True to our inner Cosmotic leanings, men and women cannot keep themselves away from the coldest places on Earth. They scale high altitudes, cross frigid oceans, brave the fiercest blizzards and contemplate frozen distances -- regardless of their resistance to Cosmotic Reintegration. We applaud such quests as important stages in Appreciation. Those regions of our biosphere are the Earth's closest semblances to the Cosmos, and places ripe for reflection and erotic sensitization. The spiritual awe that these places inspire is certainly not absent from the memoirs of alpinists or Arctic adventurers. There remains, however, a curiosity that the most Cosmotic region of our biosphere should be mythologized as another pedestrian site of exploration, despite the fact that to this day it has not been explored. This is the Antarctic continent, the holy grail of explorers and scientists for many ages.During the height of European exploration, Antarctica was surmised but funds for exploration were not readily available for a conjecture. The reality of Antarctica was known among sailors, but secrecy maintained to protect its waters -- their lucrative seal-hunting territories. Although discovered by modern civilization in 1812, the years of 1895 - 1922 mark the "Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration", fueled both by the spirit of adventure and civilization's hunger for resources for the Industrial Age. France, England and the United States launched furtive expeditions, but none were able to reach shore. The seas around the continent were among the most treacherous in the world, bearing long stretches of ice that could halt and crush ships.
In 1911, Robert F. Scott (of England) and Roald Amundsen (of Norway) were engaged in the famous race to reach the South Pole. The legend thereafter portrays both men reaching the pole, and Scott perishing with his memoirs en route to base camp. In truth, both parties reached the coastal islands but never crossed into the continent itself. The accounts of Sir Ernest Shackleton's voyage on the "Endurance" are much more authentic: the ship was gripped by the pack-ice, and the crew escaped with their lives by the mercy of the Elements. Other stories of Antarctic exploration have emerged, such as the 1949 British and Swedish expeditions to conduct seismic measurements at the South Pole. There have been many settlement (either for science or for whaling) on the outlying islands of the continent, but all invasions have been repelled to this day. Yet the public was contented with maps and documentation of a conquered territory, and curiosity deflected from Antarctica's impenetrability to musings of hidden mysteries: the lost Atlantis, prehistoric lakes, abandonded Nazi outposts, extraterrestrial crash-landings, and so forth. All of these myths betray how steeped our civilization is in reorganized nature. So unfamiliar is modern civilization with Cosmotic virtues that the public cannot contend with sublime emptiness and Cold, be it the Cosmos beyond the reaches of our biosphere, or within the White Continent where Cosmotic purity has touched down to our planet.
We do not mean to any sort of accusations of a worldwide conspiracy among the scientific community to disguise the failure of Antarctic exploration. A conspiracy would suggest an organized collaboration to deceive the public, with the intention of hiding some exciting secret. The safeguarding of Antarctica's Mystery is something that occurs on an individual basis among those who approach the continent with curiosity and open senses. It is a testimony to the strength of our Cosmotic yearnings that the scientific and political obligations become undermined among so many individuals. There simply is no other option for a being of flesh who stands before the profound intermingling of the Cosmos with our biosphere. Although technology can conquer any sort of earthly barrier elsewhere in the world, it should be understood that the Elements are but one type of defense for Antarctica. The spiritual dimension of Cosmotic Nature, and its irresistable affect opon the mind, is another. Most tales of the failures and tragedies of Antarctic exploration were, in truth, conversions. Appropriate legends were constructed to prevent an inflammation of public curiosity. Stories of successful adventures to the South Pole boosted public morale back home, regardless of the fact that only the ice shelves and coastal islands had been colonized (and there are more islands than the maps attest). Utility supercedes validity.
In the meantime, territories were theoretically staked, maps drawn, and documentary footage collaged from expeditions to the Arctic regions such as Iceland, Greenland and Siberia, as well as Antarctica's coastal islands. Likewise, radar and satellite data, like statistical data, is shaped according to priorities. The Antarctic Treaty, ratified by the United Nations in 1961, "protected" the continent from further territorial claims, industrial and military encroachment, and nuclear testing. In other words, the world is notified that the continent is "off limits".
No one can explain why exactly the Antarctic continent is impenetrable to us. We certainly do not deny the advancement of humans and spacecraft into Cosmotic Nature beyond our biosphere. Floating beyond the biosphere in a spacesuit is no act of blasphemy -- no more so than walking outdoors in Winter with a protective jacket. Yet the Cosmos draws the line at Antarctica's borders. We could hypothesize that the raw intermingling of Cosmotic nature with our biosphere creates a particularly sacred situation (it is interesting to note that astronauts have witnessed the continent as radiating light), but this is speculation. It would be comfortable to think that Cosmotic Nature assumes a more sacred and urgent quality when close to its incomplete children.
All we can say is that the matured Seeker has no curiosity about Antarctica, and seems to possess an innate understanding. Until Antarctica invites us in, the rest of us shall uphold its Mystery as an ideal upon the Earth.
Since civilization has laid its siege around the Antarctic borders, and a stasis has been maintained. Why, then, publish the truth? Simply because the time is ripe for Cosmotic consciousness and a world-wide spiritual evolution via Cosmotic Appreciation and Reintegration. It is time the world understood that the Earth is touched by the Cold hand of the Cosmos, and not by a parental sun.
Presented by the Cosmotic Order, Chicago Chapter