Indeed, volumes could be written on the subject of the “Hollow Earth”

“In The Coming Race, Edward Bulwer-Lytton speaks of advanced beings inhabiting caverns beneath the Earth's surface. He refers to these beings as the Ana, saying they were forced underground due to a flood that destroyed their civilization thousands of years before the Biblical cataclysm.

The Hopi Indians speak of an underground world called Sipapuni, where their tribe originated. Interestingly, G Warren Shufelt discovered underground tunnels beneath Los Angeles which the Hopi believed were inhabited by a lizard race over five thousands years ago.

In his book Agartha, Robert E Dickhoff recounts the story of a Tibetan monk who learned that a secret alliance between reptilians and human sorcerers was responsible for causing chaos among Earth’s surface societies. Apparently, the subterranean evil-doers projected bio energetically disturbing frequencies into the minds of humans beings.

Dickhoff wrote that the monk led four hundred warrior monks into the caverns to do battle with a “Serpent Cult.”

From David Icke’s Children of the Matrix we read: Thirty-six underground cities have been discovered in Cappadocia so far and some are huge complexes going down eight levels. The ventilation systems are so efficient that even eight floors down the air is still fresh. Thirty vast underground cities and tunnel complexes have also been found near Derinkuya in Turkey In Secret in the Bible, Tony Bushby writes: Historical documents recorded that during the 20th Century, staggering discoveries not spoken of today, were made at Giza and Mt. Sinai, and Egyptian rumors of the discovery of another underground city within a 28 mile radius of the Great Pyramid abound John Rhodes recounts the discoveries of G E Kincaid who: …apparently discovered a massive underground city that was cut out into a wall of the Grand Canyon with the precision equaled only to that of the Great Pyramid. The highly advanced civilization that inhabited this subterranean city was of unknown origin…

A Smithsonian Institution team… discovered hundreds of rooms. Some as small as an average living room and others as large as several hundred feet in length and breadth. It was estimated that the area explored so far by the team could have comfortably housed fifty thousand people.

Scholar and researcher J J Hurtak declares: In our research in Africa, the Far East and the mountains of South America, we have come across statuary of very grotesque beings, who according to the Indian and Shamanistic tradition, went into the earth at the time of a great cataclysm Apache Indians speak of tunnels between their lands and city of Tiahuanaco in Bolivia. They claim their ancestors traveled for years by subterranean routes, and that the tunnels were …carved out by rays that destroy the living rock and were created by …beings who live near the stars–(From Uriel’s Machine by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas)

In Irish mythology, the Tuatha de Danann (a tribe of powerful Druids) descended into the underworld through so-called “sidhes.” Indeed, volumes could be written on the subject of the “Hollow Earth.” The ancient city of Beersheba… has many underground rooms and tunnels dating back to the Fourth Millennia BC… In 1951, at fifty sites in the northern Negev and particularly near Beersheba, researchers found the ruins of numerous villages. These were not on the surface… but instead they were completely underground. Running at a depth of twenty feet these tunnels form a network like an underground city. These cities have been dated to about 3000 BC–R A Boulay (Flying Serpents and Dragons) Thirty-six additional cities have been located; one near Ozconak was the home of 60,000 people. A similar city at Kaymakli was connected to it by a tunnel over six miles long. Altogether, it is estimated that all these Anatolian cities could accommodate from a half-to-one million people underground.

In 1572, a select and hardy group of about 500 German colonists originating mainly from Prussia are hired as soldier-mercenaries by Sebastian I, king of Portugal, to man a garrison up the Amazon River. Later, the group had problems with the local Indians and during their getaway stumbled upon a cave entrance on the side of a mountain. Exploring the cave, they found entrances to deep underground tunnels. Factions of this German colony reemerged in 1647. Headed by a German called Von Luckner, the colony broke into several underground cities over a period of several hundred years. Cities were established… these colonists also discovered another civilization with linguistic roots similar to German who had descended to earth some 30,000 years ago in response to a reptilian invasion of earth. These people were called the Bods, and they descended into the earth through tunnels in what is today Iran, Pakistan and Syria.

