After the usual lively morning introduction by Sheila Martin and Andy Thomas, Jason Porthouse opened up the 2012 Symposium with an eloquent presentation. His overview of the 2012 phenomenon drew in the prophecies from ancient civilisations and their predictions for a period of great change, something also echoed in the astrology of these times. The square aspect between Pluto in Capricorn and Uranus in Aries signifies a tremendous clash between control versus freedom and this is a cycle associated with huge leaps forward for mankind.

Jason said that these times should not be ones of just waiting to be saved by mysterious forces, but instead of taking collective responsibility for future outcomes. The Internet is a tremendous resource to help with this, as he demonstrated with a blogger from Israel who posted up that he loved the Iranians, prompting a blogger from Iran to respond in the same vein, bucking the media’s stereotypical portrayals of opposing nations. Maybe the return of Neptune to its own sign of Pisces is showing us that love is the way forward. However, the other face of Neptune is delusion and disillusion – something we could well see if nothing dramatic happens on 21st December 2012! Jason certainly set the scene for the whole weekend with a fabulous start.

Not to forget the Symposium’s original roots as a cerealogical conference, Joseph-Mark Cohen followed the lunch break to bring a new perspective to the crop circle mystery by looking at it in terms of numerology and the power of certain numbers, such as 10, 33, 44, 52, 55, 64, 66, 77, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85 and 86. He has devised his own beautiful Crop Circle Oracle Cards, each card featuring a picture of a particular crop circle with its divinatory meaning, as revealed through meditation. Joseph-Mark also treated us all to some amazing overtone chanting.

Yet synchronicity can still be said to occur when they are personally meaningful to the observer. John used the Paul McCartney-is-dead conspiracy theory as an example, pointing out how people can, if they really want to, see lots of interesting connections in seemingly innocuous things. But some aspects of synchronicity are less explicable, and John wondered if these might be accounted for by the Morphic Resonance theory that Rupert Sheldrake postulates. This really was a talk to make everyone think.

Following a tea break, Peter Taylor‘s excellent talk combined the logic of hard science with the intuitive. Peter looked at how the facts and theories of climate change have been misrepresented by the mainstream, and explained why he believes we are in truth heading for a period of global cooling. He recounted his personal history in climatology and explained how we have never been able to have a genuinely open debate on climate change because the governments of the world appear to only want data which fits their model of global warming.

Peter was very convincing in his argument. He also expressed his concerns about how the youth of today miss out on truly living by having a diet of TV and computer games, and expressed concern about the long-term effect that may have. He spoke very personally about the wisdom he has gleaned from shamanic practices and how we should aspire to the ‘wisdom of the child’, a knowing which is very strongly connected to nature. The whole afternoon ended perfectly with a beautiful and relaxing meditation led by Jason Porthouse, before people went out to find dinner in bustling Glastonbury.

The Friday evening culminated, as it always does, in the Open Forum – a panel this time comprising Piers Adams (who came to join us as a pundit after his artistic performance), Deirdre Edwards, Nexus Magazine’s Marcus Allen, the interestingly-named TV presenter alex:g (see Sunday report), shaman Jez Hughes (see Saturday report), and myself, Helen Sewell, in an astrological capacity. Those who chose to sacrifice watching the Olympic opening ceremony to come along enjoyed an evening of lively audience participation in the form of questions and responses, where the fascinating and important themes of the weekend were debated. The Forum was, as always, a great chance for everyone, both panel and audience, to share their thoughts and feelings in an inclusive and informal atmosphere. And here’s our star-studded audience, busy lapping it up and firing thoughts and questions at the Forum’s panel! The panel nevertheless survived.

It was a little cooler today, so the ever-present heat of the Town Hall was rather easier to manage! Andy Thomas kicked off the morning session with a blast of a performance. He is, of course, now the longest-running regular stalwart at the Symposium, having presented in his traditional Saturday morning slot for a remarkable 15 years now. He certainly has just the right amount of energy to wake everyone up with his animated and original style and was perfect for setting the tone for the day. His message this morning, which very much tapped into the zeitgeist of the moment (with the many foreboding predictions over the Olympics and 2012-and-all-that hovering over the alternative world) was one of trying to get people to strike a healthy balance between between the fluffy bunny, love and light approach, and applying sensible caution for things that could well go wrong, while avoiding becoming paralysed by fear of potential disasters that may – or may not – happen. A humorous moment where the booming voice of the ‘Ashtar Command’ broke in over the speakers, arriving to save everyone, but in fact getting the wrong planet, helped make the point. Andy said that as we can never really know what’s around the corner, we should try to live our lives in personal freedom and happiness while we can, but always in readiness to act wisely in response to unexpected change if necessary. This was a perfect message to begin the day with.

Bert Janssen was on next, keeping the energy level very high indeed! His lively and entertaining style kept the whole audience on their toes. He covered many aspects of paranormal activity and gave lots of personal amusing anecdotes about synchronistic experiences he has had. It was fascinating to be reminded how crop circles leave ‘ghost’ impressions in the crop the next year, and sometimes even longer. Bert described how he decided to do a tour of sacred sites, but not including crop circles – yet he still found himself being drawn into one despite this AND he discovered it mathematically squared the circle.

