The earth will be broken up in the western portion of America. The greater portion of Japan must go into the sea. The upper portion of Europe will be changed as in the twinkle of an eye.
Edgar Cayce (1877-1045)
When there is the first breaking up of some conditions in the South Sea and those as apparent in the sinking and rising of that almost opposite the same or in the Mediterranean and the Etna area. Then we will know it has begun.
Edgar Cayce
There will be upheavals in the Arctic and the Antarctic that will make for the eruptions of volcanoes in the torrid areas and there will be shifting then of the poles--so that where there have been those of frigid or semi-tropical will become the most tropical and moss and ferns will grow ...
Edgar Cayce
CHAPTER 10
I've been told that this chapter should be augmented to deal with a wealth of mobile survivalist information as opposed to stationary surviving. I really have to disagree with this notion. When we look at areas that have experienced volcanic activity we see that the rebound of the area is remarkably faster than one might imagine. And yet, a decade is a long time to be living off lichens and mosses. No, I think that green houses and soil and stationary survival are all necessary to make it past the initial phase of earth's rebirth.
That is if my expectation of what will happen is correct. I think the tsunamis will blast away topsoil like hydrodynamic mining. As environmentally unfriendly as that method of mining is, the damage men can do is limited; I think the tsunamis will remove the earth's compost heaps in one fell swoop.
During the months of the ark's construction, I will be researching further which fields of knowledge will most benefit the potential survivors of the ark's crew. Obviously I have started thinking about the essential areas of knowledge that will be needed. I am prepared to share with you some of my thoughts on the matters so far.
One indispensable area of knowledge is the field of medicine. I've concluded that packing the boat with a wealth of pill bottles is a band-aid solution. Instead I will be looking toward alternative medicines and mainly in the direction of those medical practitioners who use herbs, since their seeds are a renewable resource. The cultivation of these plants can be the training ground where their uses are taught and knowledge transferred from one generation to the next.
Pills are simply the concentrate of particular ingredients mainly from plants. I am intrigued by homeopathy, which is the opposite of concentration. It is, rather, the dilution of ingredients from plants that are missing in a patient's chemical balance (you're probably not aware of the 'someday' ancient medical saying I've just coined: "suck on a couple of willow twigs and I'll call ya in the mornin'"). This field of health smacks of ancient knowledge to me and I think it’s no wonder that it’s growing in leaps and bounds. Homeopathy is high on my list of things to learn more about.
Another alternative medical practice I think deserves more credibility than the uninitiated would allow is Therapeutic Touch. Because I believe our spirit is an integral part of our being, a holistic approach to treating what ails us makes perfect sense to me. Therapeutic Touch falls into the category of healing hands. A practitioner moves her/his hands lightly above the patient's body with the goal of unblocking energies that flow in our bodies.
Such a practitioner lives in Gananoque, and it was while visiting her that I received my second experience of feeling that Gananoque would one day be my home. We see in the depiction of many primitive tribes around the world that their medicine people performed similar kinds of actions over the ailing bodies of their patients. I think Therapeutic Touch is a resurgence of lost knowledge (I say lost but there are a few million people on the planet that would disagree with this statement).
The first three times I had sessions with her, my health was basically good. All I can say about those first visits is that I felt invigorated after the sessions. She has a water-mattress table that has speakers under the bladder. The session includes Reiki massage, Therapeutic Touch and time to relax while being inundated by musical vibrations coming through the mattress.
She explains the music helps to release negative energy stored at a cellular level. The vibrational medical practice has links throughout history all the way back to the legends of Atlantis. Being relatively healthy those first three visits, I could only judge the worth of sessions by comparing how I felt when I arrived and when I left. Indeed, I always felt better. She told me to take an epsom salts bath when I got home for twenty minutes and to make it as hot as I could stand it. The bath was the capper; I felt truly pampered that day and in the morning I felt like a new man.
Some months later, I had done something to my neck. For weeks I lived with chronic pain. This made me very irritable and adversely affected my outlook and daily living. I went to my general practitioner, who recommended I see a physiotherapist. I went once a week for three weeks; each visit I was on time and sat waiting for the overbooked physiotherapist.
The first two visits, he contorted my body, snapping vertebrae in the area of my pain. This caused a temporary reduction of the pain but, within an hour after leaving his office, the pain returned, usually accompanied by a headache.
On my last visit to the bone cracker there was the usual annoying wait to see him. When I finally got in, I could see the overworked man was in a bad mood. He was kinda funny like that: one visit he was pleasant and the next ugly as a hungry bear. The line of impatient patients in his front office made it obvious his Hypocritical Oath was a pledge of concern for money.