It is important to understand that the surface Germans originated from Bodlanders who surfaced through tunnel openings in the Black Forest in Bavaria–Valdamar Valerian (The Master Chronology) Now that we are informed of what ancient lore has to say about prehistory, we make greater sense of the following Commandment: You shalt not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is under the water of the earth–(Exodus 20: 4) Many of the world’s quaint myths and tales-such as those featuring dragons, dwarves, trolls, elves, little people and king under the mountain, etc-allude to subterranean regions. Many native American Indian tribes (particularly the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni) speak of a period when their ancestors resided in a subterranean world after a great cataclysm tore Earth’s surface to shreds. David Hatcher Childress recounts many legends directly referring to the underworld refuges of the ancients: In connection with this story, it is notable that among the Hopi Indians the tradition is told that their ancestors once lived in an underworld in the Grand Canyon till dissension arose between the good and the bad, the people of one heart and the people of two hearts. Machetto, who was their chief, counseled them to leave the underworld, but there was no way out. The chief then caused a tree to grow up and pierce the roof of the underworld, and then the people of one heart climbed out–(Lost Cities of Atlantis)”

— Atlantis, Alien Visitation and Genetic Manipulation by Michael Tsarion

Tawai - a voice from the forest - full feature

Tawai is a word the nomadic hunter gatherers of Borneo use to describe the connection they feel to their forest home. In this dreamy, philosophical and sociological look at life, Bruce Parry (of the BBC's Tribe, Amazon & Arctic) embarks on an immersive odyssey to explore the different ways that humans relate to nature and how this influences the way we create our societies. From the forests of the Amazon and Borneo to the River Ganges and Isle of Skye, Tawai is a quest for reconnection, providing a powerful voice from the heart of the forest itself.

Busted: 5 myths about uncontacted tribes

75% of Amazon rainforest shows signs of loss, a 'tipping point' of dieback, study shows

https://www.sott.net/article/465197-75-of-Amazon-rainforest-shows-signs-of-loss-a-tipping-point-of-dieback-study-shows

The Amazon rainforest may be nearing a "tipping point" of dieback, the point where rainforest will turn to savanna, a new study shows.

Signs of loss have been found in more than 75% of the rainforest since the early 2000s, according to research that outlines this troubling trend.

"Deforestation and climate change are likely the main drivers of this decline," said study co-author Niklas Boers, a professor at the Technical University of Munich.

Using satellite remote sensing data, researchers found what they call "resilience" — the ability to recover from events such as droughts or fires — has declined consistently in the vast majority of the Amazon rainforest.

Loss of resilience is most prominent in areas that are closer to human activity, as well as in those that receive less rainfall, the study said.

Overall, the Amazon rainforest is becoming much less resilient — raising the risk of widespread dieback, the research shows. "The rainforest can look more or less the same, yet it can be losing resilience — making it slower to recover from a major event like a drought," said study co-author Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.

The study was published Monday in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Climate Change.

Experts believe the Amazon could soon reach a critical line, the crossing of which would trigger dieback and turn much of the forest to savanna. That would have major consequences for biodiversity, global carbon storage and climate change.

It is not clear when that point could be reached, but the study said the loss of resilience is "consistent" with an approaching watershed moment.

"The Amazon rainforest is a highly complex system, so it's very difficult to predict if and when a tipping point could be reached," said study lead author Chris Boulton, also of the University of Exeter.

"Many researchers have theorized that a tipping point could be reached, but our study provides vital empirical evidence that we are approaching that threshold," Boers said. "Many interlinked factors — including droughts, fires, deforestation, degradation and climate change — could combine to reduce resilience and trigger the crossing of a tipping point in the Amazon."

Tropical forests such as the Amazon play a crucial role in climate regulation, experts say.

The Amazon rainforest is biologically the richest region on Earth, hosting about 25% of global biodiversity, and it is a major contributor to the natural cycles required for the functioning of the planet, according to the environmental group Panthera.

"The Amazon is the largest tract of continuous rainforest on the planet, and it plays a critical role in the (Earth's) climate system," Laura Schneider, a geographer at Rutgers University, said in 2019, when devastating wildfires were scorching the forest.

