"A vortex is a mass of energy that moves in a rotary or whirling motion, causing a depression or vacuum at the center.... These powerful eddies of pure Earth power manifest as spiral-like coagulations of energy that are either electric, magnetic, or electromagnetic qualities of life force."
Page Bryant, Terravision: A Traveler's Guide to the Living Planet Earth
Thus said, Vortexes are areas of high energy concentrations, originating from magnetic, spiritual, or sometimes unknown sources. Additionally they are considered to be gateways or portals to other realms, both spiritual and dimensional. Vortexes typically exist where there are strong concentrations of gravitational anomalies, inturn creating an environment that can defy gravity, bend light, scare animals, twist plant life into contorted shapes, and cause humans to feel strange. Many vortexes have been shown to be associated with Ley Lines and have been found to be extremely strong at node points where the lines cross. Worldwide, the Great Pyramid in Eygpt and Stonehenge in England are perhaps the most well known as centers of vortex activity, lesser known the Gog and Magog Hills. Often overlooked, not known, or discounted as vortex influences, but equally as powerful and fully interrelated in the overall scheme of things, are Personal Body Vortexes and solar or Sun Votrexes, discussed as well further on.
Besides the worldwide sites mentioned above there are quite powerful vortexes in the United States. The most notable being the Oregon Vortex, Mount Shasta Vortex, and the four Sedona, Arizona vortexes. Superstition Mountain, Arizona is also the home of vortexes. However, unlike the previous three which are more or less permanent, easily sought out and experienced by crowds of tourists, lay persons, and New Agers, the vortexes in the Superstition Mountains, although equally as powerful or maybe even more so, are much more mysterious, subtle, and depend on the coming together of certain, but not always known to all, conditions (see). Also considered by some as vortex hot spots, and coincidentally, ALL in Arizona for some reason, are certain areas of the Grand Canyon, Sunset Crater, and the 50,000 year old meteorite impact site known as Meteor Crater.
Weavers Peak, Superstition Mountain
Panther Meadows, Mt. Shasta
© Gary R. Varner, 2001
Meteor Crater, Arizona
According to Pete A. Sanders Jr. and Richard Dannelley in their works Scientific Vortex Information and Sedona Power Spot Vortex respectively, vortexes are labled according to the direction of their energy flow. Up-flow Vortexes, where energy is flowing upward out of the earth; and Inflow Vortexes, where energy is flowing inward, toward the earth.
Up-flow Vortexes are said to boost spiritual skills associated with going to a higher level. They are said to stretch or expand consciousness, like filling a balloon with air. Places labeled as a magnetic vortex are areas of inflow energy. An area labeled an electric vortex is an area of up-flow energy.
Sometimes vortexes are referred to as ‘positive’ or ‘negative.’ The terms are intended to be used more in a yin/yang fashion, meaning neither good nor bad, just being opposite. However, there are those that feel there actually are ‘negative vortexes’ in the sense of meaning bad or evil. Such a conception is not true. It is thought the misconception originated when Up-flow Vortexes were labeled ‘positive’ because of the tremendous exhilaration they generated.
While an experience at an Up-flow Vortex is exhilarating, an inflow area generates a much more pensive feeling. Because the power of the vortex is flowing down rather than up, the energy at an inflow site feels heavier. On a spiritual quest or during introspective exploration, if not prepared, the first things people experience is Fear. As a result inflow areas are often thought of as negative or evil.
In another vein, the swirling, spherical-shaped rock art and petroglyph images of Native Americans and other cultures such as found at the Fajada Butte, Arizona Sun Dagger site and the early European tribe petroglyphs at Mt. Bego in the Maritime Alps, France, are often associated in writing with vortexes by various authors and vortex supporters seeking a more concrete spiritual link. However, although the imagery easily fits into the idea and visual concept of the vortex and are found generally throughout rock art graphics, for the most part, none of the rock carved spirals are actually found to be connected with any known or major vortex sites. As well, even though present day New Agers and some Native Americans seem to embrace vortex sites as the in thing, it hasn't always been that way in all cases. For example, it is known that Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest have traditionally shunned the Oregon Vortex site, calling it "Forbidden Ground."
Fajada Butte, New Mexico, Sun Dagger site.
It should be noted, the Sun Dagger site at Fajada Butte in its own way has its own special sort of power that may or may not be vortex related. The butte creates an environment that grows a variety of plants used by the indigenous population for spiritual and ritual purposes, plants that are not generally found on the surrounding plain. Special plants also grow on the mounds of the ruins of the ancient Native American astronomers that once inhabited the area. Although some feel the plants are equally powerful wherever they grow, the power of the plants is said to be increased by being on the butte. (see)
CHAKRAS
Besides the above "earth" vortexes there are also "body" or personal vortexes called Chakras. Chakras are subtle force centers said to channel energy into the body. In Sanskrit the word Chakra means "wheel" and they are often seen or shown as spinning vortexes similar to a spinning wheel or a water drain.
