religions and spiritual paths have contended with this cosmic stricture. Christianity plays an especially important role in this issue because its gospel and dogmas accurately describe the off-centre state of affairs. Christianity has certainly coloured our world-view for the past 2000 years; consequently its postulations must be of interest and occupy a prominent place in our analyses. The struggle of its theologians was to deal with an apparently unredeemable situation. In this light and given that the affliction is cosmic and therefore seemingly beyond our control, we must view with compassion the conclusion the Christian Fathers arrived at and which can be summed up as follows: Given the infallible wisdom of God the Creator, we must necessarily deduce that the Earth is simply where one’s sins are expiated; and that in His compassion and boundless love for His creation, He sent His only begotten Son, who agonised on the (off-centred) cross for our sins, thus assuring us of redemption and everlasting life elsewhere, but certainly not here.
India’s ancient Rishis saw the matter differently. They understood that certain processes could result in a rectification of the mis-alignment we carry in our consciousness-beings; but that, more particularly, this rectification could only come through an alignment with the harmony of our solar system, a very different approach that would exalt the Earth’s function and not diminish her cosmic status. It could be contended that rather than expiation this planet is blessed among all others since it is right here where the battle is both fought and the victory won, – as well as enjoyed. In their wisdom they understood that correction rested on the allegiance of time and the rhythms that come to us in the diurnal and annual patterns the ‘months and the years open’ for us, – with the insertion of the right ‘keys’ however. The objective of the Rishi’s labour was not to use the planet as a field to transcend time and space – the often unstated objective of religions and most Eastern paths of spiritual development – and to transcend our planetary base. Rather, for those ancients the method they discovered was to utilise that very cosmic harmony to secure the victory right here.
We have lost touch with that line of wisdom, but it lives on in the new mythos and particularly in the new cosmology whose central theme is alignment. It lives on in the revelation of the Inner Chamber more perfectly than in any pyramid ancient or new. The difference between the two – the Inner Chamber and the Great Pyramid for example, the first dealing with time, the latter with space – is important to note.
While in Egypt the extant evidence points to a mechanism for the purpose of actual spatial alignment, in the Mother’s revelation it is time. But in both instances the individual is the converging point. In other words, both models, while bearing planetary/cosmic ‘credentials’, rely on the human component for fulfilment. In Egypt the initiate entered the physical chambers for transformation, as if in a realigned atmosphere brought into being by the perfection of design and measurements established by the Initiate-builders. In the Mother’s contemporary model the individual is transformed by an act of seeing and what this produces in one’s consciousness-being. The physical itself undergoes a change in varying degrees which the totality of conditions permits when the Act brings about a realignment of the physical structure so that the current atavism of the human being is gradually replaced by a ‘higher purpose’ in service of a Higher Cause.
We do have evidence that this Act was the apotheosis of the Greek Eleusinian Mystery rites. They were brought to an end by a diktat of the early Christian rulers who had gained a position of authority in the centuries of the millennium following the birth of Jesus. But contrast this birth with the Child in the displaced Eleusinian tradition. One is crucified, strung up on the off-centred cross-axis that eventually became the identifying symbol of Christians throughout the world; the other presented the glorious transformative Vision to participants of all sections of the society at the culmination of the Greek celebration in honour of the two Goddesses, mother and daughter. That Ecstasy was experienced by all in a collective awakening when in some manner unknown in its precise details to us today – because it was indeed a ‘mystery’ rite – the Daughter addressed as Téa
was ‘seen’ to bear a divine Son, amidst the ecstatic cries ‘Brimos is born’! This was the great revelation that altered the consciousness of all who participated in the nine-day ritual. And then, like now, the apotheosis came through the Daughter and the Male Child she bore. It indicates that this birth held a secret and most sacred significance which the new faith drove out. Transformation thus hinged on the Act of Seeing, then as now when the tradition is being restored.
We thereby understand better why in this contemporary enactment the Daughter bears a similar Greek name. Moreover, we understand why the 9-6-3 Formula became etched in the fabric of our Earth’s memory by the date of the last year this magnificent Mystery was celebrated: 396 CE, – iconic in its own way. We take up the work left truncated by belief in a crucifixion of that Child which so clearly revealed what lay in store for the world from that point onward – and also what a difficult labour lay ahead for those who would come in a future Age to reinstate the ancient way.