One crucial role is absorbing carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas that's a significant cause of global warming.

"With nearly 100 billion tons of carbon stored in its trees, it keeps nearly 400 billion tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere," said Daniel Nepstad, director of the Earth Innovation Institute, an organization that works to promote low-emission rural development.

Reference: Pronounced loss of Amazon rainforest resilience since the early 2000s

SHOCKING Global Risk Report 2022

227 environmental activists were murdered last year, a new report found - more than 4 people per week

The number is likely an undercount. Global Witness compiles its database using information that's publicly available online. But many cases likely go unreported, especially in countries with heavy suppression of media or with ongoing conflicts that make it difficult to parse out particular incidents.
For that reason, the report emphasizes that its figures are "only a partial picture" of these killings.

Killings are often linked to resource extraction

The largest number of murders (65 of them) happened in Colombia, followed by Mexico (30) and the Philippines (29). Those three countries together accounted for more than half of the killings in the report.

In cases where a perpetrator could be identified, hitmen carried out the most murders, killing a total of 89 activists. Militia or guerrilla groups were linked to 30 deaths, armed forces to 18, and police to 12.

Nearly 30% of the killings recorded had links to resource extraction like logging, mining, large-scale agriculture, and hydroelectric dams. Logging was linked to the most cases in the report — 23 deaths.

The report recommends that governments implement regulations to protect environmental activists, and that the United Nations "formally recognize the human right to a safe, healthy, and sustainable environment." It also implored businesses to evaluate their supply chains and operations in order to ensure they're not contributing to human-rights violations.

But Global Witness expects these death tolls to continue rising in the years to come as the climate crisis accelerates.

https://www.sott.net/article/458872-227-environmental-activists-were-murdered-last-year-a-new-report-found-more-than-4-people-per-week

Knowledge of medicinal plants at risk as languages die out

Loss of linguistic diversity may lead to disappearance of age-old remedies unknown to science, study warns

The areas with languages most at risk were in north-west Amazonia, where 100% of this unique knowledge was supported by threatened languages, and in North America, where the figure was 86%. In New Guinea 31% of languages were at risk. The anticipated loss of linguistic diversity would “substantially compromise humanity’s capacity for medicinal discovery”, according to the paper, published in PNAS.

How Did We Avoid Extinction Last Time?

Indigenous Colombians mount a spiritual defense of the Amazon

MOCOA, Colombia — The Union of Traditional Yage Medics of the Colombian Amazon (UMIYAC) brings together five ethnic groups ­— the Cofán, Inga, Siona, Coreguaje, and Kamëntsá — who practice spiritual ceremonies for individual and community healing based on ayahuasca, or yagé. But that’s not all that these communities have in common.

All five of these Indigenous groups are also classified by Colombia’s Constitutional Court as being at “risk of physical and cultural extermination.”

“Our strategy has to do with revitalizing and strengthening our spiritual connection with Mother Earth,” said Miguel Evanjuanjoy, advocacy and project manager of UMIYAC, in a video interview with Mongabay in October. He was speaking from his community of Yunguillo, in the department of Putumayo. “As stewards of the Amazon rainforest, we care for the land because it is she who nourishes us spiritually and through her sacred products.”

Spread across the Putumayo, Caquetà and Cauca regions of southern Colombia, with a small crossover into Ecuador, the 22 territories represented by UMIYAC are on the front line of the battle to protect the Amazon. A 2018 study conducted by the University of the Andes in Bogotá, for example, shows the annual deforestation rate in Caquetà alone is 0.77%, the highest in Colombia and nearly twice the rate for tropical South America as a whole.

Full article: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/indigenous-colombians-mount-a-spiritual-defense-of-the-amazon/ 

The ceremonial use of yagé opens participants up to ancestral knowledge, particularly the “natural laws” established by the ancestors that allow communities to “live in peace and harmony with other beings in nature,” Evanjuanjoy said.

As one of the more widely studied substances in the “psychedelic research” renaissance currently happening in Western countries, yagé shows potential as a treatment for prominent modern mental health disorders like depression and addiction. It even holds promise, according to ethnopharmacist Dennis Mckenna, as a catalyst for changing environmental consciousness.

