vortex energy

Vortex Energy(Aug 04, 2009 at 10:11 PM) -

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"Cosmic matter whirling about a center or axis" is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines "vortex." But of coursevortices (or "vortexes") are much more. They are both experienced phenomena and pictographic symbols found indescriptions of the universe starting from deepest antiquity. Vortex forms -- that is to say nested circles, spirals androtating funnels or whirlpools -- are familiar to us from ancient artworks and religious iconography, all the way to today'smaterial sciences. In physics, vortex dynamics govern the behavior of fluids and air. But vortices are also seen inastronomy, most familiar in images of galaxies including our own Milky Way, and in depictions of black holes thatchallenge the limits of our comprehension. Increasingly we encounter vortexes in cutting edge physics, in specializedfields such as light on the "quantized" level -- photon confluences, virtual particles underlying visible reality. It is then nosurprise that vortices are also considered spiritual, and the so called New Age has adopted the vortex too: in places suchas Sedona, AZ and several others, visitors report having experiences and encounters with psychic energy vortexes thatare palbable and have a powerful effect on the mind and the senses. In a psychic, religious and mystical context, vorteximages are found in the folk doctrines of Peru; in the Finnish taika (magic) tradition; in Siberian shamanism, Celtic myth,ancient Greece, Egypt and more. Indigenous Australian art going back more than ten thousand years provides perhaps theoldest known examples of vortex imagery.

The Judeo-Christian tradition has examples as well. God speaks out of a whirlwind to Job in the Old Testament, where asupernal "pillar of cloud" -- intelligent energy in a in a mysterious rotating form -- also leads the Israelites in the desert(we thank Dr. Bernard Levine, Yeats scholar, linguist and symbologist, for pointing this out). The Bible has other instances-- there is Ezekiel's vision with its rotating wheels of fire; there is also the pool of Bethesda (New Testament) where anangel stirred the waters. Spirals, the DNA helix and indeed the deformation of spacetime itself around black holes, are allinstances of vortex forces. Thus it seems that micro- and macroscopic vortex phenomena are everywhere.

The western philosopher generally given credit for re-introducing vortices into scientific and philosophical discourse andfor elaborating their nature, however, is the 17th C. philosophical and mathematical prodigy René Descartes, the "I think,therefore I am" guy -- who was also the "Cartesian Coordinates and mathematical superscript guy" (for more onDescartes and vortices, visit our Vortex of Descartes page).

[image: from Bernard de Fontenelle's wildly popular (for its time) book, Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, 1724.Fontenelle also published a more serious study of Cartesian vortices, Théorie des Tourbillons Cartésiens, 1752.Copyright: we believe this image is in the public domain. If however you have rights to it, please notify us at basyevortex |at | yahoo dot com.]

The Morpho Sulkowskyi-- a Vortex Detecting Device

On the quantum photonic level of electromagnetic energy, matter is aware of mind -- particles change their behavior ifthey are observed. Nanotechnology deals with objects 100 nanometers, down to about 1/10th of a nanometer (onenanometer is one billionth of one meter, or one millionth of a millimeter). A human hair is perhaps 100,000 nanometers indiameter. The carbon atom is about one Angstrom, or one tenth of a nanometer in diameter, and a proton (one of theresidents in the atomic nucleus) is less than a femtometer in diameter, and a femtometer is a mere millionth of ananometer. Quantum photonics concern levels way below this -- and in fact these are dimensions of "virtual particles"that, although they are constitutive of matter in some sense, do not behave materially. The interaction between quantumparticles and light is way below the nano- and femtoscale of the atoms and molecules that are consituents of materialobjects, but without being limited to the laws applying to matter. Quantum-level behavior of light, and the interaction oflight and matter, has become one of the most fascinating frontiers of science.

Emblematic of the promise of these domains is the family of Morpho butterflies. The Blue Morpho (pictured), an icon ofeological Costa Rica, is a visually striking cousin of the Morpho sulkowskyi, which in turn has become aliving nanotechnology laboratory in the wild, found in the Tropical Andes region of S. America, especially in Ecuador andhttp://basyevortex.com - Basye Vortex Powered by Mambo Generated:19 September, 2015, 02:14

Peru. Nano-optical science is interested in the Morpho family because the iridescence of the wing of a Morphosulkowskyi harbors secrets: emblematic of tropical microclimates, these butterflies are teaching us about the mostpuzzling dimension of physics: the relationship of light waves and cognition, thought and matter.

It was discovered that the Morpho's sulkowskyi's iridescent wings present complex optical and crystallographicnanostructures which are in fact sensing devices. The morpho wings not only "see," they are by definition synaesthetic,that is to say, they cross the boundaries of different senses. The morpho's wings sense optical wavelenths that change inresponse to gases, which means that this butterfly "smells" by means of light. The colors on its wings are the product ofchanging light wavelengths in the presence of slight electromagnetic pressure exerted by molecules of gas in air. Theiridescent colors created by these interference waves in the presence of different vapors vary precisely and predictably --hence it is a form of cognitive capability not previously studied or even recognized.

GE received a $6.5MM grant from DARPA (Advanced Projects Research Agency -- part of the U.S. DoD and theorganization that actually did invent the internet) to study and replicate the nano-cognitive structures of the MorphoSulkowskyi for purposes related to defense. Such research is a small part of what Dr. Jeremy Ramsden, a nanosciencesprofessor in Kitakyushu, Japan and Editor-in-Chief of Nanotechnology Perceptions, refers to as the "nano-bio-info-cognoconfluence." Because nanophotonic phenomena have revealed vortex like behavior, the Morpho may also help in de-linking the notion of psychic energy vortices -- i.e., those vortex phenomena related to mental phenomena and cognition -- from the domain of exclusively New Age theories. The scientific may for the first time stand on the same ground with theparanormal and psychic. There have been many efforts to connect the experiences of vortex energies in Sedona,Arizona to paranormal and mystical affects, and the explanations have often stretched credulity. It now appears that thesecret to Sedona's vortexes and their psychic dimension is more likely to be explained via brain chemistry and changesin the perceptual field via scientifically validatable mechanics involving nanophotonics and perception, than by a mysticalprojection or the minerology or magnetism of the red rocks.

In that context, then, the vortices of Basye, Virginia, are of yet a different sort from those of Sedona (which are referredto, in the plural, as "vortexes"), and one which will bring us much closer to details about scientifically validatable subtleenergies. For one thing, Basye is a verdant, green landscape of valleys and above and underground streams. But beforegetting into specifics about Basye's ecology and energy envelope, we should probably ask, in a New Age sense and ascientific one: what is "vortex energy," and why should we care? What are vortex locations? What is it about MachuPicchu, Stonehenge, Sedona, the Église St-Germain des Prés, and the energies people claim to experience at theselocations?

Well - we might care, first of all, because the molecular cloud out of which our solar system was formed, was nudged by apulse of energy into vast rotational motion, a vortex. According to prevailing scientific views, that vortex graduallydeveloped a luminous center, the sun, and planets orbiting that center. So our beginnings are commingled with vortices;our solar system is a product of vortex dynamics and, actually, it is quite possible that the Big Bang itself is as well. Inother words, vorex energy is what the world is made of.

