7 September 2016 – Astro-Weather:
Evenings this week are great times for exploring Sagittarius, the constellation of the Archer. This star group lies due south around 9 pm, just as the last vestiges of twilight fade away. The central regions of the Milky Way pass through Sagittarius. The brightest stars within the constellation form the shape of a teapot.
For a more esoteric look https://sway.com/8gvTgTPzvoY7LMGf
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“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” ~Winston S. Churchill
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
70 – A Roman army under Titus occupies & plunders Jerusalem
251 – Deathday of Saint Regina a virgin martyr born in Autun, France
1191 – Third Crusade: Battle of Arsuf – Richard I of England defeats Saladin at Arsuf. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was a crusader state established in the Southern Levant in 1099 after the First Crusade. The kingdom lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks, but its history is divided into two distinct periods. The sometimes so-called First Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted from 1099 to 1187, when it was almost entirely overrun by Saladin. After the subsequent Third Crusade, the kingdom was re-established in Acre in 1192, & lasted until that city’s destruction in 1291. This second kingdom is sometimes called the Second Kingdom of Jerusalem or the Kingdom of Acre, after its new capital.
1228 – Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II lands in Acre, Israel, & starts the Sixth Crusade
1695 – Henry Every perpetrates one of the most profitable pirate raids in history with the capture of the Grand Mughal ship Ganj-i-Sawai. In response, Emperor Aurangzeb threatens to end all English trading in India
1927 – The first fully electronic television system is achieved by Philo Farnsworth. (In later life, Farnsworth invented a small nuclear fusion device)
1936 – Deathday of Benjamin The last thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) a carnivorous marsupial dies alone in its cage at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania
1940 –The German Luftwaffe begins the Blitz, bombing London & other British cities for over 50 consecutive nights
1945 – Japanese forces on Wake Island, which they had held since 1941, surrender to U.S. Marines
1945 – The Berlin Victory Parade
1953 – Nikita Khrushchev is elected first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
1979 – The Chrysler Corporation asks the United States government for US$1.5 billion to avoid bankruptcy
1986 – Desmond Tutu becomes the first black man to lead the Anglican Church in South Africa
1999 – A 5.9 magnitude earthquake rocks Athens, rupturing a previously unknown fault, killing 643, & leaving 50,000 people homeless
2004 – Hurricane Ivan, a Category 5 hurricane hits Grenada, killing 139 & damaging 90% of its buildings.
2005 – Egypt holds its first-ever multi-party presidential election
2008 – The US Government bails out the two largest mortgage financing companies in the US, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac.
2012 – A series of earthquakes in Yunnan, China, kills 889 people
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s.edelstein
My POD (Poem Of the Day)
~Golden Hexagram
Raw Geometry
Viscus wax
In sticky sacrifice
~hag
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Martin Bridge
BEE-cause
From the earliest times of our agrarian history the relationship between farmers & the bees that pollinate & confirm their crops has been one of reciprocal preservation. The bee as agents of pollination, are the catalyst that brings about change & facilitates fertilization, allowing the crop to mature, develop & reproduce. It is easy to see why their function is so important & why the bee is ascribed a mystical place within the human experience.
Bees have an important place in human history, yet come, as we all do, from the spiritual realm. The mythology that surrounds them is potent, & indicates a close, reciprocal relationship between the bee & the human race- companions in the great plan of divine evolution.
The Kalahari Desert ‘San’ people tell of a bee that carried a mantis across a river. The exhausted bee left the mantis on a floating flower but planted a seed in the mantis’s body before it died. The seed grew to become the first human.
Traditionally the bee was perceived as a creature that bridged the gap between the physical & the super-sensible world – the intermediary between these states of existence.
The bee was an emblem of Potnia, the Minoan-Mycenaean “Bee Mistress”, also referred to as “The Pure Mother Bee”. Her priestesses received the name of “Melissa” (“Bee”), as did some of the Delphic oracles, as well as those worshipping Artemis & Demeter .
In Egyptian mythology, bees grew from the tears of the sun god Ra when they landed on the desert sand.
The bowstring on Hindu love god Kamadeva’s bow is made of honeybees.
The Homeric Hymn to Apollo acknowledges that Apollo’s gift of prophecy first came to him from 3 Bee maidens, usually identified with the Thriae, a trinity of pre-Hellenic Aegean Bee Goddesses.
Orators, powerful speakers & those who can enrapture their audience through their linguistic ability are said to have lips that have been anointed with honey.
Bee-holding in reverence