“The sacred plant of yagé is a spiritual nourishment for people,” Evanjuanjoy said. “Through this plant, our grandmothers and traditional healers receive the wisdom to heal the diseases that affect the individual, the community, and the territory.

“It is the light, the path, the guide, and the primary tool to continue defending our territories and to continue the struggle for the survival of our culture.”

UMIYAC is an alliance comprised of spiritual leaders from five different Amazonian ethnic groups deemed to be in danger of extinction.
The ancestral lands of these five groups are located near deforestation hotspots in the Colombian Amazon, making them the front-line defense for the rainforest.
Presided over by spiritual leaders, the traditional yagé ceremonies that tie these ethnic groups together reinforce the spiritual wisdom needed to retain their territories and autonomy.

Meditative Botanical Tour at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden

How one teaspoon of Amazon soil teems with fungal life

A teaspoon of soil from the Amazon contains as many as 1,800 microscopic life forms, of which 400 are fungi.

Largely invisible and hidden underground, the "dark matter" of life on Earth has "amazing properties", which we're just starting to explore, say scientists.

The vast majority of the estimated 3.8 million fungi in the world have yet to be formally classified.

Yet, fungi are surprisingly abundant in soil from Brazil's Amazon rainforest.

To help protect the Amazon rainforest, which is being lost at an ever-faster rate, it is essential to understand the role of fungi, said a team of researchers led by Prof Alexandre Antonelli, director of science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

"Take a teaspoon of soil and you will find hundreds or thousands of species," he said. "Fungi are the next frontier of biodiversity science."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53197650

Planet of the Humans | Full Documentary | Directed by Jeff Gibbs

How Deforestation Looks From Space

'Sad surprise': Amazon fish contaminated by plastic particles

Scientists in Brazil find first evidence of plastic pollution in Amazon basin freshwater fish

Scientists have found the first evidence of plastic contamination in freshwater fish in the Amazon, highlighting the extent to which bags, bottles and other waste dumped in rivers is affecting the world’s wildlife.

Tests on the stomach contents of fish in Brazil’s Xingu River, one of the major tributaries of the Amazon, revealed plastic particles in more than 80% of the species examined, including the omnivorous parrot pacu, herbivorous redhook silver dollar, and meat-eating red-bellied piranha.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/16/sad-surprise-amazon-fish-contaminated-by-plastic-particles

Could it be that human evolution is not just the meaningless process that Darwin identified, but something more purposive and intelligent that we have barely begun to understand?

The spirit of the plant puts people in touch with their repressed pain and trauma...

Ayahuasca: The power of a plant from the Amazon and the respect it demands

The spirit of the plant puts people in touch with their repressed pain and trauma.

As a Western-trained doctor, I have long been aware of modern medicine's limitations in handling chronic conditions of mind and body. For all our achievements, there are ailments whose ravages we physicians can at best alleviate. In our narrow pursuit of cure, we fail to comprehend the essence of healing.

Thus the popularity of ayahuasca, the Amazonian plant medicine that many Westerners seek out for the healing of physical illness or mental anguish or for a sense of meaning amid the growing alienation in our culture.

http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/amazing-power-plant-amazon-and-respect-it-demands

An anthropologist's theory on shamanism and the origins of knowledge completely rewrites our understanding of dna

The shaman’s world is one of allegory, symbolism, metaphor and transcendence into the realms of energy and spirit. Their understanding of the universe and the abundant sentient beings which inhabit it is wildly foreign to the mind of the material scientist. Our best chance, therefore, at bridging the gap between science and spirit may lie in the anthropological study of those tribal cultures whose operating systems permit them to move freely in the metaphysical realms with the assistance of natural hallucinogenic substances.

The shamanic explanation of the origins of life and of the intelligent nature of the plants and animals which inhabit the rainforest are quite unbelievable to most, but a rational approach to understanding their perspective lends extraordinary insight into some of the greatest mysteries of human consciousness.

