The Coming Solar Storm

As humans we depend on the light of the Sun. The astrological Sun feeds our vitality and quality of being, and when there is a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection we are affected here on earth. Cosmic rays disrupt the electrical systems on earth, and as humans we are surrounded by an elecromagnetic grid that can be affected by solar changes.

- http://astrodynamics.net/astrologicalmusings/2013/08/06/the-suns-magnetic-field-is-about-to-flip/

"Every particle of rock or water or air has God by its side leading it the way it should go; The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness; In God's wildness is the hope of the world."

-John Muir, Travels in Alaska 

"I am an attendant of the sovereign Sun... A vehement love for the splendors of this god took possession of me from my youth; in consequence of which, while I was a boy, my rational part was ravished with astonishment as often as I surveyed his etherial light; nor was I alone desirous of stedfastly beholding his diurnal splendors, but likewise at night, when the heavens were clear and serene, I was accustomed to walk abroad, and, neglecting every other concern, to gaze on the beauty of the celestial regions with rapturous delight: indeed I was so lost in attentive vision...."

-Julian the Apostate, Oration to the Sovereign Sun 

“...he would be able to look at the Sun and contemplate its nature, not as it appears when reflected in water or any alien medium, but as it is in itself in its own domain....And now he would begin to draw the conclusion that it is the Sun that produces the seasons and the course of the year and controls everything in the visible world, and moreover is in a way the cause of all that he and his companions used to see.”

-Plato, Allegory of the Cave, Republic, 516ff)

"Our motion is regulated by some measure of the amount by which it has not yet been accomplished."

-NorbertWiener, Cybernetics, p.116 

Sunrise in Sunningdale (Photo CG Garvie)

Some Sundays, despite my love for worship, I would rather want to walk the beach or simply listen to the scheduled "Radio Amateur News Bulletin" than suffer spartan benches and discordant music!

I am a licensed Radio Amateur (ZR5ADZ). Not an active one but a philosophical one, one that constantly monitors the 2 metre bands networking with an invisible band of channellers. I even have an Android application (Echolink) to communicate worldwide (or should I say, after Bucky Fuller, "world-around"?) using my smartphone! Some regard "hams" as a somewhat esoteric breed of enthusiasts.

Last Sunday I did in fact tune in to the South African Radio League News broadcast and one item caught my attention. I was riveted. We are currently in the midst of a solar cycle peak. Solar Cycles and sunspots are a peculiar, ubiquitous interest of hams. Extreme arcane ghost-like concepts from electron holes to sunspots and even black holes interest us, indeed anything that has to do with propagation, transmission, or connectivity. Back to that news item....

SUN MAGNETIC POLES READY TO REVERSE

SARL NEWS SUNDAY 11 AUGUST 2013

According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun's vast magnetic field is about to turn over. The Sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as our home star's inner magnetic field generator reorganizes itself signalling the mid-point of a Solar Cycle.

Todd Hoeksema is the Director of Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory which is one of the few that monitor the sun's polar magnetic fields. He says that we are no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal and that this change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system. This is because of the Sun's magnetic influence, also known as the Heliosphere, which extends billions of kilometres beyond the minor planet Pluto and almost to interstellar space.

When solar physicists talk about solar field reversals they are also referring to something known as the Sun's Current Sheet. This is a sprawling surface jutting outward from its equator where it's slowly rotating magnetic field induces an electrical current. During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. As Earth orbits the sun, it dips in and out of the current sheet. Transitions from one side to another can stir up stormy space weather around our planet which in turn can affect radio propagation to some degree.

As the field reversal approaches, data from the Wilcox Solar Observatory shows that the sun's two hemispheres are out of synch. According to Solar Physicist Phil Scherrer the Sun's North Pole has already changed sign, while the South Pole is racing to catch up. Soon both poles will be reversed, and the second or downhill half of Solar Max will be underway. For amateur radio it likely means that good DX openings especially on the higher bands could be fewer and far in-between.

What caught my attention was the remark, "..... this change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system." Disturbing, apocalyptic language, as this may sound, there is nothing to be alarmed about really. I myself have lived through six such flips already and have happily survived....May 1947, March 1958, November 1968, December 1979, July 1989, March 2000, and now August 2013! Of interest to radio amateurs, of course, is the effect of solar activity on propagation, communications, and electronic equipment. Cosmologists, Astronomers, Astronauts, Electrical Engineers, Neurologists, Psychologists even Astrologers and Homing Pigeons are interested in these solar rhythms too. Perhaps Cybernauts and Theologians should be too. Every Sunday evening I religiously tune in to "Sterre en Planete" ("Stars and Planets) on RadioRSG to get the week's update on what is up with the Sun. Julian the Apostate would be impressed by my devotion!

Magnificent CME_Eruption (Wikimedia Commons)

Little ripples can have humongous consequences but we are not expecting Earth to be toasted to a crisp this time round. These ripples are relatively subtle. Your GPS might be out of kilter for a bit so watch where you are going. The Internet might go down here and there much to the annoyance cyber junkies. There could be a power outage like the New York blackout of 1977. ATMs might be uncooperative. But the Solar Flip does not have to be a conflagration. It could be a joyful, expansive jubilation moment, a time of illumination. Clement of Alexandria said: “The healthful Word or Reason (the Logos), who is the Sun of the soul...has risen within the depths of the mind, the soul's eye is illuminated” (Exhortation to the Greeks 6). In the Hermetic Corpus we find: “But when the Sun did rise for me, and with all-seeing eyes I gazed upon the hidden [mysteries] of that New Dawn...” (Virgin of the World, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, III,60). Let us see where the ripples takes us.