"What if" questions in astrophysics are annoying because they invite wild speculation and can't be answered definitively,but we will permit ourselves one to which Stephen Hawking alludes. What if, in looking through 14 billion years towardthe Big Bang at the beginning of our universe, we are in fact looking at a black hole "from the other side"? the matter ofour expanding universe spewing out from the Singularity would have been sucked in through a black hole from anotheruniverse. We keep asking, "what is on the other side of a black hole?" -- Well, in that "what if" scenario, we are what's onthe other side of a black hole; our entire universe is the other side of a Singularity that occurred in another universe. -- Inany case black holes exhibit rotational force, which means that vortices also have a "dark side," and these manifest on aless cosmic scale on our planet as maelstroms, cyclones, and the like. The mechanics of this perilous aspect aredescribed by a scientific law known as the conservation of angular momentum ("CAM") -- a physics-level explanation ofhow a vortex draws matter toward its center, and in the case of a Black Hole, irretrievably so. Not even light escapes ablack hole. In fact, not even space escapes a black hole: after nearby matter implodes with sufficient gravity, space itselfis plunged in. Light's 300,000 km per second in relation to space, can't overcome the space, the frame of reference forspeed, being drawn in to the center. So in effect light trying to emerge from a black hole vortex is going backwards.

The Morpho sulkowski. As we approach more powerful means of computing and cognition, nature often steps in to showthat we don't need to reinvent the wheel. This butterfly teaches advanced optics, nanophotonics and vortex behavior oflight, which, like a fractal fingerprint we find over and over on different levels is the latest place that gravity and substancehttp://basyevortex.com - Basye Vortex Powered by Mambo Generated:19 September, 2015, 02:14

engage in a cosmic dance. Although much of what is said about black holes is theoretical, similar vortex dynamics aresafely produced in the laboratory on a hypermicro scale. At places like NYU, laser beams create gravity fields androtational funnels using what is known as HOT technology (Holographic Optical Tweezers) in order to trap andmanipulate minute particles -- thus vortices are involved at and below the nanoscale. Light can be "spun" by thepresence of gravity and minute vortices are part of the interference pattern of lightwaves as they interact with structuressuch as the wing of the Morpho Sulkowski butterfly. These interference patterns are cognitive systems, that is theyinvolve consciousness, defined as cognition of objects outside the cognitive structure itself. The Morpho Sulkowski'swings, as a case in point, detect vapors by means of optics.

[image credit: GE Global Research. GE nanoscientists are using the morpho wing as a model for cognitive and sensingsystems under a grant from DARPA. Radislav Potyrailo, GE scientist and lead on the project, notes: "...the iridescentscales of the Morpho sulkowskyi butterfly give a different optical response to different individual vapors, and {...] thisoptical response dramatically outperforms that of existing nano-engineered photonic sensors. Dr. Potyrailo's article on theproject.]

An optical vortex, interestingly, presents the same image at its center that scientists believe a black hole will -- a darkpoint surrounded by a ring of light. And an optical vortex is, at least under certain conditions, also a singularity: its centeris a zero point in the magnetic field. In terms of advanced physics, photons -- the particle phase of light -- are "gaugebosons," meaning, they are exchanged, and force is transferred, by means of virtual particles. Since consciousness isinvolved in the laws of probability that describe quanta, it is reasonable to ask whether consciousness is not affected byvortices which create singularities in the particle structure of light and of the brain itself. The question of why vorticeshave spiritual effects is more closely related to science, perhaps, than we realize.

The CAM is a basic material dynamic. It explains why a vortex turns faster as the radius of its spin is reduced -- aphenomenon you can verify by watching water drain in a sink: the tighter the circle, the more rotations it makes and theharder it is to escape its force. Tornadoes are faint copies of the same massive vortex power involved in the making ofour solar system, and the CAM works on all levels from the macroscopic to the the submicroscopic. "Light can be twisted like a corkscrew around its axis of travel. Because of the twisting, the light waves at the axis itselfcancel each other out. When projected onto a flat surface, an optical vortex looks like a ring of light, with a dark hole inthe center. This corkscrew of light, with darkness at the center, is called an optical vortex." -- Optical Vortex, Wikipedia

Consequently, there are invisible vortices which affect our world -- studied by scientists in the behavior of matter andenergy down to the nanoscale and below. And there are "spiritual" or "psychic vortex" phenomena, which have soentranced the New Age. Many people -- and not just New Agers -- report vortex experiences at certain locations --though, granted, no scientifically rigorous study has been made of such experiences. Reports are that such experiencesare associated with personal transformation, insight, realization, entry into deep inner focus, or in general, a sense ofconnection with the universe. Many people report feeling this energy in a physical, bodily way. Vortices, in this sense too,have been around a long, long time,except that somehow, for many people, they have been neglected, forgotten orburied by the advance of modern life. No theory offered for them to date really explains what they are or how they exerttheir power. But would it be so strange, since we are "star-stuff" ourselves, and since the night sky is evidence of theubiquity of rotating, spiral forms in our universe, that our minds would in some way be susceptible, or sensitive to, thepresence of vortex energies?

The World as Artifice? - Ridiculous... but wait...

Do you remember The Matrix movie? -- or movies, there were several sequels. There is a reason we ask.

For many people it would be very strange, if not somehow repugnant, to consider the possibility that reality -- includingnature in its self-evident presence and every perception we have of "the world" -- might in any sense be an "artifice" orthe outcome of a manufacturing process. "Your mother is a computer" jokes aside, it depends on how one understands"artifice." The notion of trompe l'oeil virtual reality is part of artificial intelligence studies, implicitly, and there is vortextheory attached to it that we should address. Many of us in the contemporary world have accepted the idea of virtualenvironments as at least a probable fact of the future, beginning with enveloping holography -- the picture is 3-D and it isall around. The move to tangible holography would mean that the images are tangible and that you can touch them "justlike the real thing." Tangible holograms would be a big step -- but not nearly as huge a one as endowing the electronichttp://basyevortex.com - Basye Vortex Powered by Mambo Generated:19 September, 2015, 02:14

product with biological equivalence. Virtual biology.

The idea of human cognitive experience as a product, as the output of preceding phases, though not stated in exactlythose terms (the electronic age is more likely to use a term like "fabrication" or "simulation"), has been implicit, evenexplicit, in wisdom traditions such as Vedic and Buddhist philosophy, for a very long time. Strictly speaking, even inJudeo-Christian terms, there is a "manufacturer" -- God -- so that nature is a created thing. Whether you would call thatan artifice gets into semantics and theology in a way that probably will not be solved here.... but the view of the universeas a product has history to it. In the 17th C. René Descartes, doing science while having also to do religion (thanks tothe Inquisition), invoked God, or invisible intent, to explain the first movement of material bodies scientifically. Descartesalready then broached a mathematical representation of perception (e.g., his famous "stone in a sling" examplescontrasting apparent vs. actual momentum) -- mind as representation, in symbolic form, of the invisible. Today, brainscience is trying to explain perceptions and feelings on an engineering model -- chemical / molecular activities. A glanceat a graph showing the electromagnetic spectrum, and the the narrow footprint of the human senses in that continuum,whether expressed as Frequency (Hertz) or Wavelength (Meters and fractions thereof), are sufficient to make one realizethat we are part of a sea of energy and it is absurd to think that our part of this sea is separate from the rest. [image: thespectrum of electromagnetic energy, from the Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons - Attribution Shareand Share-Alike License.] The question then is, how is our part related to the rest? Enlightenment traditions present themind as a fabricator (of illusions), and earthly life as captivity in a crypt (see, for instance, Avicenna and the VisionaryRecital by Henri Corbin) -- but perhaps those notions need to be challenged as well. Today's digital media areacclimating us to reconsider mind and nature anew.

