Posts Tagged ‘Cemetery’

News & Submissions 12/16/2010

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

Celebrating paganism with a winter solstice
A solstice is the celebration of the sun’s rebirth. Every year, Sudbury’s pagan community celebrates a summer and winter solstice, noting the longest and shortest days of the year.

Kristan Cannon-Nixon, one of five organizers who helps run both annual events, said its a way for pagans of all denominations to celebrate their beliefs together, and celebrate the shifting of seasons as it’s happening.

She said it’s “absolutely beautiful” that people who hold varying beliefs can get along at one celebration. Read full story from northernlife.ca

Black Plants and Twilight Zones: New Evidence Prompts Rethinking of Extraterrestrial Life
Astronomers have long searched for a planet that could harbor life outside our solar system. When reports came in earlier this fall of the not too hot, not too cold exoplanet Gliese 581g, it was like the answer to a dream. “If it’s confirmed, I think it’s definitely the planet we’ve been waiting for, for a long time,” says Rory Barnes, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington who wasn’t involved in the research.

The wait may continue for a while. Soon after University of California, Santa Cruz, astronomer Steven Vogt and his collaborators reported the “Goldilocks” exoplanet, a rival Swiss group said it could not find evidence for Gliese 581g in its own data set. Confirming the new find, based on 11 years of subtle and indirect telescope-based measurements, could require several more years. Read full story from scientificamerican.com

Why haven’t we found aliens yet?
The question of whether or not we are alone in the galaxy is one that has fascinated everyone from mathematicians to conspiracy theorists.

But, if extra-terrestrial life forms are abundant in the Universe – as some people believe – why have they not been in contact?

From Doctor Who to Superman, ET to Marvin the Martian, fiction has regularly brought aliens to Earth as friends or enemies but, as yet, no-one has proved they have ever seen an alien apart from on film or TV. Read full story from bbc.co.uk

EcoAlert: Ancient 2-8 Million Year-Old Forest Discovered in Canada’s Arctic
Ohio State University researchers and their colleagues have discovered the remains of the northermost  forest buried by a landslide that lived on the island two to eight million years ago, when the Arctic was cooling. The remains could offer clues to how today’s Arctic will respond to global warming.

The Ohio State team believe the trees — and exquisitely preserved – will help them predict how today’s Arctic will respond to global warming. They also believe that many more such forests could emerge across North America as Arctic ice continues to melt. As the wood is exposed and begins to rot, it could release significant amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -and actually aggravate global warming. Read full story from dailygalaxy.com

Lunar eclipse and solstice to overlap
This year’s winter solstice -an event that will occur Tuesday -will coincide with a full lunar eclipse in a union that hasn’t been seen in 456 years.

The reappearance of the celestial eccentricity holds special significance for spiritualities that tap into the energy of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and a time that is associated with the rebirth of the sun.

“It’s a ritual of transformation from darkness into light,” says Nicole Cooper, a high priestess at Toronto’s Wiccan Church of Canada. “It’s the idea that when things seem really bleak, (it) is often our biggest opportunity for personal transformation. Read full story from montrealgazette.com

’Tis our season
Some stores no longer put up a tree because they say it represents Christmas and not the whole “holiday season” in general. However this is not completely true, contrary to popular belief. The use of tree and lights began way before the birth of Jesus. Not in any way desecrating Christmas, I’m just shining a candle light on the subject.

The origin of the Christmas tree and lighting up our houses are ancient traditions that date back to more than 4,000 years in Egypt with palm branches celebrating the 12 months of the sun with a 12-day festival during the winter solstice. Evergreens, mistletoe, holly and ivy are the few plants alive during the cold winter months and are ancient symbols of eternal life which gave our ancestors hope for the coming months. Read full story from northjersey.com

Column: Local Mars Hill Church pastor Mark Driscoll bashes yoga and ‘Easternism’
Last fall, Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, received national attention for an article he posted on his website arguing that Christians should not practice yoga. His argument was that yoga is rooted in the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Therefore, he believes that practicing yoga is corrupting to people that consider themselves Christians.

I guess you can lump yoga together with religion. However, most people just show up for their one-hour class at the local health club and then go back to their busy lives when it’s over. It is not necessary to debate the merits of Christianity versus another religion because commercialized American ‘yoga’ has hardly any religious significance. Making yoga into the enemy of Christianity is silly and paranoid. Read full story from nwasianweekly.com

Statue ‘Cemetery’ Found Near Egyptian Tomb
Two statuary fragments recently uncovered at the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III in Luxor. On the left is the head of the baboon god, Hapi, and on the right are the legs of another red granite statue. (Photo: SCA)

Egyptian archaeologists believe they have found a type of cemetery of broken and damaged ancient statues near the northern side of the funerary temple of King Tut’s grandfather on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor.

A team excavating the site, which has recently yielded many statues, has unearthed two red granite statue fragments.

One is part of a larger statue of Amenhotep III, believed to be the grandfather of King Tutankhamun, and features two legs. The other is a 2.73-meter (9-foot) high head of the god Hapi. Read full story from discovery.com

A Winter’s Tale: Afghans Take Pride In Turning Away Occupiers
Afghans have a winter tradition that goes back centuries — they put hot coals in a pot under a table and put a quilt over that. It’s called a sandali. Everyone sticks their feet under the blanket and the freezing temperatures don’t seem so bad — as long as you don’t leave the table. Stories help pass the time

“We’d sit around the sandali and my grandfather told stories while we ate raisins and dried mulberries.” says Sayed Mushtaba Frotan, a 54-year-old former guerrilla fighter. Read full story from npr.org

Fish Thought to Be Extinct for 70 Years Rediscovered
In 1940, a hydroelectric dam was constructed in northern Akita Prefecture, Japan. The project, it was known at the time, would destroy the only native habitat of the black kokanee salmon by making the waters too acidic for the fish to survive. Still, developers went ahead with their plans.