We touched on this in my previous blog about "Trim Tab"Fuller.

We talk about feedback loops, chain reactions, the butterfly effect, cybernetics, governors , or servo control systems. Positive feedback leads to a self-amplifying chain of events while negative feedback have a dampening effect. Jesus may also have alluded to small effects with massive outcomes when he spoke of the mustard seed and the leaven in the lump.

For instance, in Stellar Physics the theory is that a remarkable magnetic braking system controls, governs, or regulates stellar effects such as the angular momentum of a star including our Sun. Mysterious mechanisms shields us from harmful bombardments. All parts of a complex but delicately balanced control system.

Coronal Mass Ejection (Wikimedia Commons)

We know that solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CME), if directed earthwards can knock out entire power grids. Could they not also impact on our behaviour? Do we flare up in sympathy with solar activity? There is considerable evidence that we do! These are called "circadian rhythms". Inasmuch as some might be moonstruck we can also be solstruck. One might even speculate whether there are magnetic braking systems governing our own physical and psychological well being at molecular DNA levels ensuring balance and equilibrium in harmonious resonance with the Sun and/or even the Galaxy as Plato deduced: “the Sun … controls everything in the visible world.”

Dr Robert Becker said back in 1963: Subtle changes in the intensity of the geomagnetic field can affect the nervous system by altering the living body's own electromagnetic field." (Newsweek, 13 May 1963). Changes elsewhere in distant galaxy pulsates through us affecting and effecting us in subliminal ways modulating waves as they pass through us. We are an intrinsic element in a vast cosmic self-adapting ocean.

MichelGauquelin of the Psychophysiological Laboratory at Strasbourg University in 1966 wrote:

....the sun is responsible for a mass of strange effects which seem to influence all of life on this sphere through the weather, the atmosphere, and magnetic disturbances.

However, perhaps not all cosmic effects on earth come from the sun and the moon. There remains in the universe a huge field of influences which have yet to be explored: the influence of galactic forces, the disturbing influence of planets in the solar field, cosmic rays coming from distant space, and no doubt many other things which we know nothing about at the moment. When we do know more, we will understand better what goes on between the sky and ourselves.

(Astrology and Science, p.199)

More recent studies have refined these assumptions.

Jo A Joselyn in a paper, "The impact of solar flares and magnetic storms on humans" says:

Solar flares may disrupt radio communications in the HF and VLF ranges. Energetic particles pose a special hazard at low-earth orbit and above, where they can penetrate barriers such as spacesuits and aluminum and destroy cells and solid state electronics. Energetic solar particles also influence terrestrial radio waves propagating through polar regions. Magnetic storms may disturb the operation of navigation instruments, power lines and pipelines, and satellites; they give rise to ionospheric storms which affect radio communication at all latitudes. There is also a growing body of evidence that changes in the geomagnetic field affect biological systems.

Sometimes our chronobiological clocks might miss a beat or two in sympathy with the Sun. 

Apollo 14 astronaut, Edgar Mitchell "became profoundly aware that each and every atom in the Universe was connected in some way, and on seeing Earth from space he had an understanding that all the humans, animals and systems were a part of the same thing, a synergistic whole. It was an interconnected euphoria," says Ian O'Neill in an article "The Human Brainin Space: Euphoria and the 'Overview Effect' Experienced byAstronauts". 

One need not be a Moon Astronaut to experience this "interconnected euphoria". It can be enjoyed equally in the woods and desert places of our own planet. Naturalist, John Muir wrote: "When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." Visiting Yosemite he wrote, "We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us."

In short...the solar cycle has a direct effect on humans. There could be solar butterflies affecting emotional tornadoes in our minds and behaviour on our streets, in our universities, temples, mosques, synagogues and churches. Possibly the Arab Spring has its wells on far distant planets or deep within the magnetic poles of the Sun.

So hang on to your hats and sunblocks, take off your shirt and feel the Sun...you never know precisely when the Sun will flip your mind!

Sunset in Sunningdale (Photo: CG Garvie)

Further Reading:

Anthropic Principle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
Bioelectromagnetics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioelectromagnetics
Butterfly Effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
Chronobiology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology
Grandfather Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox
Holism: http://www.environment.gen.tr/holistic-view/111-what-is-holism.html
Retrocausality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality
Reversal of Stellar Magnetic Field: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_magnetic_field
List of Solar Cycles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_cycles
Stellar Magnetic Fields: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_magnetic_field

Teleology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

"Trim Tab" Buckminster Fuller

Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab.

It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.

So I said, call me Trim Tab.

-Designer and Inventor Buckminster Fuller, Playboy, February 1972

The Grave of Buckminster Fuller (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Genealogy, and by extension biography, has always fascinated me and in many respects changed me, opening up surprising new worlds and insights for me. Reflecting back I notice I tend to be attracted for some unknown reason to more unusual, extraordinary, off-beat personalities. One of these is American creative thinker, inventor and designer, Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983). So I felt a little “trim tab tribute” to "Bucky" Fuller should feature sometime as I muse here about small feedback influences with huge effects in my "cybernetic" (from the Greek, kubernesis, meaning "a rudder") blogs.* Trim tabs work much like the butterfly effect in Chaos Theory and Automatic Frequency Control in radios except that they are more controlled than random butterflies.