Convergence of Science and Spirit

The foregoing ideas have been given new life by studies of cognition and the brain, not to mention quantum mechanics,all of which suggest that consciousness plays a role not just in "showing the perceived world to us," but in creating it.These findings are not meant as an attack on objective reality, but as an explanation of it. It's not saying that there is "noreality out there," nor to claim "it's all subjective"; rather it questions the assumptions of the question. If there were acatastrophic event like a nuclear holocaust and mankind were obliterated, we can imagine the stars existing without us.That is rational. But we would also be lying, say some, because we would have smuggled into the universe our points ofreference, our framework, sense of the tangible human-scale world. The textured skin of an orange, is what it is becausewe have a body that can touch it and senses that receive in a certain band of the spectrum; and it is so because there issome body, like the human body, for which "solidity" exists -- since we know in absolute terms, according to physics, themost solid objects are not solid. A graphene sheet has more holes than atoms, but we do not experience it as a net.Thus in science the inner and the outer occupy a new interwoven and biochemically mingled status, the existence ofwhich we did not suspect "back in the day." Science had abandoned metaphysics, but now metaphysics has returned ina guise that is scientific and spiritual. Vortex beliefs in a spiritual sense, and vortex sciences, are on a course ofconvergence -- as are certain trends in media, computer science and entertainment. [image: a sling illustration fromDescartes'Treatise on Light, written in 1632 but published posthumously three decades later.]

Pop Culture Gets Metaphysics -- "The Matrix"

Back in 1999, a futuristic film called The Matrix -- a bit of Zen stylishly encapsulated in special effects and a "post-apocalyptic" look -- evoked discussion, both from fans and from people who were reluctantly drawn into the dialogue."Regular intellectuals" and humanists were delighted or annoyed, depending. The ensuing debate about the relationshipof electronic media, virtuality, metaphysics and morality -- a discussion Hollywood still hasn't figured out how toreproduce or "monetize" (otherwise the formula that made the Matrix phenomenon might have been copied dozens oftimes) -- took everyone by surprise. At its core was the film's allegory about cognition in a future age of machineintelligence*, provoking debate of ideas from Vedic yoga and Buddhism, to Plato and Descartes, to Marshall McLuhan,Jean Baudrillard (spoofed in the drawing; copyright unknown), postmodern social criticism and even Giorgio Armani.

*[Cognition in the Age of Computers: see Ray Kurzweil's 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans TranscendBiology.]

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In a word, The Matrix proposes that the world we live in is a fabrication, created by means of advanced computer code.The intent of the Wachowski brothers notwithstanding, being fabricated does not need to mean that a world is unreal -- itjust means there is a process preceding perception and determining its contents; equally it means that consciousnesscan be disassembled into its quanta, like light, which is a wave, is quantized in photons. That's the scientific view. Thus inThe Matrix, you can either see and take for real the objects created by "code" (these "objects" being, more or less,equivalent to the external world a.k.a. "matrix"), or you can see the code itself, the very fabric of energy responsible forrendering the perceived universe. In the case of The Matrix that would be electronic energy and, in a larger sense,electromagnetic energy, the stuff of nature. It is a contemporary idea, but strip away the technology motif and it is rightout of oriental philosophy. More precisely, it echoes the Buddhist meditative tradition which the movie has been accusedof trivializing.

The Matrix was violent enough to turn off a lot of people who would otherwise appreciate its much-discussed allusions,but the fabric of higher vibrational energy, represented in the movie by "code" (computer code), is the subject of intenseinterest for followers of "enlightenment traditions." Scientific understanding of energies in terms of frequencies,wavelength, amplitude and so on, has only piqued this interest. The visible spectrum is a small part of theelectromagnetic array, and above and below what we experience are the other frequencies of which our experience is amere "slice." Thus, some believe that one of the guises of higher consciousness, or one of the forms by means of whichit announces itself, is "vortex energy," and thus one might argue that vortices are what The Matrix movie is about.

Drenched in Digital Rain

As The Matrix shows it, at the threshold of the vortex, there is a disruption of ordinary awareness, and a kind ofliquification of material forms -- a transformation of the impermeable into the permeable, and of opacity into a transparentelectronic gel. A new medium emerges -- a plasma in which temporal events are slowed, not quickened. In The Matrix,this dimension, in which light and matter combine, is called "bullet-time," because on that level of perception a bullet'sflight is optically resolved and slowed to an almost hallucinatory degree. The vortex medium is discovered via the"melting" of solid objects into light vibrations, and as this gelatinous and sensible stuff emerges, the world is opticallyresolved into code -- visually represented as a waterfall-like curtain (called "digital rain" in the lingo of the franchise),streaming with symbols and glyphs. These symbols would normally be invisible, like the internals of software to the user,but they would assemble the perception of a world. [image: from the Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the GNU FreeDocumentation License, Version 1.2] Thus in The Matrix, our world -- the home of six and a half billion souls on earth -- isa sort of spell within which the conscious mind will be embodied and trapped unless it realizes the truth of its situation.That is the challenge put to Neo, the main character of the film. Get enlightened or get destroyed.

That is, more or less, also the setting of Buddhism, which is focused on the awakening of the mind to its true nature andits true situation. The plot asks whether Neo, the main character, can arrive at this realization and see the "digital rain" forwhat it is. If he can, he will also acquire mental abilities such as hyper-sensory perception and the slowing of time (to"bullet time" ), which of course make for excellent special effects. When at the climax of the film Neo first learns to seewithin time, the results are spectacular:

Neo looks out, now able to see through the curtain of the Matrix. For a moment, the walls, the floor, even the Agentsbecome a rushing stream of code.[from the screenplay of The Matrix, by Larry and Andy Wachowsky, 1997]

Physics of the Virtual: the World at One Foot per Nanosecond

Since "virtualization," "simulation" and the "virtual" itself seem so abstract and mental, it is odd to think of them assomething that could be conceived as physical or studied physically. But if something is perceived, it has somecorrespondence in substantial space, be it the movement of photons in visual perception, or just biochemical, molecularevents in the brain. The virtual is physical -- even if it makes us think anew what we mean by "physical." (And sincevortices are perceived, felt, experienced, they too are physical in some way, even if there is no measurably elevatedmagnetic energy at vortex locations).

Part of the cognitive puzzle here is that light is responsible for visible things, but we don't see light itself -- not as physicssays it is, anyway, in waves or particles. That's because we are bound by our bodily mind-state into a localized frame ofreference (the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty called it being inserted into time by our body), where lighthttp://basyevortex.com - Basye Vortex Powered by Mambo Generated:19 September, 2015, 02:14

reveals the world but itself remains concealed (because of its relative velocity). Light is hidden in the things it reveals.[image: Tom the cat. © The Basye Vortex™ 2010.]

Why Space IS Time, Or How Long Is One meter?