Chakras act as gateways between the higher planes of existence and the physical plane that we perceive. From these 'gates' energy is distributed throughout the body in a system of pathways called Nadis in Sanskrit. The Chakras fall, or are created, like Ley Lines, at the points where these lines cross and meet. The differentiation between a major and minor Chakra is made by how many and how major these Nadis that cross and meet are. Obviously, the more that meet, and the bigger they are, the more major the Chakra is. The seven major body vortices are listed on the right, above. For more on the little known Pingala, Sushumna, and Ida, listed on the left of the image above, go to Aushadhi. See also Amrita-Nadi.
There are other ways Vortexes can interact in the realm human activity as well, sometimes closer to home and on a much more personal level. To wit:
High in the mountains of Jamaica an occult man of spells called an Obeah, using a variety of spiritual items and herbs together with a set of rituals that included spreading sand and ashes in a circle, casting bones into the circle, sitting Buddha-like doing some chanting and using smoke that waifted throughout the house, brought back the Wanderling from the brink of Death from the ravages of Dengue Fever.
The day after the Obeah departed and following a night of heavy wind and rain, the Wanderling, conscious but racked with pain, for the first time in days was able to move and hobbled himself out onto the veranda. Barely able to stay upright he stood silently before the shaman's circle, which, despite the severity of the storm of the night before was still in place and intact just as it had been left by the man of spells the day previous. An ever so slight breeze came up and spread across the veranda floor twisting itself into a small dust-devil-like Vortex encompassing the Wanderling's bare feet and legs with the ash and sand of the circle. As the twisting breeze climbed his body the pain dissipated eventually disappearing altogether along with the wind.
A second example of a personal vortex and the impact of same on one's life is cited by the author Carlos Castaneda, who in his writings, tells of how he apprenticed under a Yaqui Indian shaman-sorcerer he calls Don Juan Matus and in doing so joined a lineage of shaman-sorcerers said to be twenty-five generations long.
It is not known how many of you may have ever heard of the butterfly effect, but sometime in the early 1960s, a scientist named Edward Lorenz, in an accidental quirk, came across what should have been an otherwise a nearly non-observable event --- an event that terminated in a huge magnification of the downstream outcome --- and because of that outcome, in December of 1972, Lorenz asked members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., "Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?" --- making reference to the fact that small, almost imperceptible happenstances or events can have huge and momentous consequences.
For a vortex to occur or BE, an incredible amount of things have to be in place or go before it, whether it's permanent or seems forever relative to our lives such as found in the Shasta Vortexes, or simply construed to be fleeting in time such as seen in a typical dust devil. In Castaneda's eighth book in his series, titled Power of Silence (1988), Don Juan, speaking of how he first met HIS teacher Julian Osorio, tells Castaneda that when a person's Spirit has something extremely important to communicate, it will "knock" three times. If one has the ability or is spiritually in tune with such things, three clear, unambiguous "meaningful coincidences" will be received showing that a certain decision is needed to be made or that an indication of a prediction is correct.
When Don Juan was just twenty years old or so, before he ever became a Shaman he was shot and lay near death bleeding in a field. In the first incredible coincidence of three --- or Omen as the case may be --- a small VORTEX like cyclone or dust devil lifted a cone of dust on the road a couple of yards from where he lay bleeding to death, bringing him to the attention of Osorio the first place. The second omen was the thought which had crossed Osorio's mind an instant before he had heard the sound of the gun --- that it was time to have an apprentice; and the third when Osorio ran for cover and instead collided with the gunman, putting him to flight, preventing him from shooting Don Juan a second time and finishing the job. Now, while it is true everything and all the players had to be in place, it is fairly clear if it had not been for the vortex, however fleeting, Osorio would never have seen Don Juan --- and all that came down afterward would have evaporated.
SUNSPOTS
There is one other major system of vortexes that is seldom thought of and usually never considered by most people, but every living thing on the planet is impacted one way or the other at one time or the other by their influence. The vortexes are on the Sun, most commonly known as Sunspots. The internal structure underneath the surface of sunspots show that there is a powerful downdraft below each sunspot, forming a rotating vortex that concentrates and warps magnetic field lines among other things. Areas on the Sun near the vortex area flare up, heating material to millions of degrees in just seconds, causing Coronal Mass Ejections (CME's) which blast billions of tons of ionized gas into space millions of miles per hour. If the gas bundle goes off at the right spot on the Sun so it can intercept and bombard Earth it can, in turn, set off geomagnetic storms that can have an impact on living organisms, damage satellites in space and shut down electrical power and power grids. There is even some speculation that the Great Sunspot of 1947 and the CMEs produced from the Sun's vortexes during that period, which were some of the largest CMEs ever recorded, were responsible for the crash of the mysterious object that was reported to come out of the sky near Roswell, New Mexico. For more on the subject please go to the link above on Coronal Mass Ejections as well as:
ROSWELL UFO
SEE:
POWER OF THE SHAMAN
(click image)
THE BEST OF
CARLOS CASTANEDA
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SEE ALSO:
APPORTATION, ASTRAL PROJECTION, AND VORTEXES
WE DO NOT HAVE SHAMANS
The Case Against "Shamans" In the
North American Indigenous Cultures
ROSWELL ARCHAEOLOGISTS
THE WANDERLING'S JOURNEY
THUNDERBIRD SITE LIST
(click image)
ANNA JONES