Out of the box thinker, Buckminster Fuller, is probably best remembered for popularising the notion of "Spaceship Earth".  In 1968 he published his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth in which he laments the exploitation of Earth's resources...

...we can make all of humanity successful through science's world-engulfing industrial evolution provided that we are not so foolish as to continue to exhaust in a split second of astronomical history the orderly energy savings of billions of years' energy conservation aboard our Spaceship Earth. These energy savings have been put into our Spaceship's life-regeneration-guaranteeing bank account for use only in self-starter functions.

Fifty years later and our “bank account” is in overdraft and we are morally and spiritually bankrupt.

1927 (he was 32) was a crucial, crossroads, year in Fuller's life. He had hit rock bottom and was deeply depressed. He felt responsible for the death of his little daughter some ten years previous. He had lost his job and was financially ruined. He was at the end of his tether. He contemplated taking his life so that his family could benefit from a life insurance policy. He found himself a disappointed, broken man on  the shores of Lake Michigan when out of the blue he had an extraordinary life changing experience.

LloydSteven Sieden relates this amazing story in his, Buckminster Fuller's Universe: His Life and Work:

After several hours of internal debate over the question "Buckminster Fuller - life or death," Bucky was suddenly seized by an experience which would transform his life and his overall perception forever. As he would later recall, he experienced what he thought was the most significant of many seemingly mystical events which occurred throughout his life. During almost all of the lectures which followed that experience, he would recount that he had unexpectedly found himself suspended several feet above the ground enclosed in a "sparkling white sphere of light." During the incident, time appeared to stop while he listened to a voice speaking directly to him. Although the experience was difficult for the pragmatic Fuller to accept as reality, he remembered not resisting and allow himself to savor it fully. Because of that, he was able to remember the exact words he heard. The voice declared, "From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth." It continued, "You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others." Although we will never know if that "voice" was simply Fuller's inner thoughts or some higher guidance, it did result in a vastly transformed individual.

It was an epiphany that changed the course of his life. Henceforth he sought to live such that others would benefit.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow called such moments of unexpected grace, "peak experiences”. Rationally inexplicable, we suspend judgement and marvel contemplating such life transfiguring, "Damascus Road" experiences with a sense of overwhelming awe and wonder. 

I have advocated journaling as a spiritual discipline but Fuller deliberately took the practice to extremes. He wrote what he called his "Dymaxion Chronofile" in which he sought to record every fifteen minutes of his life from 1920 to 1983! It is the ultimate personal scrapbook! He said, "I decided to make myself a good case history of such a human being and it meant that I could not be judge of what was valid to put in or not. I must put everything in, so I started a very rigorous record" (Oregon Lecture #9, p.324, 12 July 1962). His diary rivals everything envisaged by Pepys and John Wesley! 

Spaceship Earth at Epcot, Walt Disney World, a Fuller Geodesic Sphere.

(Wikimedia Commons)

An idiosyncrasy was the manner in which Fuller wrote and spoke sometimes "levitating" us out of our own traditional comfort zones. He invented words and used neologisms with dramatic koan like effect. “Dymaxion” was a word that came to be associated with Fuller and his designs. He readily adopted it as a personal trademark. It was a portmanteau of "dynamic maximum tension" and was so descriptive of his life and work.  Wikipedia explains his mind-shifting language further... 

Buckminster Fuller spoke and wrote in a unique style and said it was important to describe the world as accurately as possible....

Fuller used the word Universe without the definite or indefinite articles (the or a) and always capitalized the word. Fuller wrote that "by Universe I mean: the aggregate of all humanity's consciously apprehended and communicated (to self or others) Experiences."

The words "down" and "up", according to Fuller, are awkward in that they refer to a planar concept of direction inconsistent with human experience. The words "in" and "out" should be used instead, he argued, because they better describe an object's relation to a gravitational center, the Earth. "I suggest to audiences that they say, 'I'm going "outstairs" and "instairs."' At first that sounds strange to them; They all laugh about it. But if they try saying in and out for a few days in fun, they find themselves beginning to realize that they are indeed going inward and outward in respect to the center of Earth, which is our Spaceship Earth. And for the first time they begin to feel real 'reality.'"

"World-around" is a term coined by Fuller to replace "worldwide". The general belief in a flat Earth died out in Classical antiquity, so using "wide" is an anachronism when referring to the surface of the Earth —a spheroidal surface has area and encloses a volume but has no width. Fuller held that unthinking use of obsolete scientific ideas detracts from and misleads intuition. Other neologisms collectively invented by the Fuller family, according to Allegra Fuller Snyder, are the terms "sunsight" and "sunclipse", replacing "sunrise" and "sunset" to overturn the geocentric bias of most pre-Copernican celestial mechanics.

Fuller was not simply a stickler for precision. He was wanting us to rise above old, dated, confining paradigms and be caught up in life transforming orbs of light ourselves. Such are the minds, thoughts, and experiences of others that have not only amused me in the course of my own life but also inspired me to realise that there is much more to being human than simply a constricted Space-Time-Energy-Mass (STEM) Box prisoner of circumstance and misfortune. Huge is the impact of a singular life upon another that in time reverberates down the generations with awesome tidal consequences and outcomes.