Here's an oddity that should jolt our thinking: the speed of light, the space it traverses per second, is defined in terms oftime and distance (300,000 kilometers in one second of time); but once this is obtained, this "light-time" is turned back onspace and it is used to define spatial measure exactly. In other words, the stately meter, so rationally placed in thesystem of division and multiplication by 10 that is the metric system to which the meter gave its name -- indeed, the royalamong measures -- this very same meter conceals a secret: it is a unit of time. That is to say, spatial distance is in facttime. How long is one meter? You would expect the answer to be in some unit of distance but in fact the answer is thatthe exact length of one meter equals a certain fraction of time. More precisely, a fraction of one second of lightspeed. Sothe meter is used to define how fast light moves; but light's movement defines how long a meter is.

This seems contrary to reason, but only because we think of space as a container, and of things in it as contents, and oftime as something related, but different. But in fact, a quantity of linear space measured by a yardstick -- is really a unit"light-time." Time renders space for perception -- space IS time, and so are the things in space. Anything with dimensionis apprehended in time. We know about this in the abstract -- we all know that light takes years to arrive from the neareststar -- but we don't really reflect on the fact that time is involved in rendering the most immediate experiences of whichwe can conceive. [image: from the Wikipedia, under the GNU Free Documentation (Attribution Share Alike) 1.2 License;showing the transverse electric and magnetic frequencies of light as it moves, in this graph, horizontally.] The currentworldwide standard for the exact length of one meter, is a hyper-precise amount of time: one meter of space is thedistance travelled by an electromagnetic wave, in a vacuum, in exactly one 299,792,458ths of one second (there is asecond, more precise way of measuring this, but it also involves TIME rather than spatial units to define what a meter is).If light renders visibility and the perceived world, one meter of it is created in that amount of time, about one 300 millionthof one second. In one billionth of one second, light travels approximately 30 centimeters or about twelve inches, which onthe earth of Einstein and Hawking, thus becomes better defined as one light-nanosecond (although this does not havethe precision of the definition for the meter, it is a handy way to think of "how long" is one foot).

Mapping the Rings of the Vortices

Because this is the speed limit of light, it is also the speed limit of events -- i.e., it is the speed of perceived reality.Nothing that happens at a distance from us can reach our senses, or impact our bodies, faster than the amount of timerequired for the electromagnetic force of that event, the "report" of its material reality, to get to us. If the sun imploded, wewould not know that for over eight minutes; if Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, were to "go supernova" at this instant,we would know nothing of it for nine years; so it would have happened, but "not really." Space is light-time perceived,light renders the distance we see, and this light-time is event time. This lag of event and perception always exists, it isconstitutive of our bodies and of the universe: things are "in" space, but they are time. Every visible object is pushing orshedding these rings of time around itself, imprints of its own form in light, and those are transmitted through space --and ironically what science is finding now, so-called primitive people were representing, consciously or unconsciously,thousands of years ago. Electromagnetic radiation is a transverse wave, which means that its motion is perpendicular tothe direction of travel, and thus a "front" is created. We are not used to thinking of it that way, because while we readilyaccept the notion of time with respect to things like the speed of sound, and the obvious lag it takes to reach us, weassume a background of a steady reality within which the sound travels. Electromagnetic energy in its various sensiblestates, however, IS that "steady reality" itself, and we know it bends by respect to gravity, so that the fixed backgroundagainst which we measure things is not in fact "fixed." From nine feet away, nothing can reach us faster than ninenanoseconds. [image: Australian aboriginal lizard. Attribution to come.] That is such a minute amount of time that as apractical matter it makes no difference at all; but this lag in perception is all important for brain science, physics,metaphysics and now, movies -- and to the understanding of vortices.


The Elephant in the Lake

If vortex energy actually has something to do with our experience of time -- the window of the now -- then it is fair tospeculate that we become aware of vortices, whether as geographic locations or experiences in our conscious space, tothe extent that we are in fact being drawn into this expanded frame of experiencing. As both space and the visible worldare rendered in light-time (or "happen" in light-time), we see the result, not the process, but we would be effected by thevortex before we were consciously aware of it, which may explain the frequent "there is something about this place"references regarding Orkney Springs, Lake Laura, and the hills around Basye. Descartes believed not only that space iscomposed of vortices, but that light is a "liquid," that is to say, it presents itself to the senses as a kind of rippling plasma,beyond which or in the center of which is concealed the ponderous, vast heartbeat of the universe, which Vedic yogissometimes compared to a metaphorical elephant. Thus we would all experience the cosmic elephant from our positionand location -- we wouldn't directly see the powerful forces of which it is made.

The relationship between the inner process and the result is paralleled by that between the execution of code (as it iscalled in information technology) and the matrix; it is also the relationship between perceived thing and the substrateenergy, the electromagnetic ground, which makes that perception possible. When Neo suspends time in the movie, hegets INTO time, he gets into that lag -- the "now" opens, and time itself moves like waves of plasma in which even bulletsare as slow and gentle as dandelion puffs riding a lazy breeze. This process is totally invisible normally -- but not always,say the sages, and says science too, at least in theory. [image: Vortex Elephant, Iraq, 16th or 17th C.]

If the world were a painting being created anew moment by moment, no matter how attentively we look, we could not seethese puffs, nor the "brush" as it creates the image, or the hand of the metaphorical "artist" wielding this brush. Is itpossible, then, instead of merely seeing things whose perception is made possible by the movement of light wavesthrough space, to see the electromagnetic waves themselves -- the waves of time, in effect ? Is it possible to see theprocess by means of which visuality itself is rendered? The character Morpheus asks Neo a form of this question in thefilm.

Such goals may have seemed absurd and unrealistic at best, or crackpot speculation at worst, from an objectiveviewpoint 50 years ago; but today it could be argued that few things are more realistic. In light of current research into therole of the brain in the perception of time and the composition of cognition, the relationship between conceptual reality,sensory experience and the nano-structures involved in "sensing" -- that is to say, the biochemistry of the perceptualprocess -- these notions are startlingly not ridiculous at all. Vortex energy is a perceptual portal: the invitation to perceivethe light-time of which the physical world is a subset or, in quantum terms, a possibility. The Matrix leverages these ideas.

Thus while The Matrix looks like a digital reality martial arts film aimed at teenage boys, it also aspires to be a "Hermann-Hesse-on-amphetamines" type of Siddhartha vignette about the journey toward knowledge. In the process, it becomes alesson about vortex energies. (In Hollywood spiritual advancement is quantified, it seems, in terms of superior wushumartial arts skills ... ) Except this version of enlightenment is not just a noumenal inner event, an encounter with wisdom;it has an external counterpart, a change in the plane of consciousness, by accessing the world in its fundamentals, asthe malleable energy of which it is made, like a play in which electromagnetism is the principal character. Of course itseems patently absurd to think that a human experiencer can perceive quantum states of matter, when she or he iscomposed by those states; but from the quantum, to the atomic, to the molecular, to the cellular, to the level of everydayconsciousness is nevertheless a mapping which has been done in theory, and which is being partly virtualized in our day.

Light-Time and Vortex-Time

The Wachowski brothers, who wrote the script of The Matrix, had a lot of sources. They borrowed from the work ofFrench postmodernist Jean Baudrillard (d. 2007), whose book Simulacra and Simulation makes a cameo appearance inthe film, appropriately, as a hollowed out book containing computer disks; the notion of the evil superintelligent computerthat is driving the matrix and deceiving us about the nature of reality, is derived from the work of 17th C. mathematician-philosopher René Descartes; and so on. (Critics have discussed themes of the Matrix plot as parallelling both Descartesand Plato.) [image: tourbillons -- vortices -- from Descartes 1644 work, The Principles of Philosophy. Image is in thepublic domain.]