In our Age we reach the bone of the structure, its skeletal defining component. We deal directly with consciousness because we employ Time as our primary tool and the harmony of our System as the blueprint to utilise as one would a map in discovery of physical spaces. The Egyptians being spatial/physical as their 7th Manifestation demanded had to construct a physical model that would actually alter the effects of the Earth’s axial tilt. In Vedic India the map was the harmonics of our planet’s time. The yearly rhythms of the Earth’s own journey in orbit of the Sun was the ‘area’ covered as if one were to move across a territorial expanse, with keys of knowledge in hand to ‘open the doors of the months and the years’. The journey may have been the same in both cases, but, I repeat, in the Vedic experience we reach the heart and soul of what embodiment means on this particular planet of this particular solar system. For in the words of the Upanishad, here we perceive ‘Time as the self of the Horse Sacrificial‘. There are no deeper depths to explore than these.
The Mountain as Symbol
The Pyramid, the new myth informs us, is the Mountain in the formula the symbol is the thing symbolised. But this too is explained by the months and the years when the right Key opens the door to the tenth month Capricorn, India’s own zodiacal ruler. We enter the mountain-pyramid when the Vedic Brihaspati (Jupiter of the 5th orbit in the solar system) ‘has made manifest’ the only element that can effectively open those closed doors – gnosis of the supramental kind. With this light at one’s disposal, this ‘golden sword of truth’, the Warrior then moves into the 8th sign of Death, Scorpio. Thereafter, if the passage is successfully accomplished, Swar is reached in the 10th. By this singular Gnosis heaven is revealed to exist right here on this planet. If that superior dimension cannot be reached here by the 9 becoming the 10, then it is reached nowhere, for there is no conscious ‘seeing eye’ to enjoy the victory elsewhere. These keys of knowledge transform our physical reality itself because it is seen with eyes made new in an Act of Seeing made new for our times. When Death of the 8th sign is conquered, the Scorpion is replaced by the Eagle whose home is the lofty mountain heights.
Everything converges on the individual whose physical structure is the laboratory in this exclusive adventure. Rightfully, as St John prophesied in his vision, there was no physical temple in the City descended from God because each embodied soul that takes birth on this Earth can become the temple. The body itself is the temple when the tilt is corrected by a realignment of one’s consciousness whose ‘hub’ as in a wheel holds a ‘new purpose’, a new axial function for oneself and for humanity.
Initially there may be only one individual who ‘sees’ in this new way, whose perception alters the tilt and the axis/ray casts no shadows in a shadowless consciousness-being. But this ‘temple’ multiplies until ultimately the planet can be populated by millions of such ‘temples’ of the new light of Gnosis.
The Second Coming is this revelation: not a crucified but a glorified Son, he who secures the victory in the tenth month of Capricorn.
All spiritual and religious experiences of the past 2000 years have been attempts to accommodate the exigencies of the cosmic journey that takes us through the third quarter of the fourfold wheel – that is, when ‘death’ must be faced and somehow conquered. The apotheoses of all these methods, including the Vedantic, have been simply accommodations. They all accepted that the journey for those born on Earth is brought to an end either by physical death, or else a similar ‘death’ caused by an obliteration of the Seeing Eye of consciousness through methods devised for this purpose. Thus have they betrayed the planet’s sacred purpose in the Harmony, the birthright of all those born on this planet. All have been guilty of abandoning the Earth to her own devices, subjected to our ways of ignorance which have even resulted in a possible physical obliteration of our planetary base. This would amount to a denial of everything the Second Coming portends. That is, a rejection of the healing this birth signifies which is the sacred and deepest objective of the Descent. By the Coming the Void of the ages is closed.
The 2012 craze
The year 2012 has become imbued with a certain magic; but we must bear in mind that alignments such as John Major Jenkins and others describe and which is purported to occur on 21.12.2012, are gradual processes covering sometimes thousands of years. To put this in context, we can say that the entire final Round of this 77,760-year cycle or ‘journey’, a round consisting of 25,920 years, is the gradual positioning of celestial bodies to serve as the hands of a cosmic clock as seen from the Earth. Our entire final Round of the Map of the 12 Manifestations has been leading up to this and similar phenomena. But bear in mind that these alignments are Earth bound. They exist only in the eye of the beholder, – but not therefore ‘relative’ and inconsequential. Rather they reveal the one absolute truth of our existence: It is on Earth, and on Earth alone that the heavenly harmonies can be known, seen, lived, – where they can speak to us of mysteries of indescribable elegance and beauty. Rather than being a hell, this planet holds the potential, unique in our System, where ‘heaven’ can be realised here without succumbing to death. This Earth has been and always will be the home of the Immortals.