A concession was made to protect the species: 100,000 eggs were transported to nearby Lake Saiko. Unfortunately, the transplanted eggs did not hatch and the species quickly became extinct. At least, that’s what was thought.

Now, a new discovery suggests that a small population of kokanee salmon may have survived. Read full story from treehugger.com

Change is afoot for 800-year-old whirling dance (source cnn)

News & Submissions 12/15/2010

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

‘Goddess Temple’ planned at Wellsprings
ASHLAND — Nearly 20 local women plan to open an Ashland Goddess Temple dedicated to the “sacred feminine” in a dome at Jackson Wellsprings north of town.

The temple, founded by Graell Corsini and 18 others, will open under a full moon on the spring equinox, the women say.

It will enshrine the great goddess mother of ancient times, working in equal partnership with the “sacred masculine” God to “celebrate the divinity in everything,” Corsini said.

The women say the goddess path honors and supports all faiths, includes both genders and provides a space for ceremonies of the solstice and equinox, weddings, births, dance, music, meditation, counseling, classes in sacred subjects and alternative healing using reiki, cranial-sacral therapy and other modalities. Read full story from mailtribune.com

Mummified head is skull of Henri IV, say historians
A gash above the lip, a beauty spot and a pierced ear were among key features that helped identify the well-preserved head as that of the “Gallant Green” king, stabbed to death by a Catholic fundamentalist in 1610.

Jean-Pierre Babelon, France’s leading Henri IV scholar told The Daily Telegraph he and the other experts were “99 per cent sure” of their findings.

He will be alongside the 19-man team of international experts when it details its historic discovery in Paris’ Grand Palais after two years of painstaking research.

The experts, led by the renowned pathologist Philippe Charlier, used a “whole range of methods” to cross check their discovery. Read full story from telegraph.co.uk

Man in cemetery IDed
PICAYUNE — The man photographed naked in a local cemetery says he didn’t mean anything crazy by it, he was trying to capture pictures of spirits, or do orb photography.

The man, 47 year-old Robert T. Hurst, of 208 Mitchell St., said he was in the cemetery conducting his year-long hobby, orb photography, which is capturing circles of light at night, some of which appear to be faces. As for why he was naked the night he was caught by a game camera set up by cemetery staff, he said skin can be the best canvas for such photography. Read full story from picayuneitem.com

Archaeology: 8000 year-old Sun temple found in Bulgaria
The oldest temple of the Sun has been discovered in northwest Bulgaria, near the town of Vratsa, aged at more then 8000 years, the Bulgarian National Television (BNT) reported on December 15 2010. Read full story from sofiaecho.com

Pompeii skeletons reveal secrets of Roman family life
The remains of the Roman town of Pompeii destroyed by a volcanic eruption in AD79 continue to provide intriguing and unexpected insights into Roman life – from diet and health care to the gap between rich and poor.

The basement storeroom under a large agricultural depot in the little suburb of Oplontis was full of pomegranates. To many of the Pompeiians trying to find shelter from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, it must have seemed strong and safe. Read full story from bbc.co.uk

Storm in Israel uncovers ancient statue
Jerusalem (CNN) — A huge storm that collapsed part of a cliff on Israel’s central coast led to the discovery of a statue dating back to the Roman period, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Tuesday. Read full story from cnn.com

The Film That Brought Down Youtube in Indonesia
Geert Wilders, a Dutch parliamentarian leading the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, caught the attention of the world when he released a short film on his views on Islam in 2008, titled Fitna. The 15 minute film juxtaposes several passages from the Q’uran with images of Islamic. Of course, the film was to be a controversial bombshell, so to speak. But the response that ensued was not merely limited to the expected hordes of Muslims chanting ‘Death to Wilders’ on the streets of Pakistan, Iran or Afghanistan. Read full story from ISSA

On the 120th Anniversary of Sitting Bull’s Death
One hundred and twenty years ago today, Sitting Bull was killed during a confrontation with Indian police in Grand River, S.D.

Excerpt from the Smithsonian’s American Indians/American President: A History:

The campaign to take Indian lands led some Native people to seek answers and hope from spirital sources. In the winter of 1889, shortly after President Benjamin Harrison took office, a Paiute man named Wovoka, from the  Walker River Indian Reservatio in Nevada, had a vision of being “taken up into the spirit world.” Wovoka later told enthnographer James Mooney that while in the spirit world he saw “God and the dead of his nation, happily alive in a beautiful land abundant with game.” When Wovoka returned from his experience, he told the Paitue people to “work hard, and to live in peace with the Whites and that eventually they would be reunited with the dead in a world without death or sickness or old age.” Read full story from nmai.si.edu

Celebrate the start of winter at Stonehenge
Astronomical calculator? Sacred burial ground? Landing spot for UFOs? Altar for human sacrifice? Whatever the wild theories about Stonehenge, it’s clear that the monument is an awe-inspiring work of vast antiquity, which comes into its own at the solstice celebrations. Read full story from hellomagazine.com

Drug lord with a spiritual bent (source cnn)

Hookers for Jesus (source cnn)