But Baudrillard's concept of simulated reality, or more precisely reality as simulation --one of the main ports toward whichour technomedia culture is headed at rapacious warp speed -- is central. Virtuality -- that is, machine-generated reality --is an entertainment Utopia, and represents a motherlode of profits, but it goes farther than that because it represents atransformation of what we experience and where what we experience comes from. Not everyone is happy with this.Baudrillard basically accused contemporary western culture of erasing the difference between representation (a map, apicture, a report, a computer-generated object, a narrative) and the reality to which it refers, so that the virtualization or"simulation" (the computer term) is the reality. The effect of this, he wrote, is to abandon reality, transforming it into a"desert" ("Welcome to the desert of the real" -- a line actually used in The Matrix). So by technological means and byOrwellian cultural appeasement we are fed with electronic eye candy, and instead of the richness of an organic world tobe explored, we are offered a pixel-thin simulation which we take for the real, no longer caring that there is a difference.**

**[To be noted: Baudrillard repudiated The Matrix. In a short but famous interview, he basically said that the Wachowskis,and those who saw in their movie an expression of Baudrillard's views about simulation, had misinterpreted andmisappropriated his ideas about the new problem of virtuality by seeing in them old Platonic notions about illusion. In fact,the French author believed that the movie makes the very error he warned about: concretizing an abstraction, making itphysical, which is exactly what virtualization does to digitally generated concepts. Baudrillard was invited to assume, butdeclined, the role of advisor to the later installations of the Matrix series of movies. An English translation of the 2003interview is here.]

Baudrillard's is a moral argument before it is a metaphysical one, and it resonates in many quarters -- it becomespolitical, metaphysical, psychological and ecological. In the political sphere, the notion that something becomes realbecause it is asserted to be the case and launched into the media, thus virtualizing it, is much on display these days. TheWachowskis "got Baudrillard," and plucked from his work an allegory about human cognition which, combined with anunderstanding of the basics of machine intelligence, they dramatized into a simple good vs. evil story, with the fate of theworld at stake. Technology is consciousness, the platform for manufacturing the simulation, and the simulated reality --the simulacrum -- becomes the evil antagonist in a the fictional universe of the screenplay.

Baudrillard called this simulated dimension "hyper-reality." It is the world in which the simulation and the real are one andthe same, much like for many of us, world events and what is represented on HD-TV are one and the same. The map isthe territory, and the territory is a fiction made real by means of a map that is no longer outside of us, in the manner of athing, but the environment enveloping all things.

So if that is the situation, how is our state of captivity to the map to be interrupted? The quantum leap would be to moveaway from the naive notion that the world, whether arrived at via the computer or the brain, just "exists," and to realizethat it is in some sense composed, "made up." The world is make-believe -- and we believe, until we see the wizard andthe strings and pulleys. When Neo mentally slows down time enough to see the matrix as it is, he gains the ability tosuspend bullets in their path, and the implication is clear: the world happens at the velocity of consciousness, and it ismind-speed and not any clock that sets the indiscernible pulse that measures motion, change and time. Ordinary mind isthe speed of the Matrix -- to master events within the Matrix, Neo has to see within time by detaching from ordinary mind.

The double-entendre within all this is that while it is clear that the Matrix is a virtual computer-generated reality, it leads toa parallel discovery: examining the Matrix that way, makes us aware that the organic, natural world itself may be similarlymanufactured, the result of a process of which we are not conscious, but which nevertheless takes place. Vortexenergies are one point of entry into the process, into the interiority of time and the manufacturing of our own personalmake-believe. That is to say, we are already, as human beings, thinkers and experiencers, engaging in virtualization --this commonality with machines is what makes it feasible that machine-intelligence could ever fool us. This is not to saythat the mind is a computer -- a controversial topic among AI experts -- but that we are already making our ownrepresentations, which allow us to know for certain that what we see is real. So it is the very process of certainty which isvirtualized, and which ties us to artifice.

Seeing the Vortex Around You Starts by Understanding Why It Is There


The pop culture version of a new "digital Buddhism" may be relatively new, but energy vortices (or "vortexes" as they arecalled in Sedona) are as old as the tradition which holds that spiritual enlightenment is possible. Specific knowledge ofhow to "shift up" a level in awareness -- or how to shift within time, as Neo -- is the holy grail of the New Age, and it is thesubject with which yoga and other meditative disciplines are concerned. This presumes that there are levels to shift up to-- and here is where science has obliged the mystics by providing concepts such as string theory, ten-dimensionaluniverses and many other wonders. Pete A. Sanders Jr., one of the few people writing on energy vortexes who also hasa good understanding of "the new physics," specifically frames vortex energy in this kind of multidimensionalunderstanding of where our physical plane, and indeed our universe, are located in the ten-dimensional matrix of worlds.

The ideal of arriving at higher consciousness by a natural mechanism and without resorting to drugs or artifice, has beenalive for millennia -- now it is simply more informed by technology and science. By making "higher consciousness" lessabstract and less bound to religious or mystical concepts, the worlds of technology, computers, artificial intelligence,virtuality, brain science, string theory and a more scientific view of mind in general, make this issue accessible to peoplewho otherwise may have little interest in "metaphysics." Traditional spiritual "initiates" don't have to abandon Milarepa,Arjuna, Jesus or Gandhi for the sake of embracing the conclusions of science.

In short people are realizing that aspirations of experiencing higher consciousness are not just addle-brained mysticalfluff entertained by escapists, but a search for the authentic. The human mind, bound to the senses, functions in a verynarrow spectrum or bandwidth of energy frequencies (visible light is a mere sliver of what is -- we see in the wavelengthrange of 380 to 780 nm) and, relative to our limitations, higher awareness is a scientific objective, not just a spiritual one.It correlates not just to "wisdom," but to higher sensory receptivity, a broader opening of what Aldous Huxley called "thedoors of perception." What is sometimes called "crazy wisdom" is the ability to act on higher information without beingconsciously certain of having received it, because our sensory world serves our preconceptions and may lag behind.Acquiring greater sensory abilities by reference to the total spectrum of energy vibrations, therefore, and becoming moreholistically conscious, no longer represent a metaphorical cow-path to nowhere, but the main highway to evolution.

All of this serves to remind us that movies like The Matrix provide a talking point, but they are notcausing the change inour thinking -- they are reflections of a change that has already taken place. Consciousness of vortices ("vortexes") is anacknowledgment that changing to a higher frequency -- moving within spacetime -- is possible. And it is such a powerfulexperience that even a little taste of it can be life-changing. [image: NASA, on Wikimedia Commons. Vortex created bypassage of an aircraft as revealed by colored smoke.]

It is hard to argue how much we know, when science is showing us, seemingly every other day, how wrong we havebeen about the nature of reality, not just in details but in terms of the fundamentals. The world is not at all what we think itis, and in another way it is exactly what we think it is. For over a thousand years, mystics have taught that we are in atrap. Wikipedia's article on String Theory simply notes: "Another possibility is that we are 'stuck' in a 3+1 dimensional (i.e.three spatial dimensions plus the time dimension) subspace of the full universe."

