Dear Friend and Reader:
THE SUN HAS ENTERED SAGITTARIUS, which is the sign of the local cosmos. On our scale, local might seem pretty far away. But in the universe, there is always farther you can go.There are galaxies strewn all over the place, though the direction of tropical Sagittarius, the 9th and “most philosophical of all the signs” (in the words of Jim Morrison), has two special distinctions from the standpoint of deep space astronomy.
One is that it’s where we find the core of our Milky Way galaxy. Discovered in 1933 by AT&T engineers laying telephone cable under the Atlantic Ocean (which picked up the signal it broadcasts from 25,000 light years afar), the core includes a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star).
(It is difficult to get a good look at it, because our view is obscured by all of the stars and stardust on the galactic plane.)
This most exciting discovery fits all of the classical associations with Sagittarius: long-distance travel, that which is alien or foreign, that which has spiritual or religious overtones, and that which makes us question reality and our relationship to it.
It’s impressive and I think humorous what “occultists” figure out long before science gets there.
Our galaxy and the rest of those near us are rushing toward this point (located a touch over 14 degrees Sagittarius) at about 1.3 million miles per hour.
Then There’s This Weird Thing at 14+ Degrees
Second, Sagittarius includes a weird thing called the Great Attractor. It is said to be a vast pool of subatomic particles.
This object, if you can call it that, is in the same approximate direction as the core of the galaxy, though said to be about 400 million-ish light years further away.
Relative to the Earth, the distance to the Galactic Core (about 25,000 light years) is like walking to the convenience store a few blocks away from your home.
The distance of the Great Attractor is more like starting in San Francisco and driving to Tokyo the long way.
The Great Attractor is said to be the focal point of our group of 100,000 nearby galaxies, known collectively as Laniakea or “great heaven.” Our galaxy and the rest of those near us are rushing toward this point (located a touch over 14 degrees Sagittarius) at about 1.3 million miles per hour.
There are many galactic superclusters throughout the universe, frequently focused on a Great Attractor-like gravitational anomaly, according to Brent Tully, the leader of the team that figured this out. You can listen to my Planet Waves interview with Tully at this link. For those curious about the relationship between the expanding universe and the massive contraction toward the Great Attractor (and other similar gravitational fields), you may read my correspondence with him at the bottom of the page.
By the way, I have not personally verified all of Dr. Tully’s mathematical calculations. I am taking his word that he and his team have done the work, and am vouching for his sincerity, and his understanding that there is a lot more to learn.
This scenario presents significant problems when there is finally real movement toward figuring out how and where the scientific method is missing from what passes for medical science, and by extension, all science.
The Flat Earth Mystery School
As you may know, with my partner-in-investigations, Cindy Ragusa, I have been scoping out the booming Flat Earth movement — people (lots and lots of them) who don’t think that the world is a sphere. Rather, it is some kind of simulation, an artificial domed object, or cookie sitting still in space around which the entire universe orbits.
Yes, our lives are a bit sci-fi these days. But science fiction series such as Riverworld, Ringworld, Discworld, Dune, and many others, are far more imaginative, and evocative of our potential — and also reveal the lack of imagination in their synthetic flat planet concept.
Our interest in this topic is not merely out of passing fancy, seeking inspiration for a satire, or curiosity about what semi-illiterate people may think*. Rather, this scenario presents significant problems when there is finally real movement toward figuring out how and where the scientific method is missing from what passes for medical science, and by extension, all science.
However, I also think it’s interesting from the standpoint of a description of the ground falling out of the world when it is uploaded to the internet. We no longer use the internet. We no longer visit the internet. We and all of our ideas about life are entirely submerged beneath the digital ocean, which we think of as a cloud (with vast choirs of servers humming).
In the age of disembodied communication, the meaning and significance and experienced of the body is utterly transformed and distorted.
We Have All Been Uploaded
It is what happens to people’s minds and bodies when they, too, are uploaded to the internet. Our consciousness enters a dimensionless place that is more like a parallel dimension with its own rules, laws and properties, rather than any kind of “place” we are accustomed to, such as the beach, a shopping mall or condominium. It is a space without direction, distance or location.
Not enough has been said about how disorienting it is to bring this back into the physical world of trees and birds, and impose it here. That is exactly what happens, however, and it’s extremely confusing and painful to do so.
Quoting Eric McLuhan once again (I hope you’ve read this lots of times):
“The body is everywhere assaulted by all of our new media, a state which has resulted in deep disorientation of intellect and destabilization of culture throughout the world. In the age of disembodied communication, the meaning and significance and experience of the body is utterly transformed and distorted.”
This description of mental and spiritual anarchy makes it a little easier to grasp how a devoted scientific investigator and medical doctor could write something like this:
“Hope this helps you understand why many of us doubt the globe model which makes us men and women insignificant, just ants on a ball spinning themselves into dizziness and hurling through space in several frames of motion at incredible speeds for eternity without purpose.”
