This is your wake-up call!
Now is a good time to canvass our Pagan community to develop and circulate a unified “Platform” of our collective socio-political agenda. Various Pagan organizations, Projects and Alliances have in fact done just that over the past half-century, especially in conjunction with the Parliament of the World’s Religions. We can compare these and come up with an agreeable synthesis over the coming months.
We encourage Pagan conferences and festivals—such as Pantheacon, Paganacon, Starwood, Pagan Spirit Gathering, Sirius Rising, etc. to adopt this common rallying theme for next year: “The 2020 Vision: Awakening a New Cycle.” As we did with the Harmonic Convergence in 1987, we will need to create powerful rituals and Events around the world for this… “The Awakening!”
Another idea is to hold a big National “2020 Vision” hotel convention in an appropriate city, the way the World Science Fiction Convention does each year. This will mean selecting the site and pulling together a working team of people who have already been doing this sort of thing for years for events such as Pantheacon and Paganacon. A key component will be performances by well-known musicians, so we’ll need to contact them.
The theme for next year’s Three Gates Gathering in West Plains, MO will be “The Time is Now to Change the World!” That would be a good theme for a 2020 Vision convention as well… We will need to create a ritual and a series of Events around the world for this… “The Awakening!”
An Anthem can be Isaac Bonewits’ song, “We Just Say ‘no!’” with its stirring refrain, “Never again The Burning!” Also Isaac’s “Avalon is Rising.” And Gwydion Pennderwen’s classic Pagan anthem: “We Won’t Wait Any Longer!”
The Awakening
Just as each of us awakened into consciousness as an infant, so too is Gaea Herself poised on the threshold of a planetary Awakening—the evolution of consciousness into the next quantum leap. In Eastern traditions this is called Enlightenment. It is a full awakening of the spirit, in which one experiences with every fiber of one’s being the full connection with all other Beings, throughout all of Time and Space. It is the integration of both brain hemispheres into simultaneous consciousness, rather than the normal alternation of one or the other. We call this Apotheasis—literally, deification, or “becoming Divine.”
It has been imagined that this might come about as a kind of universal telepathy. But I think the emergence and rapid evolution of the Internet is already providing the seeds of a technological vehicleof global consciousness through which this Awakening will inevitably manifest. In a 1926 interview with Collier’s magazine, Nicolo Tesla said: “When wireless is perfectly applied the whole Earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance.”
And it’s whispered that soon,
If we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn
For those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter
(-Led Zeppelin, “Stairway to Heaven”)
Coalescence of Consciousness
I believe that the two-handed coordination required for playing music and operating modern computer consoles is stimulating not only a re-awakening of the dormant right brain hemispheres of humanity, but a full synchronization of both forms of mentality into a new ambidextrous consciousness that will be able to sustain the awakened mind of Gaea. And as with the awakening of consciousness in our own minds, as the billions of neurons in our brains linked up synergistically, just so shall we all participate in the Awakening of Gaea Herself—and our full Apotheasis.
Scientist/philosopher Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) envisioned just such an awakening of planetary consciousness as the “Omega Point”—the ultimate fulfillment of the entire purpose of creation and evolution. This would be the point in time when the individual consciousnesses of all living beings on Earth coalesce into a single collective consciousness. He said: “We are faced with a harmonized collectivity of consciousnesses to a sort of superconciousness. The Earth not only becoming covered by myriads of grains of thought, but becoming enclosed in a single thinking envelope, a single unanimous reflection.” (The Phenomenon of Man, 1955)
The GAiaspora
We stand at a great crossroads in evolution; the most critical in the entire history of Life. The very technology which presently threatens all life on this planet could alternately be used to build starships to carry our descendants throughout the galaxy. Perhaps humans are intended to be the spores of Gaea. Reproduction is, after all, an essential function of all living systems, and this applies no less to a living planet.
I predict that before the end of this century, we will see the beginnings of the great Diaspora of humanity out into the stars. Diaspora means “scattering,” or “dispersion”—particularly of a people with a common origin, such as the Jews after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE. But the root of the word, speirein, means “to sow,” as in the planting of seeds. Establishing space colonies, terraforming barren worlds—“flying Mother Nature’s silver seeds to a new home…” as Neil Young sings—may be the most important purpose for the evolution of a technological species.
And one day seedlings of Gaea will be planting new roots in distant soil beyond the farthest star…
Web links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2020VisionAwakening
Website: http://2020visionawakening.com/
Bibliography:
- “American Religious Identification Survey (2001),” Trinity College, 2013, at: https://commons.trincoll.edu/
- Bonewits, PEIB. “Avalon is Rising” on Avalon is Rising. 1988, 2001. http://www.neopagan.net/IB_Songs
- _ “We Just Say ‘No!’” on Be Pagan Once Again. 1985, 2001. Ibid.
- De Chardin, Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man. William Collins, 1955.
- Introvigne, Massimo, “The rise and rise of Wicca,” Mercatornet, 2018-DEC-05, at: https://www.mercatornet.com/
- Judith, Anodea, The Global Heart Awakens: Humanity’s Rite of Passage from the Love of Power to the Power of Love. Shift Books; 2nd ed. 2013.
- Pendderwen, Gwydion, “We Won’t Wait Any Longer!” on The Faery Shaman. Nemeton, 1982.
- Robinson, B.A., “How many Wiccans are there?” Religious Toerance.org. http://www.religioustolerance.org/estimated-number-of-wiccans-in-the-united-states-7.htm
- Russell, Peter, The Global Brain Awakens: Our Next Evolutionary Leap. Global Brain Inc; 2nd ed. 1995.
- Singh-Kurtz, Sangeeta & Kopf, Dan, “The US witch population has seen an astronomical rise,” Quartzy, 2018-OCT-04, at: https://qz.com/
- Strauss, William, & Howe, Neil, The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy. Broadway Books, NY, 1997.
- Tesla, Nicolo, interview with Collier’s magazine, 1926.
- Zell, Oberon, Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard. New Page Books, 2004. (pp. 57-59)