New Podcast and Promo Are Up!

Media Astra Ac Terra Episode #4 just went live this morning — I hope you’ll give it a listen!  In it, I talk about the magical use of sexual energy, and revisit the topic of scientific knowledge in relation to religious and magickal experience.  (Yes, I did just spell magical with and without a “k” in the same sentence; I’m really ambivalent about the spelling, and it shows!)  We also take a look at Aries in the Astra segment, and garnet in the Terra segment.

I also mention the Globe at Night project, which I posted about last week.  I just participated in this last night, and it was fun!  I’ve also previously posted some recommended reference materials on both Astra and Terra related topics, which are relevant to today’s show.

This episode is a little over half an hour long, which is about the length I’ll be shooting for in general now that I’ve worked my way up to it.    I’ve extended the introductory segment to add a little bit of current events and whatnot, as well as time to answer any correspondence.  So feel free to add a comment to this post, or email me at oraia.sphinx@gmail.com.

I’ve also recorded a promo for the show, and have posted it on the Libsyn site as well as on its own page here on this blog.  You should see it in the right-hand column, just below the “About” page.  Please let me know if you use it in your show, or if you’d like to do a promo exchange!

As always, thanks for listening to Media Astra Ac Terra.

Bright and dark blessings,
–Sphinx–

GLOBE At Night Project

I plan to bring this up in the next podcast, but since that’ll go live after the start date I wanted to give people a heads-up here also.  From March 16-28, you can participate in the “GLOBE At Night” project, which is an effort sponsored by the GLOBE Project to measure and raise awareness of the growing levels of light pollution around the world.  GLOBE stands for “Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment,” and is a worldwide educational program for hands-on learning about the planet.

With over half the people on earth living in cities (really) and with about 2/3 of the people in the US unable to see the Milky Way at night (it’s about 1/2 for Europe and 1/5 worldwide who can’t see it), we are rapidly losing access to one of the most awe-inspiring vistas we humans have available to us.  Looking at the stars on a dark night is one of the deepest spiritual experiences for me — we are made of star-stuff, after all, and I don’t know about you, but I can feel it in every cell on a dark and starry night.  So the thought of this experience becoming impossible for more and more people in the world makes me happy this project exists.

The project boils down to this:  sometime during the two week period, you just go outside about an hour after dark, wherever you are.  Find the constellation Orion, and see how many of its stars you can see, and how bright they look.  Go online to the GLOBE At Night website, enter your location by latitude and longitude, and match your observation to one of seven pictures there, each showing the stars of Orion under varying levels of light pollution.  Your observations will then be added to observations from people all over the world to produce a survey of global light pollution levels that will be used for education purposes.

Tools to help you find Orion in the night sky, as well as find your latitude and longitude, can be found on the project webpage, so I won’t get into that here.  I hope you’ll join me in participating, because sometimes you need the darkness if you want to see the light.

Now on Facebook

I really have been a busy little sphinx today.  Not only did I get episode 3 of the podcast online, plus the two posts below with links to reference materials, but I also got myself set up on Facebook!  So if you’re on Facebook, you can both be-Friend me and become a Fan of the show, if you feel so inclined.  Just click on the handy little profile icon on the right-hand side of the blog!

Crystal and Mineral References

For mineral and crystals, my preferred reference for metaphysical information is the wonderful and extensive book Love is in the Earth by Melody. She goes into quite a bit of detail about each mineral, including specifics about varieties and unusual formation (especially all of the varied formations of quartz such as channeling crystals, timeline crystals, phantom crystals, etc.)  Personally, I don’t work much with the properties of minerals related to healing physical ailments, and so I don’t tend to mention those in the podcast — but Melody does include that information as well.

For mineralogical data, I use Gemstones of the World by Walter Schumann and the Simon & Schuster Guide to Rocks and Minerals, edited by Martin Prinz, George Harlow, and Joseph Peters.  Both of these two books primarily consist of very brief entries, so I supplement this extensively with online research.

As I mentioned in the last post, I like Wikipedia as a starting point for research.  Since I’ve been talking about varieties of quartz for the last three podcasts, here is the Wikipedia entry for quartz and the entry for minerals in general — and they also have a portal for all entries related to Gemology and Jewelry.  Enjoy!

Astrology and Zodiac References

So in today’s episode of Media Astra Ac Terra, I talked about the Zodiac and about astrology in general.  I wanted to give you some pointers toward more information, both in printed form and online.  (For good sites to visit related to astronomy and night-sky observing, I put up an earlier post about stargazing aids.)

A book that I’m still in the process of reading but that I find really well done is Making Sense of Astrology by Ronny Martens and Tim Trachet.  Although it is written from a generally skeptical point of view, it was recommended to me by a firm believer in astrology as one of the best overviews of the subject.  It may strike some of you as being overly adversarial, but (at least so far in my reading of it) it provides a thoughtful and solid grounding in astrological principles while keeping them firmly in contact with modern scientific understandings as well.

Going forward with the podcast, I intend to devote the Astra segment of the second show each month to a close look at each of the signs of the zodiac in turn.  The primary books I intend to use for this are The Astrologer’s Handbook by Julia Parker, and Horoscope Symbols by Robert Hand.  These aren’t terribly new books, but they are both still readily available, and have been recommended to me time and again by people who really know what they’re talking about.

For online resources, I like Wikipedia as a starting point, despite its flaws.  I think that with the possible exception of current events and politics — where people with vested interests may be changing the information too often to keep up with it — it’s a great place to find a fairly balanced approach to contentious issues like astrology.  As long as things are well sourced, and you’re careful to fact-check the information against other references, Wikipedia can provide a great overview and a set of pointers for further investigation.

So for specific topics addressed in episode 3 of my podcast, I recommend the Wikipedia entry on the Zodiac, as well as their “astrology portal” page that contains links to various more detailed entries on that topic.

And just for fun, here’s a great picture online that recreates the ancient Babylonian star-map.  I’m planning to pick this book up soon, and I was very happy to stumble across it while researching this podcast!