Energy Rising, Healing Divides in Nashville, Thanks to Egypt, Greece, India and the Cicadas

The Great Southern Brood is rising. No, I'm not referring to another political party or fringe group. The worlds' largest cicada brood is birthing as I write this morning. Their first personal appearance in my yard came Sunday night as I went out flashlight in hand and found them crawling up our home's foundation seeking a hang out in order to begin phase two of emergence, the crossing of another threshold in their heroic journey.

The 13 year cicadas known to scientists as yes, The Great Southern Brood or Brood XIX, are coming out all over Nashville and parts Southeast.

After posting Sunday's first cicada-related musing, I fell asleep smiling recalling my Creepy Crawler kit in the 70's. It came with several metal molds, bottles of colorful goop that could also be poured in swirls and a little baking machine that when heated turned goop into rainbow colored spiders, snakes, lizards and bugs. I fell asleep thinking these childhood creations may have laid the foundation of my being mesmerized by the insect and reptile world, a world that evokes delight for some and fright for others.

I have continued to smile as on morning walks I've found birthing units on light poles and this morning even assisted in some births. There's something at least for me that's deeply satisfying and heartening as to how these creatures live for years in Mother Earth's dark, enveloping soil then find the courage and feel the sensory knowing (or the sap rising and soil temperature right) to come out into the light.

The fact that these particular cicadas venture out every thirteen years makes them even more curious and special. Thirteen is considered sacred. There were 12 disciples with Jesus being #13 just as there are twelve planets around which the Sun #13 rotates. The number 13 is preserved in the measurements of the Great Pyramid. Thirteen is part of the Fibonacci sequence found in aspects of nature such as leaves on a stem, the arrangement of a pine cone or flowering artichoke.

Thirteen reduces to the number 4 ( 1+ 3 = 4) the number of Earth and the astrological correspondence to 13 is the Earth. How perfectly fitting that the cicadas live within the earth, the below, finding nourishment from tree roots and sap that sustains them until it's time to emerge.

The "below" takes me back to the South, the below of our country, where these particular cicadas reside and where like the cicada Southerners are still at times the brunt of jokes and put downs. You know the ones suggesting we still use outhouses and our lacking education (although compost toilets are now in, maybe we're not behind times but ahead of the curve).

Regardless of jokes or innuendo Nashville the city I've lived in or near all my life called the "Athens of the South" is an energetically potent place in an extremely potent time.

There is an energy rising here alongside the cicadas as historically divisive events are being marked by anniversaries related to Civil Rights and the Civil War.

We're now a month into the 150 yr. commemoration of the Civil War. Although I'm not a re-enactor as some folks are, I've recently learned that unlike other Southern states, Tennessee was evenly divided pro-Union and pro-Confederacy. (I think I was hibernating like the cicadas during history class which to some may sound like my being uneducated.) It took two votes in Tennessee for secession to pass. We were the last state to secede and the first to return to the Union after the war. Nearly 1500 battles were fought here, more battles than any state except Virginia and more skirmishes than any state. Each of our 95 counties suffered bloodshed. Because of this, the entire state is considered a Civil War Heritage Area. As with any place of war there is an energetic inheritance, one of courage, sorrow and grief residing in the land and lineage here.

May also marks the 50th anniversary of the Civil Right's Freedom Rides. Congressman John Lewis a student at Nashville's American Baptist Theological Seminary and many other Nashville college students were integral to those historic, courageous rides into the segregated South. These young people experienced violence and imprisonment 100 years after the Civil War because of their race. The Freedom Rides are being reenacted and tomorrow May 12th a group of present college students and past riders will arrive in Nashville for a showing of "Freedom Riders" (also to be aired on public tv nationally Monday, May 16th).

(There's a new healing energy available now as evidenced by Fisk's Jubilee Singers performing at last month's Civil War commemoration ceremony whereas fifty years ago the Centennial was started by the removing of the American flag from the State Capitol.)

There are other reasons this land holds the energy of cheers and tears. We were the state casting the deciding vote ratifying the amendment so women could vote. Unfortunately we were also the state, as was much of the South, where thousands upon thousands of Native Americans were forcibly removed from their homes in the Trail of Tears.

Global energies are rising in Nashville to assist in this time too. We are presently host to objects imbued with energies of the Egyptians, Hindus and Greeks. The Frist Museum is hosting Vishnu until May 29th; the TN State Museum hosts King Tut until September and as always the Parthenon hosts Athena.

What does this have to do with the cicadas?

The cicadas carry a vibration, some call it noise. This vibration is reminiscent of a giant rain stick being turned over and over, end upon end.

The work of French otolaryngologist Dr. Alfred Tomatis suggests that upper mid-range frequencies like those of the cicadas have an energizing effect on the brain and ultimately produce an electromagnetic charge. (I'm quoting my friend Garth on this and have since read some about Dr. Tomatis work.)

All I know is I find the cicada sounds soothing yet energizing. They're like a heavenly rain stick raining down energy that is grounding and balancing.

I envision the cicada vibrations lifting us energetically to a higher plane of compassion, wisdom and openness, a plane in which it's possible to heal the wounds of past and present divisions, the civil war and civil rights wounds still held and the civil wars continuing politically in Washington and on Capital Hill here at home.

Joining with the cicadas are the archetypal energies of the Hindu, Greeks and Egyptians. Oh, and the Divine of course. How did I forget we're in the Bible belt!

This is a time of energy rising personally as we assimilate the vibrational shifts of the cicadas and planetary as the energies rise in Mother Earth to be held, healed and wholed.

The Great Brood is rising for a long awaited family reunion, a reunion of the heart and mind, a waking up and coming out at this historical time, a time which the Mayans called the ninth wave, the wave related to Unity Consciousness.

All minds, hearts and hands are needed on Mother Earth to assist in making the shift from fear to love, from holding on to pain and suffering to healing. Mother Earth needs those who can hold and bridge the dark and the light, bring consciousness to the unconscious and with courage heal the divides within and around us.

The cicadas presence are a reminder that those of us in the Great Brood at this time on Earth embarked on this journey long ago. The cicada brood and all of Nature awaits us. I'm in. How about you?

-Dawn, For Today the Cicada Loving Good News Muse, 11 May 2011