The Pole Shifts that Didn't Happen

[Jnana]

Pole shift doomsday mania did not start with the 2012 hysteria.

Here is a quote from a 1996 article entitled Pole Shift Torpedoed by Author

When John White first published "Pole Shift" in 1980, his book sent re-affirming shocks waves through the earth changes community. Many earth change believers (including this reporter) believed White's book "proved" that Edgar Cayce, and a host of other psychics, had correctly foreseen a global catastrophe that would destroy much of the planet along with major portions of the human race. White's book was particularly powerful because it was written by a man with serious professional credentials and, perhaps more importantly, because it seamlessly wed modern scientific data with contemporary psychics and ancient myths and prophecies. While White refused to say in "Pole Shift" that he was absolutely certain that a pole shift was coming, he left no doubt that he thought one might strike sometime near the year 2000.

Now, however, White has publicly said that he doesn't believe there is going to be a pole shift -- at least the kind of cataclysmic variety envisioned by Cayce, Gordon-Michael Scallion, and others. And while "Pole Shift" is still selling like hot cakes (it is presently being published by the A.R.E., Edgar Cayce's organization), the 1995 edition now contains an epilogue that discusses why a pole shift WON'T be visiting planet Earth anytime soon. White also challenged the themes championed in "Pole Shift" in another book of his published in 1990, "The Meeting of Science and Spirit." In that book he writes, "On the basis of a decade's hindsight, I think that the possibility of a catastrophic pole shift at the end of this century is increasingly unlikely. To be more precise, I do not think a pole shift will occur as predicted."

So even in the 1980's, the pole shift concept was already active and evidently a money maker. The rest of this article can be found at the link above.

Various people jumped on the bandwagon with the Edgar Cayce prophecy of a pole shift in 2000-2001. Some said this would be a magnetic pole shift, others a geographic pole shift. Some links and quotes from them:

Pole Shift and Earth Changes in 2000-2001?

Q What great change or the beginning of what change, if any, is to take place in the Earth in the year 2000 to 2001 A.D.?
A When there is a shifting of the poles. Or a new cycle begins. 826-8 (8/11/36)
For, these [records] were to be kept as had been given by the priests in Atlantis or Poseidia ... when the records of the race, of the developments, of the laws pertaining to One were put in their chambers and to be opened only when there was the returning of those into materiality, or to Earth's experience, when the change was imminent in the Earth; which change, we see, begins in '58 and ends with the changes wrought in the upheavals and the shifting of the poles, as begins then the reign in '98 (as time is counted in the present) of those influences that have been....kept by those sojourners in this land of the Semitic peoples. 378-16 (10/29/33)

The Shifting of the Earth's Poles Has Begun

as predicted by Edgar Cayce in 1936

NOVA, the PBS television program from WGBH in Boston, reported startling discoveries about our planet’s electromagnetic poles and fields. The program was titled “Magnetic Storm” and was written and produced by David Sington. The reason this is of interest to us is that Edgar Cayce predicted that the beginning of the New Age would coincide with a pole shift.

Pole Shift!

A shifting of the Earth’s poles has been predicted to occur within the next few years by a number of psychics, including the renowned Edgar Cayce. This certainly is not a scientific prediction, but some scientists believe that it is at least possible that this could happen at some future date, and perhaps has happened many times in our planet’s past. Whether or not we could survive a physical shifting of the Earth’s poles is open to debate; it could be much more cataclysmic than described above.

“There will be upheavals in the Arctic and Antarctic that will cause the eruption of volcanoes in the torrid areas, and pole shift.” There are two ways of considering what is meant by a pole shift:

1. A geological or axial shift in which the Earth’s crust literally slips around its molten core – like a loose peel on an orange – altering the positions of land masses with respect to the planet’s rotation on its axis. This could happen by a few degrees or by many degrees. Antarctica could wind up at the equator and Miami could be the new North Pole. The effects on our civilization could be devastating.
2. A shift of the magnetic poles only. As it is, the Earth’s magnetic north (the north that compasses point to) is not exactly the same as the true North Pole. This magnetic pole is not fixed and can move. In fact, scientists are fairly certain that it has shifted by as much as 180 degrees several times in the past. This change may be sudden or it may be gradual, taking place over hundreds or even thousands of years. The effects on life on the planet would probably be minimal, affecting perhaps the migratory or homing instincts of some animals.