A Geodesic Sphere (Wikimedia Commons)

oOo

* Along these lines I commend the South African based novel of BryceCourtenay,  The Power of One...another story I resonate with. 

Acknowledgement:

Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Immensity!

However one might imagine the cosmic immensity, God is present at every discrete point, from the smallest speck, the tiniest sparrow, every niche of time and space, to the uttermost parts of the seas and heavens, and unknown galaxies.

-Thomas C Oden, John Wesley's Scriptural Christianity, p.34

Viewed from the being of God as holy love, omnipresence means nothing less than the ability of divine love to maintain itself everywhere unhindered by limitations of space.

-Albert Truesdale, A Contemporary Wesleyan Theology, Vol.1, p.126

The Andromeda Galaxy (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

In my previous blog, "Awesome!", I reflected on the immensity of space and by implication, of time. I wondered, where does God fit in this picture? Can we even apply "where questions" to God? Can we even ask a question such as, "Where is the Universe?" Dr Albert Truesdale reminds us that, "God's omnipresence has nothing to do with how a physical entity can nevertheless be unbounded by spatial restrictions. God is Spirit..." (ibid.)  Whatever, instead of negating our understanding of God, our new cosmologies and biologies have served to enhance and enrich theology tremendously. I agree with Kit Pedler... 

I began to study the works of people with legendary names: Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger and Dirac. I found that here were not clinical and detached men, but people and religious ones who imagined such unfamiliar immensities as to make what I have referred to as the 'paranormal' almost pedestrian by comparison. (Kit Pedler, Mind Over Matter, p.11)

In relation to the universe three attributes of God comes to mind: Infinity, Eternity, and Immensity. Much of my own theological understanding of God has its roots in Wesleyan theology. I agree with John Wesley where he says in his sermon, "The Imperfection of Human Knowledge"...

...our desire of knowledge has no bounds, yet our knowledge itself has. It is, indeed, confined within very narrow bounds; abundantly narrower than common people imagine, or men of learning are willing to acknowledge: A strong intimation, (since the Creator doeth nothing in vain,) that there will be some future state of being, wherein that now insatiable desire will be satisfied, and there will be no longer so immense a distance between the appetite and the object of it.

...

Who is able to comprehend how God is in this and every place how he fills the immensity of space? If philosophers, by denying the existence of a vacuum, only meant that there is no place empty of God, that every point of infinite space is full of God, certainly no man could call it in question. But still, the fact being admitted what is omnipresence or ubiquity Man is no more able to comprehend this, than to grasp the universe. The omnipresence or immensity of God, Sir Isaac Newton endeavours to illustrate by a strong expression, by terming infinite space, "the Sensorium of the Deity."

We occupy a minuscule sliver of time (three score years and ten of 14-billion) and a mere wedge of space (a speck in the vastness of an immeasurable universe), aware of only a very tiny slice of the full electro-magnetic spectrum of light. We are severely confined creatures!

Another of John Wesley's sermons is his homily "On the Omnipresence of God", or what he terms the "ubiquity of God."  In the homily Wesley addresses deistic tendencies, the idea that the Creator is remote or absent from creation. Wesley argues that however immense the universe might be, that God is all pervasive, immanent in time and space. Contemporary theologians sometimes describes this as “panentheism”. Wikipedia defines panentheism as “a belief system which posits that the divine interpenetrates every part of nature and timelessly extends beyond it.”  Church of the Nazarene/Methodist theologian Thomas Jay Oord advocates panentheism, but he prefers the word "theocosmocentrism". 

Dated 1788, I still find Wesley's sermon, despite the limited scientific knowledge of the time, refreshingly contemporary:

The Macrocosm

God is in this, and every place. The Psalmist, you may remember, speaks strongly and beautifully upon it in the hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm; observing in the most exact order, First, "God is in this place;" and Then, "God is in every place." He observes, First, "Thou art about my bed, and about my path, and spiest out all my ways." (Ps. 139:3.) "Thou hast fashioned me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me." (Ps. 139:5) Although the manner thereof he could not explain; how it was he could not tell. "Such knowledge," says he, "is too wonderful for me: I cannot attain unto it." (Ps. 139:6) He next observes, in the most lively and affecting manner, that God is in every place. "Whither shall I go then from thy Spirit, or whither shall I go from thy presence If I climb up into heaven, thou art there; if I go down to hell, thou art there also.'(Ps. 139:7, 8.) If I could ascend, speaking after the manner of men, to the highest part of the universe, or could I descend to the lowest point, thou art alike present both in one and the other. "If I should take the wings of the morning, and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there thy hand would lead me," -- thy power and thy presence would be before me, -- "and thy right hand would hold me,' seeing thou art equally in the length and breadth, and in the height and depth of the universe.

In a word, there is no point of space, whether within or without the bounds of creation, where God is not. ...The universal God dwelleth in universal space.

The Microcosm

If we may dare attempt the illustrating this a little farther, what is the space occupied by a grain of sand, compared to that space which is occupied by the starry heavens? It is as a cipher; it is nothing; it vanishes away in the comparison. What is it, then, to the whole expanse of space, to which the whole creation is infinitely less than a grain of sand? And yet this space, to which the whole creation bears no proportion at all, is infinitely less in comparison of the great God than a grain of sand, yea, a millionth part of it, bears to that whole space.

