Astral Facts, July-August 2017
Astral: (Theosophy)
Consisting of, belonging to, or designating, a kind of supersensible substance
alleged to be next above the tangible world in refinement; as, astral spirits;
astral bodies of persons; astral current.
In the Wake of the Eclipse
As usual, lots of
things are changing – statues are coming down, tempers are flaring up, and on
August 21 the sun will (or did depending on when this is being read) go dark.
What and who will be saved in this process and how will the changes and
unchanges emerge once we find the light at the end of the tunnel, or eclipse? Will the “wake” provide some kind of “awakening”
in the future?
Literature and the
extension into associated fields in the Humanities Sciences can be a means for addressing,
understanding, and imagining potential causes and effects.
They say we study
history and its lessons “to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.” Certainly I’ve learned from studying Hannibal’s
experience not to try to cross the Alps with my elephants, but I’m more
interested in building upon the successes of the past. Regarding the experiences of the history of
eclipses, the experience of Columbus is one expanded upon by writers and other
humanities scientists and artists (before and after).
In 1504, Columbus
and his crew were stranded in the Caribbean and the local inhabitants of the
area had become hostile toward the Europeans due to previous mistreatment by
them and others. As a result, the food
supply had been cut off and Columbus and his crew were in danger of starvation
and/or being killed. Columbus had a copy
of an astronomic and astrological text, Ephemerides, (literally meaning "astronomy chart”) written over 30 years
earlier by Regiomontanus (the Latin name used by Johannes Müller, a German
astronomer and mathematician [1436-76]) which predicted a lunar eclipse at that
time (February 29, 1504). On February
28, Columbus warned the local natives that he would turn off the moon if they
did not resume the food supply. When
they rejected the threat, the moon was blackened and the rest is history.
I can understand how frightening that must have been.
In 1977, I was working in
sales on the East Coast. I had been out
on “the road” for over a month travelling from town to town selling herbal
products to small health food stores.
Because I was on commission sales with a limited expense account, I
mostly stayed in campgrounds and state parks – my sleeping bag and tepid
showers were the norm.
However, on July 14th the sales people were to gather in
New York City for a sales conference. I
remember arriving in my car late on the hot evening of July 13. Seeing the bright lights of Manhattan in the
distance as I approached the Hudson River and entered the Lincoln Tunnel filled
me with joy at anticipating having a hot shower and sleeping in a comfortable
bed. I emerged from the tunnel and the
city was in darkness! While I had been
driving under the river, the city experienced a massive “brown-out” with no
power for two days!
Frankly, it was extremely spooky to be surrounded by all the tall
buildings with no traffic signals, no street lights, no lit up building, and so
forth as I cautiously drove to my hotel.
Only the headlights of my car and other vehicles were penetrating the
gloomy atmosphere and crowds of astonished people stumbling around us in the
dark. (It might not have been so “spooky”
for everyone; nine months later the hospital maternity wards experienced a “spike”
in new births.)
But getting back to Columbus and the Astral Facts – how fortunate
that Regiomontanus had done the scientific research in the natural world, but
even more important was that it had been written in a text that Columbus could
have handy!
Many other Humanities Scientists
have used eclipses in their writings – most similar to the experience of
Columbus was Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” (1889) now
perhaps more familiar to the general public as presented in the 1949 musical
film starring Bing Crosby as the “Yankee,” although many other earlier versions
had been done, including the stage version A
Connecticut Yankee by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart performed on Broadway
in 1927.
Even Tintin is able to use a Columbus technique during a solar
eclipse to escape death from the Incas in the story Prisoners of the Sun by Hergé.
Many other literary works have also featured an eclipse (solar and
lunar) as key factors, including:
The Odyssey (Homer) probably
based on the actual eclipse of 1178 BC.
King Lear (Shakespeare)
“The Sun Rising” (John Donne) – perhaps population growth nine
months later as well?
The Return of the
Native (Thomas Hardy)
Dolores Claiborne (Steven King)
Eclipse (John Banville)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/19/how-the-solar-eclipse-and-vernal-equinox-have-cast-shadows-across-literature
While the so-called “civilized”
people of New York understood what was happening when the power went out in
1977, my experience a few years earlier was quite different:
When I was in the Peace Corps
in Afghanistan, I did experience a lunar eclipse – unexpectedly – on “Thanksgiving
Weekend” 1974. My roommate Ed and I were
the only two westerners in the village of Jalalabad (near the border with
Pakistan). Since this was a Muslim culture, this Friday, November 29th,
was the Sabbath day with no school and we were celebrating our own Friday after Thanksgiving
along with some other volunteers visiting us at the time.
We were in a warmer climate
with school summer vacations, while the northern areas had school vacations during the
extremely cold winter. Thus, our area 90 miles from Kabul, the capital city, was
like the “Palm Springs” of the eastern half of Afghanistan, and those other
volunteers teaching up north often traveled down where we were (they brought
our mail from the Peace Corps office in Kabul, which made them quite welcome). Jalalabad had a population of about 3-4
thousand in summer, with temperatures regularly over 100 degrees. From November
to March the temperatures were in the 40-80 degree range, and the population
swelled to an estimated 36,000.
That evening we had just
finished dinner and were enjoying tea and conversation when we heard some
unusual noises outside. When we went out, the full moon had a strange orange arc
along the edge, and we realized a lunar eclipse was occurring. We moved to the
roof of the slightly taller of the two buildings in our compound, dragging a
table and chairs up to enjoy the event.
The warm evening air was
filled with an eerie combination of the voices of groaning men, wailing women,
and agonized children. In addition, the local mullah was using the loud speaker
that normally called everyone to prayer, and his voice vibrated along at a
lower octave. We asked Ghrafar, our live-in “servant” who took care of the
cooking, cleaning, shopping, and such, what was happening. He said the people
were saying that God was punishing them by eating the moon and they were all
promising to repent and be good from now on if God would stop.
Ed ( originally from New
Jersey but more recently a faculty member at Seattle Central College) then held
up a grapefruit and an orange to explain and demonstrate how the moon was
merely moving into the shadow caused by the larger Earth, using the ceiling
light to represent the sun. As we explained all this, Ghrafar was nodding his
head in understanding and agreement. So Ed asked Ghrafar what he believed was
happening. Ghrafar pointed to the fruit and agreed that he accepted the
scientific explanation. Then Ed asked him, “What makes the Sun, Moon, and Earth
do all this?” Ghrafar didn’t have a clear explanation, so Ed supplied it:
“God makes it happen!” which thoroughly pleased Ghrafar.
So we went up on the roof to
watch the progress of the color change on the moon while Ghrafar prepared more
tea for us all. After a while, I realized Ghrafar was not watching the progress
with us. I went downstairs and I saw Ghrafar in his room – frantically kneeling
and bowing on his prayer rug.
Fortunately, all the effort
was very effective, and the entire city reverberated with cheers once the
original moon began to reappear again over the repented community.
In addition, I can say that I
experienced “Black Friday” long before Madison Avenue began to use the term to
get us and our credit cards to the Malls in the wee hours of the morning!
Walter Lowe
Astral Facts is a somewhat regular presentation of Humanities Science, produced in the bowels of the Humanities Science offices during the academic year.
Astral Facts is a somewhat regular presentation of Humanities Science, produced in the bowels of the Humanities Science offices during the academic year.