Thus the date 21.12.2012 (note the focus on the number 12) is not THE moment itself as if it were some Final Judgement Day. These are cycles, some major, some minor. The Maya were as obsessed with cycles as the Indians from ancient times till today. However, the civilisation that left us this ‘pointer’, the Maya, no longer exists. 2012 then becomes a lifeless and meaningless indicator because the convergent object, the human component of that special Maya journey is no longer with us. Indeed a shift has taken place, and we must realise this and make the necessary adjustments. The Mountain to climb is India where Omanisol sits on its peak. The answers lie in the present not in a long-forgotten past. For if not, then what would have been the purpose of recording and preserving somehow that date, or of a Sphinx or a Great Pyramid? Are they to be simply reminders of a glory that once was but cannot now be retrieved? Or are they simply pointers to our times of convergence when all that they signify, the secrets they hold, are to be not only revealed but lived.
This entire ennead, of which 2012 occupies the 5th position in a series of 9 years beginning in 2007 and ending in 2016, is the culmination of everything the December Solstice date has signified throughout the ages into the present. The initiation of Capricorn holds the key to 2012 because the Maya highlighted that solstice and no other date in the year. All ancient Traditions have held this solstice to be special. Therefore, to know what the Maya expected of 2012, we have to plumb the mysteries of Capricorn.
The December Solstice of any year offers entry into the Inner Chamber, but only if ‘the 9 has become the 10’. It is the master key, the key that alone can open all the other months/doors. Through this special portal we not only enter Swar but we open that Chamber whose heavenly light can then descend as torrents on the world just as the Ganga legends tell us. The great secret of 2012 is found in these pages. It is the revelation of not merely one date but an entire process covering a number of years, weaving its magic through many cycles across the ages. It is the secret the Capricorn Solstice holds.
For all practical purposes that solstice no longer exerts its magic at any point on the planet. It certainly does not exist in what once was Maya land. It does not exist in present-day India, a land that was once home to the realisers of Immortality. Yes, that ‘gateway’ to Capricorn continues to be celebrated by contemporary Hindu society – faithfully, religiously, with all the rituals that should accompany such an event, – minus the light, the living knowledge of the tenth ‘gateway’. Further, it might be said that the loss occurred in a more dignified manner in the land of the Maya than what occurred in India, where distortion has displaced the ‘soul of knowledge’, as Sri Aurobindo described in his ‘The Secret of the Veda’, ‘…The letter lived on when the spirit was forgotten; the symbol, the body of the doctrine, remained, but the soul of knowledge had fled from its coverings.’ It is exactly what we find in the Shadow Temple in Auroville: distortion. At least the Maya respected the knowledge and did not tamper with it; they preferred to let it be buried by the soil of the ages and exhumed at the behest and will of the Time-Spirit.
Not so in India. Here the ‘wisemen’ of science, of architecture know what the Immortals do not know: How to disfigure so that the populace is made to believe that the Capricorn solstice gateway opens before believers on 15 January, when in effect that 21.12 ‘door’ has passed them by on the magical carousel of the ecliptic Vedic Year. And they see not, they have neither eyes to see what they have missed nor the keys of knowledge to open that sacred door. Most lamentable of all, they have lost the Master Key that holds the knowledge of their very own Capricorn destiny.
The harmony died with the Maya, a noble dignified fading away. In India of today it is purported to be alive and well. We hear constant praises of her ancient culture where, it is proclaimed, an unbroken line ties the nation to that Vedic Cosmic Truth. None see that through distortion, like in the disfigured temple in Auroville, it is simply a shadow of that supreme Light. Certainly we must ask, Was it reasonable to expect the physical construction of the chamber of Cosmic Truth when it had not been acquired by processes of the supramental yoga? And when on the soil where it was being constructed there is an identical disfigurement of the very element the Mother’s original vision was to rectify?
The greater sin is to distort the truth, not to lose it entirely. We see all around us the infirmities of distortion. Every religion transgresses in the same way: a kernel of the true thing exists, but its ‘coverings’ have made a mockery of that kernel’s significance and place within the whole, – above all, its place within the whole. Indeed, in the wise words of a member of the Calendar Reform Committee in 1953, those entrusted with the task of guiding Hindus in this crucial matter of time reckoning ‘believe they are guiding [them] on the path of dharma, when in effect they are being led on the path of Adharma’.
The Santana Dharma lives on only in the Veda. But, as the Rig Veda itself states, ‘Who can understand it?’
2012 in context
The new cosmology covers all the bases, all angles of the unfolding. The statements made on the basis of its indications over the years have been validated. This will now increase. A symbol that the time has come for the things promised to become manifest for all to see, hinges on the date when the Fourth Power was born in Earth time: 26 November.