He started barking at me to relax. The more he barked, the more tense I became. Finally he threw up his hands and told me he "couldn't do anything for me this visit, but on my way out I should book a visit for next week." I was pissed off and didn't book another appointment: an hour a week of reprieve was not worth suffering the agonizing wait and subjecting myself to this man's moodiness. I decided to live with the pain, which I was doing anyway.
A week or two later, Kay and I were going to Napanee, where Kay's mother lives. Since the trip would bring us right by Gananoque, we decided to book me a session with the Therapeutic Touch practitioner. I was keen for the session; it's a wonderful relaxing time while lying on her musical water table. We refer to the best sessions as "real shakers." During the session she asked if I had any ailments she could attend to. I didn't have much hope for relief from my chronic pain, but I explained my trouble.
She didn't snap any bones, but simply performed the usual treatment, paying a little extra attention with massage to the afflicted area after which I had a "real shaker." On the way out she prescribed the usual epsom salts bath and a series of neck roll exercises to perform every morning. Leaving her house, the pain was drastically reduced; an hour later, it remained relieved. After three days of following her advice by doing neck rolls daily, my pain was gone completely and today, several months later, it has not returned.
With the chronic pain gone, I had a new respect for the lady in Gan and for alternative medical practices. I should mention she has been studying homeopathy for seven years now and is taking on patients. I am intrigued and interested in becoming a patient; even a relatively healthy person can benefit from having their body's chemical balance properly balanced.
I feel a spiritual serenity surrounding this woman; a calm emanates from her whole family. She is an inspiration to me during these days when the world is functioning at synthetic technological speed. The world outside is still spinning frantically, yet I become somewhat peaceful during my visit. Within moments of entering her home, the turmoil I carry within seems to slow down.
The peaceful feeling can linger for several days until yet again I finally succumb to the familiar pace of the current reality of our continent. A description of a recent trip to Gananoque will help to clarify my meaning. On my way home I noticed people on the Thousand Island Parkway routinely driving ten or twenty kilometres below the eighty-kilometre-an-hour speed limit. People drive slower because they are admiring the scenery--the river view with lovely cottages perched on tiny little islands. One can't help daydreaming of the tranquil serenity they would experience owning one of these private nature retreats.
Quite suddenly the river vanishes as the Parkway merges with the Trans-Canada highway where the routine is to drive ten or twenty kilometres above the one hundred kilometre-an-hour speed limit. Is there a physiological change to the human body during this transition? You bet'cha there is!
Entering the Trans-Canada, man-made rock cuts and tree lines help to sterilize nature's beauty, providing us with the tunnel vision required to re-enter the "rat race." No longer do we feel the ache of spiritual longing that accompanies a picturesque scene in nature. I hope someday to become immune to the mind-boggling whirlwind of stresses our reality manufactures. There is peace; I've felt it. What I have to attain is the ability to hold on to it.
Along with seeds of every kind, there is a need for horticultural knowledge. These knowledge carriers must be familiar with a variety of climatic conditions. It will not be prudent to pack the boat as if the latitudinal destination were known. I have considered that the anchoring drogue stones may hold the boat above the very place it was built. The rope or chain used to attach the drogue stones to the boat will be strung out for miles. The water might not move the last of the drogue stones, thus anchoring the boat roughly where it started.
A change in climate will likely be caused by a change in latitude of the launch site. Predicting the direction the earth's crust will slide is something I am not capable of doing; anyone who could possibly help in ascertaining a logical guess is not likely to believe the possibility exists and even their best guess would still remain a guess. If we pack with the intention of living in Florida's climate and wind up at the new North Pole, we'd certainly be in a pickle. I can picture a boat full of survivors wearing Bermuda shorts and goose bumps; then in time, being dug up out of the snow and ice just like the mammoths. There is, however, a prediction that says to me, "the next ice cap will be located in Europe." It states that "Great Britain and Scandinavia will become uninhabitable." This possibility strikes me as a bit of a drag because the launch site would remain at roughly the same latitude as it is right now. I was hoping for a little sunnier climate.
I do trust that if the theory I consider given to me is indeed correct, the Source will also provide a favourable climate ensuring the continued survival of survivors, a climate where crops could be planted immediately after the landing (provided we bring our own soil). However, a lesson I am constantly learning is that my expectations are often wrong, so we'll "hope for the best and prepare for the worst."