Bert recalled how he was drawn in on a quest and kept coming across synchronistic discoveries of roses and crosses that tied in precisely with the geometry of the crop circle. He also went into a lot of depth about the symbolism of the Virgin Mary standing on a crescent Moon being held up by a cherub. Bert’s finale showed us an amazing discovery he had made – that the Sun, Moon and Earth are totally tied in by their geometrical proportions with each other – the chances of which are beyond belief. It was also beyond belief how Bert managed to get through so much information in an hour!

Jez recalled what an indigenous shaman once observed about the West: ‘Your magic is too strong – you’ve brought too much in; you’ve manifested too much in the physical world’. Jez discussed collective soul loss and how a shaman can help retrieve parts that have been split off, and went on to describe the quality of the elements, especially Fire. Indigenous peoples do a lot of movement through dance, stamping the fire into the ground, but in the west, the fire in our belly rises into the head and explodes. Ritual can help with this. We become the centre of our world when we engage in ritual, and we need to feed our ‘hungry’ ancestors, grieving loss so that we deal with it, thus helping the souls to move on and not become trapped, freeing ourselves at the same time. Jez made what can be a misunderstood subject much clearer in a way that was heartfelt, authentic and grounded. A fabulous talk!

Following another spirited and uplifting annual performance by the always-welcome Avalonian Free State Choir… our Saturday night speaker was Harry Oldfield. Harry was back by popular demand after speaking at the Symposium three years ago. He treated us to a show demonstrating his Polycontrast Interference Photography, which he claims can show the energy fields around things, with examples of images of Glastonbury Tor, Niagara Falls and also the stones of Stonehenge, where it appeared to show the stones not as solid entities, but semi-transparent – quite amazing. He also featured a picture of the nuclear reactor at Fukushima and how the energy field around it started to react before the explosion. Harry also showed examples of the work he has undertaken in detecting illnesses and ailments in people and animals, suggesting how healing might be accomplished. The camera apparently picks up other things we cannot see with our eyes, such as orbs and spirits. Harry shared with us his exasperation at getting the scientific community to accept his findings, something that many in alternative realms would be able to relate to. When Harry focused in on problems in the world and his sadness with the way young people can get caught up with drugs, he was obviously very moved, as were the audience.

The curiously-monikered Alex:G will be familiar to many people as one of the key presenters on Sky 200’s Edge Media TV, and television was at the forefront of Alex’s Symposium lecture, as he revealed the hidden and sometimes not-so hidden messages encoded into some of the best-known fantasy ‘cult TV’ shows (and occasional film) of past decades. An expert in his field, Alex took many members of the audience through a heartwarming nostalgia-fest of classics, ranging from Quatermass, Doctor Who, and the Gerry Anderson sci-fi series of the 60s and 70s, to abstract masterpieces such as The Prisoner, noting along the way their strong hints at many of the areas which the ‘alternative’ world regularly obsesses over today. After all, the envisioned future worlds of Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet all seem to promote one world government as the ultimate positive solution to our political problems! Were these early examples of ‘psy-ops’ conditioning or merely coincidence…? Alex left the audience to make up its own mind on this, but his breathless quick-fire narrative, obvious expertise and always entertaining style certainly made some keen to go out and invest in a few DVD box-sets to check out the clues for themselves… This talk had a lot of people reminiscing about these great programmes afterwards.

As a humorous introduction to the next slot, Sheila introduced Andy, who then introduced our own Geoff Stray of Beyond 2012 fame, who then introduced Mark Heley! To many, the Mayan calendar can seem complicated and confusing and it is a challenge in itself for Mayan specialists to get the rudiments over to an audience in a clear and concise way. However, Mark achieved this extremely well. He also gave some interesting statistics on such things as what percentage of people feel 2012 is going to be the end of the world – only 10%. However, 27% of Americans think that there is going to be a major disaster of some kind on 21st December. Mark was a real trooper when, in mid-flow,the power suddenly went off and he had to battle on in twilight for a few minutes without his slides. Apparently the whole of Glastonbury was affected by the power cut, so it was not just Mark that was being personally targeted! Luckily it came back on ten minutes later. Mark highlighted how there are discoveries being made all the time and that just this year they have found Mayan calendars projecting dates beyond 21st December 2012. Mark feels that this time is not one of apocalypse but a time of transformation and renewal. He also felt that wider solar cycles have a big effect on human evolution – when certain solar cycles reach their peak, we see more revolution on the streets, but they also seem to be times of massive creativity. It was heartening to hear that 30% of people are now trying to live their lives in a more holistic way, and hopefully this number will increase. A very enlightening talk on the 2012 phenomenon.

Although our last afternoon speaker and the following meditation in the beautiful Glastonbury Abbey grounds (which was happily sunny this year) is technically the close of our main event… …we always open up the Sunday evening as an extra separate event with a very special guest presenter – to help fill the places of those unfortunates who have to work the next day and can’t stay as long as they might like!

In her friendly and easy style, Dolores explained how three ‘waves’ of incarnated souls have been arriving here over the last 70 years or so to help nurture our race through difficult but very important transitional times, in the hope that we will eventually evolve to take our proper place as wise beings with a crucial part to play in the development of the universal collective consciousness. 2012 is, of course, an important nexus point. Dolores last spoke at the Symposium over ten years ago, but this time she won the largest audience of any of our previous Sunday nighters, with not a single seat left, making for a perfect end to what was a wonderfully uplifting and worthwhile weekend overall. Thank you Dolores. And thank you to all who came along and made the whole event such a vibrant and very special one!

Report by Helen Sewell, most pictures by Andy Thomas