I can see where all of the many facts of life plus knowing a little about the cosmos could make a person feel insignificant. However, the answer to that is not self-importance but rather making an inquiry into one’s place in the grand scheme.
The Groundless World
Whenever I read this, or get into a discussion with someone about why they think the world is some kind of fixed object around which everything else orbits, I am reminded of Laniakea.
As part of my research Monday night, I watched exactly the first two minutes of a “documentary” about our supposedly flat planet where the narrator expressed incredulity that we think we’re moving at incredible speeds — the rotation, the orbit of the Earth, the orbit of the Sun around the galaxy and the motion of the galaxy itself, but we can’t feel it.
No, buddy, this is what it feels like.
Exactly precisely what you are feeling and experiencing: reading this article on your phone, stuck in traffic, laying in the tub, working at your pottery wheel, playing with a puppy or sweeping the kitchen. What you feel now is what it feels like to be moving in all those “frames of motion at incredible speeds for eternity.”
But without meaning? What’s that about? Well, I can see where all of the many facts of life plus knowing a little about the cosmos could make a person feel insignificant. However, the answer to that is not self-importance but rather making an inquiry into one’s place in the grand scheme — if that is interesting. Sometimes it is necessary even if the question seems irrelevant.
How is it more meaningful to pretend that we are living on a stationary flat object than a moving spherical one? Well, this is a product of the “deep disorientation of intellect and destabilization of culture throughout the world.”
While some people are taking this disorientation to a humorous degree — and along the way, pretending that they don’t know what Mars is (in the most basic sense, as a famous Flat Earther claimed to me this week), and that there is a glass dome over the atmosphere — we are all experiencing some version of this same groundlessness created by full digital conditions.
And it is easy to exploit. It is easy to go to confused people and offer them some form of “I have the answer.” There will always be takers.
The body, under digital conditions, has been reduced to a disease vector. The popular notion of sexuality has been reduced to the expectation of attack, a one-hour “DTF” hookup, or something mysterious that happens in marriage.
Locate Your Missing Ground
Ultimately, the missing ground created by digital conditions is within ourselves. Electrical technology turns people inside out, eliminates privacy and the very concept of privacy, collapses space and time, and strives to turn us into data sets. That’s a lot to handle.
One of the messages of the medium of the internet is that everything is a scam; it’s a short hop to the notion that the concept of a human or of the planet under digital conditions is also a scam.
Plenty else has gone missing. The body, under digital conditions, has been reduced to a disease vector. The popular notion of sexuality has been reduced to the expectation of attack, a one-hour “DTF” hookup, or something mysterious that happens in marriage. Communication is no longer an embodied act. Rather, it is random and fleeting at the speed of light. Truth is allegedly anything someone wants it to be.
There is likely to be somewhere you are feeling the loss of ground. It might be social, it might be spiritual, it might be the loss of contact with something that you were previously good at or interested in.
Sagittarius is the sign associated with our spiritual connection to the vast cosmos that contains us. It is up to us to form or discover our own bond with existence, or to recognize that it exists, and draw wisdom from it.
Does it Feel Like There’s Anything Else Missing?
Does it seem to anyone else that the world is a little, um, hollowed out? That its substance has been removed or altered? I don’t think you’re dreaming.
There is indeed something missing. And many have not noticed this, or if they have, they have not given it a name. It would feel like stating the obvious, “wow, everything is wet” when you’re splashing around in a swimming pool.
And in that condition, people are vulnerable. We are vulnerable. Such as to anyone who says something with appealing confidence and nobody knows how much verification of facts.
Sagittarius is the sign associated with our spiritual connection to the vast cosmos that contains us. It is up to us to form or discover our own bond with existence, or to recognize that it exists, and draw wisdom from it. We might make up theories, though to those who experienced it, this line of contact is not theoretical. Nor is it provable. Nor is it a matter suitable for scientific analysis. Nor is it something we can impose on others.
With Sagittarius, as with all of cosmology, the best approach is something like, “I’m not certain, though there’s so much beauty and so much mystery to behold.”
Which is great — if you can stand it.
With love,
*By semi-illiterate, I mean out of contact with established and agreed documented history, to wit, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Brache, Sir Isaac, Bruno and others were going against the official government (meaning church) position that the world is flat and at the center of everything.
This was very dangerous work. Some paid a high price for their viewpoints — such as risking being tried before the Holy Inquisition, having their scholarship confiscated and burned, and being executed or imprisoned for their work on the heliocentric model.
Today we are told by some that the heliocentric model is the fraudulent government coverup for the deeper truth of a stationary, geocentric planet. But this shows no knowledge of where the heliocentric model came from or how it was developed.