Other knowledge that will benefit survivors is how to make food from scratch. If the poles shift, the luxury of going to the grocery store will be gone; we'll have to make cheese from milk that doesn't come wrapped in plastic bags, flour from wheat, bread from flour, et cetera, et cetera. Survivors will enter the relatively primitive conditions of our past. By preserving the right knowledge, we will not be victims in our new circumstances.
Not only will food become labour-intensive, but making clothing--for instance, gathering wool from sheep, weaving and knitting--will make a comeback. All of these activities sound like a lot of work but they also sound like a lot of fun. Consider the sense of community: life will slow right down with the destruction of communications and the rest of technology.
Another rather serendipitous meeting provided through my job was with a guy who has a booth in one of Ottawa's farmers' markets. It was early spring so his forty acre "garden", as he called it, wasn't as yet demanding sixteen hour days from him. He hung out with me during the whole install of his new satellite dish--we had a wonderful chat. He was very interested as most people are when I discuss with passion the premise of my book. A lot of people seem concerned with the signs of the times; it's like they feel something is about to happen but they don't know what. When I offer the scenario in the book and back it up with the Ice Age being caused by a pole shift, and offer the mammoth story as the only fact needed to prove this happens, quite often they embrace the theory.
As did Ray. He was quite excited to read a copy of my manuscript, which I promised to bring out to him but I decided to wait until he is included in the story. He is important because I got a glimpse of the future from his sharing his past. I think I will survive the cataclysm so I am not as scared of it as I am of a thought triggered in me by the writings about Plato. When I heard the description of food from around the world being available in Atlantis, I wondered what kind of people are going to be fascinated by descriptions of exotic foods? I concluded he was talking to people who very likely lived on a pretty bland diet. I also remember the plight of the Israelites as they escaped Egypt and finally arrived at the land of "milk and honey." I think that after a forty-year trek in the desert I'd expect a truly benevolent God to at least drop me off at the land of 'steak and lobster.'
I was thinking that stepping back in time meant giving up the food transportation system I've grown up with. When I think of being reduced to eating the same local produce year in and year out, that scares me more than the cataclysm. I guess I've been spoiled; I love variety in my diet.
Ray helped to alleviate my fears. He described his early years on his parent's farm between 1940-1950. The first fridge he remembers his family owning was a Norde built by General Motors. He shared that he still knows its whereabouts and it is still running. Ray described that before fridges some people had built wooden iceboxes. These people would go to the river in the winter and cut out foot and a half blocks of ice. They'd bring them back to a storage area and cover the blocks with sawdust; this process preserved the ice for the entire summer. They simply went out and chipped off a chunk and threw it in the icebox to keep their food chilled.
He went on to tell me how his family coped with the cooling problem before the Norde, about the times when they used their well for cooling. When fresh milk is left to sit, the cream floats to the top and the milk settles on the bottom. By taking a gallon of cream and agitating it, about a third of it becomes the hardened substance that is butter. They added a little salt to the butter to prevent it from spoiling and thus tasting too oily. Then they put it in a bucket and hung it in the cool well.
I asked him if people got sick in those days from drinking unpasturized milk. He said, yes but it was pretty rare. Most people inherited the required antibodies from their mothers until they developed their own. He thought people seemed much healthier in those days; they didn't even keep aspirin around the house. He went on about how most of the major illnesses of the time were caused during the winter because in those days there were only boards on the outside wall of the house. They didn't have insulation and these double-paned, vacuum-sealed windows that we have now. People went to bed under ten or even fifteen blankets. He described his sister's place in North Bay where his sister would get out of bed in the morning and shake the snow off the baby's blankets that had blown in through the cracks between the boards of the wall. It was also common to keep a bucket in the house for women; usually the bucket's contents were frozen in the morning. What did the men do? Well they were expected to run out to the barn whether it was the middle of the night or the dead of winter, or both (I think I'd manage to sneak the bucket into a closet, if they had closets. This is sounding a little like, "When I was a young fella we didn't have school buses. We had to walk forty miles through waist-deep snow").
Ray's parents kept chickens for producing eggs. When the chickens stopped producing eggs they made a lovely chicken dinner. On this quaint ten-acre spread they raised two cows to meet their dairy needs. Cream, milk and butter were the basics from the cows. But they also got buttermilk, which is what is left over after making butter. When I screwed up my face, Ray assured me it tastes nothing like what we buy at the store today. They made yogurt by letting milk sit at room temperature. Once it had formed they ate it with brown sugar and bread. They themselves didn't make cheese but some of their neighbours did, so although they did eat cheese, Ray couldn't describe the process of making it to me.