Mystics and scientists are, like it or not, engaged in the same game, and vortex energy is a phenomenon that manypeople believe is relevant to the human project of broadening the bandwidth of consciousness. It's why some peopleseek gurus: the guru is the vortex; others seek science, and science too is a vortex. It is why geographic vortices tend tobecome holy sites (but don't need to, in our scientific age). There has been no need to wait for digital reality or for a "wink-wink" Hollywoodized version of Eastern wisdom, conjured by means of special effects to feed the violence-jaded neuronsof the western sensibility -- we're all already interested. We can say that the earth has an organic soul, that its flesh is the land, its bones are the structure of the rocks... its bloodis the pools of water... its breathing and its pulse are the ebb and flow of the sea. -- Leonardo da Vinci

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Basye and the Network of Vortices

From ancient Egypt to modern America - from Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain to the temples of Peru - people haveacknowledged that extraordinary places possess energies that inspire us in extraordinary ways. What is new are theincreased number of people who are taking vortexes seriously, and the consequent elevated interest in visiting vortexspots, understanding them better, getting "in tune" with them, and gaining an insight into why some places in nature andsome specific locations of non-electronic artifice (one way of categorizing what the church of Saint-Sulpice is) concealhttp://basyevortex.com - Basye Vortex Powered by Mambo Generated:19 September, 2015, 02:14

pools of energy that makes us more focused and peaceful. In addition, many people, in trying to comprehend psychicvortices, are now seeking to complement the mind-boggling metaphysical theorizing about them, with scientificperspectives that do not abandon organic nature or mystify it needlessly.

Many of the older theories ("older," in this context, means up to about 2 decades ago) set vortex energies in a kind ofnineteenth century framework ("it's magnetism"). This is understandable, because people realized that vortexes weremysterious and attractive, therefore they must be magnetic. Interestingly, although electro-magnetism is a fundamentalforce involved in mass and atomic coherence, it is not sensible as such to humans in its quantum, universe-constructingaspect. But newer information, in fact, suggests that vortices may be involved on a quantum level as a creative agent ofthe universe -- the rotating energy behind the fundamentals of consciousness, time, and matter. Pete Sanders, an MIT-trained scientist who writes on Sedona's vortexes, also steers people toward an explanation of vortex energies thatcombines science, spirituality and different dimensions of energy, but he steers away from the magnetism scenario.

With that in mind, it would be good to separate some of these threads of thought: 1) the cosmological view of vortices,first articulated in detail by French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes in the 17th century, envisioningspace as a liquid (yes), and all "emptiness" as substantial -- part of a mosaic of rotating energies or whirlpoolsresponsible for the motion of astronomical objects physically and, by extension, for mediating between time and eternity,both physically and spiritually; 2) the New Age view of vortex energy as a not-yet defined spiritual force manifesting viaplanetary power spots such as Sedona, Machu Picchu and Stonehenge; and 3) the scientific perspective of vortices asphysical forces, based largely on the behavior of fluids and air, but lately finding that vortex dynamics may be related tofractals, chaos theory and even quantum mechanics (ref. to the work of Wiktor Lapcik -- see link below). Descartes is duefor a radical reinterpretation, and his vortices ("tourbillons" as he called them) may be rediscovered to be newly relevantnot just on astronomical but on quantum levels. Fontenelle, writing over a hundred years after the death of Descartes inhis Tourbillons Cartésiens, did not know anything about the quantum plane, but he knew Descartes was onto something,in spite of the fact that Newton had debunked the Cartesian explanation of gravity.

However the New Age being what it is, none of that mattered. In the second half of the 20th century, to the extent thatspiritual vortex phenomena were associated with "earth energies," as they generally were, they were described asmagnetic energies, effects of ley lines or just "geomagnetic anomalies." People found them fascinating, believing suchenergies are sources of power, enhanced awareness or spiritual attunement. Many still seek in them psychic or healingqualities, sensing in vortex energy a pristine or virginal aspect connected to feminine religious and mythological figures,from Isis and Venus to Holy Mary and Mary Magdalen. [Image: Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" - detail.] Some believevortices are the chakras of the planet (Sanskrit "chakra" means "wheel" -- i.e., rotating energy), bringing us into spiritualalignment; others promote the notion that a vortex is a sort of Jacob's Ladder through the dimensions and that by settingthe right intention and learning how to "fly" in the soul dimension, we can journey up the rungs to more profound truths;accordingly, places such as Peru's Machu Picchu and Cathedral Rock in Sedona, as well as the plein-air cathedral ofOrkney Springs VA, have become pilgrimage destinations, and theories of their vortex potencies are abundant.

The understanding of what generates or transmits vortex energy is not restricted to natural earth phenomena alone; man-made structures are also invoked, Stonehenge being the obvious example. (This is not a small point: if Stonehenge is avortex, it is not the rocks themselves, as such, that generate or conduct the energy; it is their arrangement, or theintention of the builders and our relationship to these, that create the psychic spell.) Obviously, there are many man-made or consciously designed places other than Stonehenge that have a notable psychic effect. Celebrities fromNapoleon to Shirley MacLaine have spent a night in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, hoping to receive amystical revelation or undergo some great personal transformation as a result, and there is currently a deep fascinationwith the Paris churches of St Germain des Prés and St-Sulpice (the latter catapulted to global fame by The Da VinciCode).

Among remarkable locations and structures - man-made or natural - with an unusual psychic presence are: Egypt's Giza,site of the Great Pyramid; also in Egypt, El-Genizeh in Cairo, and Akhetaten, the site of the capital of Pharaoh Akhenatonand of his wife, Queen Nefertiti; more than one place in Jerusalem; St. Catherine's monastery in the Sinai desert; thefamous Stonehenge of England; the Abbey of St-Germain (St. Germain des Prés) and the church of St-Sulpice, on theLeft Bank of Paris; at least four, perhaps seven, locations among the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, where psychic PageBryant coined the term vortexes and defined some of their basic properties; Peru's Machu Picchu; the re-emergentmystical centers of Orkney Springs and Basye, VA; the Dordogne River by Domme, France; and many others (withouteven considering the eastern hemisphere...).

Some of these places are less known, or almost forgotten (Akhetaten is an example -- there is almost nothing thatremains of the great Temple of Aten), but many have not only sustained and rewarded our interest - they've spawned anhttp://basyevortex.com - Basye Vortex Powered by Mambo Generated:19 September, 2015, 02:14

industry of books, charts, tours and events supporting the fascination with and thirst for the experience of mysticalenergies. "Machu Picchu was acknowledged as a sacred vortex long before the Incas, going back to the Lemurian timesof ancient Og," claims International Spiritual Experience -- which arranges tours there and to some other global sites."Situated in the core of a unique double vortex, this sacred energy is of massive potency. It is primarily female, goddessin nature," the text (attributed to James Tyberonn) continues. The tour organizers promise to "work with crystal skulls toassist in raising consciousness and connecting with the activation of the ancient vortexes and portals blossoming at thistime." (Please note this reference does not constitute an endorsement of the tour company or any other travel agency.)Balancing all this, or converging with it, are serious scientific tracts such as Wiktor Lapcik's The Vortex Theory of Matterand Energy.

Copyright: © 2002-2010 Studios St-Sulpice; All Rights Reserved, unless otherwise noted.