Author and anthropologist Jeremy Narby set out in the mid 1980’s to do just this, hoping to learn from medicine men of the Amazon jungle about how it is they claim to be able to communicate directly with plants and unseen spirit beings of the forest.

anthropologists-theory-shamanism-origins-knowledge-completely-rewrites-understanding-dna/

The Last Shaman - Ayahuasca Journey

James is an all American boy whose promising life is brought to a halt by acute depression. Turning his back on the most progressive western treatments and medicines, James discovers ayahuasca in search of healing in the Peruvian jungle. Over the course of 10 months venturing from Shaman to Shaman, James finds friendship, answers and a kind of redemption hidden deep in the Peruvian amazon. watch the-last-shaman

Ayahuasca — The Fashionable Path of Awakening?

“Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.” These words were spoken by Krishnamurti in 1929 as he dissolved the global spiritual organization that had formed in order to promote him as the new Messiah. As I witness the growing popularity ayahuasca, I hope we do not turn this medicine into a Messiah that has to come to save us. Although I see ayahuasca as a powerful tool of individual and planetary awakening, I am also seeing it evolve into a spiritually-sophisticated brand that we wear and glorify. As any trend becomes more popular, authentic original impulses are replaced by unconscious conformity: we follow trends as unquestioning groups, rather than as conscious free-willing individuals.

The New Yorker recently published an article on ayahuasca, calling it the “drug of choice for the age of kale”. The author narrated her only ayahuasca experience, in a Brooklyn yoga studio, next to a “thumping dance club”. The article makes no mention of the rich cultural diversity of ayahuasca traditions or the countless stories of ayahuasca-assisted personal transformation. However, I thought her association of ayahuasca with kale was spot-on. Ayahuasca may be answering the call for a global paradigm shift, yet it also fulfills an obsessive craving for wellness, detox, and healing. Plant medicines can be powerful catalysts for healing, when approached with individual and social self-awareness, and these two forms of awareness – of ourselves and of our society – are difficult to cultivate when we do what the cool kids are doing. What we can do is learn to discriminate between self-expression and imitation, and between the authentic desires of our hearts and the chatter of our minds. Are we acting from our core or simply being blown around by the cultural zeitgeist?
When to take ayahuasca?

These distinctions are absolutely necessary. Powerful tools can be misused and have damaging effects. My original inspiration for writing this article was a botched iboga ceremony that left me so traumatized that I was forced to accept that 1) there were some highly irresponsible and reckless shamans/healers out there and 2) there were highly irresponsible and reckless individuals like myself naively attending ceremonies without proper awareness. I’ll save the details for a future article, but I will share that I experienced an abyss so unbearably painful that my only wish was for it to end, without caring what came after this end. I understood the torment of suicide. These realms of consciousness are real. I share them here not out of masochism, but to emphasize the importance of preparation, discrimination, and intuition.

We can sharpen our skills by coming back to the basics: set and setting. Set – why am I here? And how do I really feel in my heart of hearts? Setting – do I feel safe? Do I trust this environment and the people around me? It is crucial to critically evaluate the shaman by their “fruits”: what type of life has this person created for themselves? How do they relate to their family and partner? How do they relate to their assistants and workers? Have the workers been there a long time? Are they happy to work there? These questions reveal a lot about what kind of person the shaman is, and therefore what kind of shaman they are.

We also need to de-romanticize our understanding of shamanic traditions. We crave for more natural, organic lives, for health, and for wisdom, so it is not a surprise that we fantasize about Amazonian tribes and their psychedelic brews. But our colorful projections have consequences and can reinforce racist, neocolonial dynamics. Not all medicines are appropriate at a given time or compatible with a given person. Indigenous peoples are born into tribes, whereas Westerners self-select into their tribes. Not all shamans heal; some throw curses; others do both. And I have yet to meet a shaman who calls themselves a shaman. Shaman is a word from Siberia popularized by Western anthropologists to categorize a wide variety of seemingly related spiritual practices.

Our interaction with indigenous medicines is not a one way street – with us simply “gaining wisdom” from them. As any quantum physicist or modern anthropologist will tell you, observation entails participation. It’s a two way street: the massive influx of ayahuasca tourists to the Amazon impacts local economies, culture, and healing traditions. In addition to our own healing, we need to remember that indigenous communities have their own healing to do. Are we operating as co-creators or are we imposing ourselves on them? Am I giving as much as I am taking? And where is all this ayahuasca coming from? This is not a question of shame, but of awareness.