God acts in heaven, in earth, and under the earth, throughout the whole compass of his creation; by sustaining all things, without which everything would in an instant sink into its primitive nothing; by governing all..... having a regard to the least things as well as the greatest; of his presiding over all that he has made, and governing atoms as well as worlds. This we could not have known unless it had pleased God to reveal it unto us himself. Had he not himself told us so, we should not have dared to think that "not a sparrow falleth to the ground, without the will of our Father which is in heaven;" and much less affirm, that "even the very hairs of our head are all numbered!"

....

Omnipresent

If I remove to any distance whatever....to any conceivable or inconceivable distance; above, beneath, or on any side;, it makes no difference; thou art still equally there: In thee I still "live, and move, and have my being."

Empty Space

Simulated view of a black hole in front of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Wikimedia Commons

And where no creature is, still God is there. The presence or absence of any or all creatures makes no difference with regard to him. He is equally in all, or without all. Many have been the disputes among philosophers whether there be any such thing as empty space in the universe; and it is now generally supposed that all space is full. Perhaps it cannot be proved that all space is filled with matter. But the Heathen himself will bear us witness, Jovis omnia plena: "All things are full of God." Yea, and space exists beyond the bounds of creation (for creation must have bounds, seeing nothing is boundless, nothing can be, but the great Creator), even that space cannot exclude Him who fills the heaven and the earth....for it is well known, the Hebrew phrase "heaven and earth," includes the whole universe; the whole extent of space, created or uncreated, and all that is therein...

In extra-mundane space, (so to speak,) where we suppose God not to be present, we must, of course, suppose him to have no duration; but as it is supposed to be beyond the bounds of the creation, so it is beyond the bounds of the Creator's power. Such is the blasphemous absurdity which is implied in this supposition.

Of course this is a sermon and not a scientific treatise. Elsewhere Wesley reflects on the mysterious immensity of creation:

Wesley on the "Goldilocks Zone": 

The Copernican System

That [God] who dispenses existence at his will, should multiply, extend, enlarge, and add a kind of immensity to his works, is not properly what surprises me; at least my amazement is chiefly founded on my own extreme littleness. But what astonishes me most, is to see, that notwithstanding this my extreme littleness, he has vouchsafed to regulate his immense works, by the advantages I was to receive from them! Thus he has placed the sun just at such a distance from the earth on which I was lodged, that it might be near enough to warm me, yet not so near as to set it on fire.

-John Wesley, A Compendium of Natural Philosophy, VOL. III.p.253

Wesley on the "immensity of the great chain of beings": 

Great Chain of Being. Retorica Christiana, written by Didacus Valdes in 1579

Between the lowest and highest degree of corporeal and spiritual perfection, there is an almost infinite number of intermediate degrees. The result of these degrees composes the universal chain. This unites all beings, connects all worlds, comprehends all the spheres. One SOLE BEING is out of this chain, and that is HE that made it.

A thick cloud conceals from our sight the noblest parts of this immense chain, and admits us only to a slight view of some ill-connected links, which are broken,and greatly differing from the natural order.

We behold its winding course on the surface of our globe, see it pierce into its entrails, penetrate into the abyss of the sea, dart itself into the atmosphere, sink far into the celestial spaces, where we are only able to descry it by the flashes of fire it emits hither and thither.

But notwithstanding our knowledge of the chain of beings is so very imperfect, it is sufficient at least to inspire us with the most exalted ideas of that amazing and noble progression and variety which reign in the universe.

-John Wesley, A Compendium of Natural Philosophy, Vol IV, p.60

Since Wesley there has been an eruption of knowledge. Our knowledge is still severely imperfect. 

Wesley concluded his sermon of 1788 with this mindful application which is as applicable today as it was in the 18th Century:

If you believe that God is about your bed, and about your path, and spieth out all your ways, then take care not to do the least thing, not to speak the least word, not to indulge the least thought, which you have reason to think would offend him. Suppose that a messenger of God, an angel, be now standing at your right hand, and fixing his eyes upon you, would you not take care to abstain from every word or action that you knew would offend him Yea, suppose one of your mortal fellow-servants, suppose only a holy man stood by you, would not you be extremely cautious how you conducted yourself, both in word and action How much more cautious ought you to be when you know that not a holy man, not an angel of God, but God himself, the Holy One "that inhabiteth eternity," is inspecting your heart, your tongue, your hand, every moment; and that he himself will surely bring you into judgement for all you think, and speak, and act under the sun!

Acknowledgements:

John Wesley Sermon Project General Editors: Ryan N. Danker and George Lyons, Copyright 1999-2011 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. http://wesley.nnu.edu/?id=787

Charles Carter Ed., A Contemporary Wesleyan Theology
Thomas C Oden, John Wesley's Scriptural Christianity

H Orton Wiley and Paul T Culbertson, Introduction to Christian Theology.

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Awesome!

Here, in the dark immensity of the of the heavens, we shall meet with glories beyond description and witness scenes of inexpressible splendor. In the great black gulfs of space and in the realm of the innumerable stars, we shall find mysteries and wonders undreamed of.

-Astronomer Robert Burnham, Celestial Handbook, Vol.1, p.13. 

What are the odds that we are alone in the universe?