Quick links: José Argüelles - The Call of Pacal Votan | Vortex Energy Events Guide | Understanding Sedona Vortexes -about.com | Wiktor Lapcik's The Vortex Theory of Matter and Energy - opens as a PDF |

Basye, a New Age Mecca? Not even close, but yet ...

By contrast to some better-known centers of subtle energy, the Basye region (in which we include the hamlet of OrkneySprings, VA) is not much of a New Age Mecca: although there are some web references to the vortices, Basye has a lowprofile in guides to the occult; there isn't a single new age bookstore or crystal shop in evidence -- not even anastrologer's or Tarot reader's shingle hanging in town center. There are no vortex tours. Yet the Orkney Springs / Basyearea has its place among the "power spots" of the planet. With its unlikely credentials -- Basye is a resort- and retirement-community with a large proportion of military and government careerists -- this vortex challenges expectations in manyways. Protected by being on a dead-end highway (Rte 263), the resort is terraced on the hillsides of a little valley, linedwith ski slopes, an airstrip, a golf course, and with a lake created by means of a dam. It is all only two hours by car fromWashington DC, in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

However, if you look at neighboring Orkney Springs -- very much part of the vortex area and the secret concealed behindBasye's resort façade -- things look different. It is possible that in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Orkney Springsand Basye were a single community before being separated by the geo-social equivalent of mitosis. Orkney was left withthe predominance of native American feeling; Basye with the European influences, mostly German, but also includingthat of the French Huguenots, one of the families of which gave its name to the community (see The Basye Genome formore detail). In the 19th century Orkney was prominent on the well-to-do health-resort calendar, hosting genteel and not-so-genteel entertainment, depending. Today, Orkney Springs and Basye, separated by a mere 1.5 miles, are still boundby shared ancestral DNA. Orkney is a charming, tiny village without the taint of bars, restaurants or secular pastimes likegolf. Its massively large main building (96,000 sq ft), said to have the largest conventionally supported (no pillars)ballroom of any wooden building in Virginia, offers conference space for spiritual retreats; it also has a collection oforiginal art depicting the Holy Land, by a remarkably gifted early 20th C. water colorist. The village hosts an annualclassical music festival by the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra; plus the settlement has healthful springs (many of theoriginal ones now lost, but a few remain). The Cathedral of the Transfiguration, hidden behind some trees on a hillside, isa stone church without walls or roof; it is the cathedral seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.

A Search for the Shendo. The Orkney Springs resume is only strengthened by the fact that as in Basye if not more so,visitors really do notice -- and wonder about -- the unique energy they experience while there. It is only fairly recently thatthe possibility that the area was a native American sacred site, and that it presents unique and powerful mysticalenergies on which its Christian themes are an overlay, have begun to pique the curiosity of visitors. Hence there isincreased interest in traces of the Virginia Indians of the area. The "Orkney effect" extends to Basye, and there is also aliteral underground sharing. The Shenandoah Valley is a "karst" region** (characterized by underground streams,dissolution of the bedrock; caverns, grottoes, disappearing / reappearing springs), and Lake Laura, artificially created butpristine and magnetic and the major body of water in adjoining Basye, in fact contains some of the sacred waters ofOrkney Springs. Stoney Creek, source of much of the water of Lake Laura, has its headwaters in Orkney Springs, andthe creek has possible unknown subterranean tributaries.


If you put stock in numbers (i.e., if you are of the "there are no coincidences" school), Basye, VA is also exactly 3,600aerial miles from Machu Picchu and exactly 6,000 miles from another vortex center of occult significance, Akhetaten,Egypt, also known as Tel el Amarna. The former is believed by many to have been the site of alien visitations. The latterwas the capital of Akhenaton, the Pharaoh known to history, somewhat misleadingly, as the "first monotheist" - adistinction he earned for his adoration of the body of the sun, that is to say the solar disk; Akhenaton's wife, whom headored with an almost equal fervor, was the enigmatically beautiful Nefertiti. The "wooh-wooh factor" of numericalcoincidences aside, there are several parallels between Basye / Orkney Springs and Akhetaten, which we will discusselsewhere on this site.

[ image: Winter. The humble but magnetic rivulet bisecting the famous "Orkney Ankh" -- the area inside the loop whereRte 263 turns back on itself. ]

[** NOTE on karst terrane: According to the U.S. Geological Service, karst aquifers provide some 40% of the freshdrinking water in the United States. The Texas Hill Country (a large area west of Austin, TX, known for its natural beauty)is also a karst area, and the town of Wimberley, not far from San Marcos, TX, is a purported vortex area -- which wefound out, believe it or not, on a visit to Town Hall! There is a high-volume, karst-type spring called Jacob's Well inWimberley, feeding a scenic creek in town. The bed of the very shallow Blanco River, which flows through town as well,is good example of surface karst formations, and there is something captivating about many stretches of the Blanco'spolished surface of clear olive- and light green tones over a shallow washboard of limestone.]

Star Goddesses

We'll leave it for others to decipher the meaning of these coincidences - and whether Basye, as it is alleged, shares asimilarity, on the inner energy level, with Machu Picchu, Akhetaten or Saint-Sulpice - the latter being the Paris churchthat, according to many, plays a role in the secret of Templars and in the sudden wealth of one Abbé Saunière. Saint-Sulpice was built - starting in 1646 - on the ruins of a smaller and much older church - not to say temple - which mayhave been dedicated to the Black Madonna or Black Virgin, a form of Holy Mary traceable to the Egyptian mother- andlight-goddess Isis, after whom the city of Paris is named. Isis is associated with the star Sirius and with watery places...The Shendo (Senedo) native Americans who dwelled in the Shenandoah Valley up to perhaps three hundred years agoalso have a feminine association and are likewise of stellar origin - they are according to myth the "daughters of thestars." Some believe the Basye / Meem's Bottom energy center was active a thousand years ago when the predecessorsof the Senedo lived here, after which it fell into quiescence .... The time line is very difficult to construct. It appears thatthis matrix of star-energies, associated with Pleiades and the Seven Sisters, is becoming "etherically vitalized" again, andexperiences supporting that view have become something of a quiet sensation. (image: antique Italian Tarot card, "TheStar," showing stellar waters being poured downward.)

Fragments of History: Saint-Sulpice in Paris ...

"Energy channels" are not just New Age concepts. Priests and spiritual practicioners have spoken of them ever sincehumankind has contemplated the relationship of the spiritual and material worlds. And those realms, over the millennia,have been mapped according to beliefs about energy flows that sustain and connect them.

In some cases there was a relationship between mystical order and scientific mapping. For instance, 18th C. religiousauthorities in France found a role for the so-called "Paris Meridian" - predecessor to the Greenwich Zero Meridian uponwhich time zones are based - in theology. At the famous Saint-Sulpice cathedral in Paris, a copper line marking theMeridian and terminating at an obelisk ("Le Gnomon") within the church, was placed in the floor of the transept. Thismarker, occultly known as the "Rose Line," was viewed as both an astrophysical reference and a vein of mysticalenergy.* The Paris Meridian is located 33 degrees* from the Holy Land - which has a lot to do with why 33 is a specialnumber for some occultists (e.g., "33rd degree Masons").