26/11 is the latest iconic number to fill our news reports daily. The revelation of the Fourth Power indicates that in its addition to the triadic grouping that preceded his entry, not only were all the angles of the Gnostic Circle’s sacred triangle covered by the 9/6/3 births of the Solar Line, but the essential, the most cosmically relevant ‘gap’ was finally attended to when the birth of the Male Child took place. More significantly, the closing of that cosmic ‘black-hole void’ did not simply occur at birth and the work was then done. To be precise, 13 years had to pass before it could factually be inserted into the equation. This happened through an Act of Seeing involving the Core of the Mother’s chamber. 26/11 was written in this sacred space, but distorted beyond all recognition in the architect’s rendition of the Mother’s original, – as written above, the greatest of all transgressions. The true ‘filling of the void’ occurred when it was ‘seen’ in 1976, 36 years (four cycles of 9 years) before 2012. From that year the new cosmology would point to the complete fourfold cyclic passage through the four major dimensions of Being, – physical, vital, mental and supramental; concluding in 2012. It can be deduced on this basis that 2012 can rightfully be understood only on the basis of an interrelated assessment via the lens of a Gnostic vision. Disconnected from that interrelated harmony, 2012 can make little sense.
Carrying the act of seeing further, we note that the addition of another 13 years (the measure of the Pedestal where the rebirth is recorded) brings us to the 49th year; and backwards in time we reach 1963, the actual year the birth occurred. By the mathematics of unity, 49 equals 4 – thus fully centred on the orbit this Power of the Solar Line brings to the equation. His year number-power is 1, but his operational orbit, where he fulfils his ‘purpose’ is the Void that the design of the enneagram itself points to: the 4.5 Orbit of our solar system, or the Asteroid Belt.
This orbit is a place of shattered particles and we call it a ‘void’ because there is no consolidated cosmic body at that location, precisely to ‘fill’ this Void. In equal measure the millions of particles at the 4.5 position reveal the immense danger of the period on Earth that is opened by this birth; hence it is written that we face creation or destruction now, as never before. It is further written that this Fourth relates to nuclear physics and the shattered particles of his ‘orbit-realm’ to the fission in nuclear processes; and by deduction, to the possible destruction of the world through a nuclear holocaust. We may rightfully ask, Is this what 2012 portends as many believe, since it is described as the ‘end time’?
True, 26/11 reaching India’s doorstep through the Mumbai Massacre points to a confirmation of the new cosmology’s message: the nuclear weapons play-out would be centred on India. And so it has come to pass. This play-out in its final stage began on 26/11 in the year 2008, indicating 4 remaining until 2012. It was the 45th year from 1963, thus by the count from the birth itself it indicates not an end but a most significant new beginning of an ennead ending in 2017 and whose mid-point is the 4.5 under discussion, 2012. 26/11 occurring on Indian soil confirmed the trikaladrishti of the new cosmologists. It is a seeing of relations, of interconnections, of a unified One and Many, or Being and Becoming, which is the heart and soul of the truth-conscious Gnosis. The final showdown has begun, centred on India as foreseen in 1976.The above brief analysis is meant to be an indication of the inadequacies of reductionist thinking. An event such as a galactic alignment, if it does exist, is for all purposes meaningless when meaning is not instilled by the Keys of Knowledge revealed for the express purpose of providing the Light that can serve as a beacon while we explore the cosmos in an effort to understand our reason for existence. Above all, these Keys renew an appreciation of the Earth’s role in the unfolding of this grand Harmony I referred to when I wrote to the Mother in 1971 from Rome, ‘Il n y que ça, cette grand Harmonie qui va toujours en avant et que rien peut arrêter.‘ (‘There is nothing but that, this grand Harmony that moves always forward and that nothing can stop.’)
We are living, conscious parts of that Harmony. Birth in this special cycle offers the privilege of allowing us to bear witness to that movement of the cosmic harmony which only our special position in this third orbit can reveal in its true splendour. It is not that the Harmony is only relative because it can only be perceived from Earth, as the exponents of Voids and Nothingness would have us believe, but rather that the structure of our solar system as it exists in this cycle of many thousands of years indicates that Earth has a very special purpose: she is to provide the field, the laboratory for the descent and manifestation of the truth-conscious gnostic Supermind. This happening requires for its unveiling an instrument aligned for the purpose – indeed, to express at last that core of a divine Purpose.
Thea
Aeon Centre of Cosmology
at Skambha
January 2009
© Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet
