Carmen Di Luccio – We are having a Total Lunar Eclipse on July 27th, 2018 which is also referred to as a ‘Blood Moon’. This specific eclipse will be the longest Lunar Eclipse we will have until 2123, lasting almost 4 hours. This is because it is a total eclipse at a time of year when the Earth reaches its furthest point from the Sun in its orbit while the Moon will be at its furthest point from the Earth. Therefore it casts a larger shadow over the Moon.
This eclipse will be visible from South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. In North America, a small part of it will be visible in Eastern Newfoundland, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and other islands east of there.
Eclipses happen every 6 months and reflect changes and shifts that influence the following 3-6 months. This is the 2nd of a series of three happening back to back, with the previous and following ones being partial Solar Eclipses. However, this one is the most significant of the three because it is closest to the Lunar Nodes which is where the path of the Sun and Moon intersect. When this occurs, it is then a ‘Total’ or ‘Annular’ eclipse, similarly to the ‘Great American’ Solar Eclipse that occurred in August 2017. Continue reading →
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Inca Empire was the largest South America had ever known. Rich in foodstuffs, textiles, gold, and coca, the Inca were masters of city building but nevertheless had no money. In fact, they had no marketplaces at all.
Centered in Peru, Inca territory stretched across the Andes’ mountain tops and down to the shoreline, incorporating lands from today’s Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and Peru – all connected by a vast highway system whose complexity rivaled any in the Old World. The Inca Empire may be the only advanced civilization in history to have no class of traders, and no commerce of any kind within its boundaries. How did they do it?
Many aspects of Incan life remain mysterious, in part because our accounts of Incan life come from the Spanish invaders who effectively wiped them out. Famously, the conquistador Francisco Pizzaro led just a few men in an incredible defeat of the Incan army in Peru in 1532. But the real blow came roughly a decade before that, when European invaders unwittingly unleashed a smallpox epidemic that some epidemiologists believe may have killed as many as 90 percent of the Incan people. Our knowledge of these events, and our understanding of Incan culture of that era, come from just a few observers – mostly Spanish missionaries, and one mestizo priest and Inca historian named Blas Valera, who was born in Peru two decades after the fall of the Inca Empire.
The stunning vista of Los Torres del Paines incredible sculpted mountains. The incredible crystalline energy park is on the 51st latitude south. This region of South America is then lowest southernmost land mass before Antarctica. It is beyond magical, and has the Southern Hemisphere clockwise spin that balances & aligns with the counter-clockwise spin of the Northen Hemispshere.
Patagonia is mythical, a place of exquisite dream-scape that seems to exist more in the exotic fantasy of imagination as in reality. And that aspect alone makes a trip there feel momentous. One view of the incredible surreal landscape there explains it all, even if you have to pinch yourself. This is the sort of place that seems to come right out of a sci-fi movie. Mountains of incredible jagged peaks, surrounded by a base matrix of wheaten pampas, blue-crystal lakes, and amazing flora and fauna, the type not seen anywhere else on this planet.
In a globally reduced world, where your neighbor visits Nepal, and a friend has just returned from Tahiti, Patagonia still rises above the rarest of expectation, and literally so. Patagonia has somehow retained the mystique of the frontier. The name alone conjures images of a fabled landscape of spiky peaks veiled in clouds, glaciers that extend to the horizon tumbling into electric-vibrant lakes, endless flowing steppes unpopulated for hundreds of miles save for the herds of llama and wandering puma. And it puts you in a mood of wonder and amazement that is vibrantly luminous in the sheer & vast enormity of physical space. Patagonia covers about 260,000 square miles in size, about the same as Texas, spanning a significant portion of lower South America.
And while few places, including Patagonia are no longer uncharted territory, Los Torres del Paine and the surrounding Andes are as close as one comes in the new millennia, to being truly pristine areas of open untouched majesty. For years Patagonia has been on the map of hardy international trekkers, who have found there some of the world’s best unspoiled scenery, and found solace in the solitary existence of some of nature’s finest artistry.
I first saw the sheer granite towers of Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park in National Geographic 2 decades ago. Literally stunned at the incredible jagged landscape, I promised myself I would go there one day. I kept that promise in March, 2002. I made another promise when I left…and that was to return one day.
Torres del Paine National Park is an amazing array of lakes, waterfalls, glaciers and jagged peaks at the bottom tip of South America. Its massive 1,000 square mile, 500,000-acre expanse runs from just north of Tierra del Fuego and curls around the Sound of Last Hope in southern Patagonia, Chile. The crowning jewel and namesake of the park are three incredible 9,000-foot violet-pink granite monoliths.
Those looking for dramatic alpine landscapes, glacial fields, astonishing, jagged mountainscapes and a chance to get a look at the stunning spires of pink granite that make the famous towers of Paine are drawn from all over the globe to experience firsthand the wonders of the Torres del Paine circuit in Chile’s Patagonia mountains. It is no surprise, to those that have been there, including this writer, that Torres del Paine has been names one of the ‘Nat-Geo Top Ten’ places to visit in your lifetime by National Geographic. It is also, thankfully, a UNESCO biosphere protected reserve, specifically because of the extraordinarily uniqueness of place: the mountain vistas, pristine valleys, rolling pampas, crystal glacial lakes and its unique wildlife.
A Place Not of this World
I have been fortunate to circumnavigate the world many times over the past 3 decades. I am often asked what place is my favorite. It’s a difficult question, and in many ways, one I truly cannot answer. It unfair to the numerous amazing places, that all stand out in their own merits, for vastly differing reasons. But within the prodigious expanse of Patagonia, Los Torres del Paine is utterly unique, beautiful beyond imagination. And perhaps it is the immensity of limitlessness, this sense of infinite that embellishes the sense of the mystical within Los Torres del Paine. Truly it looks & feels different, a place not of this world.
Recently we are experiencing an intensive amount of solar activity on the Sun which is affecting both the Earth and Humans.
Exactly what is a solar flare and how does it affect us?
A solar flare is a magnetic storm on the Sun which appears to be a very bright spot and a gaseous surface eruption such as in the above photograph. Solar flares release huge amounts of high-energy particles and gases that are tremendously hot. They are ejected thousands of miles from the surface of the Sun.
According to Mitch Battros – Earth Changes Media, “One of the best known prophecies/predictions of our Mayan elders is the message of a changing paradigm of our era. In the words of the Maya, it is said that we are now in a time of “change and conflict”. The change is coming from the ‘outside” in the way of weather, natural phenomena, celestial disturbance (sun flares) and manmade self-inflicted trauma. The conflict comes from the ‘inside’ in the way of personal challenge, grief, bewilderment, depression, anxiety, and fear. It is said we are “at the cross roads”. A time of choosing a new path, deciding on a new self and community direction, venturing into the unknown, finding our true identity of being. Others will choose to stay on the same road, stay with the familiar, and place great effort to maintain “predictability.”
There appears to be a direct connection between the Sun’s solar storms and human biological effect especially after an “M” class solar flare. The conduit which facilitates the charged particles from the Sun to human disturbance is the very same conduit which steers Earth’s weather through the Magnetic Field on Earth, and also through the magnetic fields around humans.
Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tornadoes, and wind storms appear to happen after strong solar activity on the sun.
Geomagnetic Activity on the Sun Influences our Thoughts
I have noticed in my own research that solar activity is known to influence human consciousness. Solar flares affect the Central Nervous System (stomach lining), all brain activity (including equilibrium), along with human behaviour and all psycho-physiological (mental-emotional-physical) response. Solar flares can cause us to be nervous, anxiousness, worrisome, jittery, dizzy, shaky, irritable, lethargic, exhausted, have short term memory problems and heart palpitations, feel nauseous, queasy, and to have prolonged head pressure and headaches. Do you have any of the above lately? I am hearing from people in Canada, the U.S., South America, Japan, Greece, Malta, Belgium, Sweden, the UK, Australia etc. that all report the symptoms that I address after an episode of high solar flare activity. I have also experienced these symptoms myself as have many of my clients. Scientists don’t seem to be addressing this, but we all know it is real as we are experiencing it first hand.
Almost everyone has seen the iconic images of the Easter Island statues staring silently out from the hillsides. For years I thought these were the only Moai on the island. I knew nothing of the statues erected on ahu or the fallen moai at the other sites. Seeing these pictures many people have come to believe that all Moai faced the ocean while it is the exact opposite that is true. With the exception of Ahu Akivi all erected Moai face inland. It is believed they were positioned that way to watch over the villages. At Rano Raraku the statues face away from the crater.
The fact is these statues were not meant to have stayed in this place. The Moai that you see half buried on the sides of the volcanic cone of Rano Raraku were pieces waiting to be transported to ahu around the island. The Moai that you see sticking up out of the ground have bodies that extend down underground 20 – 40 feet, all the way to the waist. Centuries of erosion from the slopes above have covered all but the tops of these giants – the largest Moai ever constructed. One of the unfinished moai, completely carved but not removed from the crater wall, is a staggering 70 feet in length. Many doubt this statue could ever have been raised successfully. Giving their ingenuity and obsession, I believe they would have eventually.The slopes of Rano Raraku are filled with eye-less moai – several hundred circle the crater in various stages of construction.
Many have a more detailed and finished look than the moai erected on the island’s ahu. There are some that disagree that these statues were finished pieces waiting for transport and believe that they were never meant to be move from the slopes surrounding their birth place. Perhaps it was a “Moai Showroom” of sorts where local leaders could come and pick out their favorite design!
Thor Heyerdahl’s team was given one day in 1987 to excavate and measure the full length of the moai. Its regal head tapers into a long thin body with carved tattoo and loin cloth relief’s on its surface. It has a distinctly phallic shape to it and some have proposed that all the moai were purposely designed around a phallus shaped form.
The interior of the caldera contains many finished and unfinished moai as well. Erosion has covered many nearly completely and it’s possible more lay beneath the ground, covered by hundreds of years of erosion. The potmarked walls from which the moai where carved can clearly be seen in this photo taken of the interior of the Rano Raraku caldera just above the crater lake.
Carmen Di Luccio – We are having a Total Lunar Eclipse on July 27th, 2018 which is also referred to as a ‘Blood Moon’. This specific eclipse will be the longest Lunar Eclipse we will have until 2123, lasting almost 4 hours. This is because it is a total eclipse at a time of year when the Earth reaches its furthest point from the Sun in its orbit while the Moon will be at its furthest point from the Earth. Therefore it casts a larger shadow over the Moon.