... and the red rocks of Sedona

Back in the 1970s, if not earlier, some people in Sedona, AZ became convinced that the red rocks which characterizedthe desert landscape, and which had been featured in many western films, emitted a vivid psychic energy. In the early80's, a gifted psychic named Page Bryant* traced this palpable energy to specific locations; she is generally credited withapplying the term "vortex" to confluences or eddies of subtle energy issuing from Sedona rock formations. Page Bryanthas since moved on to Asheville, NC, another New Age center, but the term "vortex" and the names of Boynton Canyon,Bell Rock, Cathedral Rock and the Airport Mesa have a permanent place in the lexicon of American pop mysticism.Today Sedona and locations in France, Egypt, Peru and elsewhere, are widely recognized as being key parts of "theplanetary energy grid," a network of living energies that is a vital part of earth's spiritual infrastructure.

The End of the World

As noted in the foregoing, Route 263 is the only Virginia state highway that dead-ends. Well, actually it loops and returnsupon itself, like the top of an ankh. The place where it does so is Orkney Springs - the quiet settlement of white-paintedhouses, a historical hotel complex and a little-known and unique open-air church. It is 1.7 miles past Basye on Rt. 263,and less than that from the border with West Virginia. Almost from the first, Orkney Springs has been a refuge from thepressures of life, and today the village welcomes a steady stream of tourists, vacationers and spiritual conferenceparticipants. The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia is a conference center operator in Orkney Springs and it owns thebeautiful plein-air cathedral set among the trees. But for the occultist, the seven ancient springs (now mythical since onlythree or four are known) and the energies they emit, form the main attraction.

Basye and Sedona: lighting up the subtle energy grid in America

The sheer poetry of this setting in combination with legends of ancient springs and the mysterious Senedo tribe lendsitself to powerful inner experiences. There is clearly something uniquely American in the Basye Vortex, as there is inSedona's "vortexes." The Basye, VA region, in a strong parallel to Sedona, was a site where a native American peoplelived and then disappeared without explanation. In the Basye area it was the Shendo (or their predecessors); in Sedona itwas the Anasazi. But unlike Sedona's rocks - Cathedral Rock, Bell Rock, Boynton Canyon, the Kachina Woman andAirport Mesa - which act like transmitting stations, the "power areas" in the Basye area are mostly near verdant openingsin the earth - springs, creeks, stream-beds, pools, rivers. Meems VA, a power spot some 12 miles from Basye, is famousfor a covered bridge over the North Fork of the Shenandoah River; it was also the site of a Shendo or Shawnee tribesettlement over 300 years ago. The bridge is located just off Rt. 11, south of the town of Mount Jackson, actually inMeems, VA -- named after one of the early families in the area, whose name you see in records dating to the 1700s. Aswith Sedona, one of the mysteries is how this native American influence colors the energies of the place today.

Interestingly in view of the water symbolism of Orkney Springs, VA and of Basye, the Shenandoah Valley is synonymouswith two emblems: the derivation of the name "Shenandoah" from a Senedo indian creation legend called "TheDaughters of the Stars" - a story which also concerns water - and the famous "Seven Bends of the Shenandoah River."Please note though that there is no agreement on where "Shenandoah" came from.

SPRINGS LOST and a VORTEX FOUND

It will come as no surprise then to learn that Orkney Springs had, in the 18th C., SEVEN springs, whose waters werecharacterized as "chalybeate" (pron. "kha-LIB-ee-at" - containing iron salts), with widely recognized healing properties.The presence of the springs doubtlessly contributed to the rediscovery of the Basye Vortex. In the "old days" chalybeatesprings were believed to be both "tonic" and "hematic," meaning the waters could help harmonize the body and alsopurify the blood. Of the seven springs, the location of perhaps four are known today. http://basyevortex.com - Basye Vortex Powered by Mambo Generated:19 September, 2015, 02:14

Basye - the derivation of the name

If you pronounce "Basye" for someone, they will generally assume that it is spelled b-a-s-e-y. So it is in fact curious: whydo the two last letters seem inverted? The answer may be that the name Basye is of Hebrew origin, and in fact it comesfrom the Old Testament. It is a relative of names such as Baskin, Batyah and probably Bath-sheba, as we'll explain in amoment. (Our Basye Genome page has more on this.)

From a New Age perspective, springs represent the feminine divine, or the goddess. Through mythological andpsychological association, it is thought that springs share the spiritual frequency of the constellation Pleiades, or theSeven Sisters. The fact that Orkney has seven springs and the Senedo native Americans were known, according tolegend, as "The Daughters of the Stars" (see the quote from author Julia Davis on our Senedo page) seems, in view ofthese connections, like a fascinating coincidence.

The name "Basye" is related to all of these concepts.

The most vivid link between Basye and ancient myths of springs and rivers is via the Old Testament, through whichBasye is also connected to Egypt. That is to say, the name "Basye" is rooted in the Old Testament account known as"the finding of Moses," and thence it has arguable connections to the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris.

In the Egyptian account, Osiris was tricked by his enemies into entering a box (or coffin) - after which his body washacked to pieces and cast in the river Nile. Isis and her sister Nephthys - the grieving women in whom, it is said, HolyMary and Mary Magdalen find their archetypes - recovered the pieces of Osiris's body from the Nile and reconstitutedhim through prayer and divine assistance.

The Old Testament too has a story in which an important being is rescued from the river Nile: the finding of Moses.Tradition holds that the daughter of Pharaoh who found Moses was called Batyah, or Bathia; she is so named, forinstance, in two places in the Old Testament (Chronicles 1 4:8 is the usual main reference), in a midrash (Biblicalcommentary in Jewish Scripture), plus in the purported Book of Jasher (the Hebrew Sefer Hayasher), which is notincluded in the Old Testament but to which two references are made. The variants of "Batyah" or "Bathia" include Bas-shevah (or Bathsheba), and by contraction the name Basya or Basye. "Bas," "Bat" and "Bath" all signify "daughter." Thename means either ""daughter of God." Bath-shevah can also mean seventh daughter. The Biblical Bath-sheba, whobecame the wife of David, was also the mother of Solomon (or wisdom); just as her earlier namesake, the Egyptianprincess Batyah (tradition holds that this was the name by which the Hebrews referred to her), nursed Moses, who alsorepresented wisdom as the leader of the Jews.

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Many people are drawn to the Basye - Orkney Springs Vortices, and perhaps a reason for that will become clear later toeach person individually. But regardless of how you got to this website - whether you've heard about the Basye vortex orabout the Seven Mystical Springs of Orkney or perhaps you met someone who has been here and experienced firsthand what the excitement is about - if you are interested in natural energies, and subtle energies with a spiritual charge,you have come to a place worth exploring.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Photos, illustrations, content and written materials are copyrighted, © 2002-2010 Studios St-Sulpice. All Rights Reserved to the full extent provided by state, U.S. and international laws, except for items in the publichttp://basyevortex.com - Basye Vortex Powered by Mambo Generated:19 September, 2015, 02:14

domain as noted next to or below the item, or unless otherwise noted near the item where it appears, or at the foot of thepage on which the item appears. "Cartesian Dreamtime"™ is a Trademark of Studios St-Sulpice. We thankWikipedia for materials in the public domain or licensable for re-use; and also want to express our appreciation to theCreative Commons for their licenses. Brief quotations with attribution are permitted. For longer quotations or otherpermission to use materials that appear on the Basye Vortex website (except those that are in the public domain orowned by/licensed to third parties) written permission is required. To obtain such permission, please contact us via emailat basyevortex | at | yahoo |dot| com


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