Friday, June 24, 2016: The moon phase is Waning Gibbous in the zodiac sign Aquarius until entering Pisces at 10:30 PM EST.
Element: Water
Color: Rose
Incense: Orchid (see below for magical uses)
Garden Activities:
Kill pests and weed
Harvest fruit and root crops
Hill up parsnips and carrots
Plant out asparagus crowns
(Orchis spp.)
Folk Names: Levant Salap, Sahlab, Sahleb, Salep, Saloop, Satyrion
Interview with Author Dorothy Morrison Dorothy Morrison is the author of a number of books on Wicca and Paganism, including the brand new Utterly Wicked. Dorothy was able to take some time out from her busy tour schedules to answer a few questions for About.com.
Accepting death is difficult for patients and doctors, but it needs to be done My 64-year-old patient with terminal cancer and less than six months to live wanted to go to Oregon. He was contemplating assisted suicide, which is legal there. “My life has been long and good,” he said. “I believe it is my right. I want the ability to say it’s too much, I can’t do it anymore. A person should have a dignified quality of life.”
Harry Potter tour hopes to cast spell on UK Muggles As all good students of the Harry Potter saga know well, Muggles are not usually allowed at Hogwarts school of witchcraft of wizardry. However, a new exhibition will soon give those not gifted with magical powers the chance to see some of the famous Potter film sets, such as the Great Hall and Dumbledore’s office, for themselves. Read full story from guardian.co.uk
The Biggest Logic Fails in The Vampire Diaries Season 3, Episode 2: “The Hybrid” The Vampire Diaries is a show where witches can bring back people from the dead, vampires kiss humans instead of ripping their throats out, and werewolves have silky smooth chests when they haven’t transformed. And we accept all of this without the blink of the eye. Yet it’s the little things that make us scoff and say, “that would never happen.” Check out the biggest logic fails from Season 3, Episode 2, “The Hybrid.” Read full story from wetpaint.com
Botanical Name: Crataegus Oxyacantha
Folk Names: Ban-Sangli, Bread and Cheese Tree, Gazels, Hagthorn, Halves, Haw, Hazels, Hedgethorn, Huath, Ladie’ Meat, May, Mayblossom, May Bush, Mayflower, Quick, Thorn, Tree of Chastity.
© Copyright David Hawgood and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
Hawthorn is a member of Rosaceae family. A spiny tree or shrub, native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere in Europe, Asia and North America, It may reach a height of 30 feet.
Masters of Math, From Old Babylon
If the cost of digging a trench is 9 gin, and the trench has a length of 5 ninda and is one-half ninda deep, and if a worker’s daily load of earth costs 10 gin to move, and his daily wages are 6 se of silver, then how wide is the canal?
Or, a better question: if you were a tutor of Babylonian scribes some 4,000 years ago, holding a clay tablet on which this problem was incised with cuneiform indentations — the very tablet that can now be seen with 12 others from that Middle Eastern civilization at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World — what could you take for granted, and what would you need to explain to your students? In what way did you think about measures of time and space? How did you calculate? Did you believe numbers had an abstract existence, each with its own properties? Read full story from nytimes.com
Astronomers Discover Alien Planet In Our Milky Way
We’ve talked about colliding galaxies on this blog before. But this piece of science news today is a little weirder: The journal Science reports that astronomers have found the first extragalactic exoplanet in our Milkyway. Read full story from npr.org
Ghost caught on camera
People who are open to the supernatural see ghosts everywhere. For instance a speck of dust as it moves on an air current and caught in a camera flash becomes an ‘orb’: a ball of otherworldly energy left by the souls of the departed. Read full story from manchesterconfidential.co.uk
Astrological Gardening: Voodoo or Cool?
Personally, I think it’s very cool! Astrology has played an important role in gardening since our ancestors first began planting seeds in the soil to grow food, medicinal herbs and flowers. In ancient times the sun, moon and stars were critical because they were constants in our ancestors’ lives. Today we have the internet, iPhones and cable TV to remind us that the astounding celestial world outside is still spinning on schedule! Some gardeners and farmers may scoff at the idea of planting by the moon signs and phases while many others claim the natural rhythms of the universe helps to make their crops more prolific. These gardeners found that crops fared better when planted at certain times of the moon’s phase. My feeling is why not play around with it and see what happens? Take a small section of your garden and do a test run of planting crops according to the cyclical movement of the planets. (I wish I could tell you that I have tried planting by the moon but, sigh… I am just a fickle, impatient and impulsive gardener from New York City so I have not.) Read full story from huffingtonpost.com
Friends honor Wiccan with Halloween burial
BARNEVELD — On a warm, sunny Halloween day, a group of 20 people drove up a rural road at Circle Sanctuary, a nature-based pagan church and ecological preserve here, to spread and inter the ashes of one of their own.
Bruce Parsons, of Milwaukee, who identified as a Wiccan or pagan, died in June at age 63, but his Circle Sanctuary ceremony was held Sunday afternoon, coinciding with the sanctuary’s green cemetery dedication. Read full story from madison.com
Lifestyle?
Pagan Lifestyle? Christian Lifestyle? Gay Lifestyle? Heterosexual lifestyle? Hippy Lifestyle? Green Lifestyle?
Huh?
I can’t speak for others, but I don’t have a ’lifestyle’, I LIVE a LIFE. No, not just A life, I live MY life. Read full story from fernsfrondblogpost.com
Anglesey Druids open book of the dead for Halloween
They will be holding a mourning tea at Glynllifon Mansion, Llandwrog, near Caernarfon, on Saturday to remember and celebrate loved ones who have died.