II. Cycles
Grandfather Martin showed me a unique book of maps titled Cycles: A View of Planet Earth from 4 Million BC to 15,000 A.D. It is a book about Earth Changes and it discusses the kinds of Pole Shifts that are said to accompany the end of a world.
The belief in cataclysmic Pole Shifts was popularized by the predictions of Edgar Cayce. The idea is that the earth's crust rests on a molten inner layer and that at periodic intervals it experiences a dramatic reversal in which it flips over and the North Pole occupies the Southern position and vice versa. This is obviously a catastropic event for surface-dwellers. Another type of pole shift, a geomagnetic pole shift, is less cataclysmic and consists of a reversal of the planet's magnetic poles only. Case's Association for Research and Enlightenment says his trance-predictions sometimes referred to the first kind of pole shift and at other times the second.
The image at right shows a map from Cycles that depicts a possible pole shift. (Click on image for larger version.)
In Hopi cosmogony (their story of the universe's origins), the world's formation was assisted by a set of twins named Poqanghoya and Palongawhoya. The first sibling was responsible for making the earth fully solid, while the second was responsible for sending sound out to resonate through the vibratory centers that run along the planet's axis. After traveling throughout the world, one took his place at the North Pole and the other at the South. It is said that if either of them were to leave their post, the world would spin off its center and be destroyed.
In Hopi belief, all life is interconnected, and the fate of the world is intimately related to human activity and particularly our emotional health. Each community, it's said, was given a "life-map" by the Creator and, if we followed its guidance, our prayers and religious ceremonies would help keep life on the planet in balance. When we abandon our ancestral traditions and turn to materialistic, egocentric lifestyles, over time this will have a visible effect on the weather and the natural world.Mystics often believe that religious stories have both "outer" (exoteric) and "inner (esoteric) meanings. It is my personal belief that there are many layers on which these stories are meant to be understood: the "world" that is ending could mean the whole planet, or it could mean a certain society (like "the Aztecs") or it could mean our own personal "world" that is the emotional sphere in which we live and define who we are. In the following pages we talk more about the "inner" meanings of these stories. But there are also outer meanings: this planet is really in trouble!