I was but a toddler growing up on a farm called "Gemakstroom" (Afr. Comfortstream) in the foothills of "Skurweberg" (Afr. Rough Mountain) when one dark starry night my father took me up in his arms and we went outside to show me what I think was supposed to be a lunar eclipse. I had no idea what he was on about. How could I? I was hardly three! To say it was incomprehensible is putting it mildly.

Now that I am almost 70 it is no less incomprehensible. Louie Giglio rightly says it is "indescribable"! Then he is only scratching the surface of what our limited intellectual capacity can grasp. We hardly apprehend even the minutest sliver of the undefinable reality in which we “live and move and have our being”.

View Louie Giglio's "Indescribable"

I am presently engaged in a course in "Mathematical Philosophy" grappling with the notion of infinity. Needless to say I cannot even begin to wrap my mind round what the lecturer is trying to explain despite his assurance that high school math will suffice! I cannot even begin to comprehend the magnitude and magnificence of the universe. It defies our best descriptions and formulations.

The Psalmist exclaims...

The heavens declare the glory of God, the vault of heaven proclaims his handiwork, day discourses of it to day, night to night hands on the knowledge. No utterance at all, no speech, not a sound to be heard, but from the entire earth the design stands out, this message reaches the whole world. High above, he pitched a tent for the sun, who comes forth from his pavilion like a bridegroom, delights like a champion in the course to be run. (Psa 19:1-5 NJB)

As we know, our sun is but a star, one of many billions of stars. I once sat on Battery Beach in Durban with my teeny-bopper grandson, Dane. Taking a handful of beach sand in my hand with grains streaming through my fingers I asked, "Dane, how many grains of sand?" "Billions!" he replied. "And how many grains of sand on Battery Beach and all the beaches in our world?" I pressed. I  knew he intended to become a marine biologist one day. "Uncountable!" he told me somewhat pleased with himself. I then said something stupid like, "Dane, do you know that there are more stars out there than all the grains of sand on the beaches of planet earth?" I didn't think I was exaggerating. Even John Wesley anticipated this great vastness when he wrote, "This assemblage of vast bodies is divided into different systems, the number of which perhaps exceeds the grains of sand which the sea casts on its shores" (John Wesley, Compendium of Natural Philosophy, Vol.IV, p.51). Totally befuddled and bewildered, all Dane could say was, "Bull!" That was pretty smart, I thought, an exclamation of sheer brilliance!

Dane was right. Later that night I pointed out to him the fascinating constellation of Taurus the Bull, rich in legend, myth, and religious tradition and significance which in ancient times marked the beginning of the course that our sun ran like a groom across the skies replete with "uncountable" stars. I pointed out the beautiful Pleiades in Taurus to which Dane's ancient Khoikhoi ancestors presented every new born Khoi baby. (See More Khoi Starlore...and Theology: The Pleiades.)

Age of Taurus the Bull

Equinox 4000BC (Stellarium)

The Sumerian high god Enki was referred to as "The Bull". The supreme deity of the Canaanites, El, was represented wearing a crown adorned with the horns of a bull. In the oldest of the Egyptian inscriptions, the Pyramid Texts, the king is addressed...

Behold, thou art the Enduring Bull of the wild bulls of the gods who are on earth...of the gods who are in the sky... Endure, O Enduring Bull, that you may be infinite in strength as the ruler of all, at the head of the spirits forever...  (Quoted Robert Burnham, Burnham's Celestial Handbook, An Observer's Guid to the Universe Beyond the Solar System, Vol.3, p.1814)

In our galaxy alone, the Milky Way, there are estimated to be more than 100 billion stars! Many billion of these are "sun-like stars"

Carl Sagan also said, "Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them, there's a succession of incidence, events, occurrences which influence its future; countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time."  (Cosmos, Episode 8, “Journeys in Space and Time” )

The Milky Way

Michael Moyer in Scientific American wrote:

Look up on a starry night. Almost every one of those tiny pricks of light is home to an unseen world. Our Milky Way galaxy is full of planets-100 billion or more-and many of those planets are Earth-like rocks (although our solar system still appears to be an oddball).

An estimated 17 billion. "Almost all sun-like stars have a planetary system," said Francois Fressin, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Fressin's research indicates that about one in six stars is home to a rocky, Earth-like planet.

We are just talking about our galaxy explains Michael Moyer....

John Johnson of the California Institute of Technology says that Red Dwarfs make up 70 percent of all stars in the galaxy, and these are absolutely full of planets. We can estimate that the Milky Way is home to at least 100 billion planets. "Our solar system is rare among the galaxy's population of planetary systems," says Johnson, "because our star is not a red dwarf." But with 100 billion possibilities to choose from, who would bet that there's one not like us peering back through that darkness? 

It boggles the imagination. We can not even begin to appreciate the number of possible earth-like planets swirling around out there. However, there is more! There are universes, how shall we say? Universes within universes ad infinitum!

According to an article in National Geographic entire universes exist tucked away within so-called "black holes"! Our universe may be in such a hidden tuck of another. At our own galactic centre is a black hole too that could well be a portal to another universe!

Our Galactic Centre (Photo: NASA JPL)

A supermassive black hole resides in the bright white area, right of the center.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Center_of_the_Milky_Way_Galaxy_IV_%E2%80%93_Composite.jpg

Ker Than writing for National Geographic News says, "Like part of a cosmic Russian doll, our universe may be nested inside a black hole that is itself part of a larger universe. In turn, all the black holes found so far in our universe-from the microscopic to the supermassive-may be doorways into alternate realities.

