JUL 25, 2011 - Summers Can Be Like the Dark Ages is an article I just chanced upon, a serendipitous finding that I wish had been there back when I wrote about the Leo-Scorpio-Aquarius Saturn-Jupiter-Neptune T-Square in my 2006 World Forecast Highlights, describing it as a celestial configuration not seen since 536; a configuration, I wrote, which heralded a chain of developments "from climate change to crop failure to hunger to migration and pandemic disease" up to an including "disease, religious persecution, political upheaval or economic restructuring" Writing in The Guardian, Kate Ravilious bids us "imagine a summer where the Sun completely failed to shine. This grim scenario has happened in the past, and may be responsible for giving the historic period known as the Dark Ages its name. In the year 536AD [sic] a volcanic eruption blotted out the Sun, bringing continuous twilight to people living across Europe and Asia." The darkness was noted by contemporaries from Byzantium to China, and is confirmed by thick layers of volcanic ash in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. From a Mayan population collapse to crop failure, famine and war in Europe, the volcanic eruption left its mark in history. Here we are in the wake of the self-same configuration. Look around!