The reality of indigenous peoples is not a Jungle Book fairy tale. Their cultures are steadily declining in the face of consumerism, missionary activity, and the rape of nature by oil pipelines and industrial super-farms. Ayahuasca tourism is a booming industry in much of the northwest Amazon and its reality is more nuanced than we like to think. Explore the backstreets of Iquitos, Peru and see for yourself the shadow side of the Western appetite for healing.

Please don’t mistake my words for pessimism. The intention that infuse these words is for renewed awareness and courage. Charles Eisenstein writes that “no optimism can be authentic that has not visited the depths of despair…no despair is authentic that has not fully let in the joy.” The world is not ending. It is only changing, as all things change. Stop, breathe, be gentle. May all beings be happy and peaceful.

by Félix de Rosen

Félix de Rosen is a free spirit who aims to catalyze conscious planetary evolution. His long-term vision is to organize sacred arts festivals and create spaces of trust, spontaneity, and transparency. He was born in France, grew up in the US, and is learning how to let go and relax. He is currently based in California.

A Forest Existence

By Tom Sterling

One day, on the upper Cuieiras, I saw a remarkable example of a man totally and successfully adapted to a forest existence. I came on the river-side shack of an old hunter. There are a number of these men living alone in the back tributaries. Usually, they are almost pure Indian, although they are completely detribalized. The few that I saw seemed to have dropped out of the human race altogether, and they were not very unhappy about their choice. They all had dogs, and this one had two. Both these animals had adapted so well to the life of their master that they looked like him; they were lean and hard, and there was something intensely placid about them. They obeyed the hunter’s every word, as more domesticated dogs never learn to do, but they never cringed or whined. Like their master, also, they were somehow neat and orderly, without seeming to be so. They had appointed places to sleep in the sun (or shade, depending on the time of day) and places to stand on the riverbank looking noble and precise positions to take in the hunter’s dugout canoe in order to balance it properly. I have never seen more contented dogs, though they were also highly keyed and immensely eager to hunt.

The man must have been in his middle fifties. He had brown, wrinkled knees and elbows of the aged, but he was tough as mahogany and could obviously have walked the legs off most men half his age. The muscles of his arms and thighs and belly were flat and unobtrusive, shaped for endurance. Quite obviously, his diet was protein, and he drove himself as hard as his pray to get it. We talked for a while; he was full of apologies because he had no coffee, an almost unforgivable sin for a Brazilian host. Aside from coffee, however, he appeared to want nothing. His little house was almost old-maidishly trim; a better word, perhaps, would be ship-shape – sailors can be old-maidish too.

Every few days this happy man would go into the jungle with his dogs to hunt. There he found sufficient food for himself, and for them, and once in a while he took a pelt which he sold (illegally) down river. It was enough. Indeed, as I could see with certain envy, it was more than enough; he was a very rich man with his neat house and his neat dogs and all the time in the world – which, I saw with another twinge of envy, did not weigh on his hands at all. Like the dogs, he was thoroughly enjoying himself, though he could have used some coffee.

I asked the hunter, then, if he had ever been married – clearly he lived alone here now. It seemed another thing that he might be missing even more than coffee, perhaps. No, he said, he had never lived with a woman and did not intend to. Women, he said, were too messy, and made too much noise. Anyway, he added, “I am married to her.” With this he pointed to the great forest behind him. On the surface, it was an ordinary remark, much as a man might say that he was married to his work. But I could see that he took the statement very seriously. That is to say, he took the gender of the forest very seriously. For him, it was a woman and not a virginal woman either. She was the guardian of the creatures he hunted. Indeed, when he spoke of hunting, he had the settled look of a happily married man. His wife was clean, efficient and reliable if treated with proper respect.

As we shoved off in our boat, the hunter stood on a spit of sand with his two proud dogs and waved goodbye. Then with apparent relief, he walked back into what he surely believed was the eternal forest.

Source: Time Life - The Amazon