This is a remarkable theory which, though Dane is now 21, I still hesitate even to mention to him!

The psalmist harps...

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. (Psa 8:3-5 KJV)

...and I begin to wonder and ask myself, "Who then are the angels, the "elohim," of whom the psalmist sings?" Clearly in his mind we are not alone in the universe, we cannot be the only form of intelligent life in a universe so indescribably and infinitely vast. If there be such diversity of “wonders undreamed of” out there, how much more then, the diversities of all the hosts of heaven and the imponderable “glories beyond description”!

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

"Very deep is the well of the past" -Thomas Mann

“And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge.”
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

When I walk the fields, I am oppressed now and then with an innate feeling that everything I see has a meaning, if I could but understand it. And this feeling of being surrounded with truths which I cannot grasp, amounts to indescribable awe sometimes. Everything seems to be full of God's reflex, if we could but see it. Oh, how I, have prayed to have the mystery unfolded, at least hereafter! To see, if but for a moment, the whole harmony of the great system! To hear once the music which the whole universe makes as it performs His bidding.
-Charles Kingsley, His Life and Letters, I, 55

As a boy we lived within a stone's throw of the legendary Bourke's Luck Potholes at the Blyde River Canyon in South Africa. It was one of my favourite childhood haunts.  The awesome potholes were named after a persistent prospector and gold digger named Tom Bourke who in the 1880s discovered signs of alluvial gold in the canyon in the late 1880s. He quickly staked a claim and began to pan for gold. Sadly, his claim did not yield a single ounce of gold, while other prospectors in the area struck it rich. However, the legend lived on.

Bourke's Luck Potholes (Wikimedia Commons)

The Elusive Nature of History

History is thought by some to be a factual account or chronicle of past events, of both fortune and misfortune. However this is not so, history is but an interpretation (or misrepresentation) of something which in itself is mysterious, elusive, and undefinable like a morning mist that has transpired. It is a narrative or report of events through the lens of a mind not my own, an author, an interpreter, an editor, or an observer. It is impossible to represents events as they had actually occurred or were. At best history is a means of gazing out across the vast vistas of time through the eyes of another. We can never get a grip on reality as it is, without interfering with it. On the micro level this is known as (or confused with) Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.  In Physics it is called the Observer Effect. Entropy sets in with time the moment conscious experience slips further and deeper into an abyss of unconscious oblivion.

Quantum Physics contorts our linear concept of future, present, and past even more to a point where we may literally not know whether we are coming or going we get so “entangled”. Stephen Hawking suggests we could conceivably warp time-space sufficiently to arrive back to somewhere before we started and even modify histories in ways never dreamed of before. (See A Brief History of Time.) Now that could be a lot of fun with a new class of holographic and cybernetic therapists and shamans, avatars, emerging doing fixit or hatchet jobs on our behalf! Historian Michael Parenti unravels the record of the past in his History as Mystery exposing the ideological agendas that invariably underlie our history books and scriptures that then seek to inform or reconstruct our futures.

Historia, by Nikolaos Gysis (1892)

Folk-Lore, Legend, Mythology

Is 9/11 history, folk-lore, legend, or mythology? There are already elements of all four wrapped in that awful but recent tragedy. The historicity of events such as the Lunar Landings and the Holocaust are now being questioned by a new generation that never experienced or can even imagine the likes of it ever happening despite the evidence of Martian Rovers and Modern Day Genocides. Historic events take on mythological dimensions with time. This applies especially to the more distant, so-called "pre-history" accounts recorded, say, in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Alphabets dwindle into hieroglyphs, pictograms and eventually neolithic doodlings left to scholars and specialists to decipher and interpret for us. It is all very hidden and occult.

Equally so the epics recorded in the ancient Sanskrit and Mayan texts. Such myths are stories generally not believed to be true, or at least not literally so, involving impossible adventures or supernatural, fabulous mythological creatures. Much of it is couched in poetry and romantic metaphors that isn't always literally true but instead, as it should be, poetic. Are the stories about  Aladdin and his mysterious lamp and magic carpets, for instance, fact? Fantasy, perhaps? Or fiction? Yet, if it can be imagined could it not also be true? After all, it is a construct of a rational mind, is it not? Legends, on the other hand, are stories peoples tell about themselves, often with improbable, exaggerated elements. Folk-lore are usually oral traditions, kind of trans-generational gossip, handed down from one generation to another giving cohesion to a community or people.

Anthropologist and mythologist, James Frazer exposes his own prejudices (and mine) when he writes of the Old Testament:

The annals of savagery and superstition unhappily compose a large part of human literature; but in what other volume shall we find, side by side with that melancholy record, psalmists who poured forth their sweet and solemn strains of meditative piety in the solitude of the hills or in green pastures and beside still waters; prophets who lit up their beatific vision of a blissful future with the glow of an impassioned imagination; historians who bequeathed to distant ages the scenes of a remote past embalmed for ever in the amber of a pellucid style? These are the true glories of the Old Testament and of Israel; these, we trust and believe, will live to delight and inspire mankind, when the crudities recorded alike in sacred and profane literature shall have been purged away in a nobler humanity of the future. (James George Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, Studies in Comparative Religion Legend and Law, Abridged Edition, Preface.)

There is something enduring, “historic” if you like, in the ephemeral, truths that "delight and inspire".