Every spring they would get two orphaned lambs. Orphaned lambs were too big a burden for sheep farmers who in the spring didn't have enough time to play mother and feed the little darlin's. Orphaned lambs could be had for next to nothing. Their family would raise one to eat and one to sell. In the fall they butchered theirs, making a nice change in the menu. Parts of the lamb were hung in the well to keep them fresh a while longer. If it was cold enough they'd hang some in the shed and freeze it.
They also raised pigs. Pork was preserved by cutting it up into four- or five-inch chunks and laying the chunks in an oak barrel completely covered in salt. I asked if they added water to make the brine. He said very little: the majority of the brine consisted of the water sucked out of the pork by the salt. This meat was now preserved and, if memory serves me correctly, I think all one did was go to the barrel, take out the meat, boil it to remove the salty flavour, and then serve it. They smoked themselves a few hams to help get through our long Canadian winters. Preserving meat in the fall must have been almost a necessity. During the summer these animals would basically take care of themselves by grazing. To keep them fresh all winter, it would create extra work for the farmer who would have to stockpile that much more extra food.
Root vegetables like potatoes, beets, carrots and some other vegetables like corn and beans were kept in the root cellar. He said they kept quite well. I can hardly imagine that because after about a month in my fridge, these same vegetables get all hairy and have molds that would make Louis Pasteur jump for joy while yelling, EUREKA! Ray strikes me as a very honest man so I'll take his word for it; I'll presume my vegetables are likely DNA altered for the chemical pursuit of unblemished veggies. Any vegetables that didn't keep well were canned and some were canned for variety's sake. Tomatoes and corn were on the list.
In the winter they'd get pigs' heads from the butcher and make headcheese. They'd also make blood pudding. These two items were taken and sold in Ottawa at the Byward Farmers Market and made up part of their annual income. Sometimes for a treat they'd mix ice and cream making homemade ice cream. I could tell that Ray as a little boy really liked this treat; his face was transformed as he described how delightfully rich pure cream could be. He also mentioned buying brown and white sugar by the hundred-pound bag, and that all their bread was home made and that he'd love to go back to that simpler kind of existence.
I said, "Hey Ray, if I'm right you may get that chance and you know what I think, with all of that knowledge in your head, you'd probably be a handy guy to have around after a cataclysm." He said, "You're darn right! I can slaughter animals and even castrate your dog if need be." Yep, after a cataclysm Ray would be more valuable than all of the money in the Bank of Canada's vault. I'm not as concerned about losing the varieties of food I've come to cherish. Mind you, I'm not going anywhere until I find someone who knows how to make a few different kinds of cheeses. I think a little forethought in the planning of what is brought onto the ark, and a little knowledge of what to do with it, will produce enough variety to satisfy my discriminating taste buds.
I know the appearance of modern technology was welcomed by those who performed labour-intensive tasks, but look around and see what has become of humanity with too much time on its hands. Our hunter-gather instincts are confined to grocery store shopping. Sometimes what we want for ourselves is not necessarily in our best interest. Mothers and fathers basically have to abandon their children to make a living these days. A simpler life will bring back old family values. Don't confuse this step backward with stepping into the Middle Ages where people killed each other over land and customs. This is a bigger step backward to a time where the imaginary lines we draw on maps don't exist--down payments, mortgages and a lifetime of paying for a house won't exist either. A time when people depend on people for their mutual survival. Every day will bring us in contact with nature. Every day will become like driving down the Thousand Island Parkway.
Of course, for a forty-year old like me who has sown the hell out of his wild oats, I can see contentment in such an existence. However, I still vividly remember my youth and I have considered the restlessness of my boys when they become teenagers, as they move from dependence into independence--their period of rebellion. I think the Aborigines of Australia have a great solution for this human condition: a rite of passage where adolescents are given a one-year walk-about. During their dependent years, they are taught all the necessary survival skills; then, eventually when they develop adolescent instability syndrome, they are sent off to roam the wilds and told not to come back for a year. At the end of the year, the independent stage is subdued allowing them to move into the next stage of growth--interdependence. In a culture of pole-shift survivors, this practice could be made even more practical by giving each explorer a bag of seeds to spread along the journey, turning an ever-expanding area into an agriculturally lush playground. It is daydreams like this, and an inner cry as expressed by Ray to return to a less stressful time of human development, that allow me to see past the horror of the cataclysmic event.
