'The times they are a changing'

You don't need me to tell you. You know it already! Even if you don't think about it consciously, it is filed away there in the back of your mind: We are living at a time of change such as has not been seen in our world since mankind abandoned the simple life of hunter/gathering for the more work intensive toil of agriculture. How do we know this? How can we be so sure? Well it's quite simple really. The signs are all around us: over-population; extinction of an increasing number of species; climate change; pollution of land, sea and air; availability of weapons of mass destruction; globalization leading to mass unemployment; approaching one-world government...and above all there have been 'signs in the sky'.

We have been  here before of course, at least we have in a minor way. About four hundred years ago, in 1603-4, people noticed strange things happening in the sky. New stars or novae appeared in the W shaped constellation of Cassiopeia and in the serpent held by Ophiucus, (sometimes regard as the thirteenth sign of the zodiac). Johannes Kepler, the greatest astronomer of his age, recorded the appearance of these stars in his journal and almost immediately philosophers began to wonder what these strange portents might mean.

In Britain these celestial fireworks were seen as omens of a change. The death of Queen Elizabeth I and accession of James I in 1603, the same year the first of these stars appeared, was seen as signifying not just a change of dynasty but rather of the zeitgeist. This change in the spirit of the times gave encouragement to Sir Francis Bacon, who'd languished untitled during the rule of Elizabeth but rose like a nova himself under James. It fell to him to put into words what many others felt: that the world was ready for an 'instauration' — the word means renewal — of the sciences. His book The Advancement of Learning, which was published just two years later in 1605, quickly became the approved manifesto for 'Natural Philosophy', as Science was then termed. In the course of the next twenty years it would be followed by further tomes on the same subject — notably Novum Organum — cementing his position as England foremost philosopher.

Over on the continent the zeitgeist of change was to manifest in a somewhat more spiritual way. Around 1614 the first of several 'Rosicrucian' pamphlets appeared on the streets of Europe's great cities. Purporting to have been penned by an underground 'School' of religious philosophy, they invited the worthy to join their secret brotherhood of the Rosy Cross that together they might actually bring about the sort of instauration prophesied by Sir Francis Bacon. Though in practise the brotherhood continued to be hidden — indeed we do not know for certain that it really even existed — there is little doubt that something of the sort was active in Heidelberg, the capital of the small, German Principality of the Palatinate.

 

College of the RosicruciansIn 1618 all these ideas came together in the frontispiece to a book entitled Speculum Sophicum Rhodo-Stauricum ('Mirror of the Wisdom of the Rosy-Cross') by an otherwise unknown author called Theophilus Schweighardt. The frontispiece shows the college of the Rosicrucians in symbolic form as a moveable, lanterned, castle on wheels. Crucially it depicts the novae of 1603-4 as heralds of coming good.
  In 1642 science followed art when a group of Europe's most eminent scientists began meeting together, first in London and later in Oxford.  The called their group 'The Invisible College' for it had no premises of its own and they mostly shared ideas by sending one another letters. The work of the Invisible College, (which later gave birth to the 'Royal Society of London'—still considered the pre-eminent scientific body in the world), was to bring about the 17th century 'Enlightenment'.
A founder member of both organisations their number was Sir Christopher Wren who would later, design and build what is probably London's most esoteric and numerologically significant building: St Paul's Cathedral. This, like the imaginary college in Schweighardt's book has a dome and lantern. For those with the eyes to see it, it is a masterpiece in the tradition of the ancient mysteries.
    So what has all this to do with us today, I hear you ask?  Well actually much more than you might imagine. We have 'signs in the sky' of our own that indicate clearly that this is the time prophesied in the bible as the end of the age. For in our own days and  for the first time in 26,000 years, the great cycle, known as the precession of the equinoxes, has reached completion. This is marked by the appearance of the sun, at the solstices, aligned with what were called by the ancients the 'gates of heaven'. These positions in the sky were known of by the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and even the Maya of Central America. Why else would they have timed their sacred calendar, the 'Long Count' to terminate on the exact day that the sun would be aligned with a star-gate: on 21st December 2012?
    All this and much more besides is discussed in articles on this website and soon there will be video lectures available too. You do not have to join: there is no compulsion and indeed you can even access some articles and even areas of the Discussion forum as a guest. However, you will be missing out on what could well turn out to be your best chance for finding out information crucial to successfully navigating your way through the chaos that masquerades as informed thought in the early 21st century. So why not give this Invisible College a try?