It is likely that legends and mythologies do contain elements of historical fact. For instance, Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid. For many years scholars doubted that the Trojan Wars ever took place. Since the Heinrich Schliemann and Carl Blegen excavations, the existence of the ancient city of Troy proved that historical truth lay behind the legends and myths of these ancient places and poets. The Mycenaeans, the Hittites, Agamemnon, and Nestor are indeed historical realities from our mythological past. The same could be true of the mythologies of the ancient Sumerians and Hebrews. Similarly the Incas and Mayans and the fabulous stories of Credo Mutwa.

Even fiction can and does incorporate historical fact. It can be argued that even if Christ-Myth theories were valid and, heaven forbid, the Bible pure fiction, that there still remains an underlying and abiding authenticity in the Gospel stories of the New Testament that is far more true than conspiracy or a spurious eruption of the Collective Unconscious.   (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ-myth and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_the_historical_Jesus.) Of course, to get to the core of the truth running through such stories takes a lot of digging, dredging, and reduction of the ore to extract the gold. (See "Reductionism".) By the same token we cannot simply take our daily newspaper or school history text books at face value. They carry a hidden agenda.

Euhemerus

The idea that mythologies might be based on actuality is called "euhemerism", so named after the ancient Greek mythographer Euhemerus. I first met Euhemerus through the writings of the Early Church historian, Eusebius. "The term euhemerism is derived from his name, and is the philosophy attributed to Euhemerus which holds that many mythological tales can be attributed to historical persons and events, the accounts of which have become altered and exaggerated over time" (Wikipedia). Euhemerus considered mythology to be "history in disguise." It is like when astute whistleblowers disguise fact in fiction. An extension of this can be found in prophetic writings such as Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged  where future fact is disguised as fiction. Similarly Star Trek, George Orwell, Jonathan Swift, and John of the Apocalypse.

Eusebius cites Euhemerus...

With regard then to gods the men of old have handed down to their posterity two sets of notions. For some, say they, are eternal and imperishable, as the Sun and Moon and the other heavenly bodies, and besides these the winds, and the rest who partake of the like nature with them; for each of these has an eternal origin and eternal continuance. Other deities they say were of the earth; but, because of the benefits which they conferred on mankind, they have received immortal honour and glory, as Heracles, Dionysus, Aristaeus, and the others like them. (Eusebius, Praep. evan. ii.2.59B-61A)

"It is not at all correct to elevate any human being to the position of a god." ~ Nelson Mandela at home, Soweto, South Africa, February 1990

Mandela Window,Regina Mundi Church, Soweto

We have an innate tendency to deify and to mythologise. We transfigure our heroes. We are witnessing the deification of Nelson Mandela right now in the South African psyche contrary to Madiba's own aspirations. Googling "deification of Mandela" renders numerous instances of this peculiar phenomenon. (Eg. http://www.politicalworld.org/showthread.php?14420-Why-do-humans-deify-people.)  There could yet come a time when we will even wonder whether Madiba ever existed in the sense that Prof. Gary Gutting recently asked "Did Zeus Exist?"  We worship our rugby heroes such as Bryan Habana and idolize our celebrity stars like Charlize Theron projecting qualities of a Hercules to the one and the attributes of a Venus to the other. Then comes the day when Atlas shrugs and no longer wishes to carry the burden of the world systems on his shoulders.

Another somewhat extreme example of euhemerism is Sitchinism and the divinisation of the Sumerian sky-heros, the Sumerian trinity, Anu, Enlil, and Enki. In Zechariah Sitchin's view the Sumerian gods were historical personages, extra-terrestrials in fact, who visited Earth, created humans and returned to their home, Nibiru, from whence they will come again. Drawing largely on Sumerian mythology and Genesis 6 a New Age theology has evolved which, with apology to Ireneaus and others, could be summarised: "The sons of heaven became sons of earth in order that the children of earth might become children of heaven. Extraterrestrials became terrestrials so that terrestrials might become extraterrestrials." Here is a mythic elaboration of the Christian and ancient Greek doctrine of apotheosis, "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods" (Thomas Aquinas, Opusc. 57, 1-4 cf. 'If the Word has been made man, it is so that men may be made gods' (Ireneaus, Adv. Haer V, Pref.)

Enki (Wikimedia Commons)

The Enduring Essence of Mythology

Joseph Campbell, American mythologist, quotes Thomas Mann, "Very deep is the well of the past. Shall we not call it bottomless? The deeper we sound, the further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomable" (Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, p 5 from Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers).

Hans Schindler Bellamy wrote, "We must rather go to the mythologist, the quiet collector of 'cosmic fiction', who has not been taken seriously up till now, for the true meaning of the reports that have been handed down to us for time immemorial."
(Hans Schindler Bellamy, Moons, Myths and Man)

There is gold hidden in these ancient traditions, wells, and potholes. Tom Bourke for all his misfortune is remembered for his persistence. Legend has it that Tom struck it lucky when he found nuggets of alluvial gold in the potholes that now bear his name. The other gold diggers are largely forgotten and unknown. The young boy of Bourke's Luck would sit many hours and look out in sheer bliss across the deep gorge and geological sandglass of the Blyde River Canyon and ponder things as they were.  "Very deep is the well of the past!" Such is the stuff our stories are made of. We must relentlessly pan the streams lest it slips through our fingers forever!

Blyde River Canyon. Photo CG Garvie

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za