Unfortunately (if you put stock in such things), Cayce was referring to a shift of the first type. He wrote: “There will be upheavals in the Arctic and Antarctic that will cause the eruption of volcanoes in the torrid areas, and pole shift.”

Nancy of Zetatalk describes a vision of a pole shift caused by a giant comet in early 2003:

The cataclysms result from the magnetic pull of a giant comet, which is in fact a planet of your Solar System. The body of this planet surpasses, in mass, that of Earth. The comet will pass, on its first swing through your Solar System, between the Earth and the Sun. No collision is possible, as the orbits do not intersect. However, coming in from outer space as it were, the comet is not magnetically aligned with the close-knit group orbiting the Sun. The comet is aligned with the larger arena, where it spends most of its cycle, some 3,657 years, on average. As the comet approaches your Solar System, it speeds up, so it retains its magnetic alignment when whizzing through. Being of greater mass than the Earth, it is not affected by Earth's magnetic alignment. The Earth is not so fortunate.

Considerable tap dancing as to why nothing happened ensued.

Failure to get it right has not stopped the pole shift business at all. In fact, there are over a dozen pole shift books on the market right now, most of them 2012 oriented.

There are scientists who think the earth's geographic poles may shift, although the process is a very slow one and not particularly noticable within a human life-span.

Pole shift hypothesis

Hapgood, building on Adhemar's much earlier model, speculated that the ice mass at one or both poles over-accumulates and destabilizes the Earth's rotational balance, causing slippage of all or much of Earth's outer crust around the Earth's core, which retains its axial orientation. Based on his own research, he argued that each shift took approximately five thousand years


Other theories which are not dependent upon polar ice masses include those involving:

• a high-velocity asteroid or comet which hits Earth at such an angle that the lithosphere moves independent of the mantle
• a high-velocity asteroid or comet which hits Earth at such an angle that the entire planet shifts axis.
• an unusually magnetic celestial object which passes close enough to Earth to temporarily reorient the magnetic field, which then "drags" the lithosphere about a new axis of rotation. Eventually, the sun's magnetic field again determines the Earth's, after the intruding celestial object "returns" to a location from which it cannot influence Earth.
• perturbations of the topography of the core-mantle boundary, perhaps induced by differential core rotation and shift of its axial rotation vector, leading to CMB mass redistributions. See, e.g., Bowin.[5]
• mass redistributions in the mantle from mantle avalanches or other deformations. See, e.g., Ladbury,[6] and Steinberger and O'Connell.[7]

Here are some of the problems I see with worrying about a geographic pole shift due to some of these causes: An asteroid or comet impact big enough to cause a pole shift will cause more immediate damage from the impact alone. A highly magnetic object will also be very massive (an object made mostly of iron), probably larger than the earth, so gravitational tidal effects could be more damaging than the magnetic effects (picture of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 ripped apart by the gravity of Jupiter ). In other words, it takes such an energetic event to cause a pole shift, that the pole shift itself is insignificant by comparison or will occur over a long period of time. Kind of like worrying about dying from lead poisoning from a bullet. A very slow pole shift such as from a mantel mass redistribution is simply not a threat.

Will there be a pole shift in 2012?

My prediction: No.

Y2K proved that there was good money to be made in the doom market. The bandwagon has become bigger since Y2K, but the predictions are just as wrong. Many other concepts fielded for Y2K have also been recycled for 2012 - do some checking and you will see what I mean.

There are plenty of real problems to be concerned about. A pole shift isn't one of them.

[Humble Janitor]

I'm honestly not fully sold on the idea of a pole shift in 2012. I believe the Y2K hype has taught people that they should not focus on doom-and-gloom, especially when the science behind it is not 100%. We weren't around when the pole shifts of the past occured and I have reason to believe that we could still survive a pole shift, perhaps losing 10-20% of the entire Earth population as a result.

[burgundia]

Originally Posted by Humble Janitor

I'm honestly not fully sold on the idea of a pole shift in 2012. I believe the Y2K hype has taught people that they should not focus on doom-and-gloom, especially when the science behind it is not 100%. We weren't around when the pole shifts of the past occured and I have reason to believe that we could still survive a pole shift, perhaps losing 10-20% of the entire Earth population as a result.

many years ago a Polish priest, also an herbalist , an intuitive predicted that one day there would be a global catastrophy and a lot of people would die. But he predicted that Poland would be quite lucky as a country as it would lose 5-10% of its population. he also said that the climate in Poland would be warm enough to grow oranges here. So if anything happens, perhaps it won't be that bad.