Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

by Timi Chasen

BREATHING TIME An Assistant Professor from Harvard Medical School has been showing the world how regular meditation and mindfulness practices have profoundly positive effects upon brain function and structure.

In a documentary called The Connection, as well as in an interview with the Washington Post, Mass General Hospital neuroscientist Sarah Lazar explains how MRI imaging has been able to demonstrably show the benefits of meditation, and how routine practice can change both brain chemistry and quality of life.

Studying two separate groups of individuals over a span of merely eight weeks, with one engaged in a regimen of regular meditation and the other not, Lazar was able to find increased brain activity and the thickening of tissue in areas of the brain associated with learning, memory, empathy, visualization, cognition and compassion, while noting a marked lessening of activity in those areas of the brain that monitor stress and anxiety.

This victory means more mindfulness studies are sure to come, as Harvard and other Ivy-League institutions such as Brown University are tasking some of their best and brightest in the Religion, Psychology, and Neuroscience departments to dig even deeper.

However, we at The Witches' Almanac see it as another instance of modern science "verifying" something that mystics have been saying for thousands of years.

THE MEDIEVAL PYRAMIDS OF EAST ST. LOUIS While Europe was dealing with the tumultuous invasions of the Dark Ages, cyclopean mounds and towering pyramids were being constructed alongside the swamplands of the Mississippi River. Immigration to this new settlement began in earnest around 900 CE, as thousands flocked from miles around.

The city was thriving by 1100 and would have had a population of approximately thirty thousand people — larger than both Paris and London at the time. Officially, it is currently deemed the largest pre-Columbian city found within continental US territory.

Located in Southern Illinois, the ancient settlement would have hugged the river, stretching approximately six square miles in size and encompassing a large chunk of land between modern Collinsville and East St. Louis.

The city's name, Cahokia, was given by European explorers who encountered a tribe of Native Americans in the 1600s who controlled the region. However, the Cahokia tribe claimed no affiliation with the city, which had been abandoned centuries prior. The name of the people who actually constructed it is still, unfortunately, lost.

The remains of the once-great city are now considered a National Historic Landmark. The 2,200-acre Cahokia Mounds National Historic Site remains open to visitors, and has been deemed a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

DOWNTOWN SERPENT TEMPLE Further south in the heart of Mexico City, another ancient monument is being revealed layer by layer. Discovered not far from downtown's Zocalo Plaza on the grounds of a 1950s hotel, the temple complex has archaeologists, historians and mystics wringing their hands in excitement.

Built during the reign of emperor Ahuizotl near the end of the 15th century, this huge and circular sacred structure was dedicated to Ehecatl, the Aztec deity of the winds, and included a ball court where religious games were played in his honor. The design of the court appears in alignment with much of the original Spanish chronicle of the region, which described some of the contests in question. Also found was a pile of thirty-two sets of human neck vertebrae — sacrifices in relation to the games.

Archaeologists claim the full complex was most probably designed to look like a massive coiled snake, with temple priests using a door situated in its nose.

BENNU AND OSIRIS The United States government sending a probe to intercept and study a possibly dangerous asteroid before returning home with its findings sounds a lot like the plot to a science fiction film. Make the names of both the 500-meter celestial stone and the state-of-the-art, unmanned space vessel inspired by Egyptian mythology, and one might think we've uncovered a lost episode of Stargate. However, in 2016 this is precisely what happened.

The carbonaceous sphere originally classified as 1999 RQ36 was given its Kemetic moniker after a "Name That Asteroid" contest. Bennu was a mystical, heron-like bird deity which featured heavily in the differing myth structures of the Ancient Egyptians. The latest readings seem to suggest there's a slim chance — about 0.04% by some estimates — that Bennu the rocky orb could collide with Earth in a couple of centuries. Thus, NASA has sent its latest technological marvel to learn as much as it can — OSIRIS-REx. The research vessel will reach Bennu early on in 2018 and then spend the next 505 days mapping and collecting samples from the heavenly object, as well as leaving a time capsule with art, music and poetry, in case someone else happens along while it's away.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER Canada has finally updated its criminal code, allowing Witches to practice their craft without theoretically being guilty of violating Section 365, which prohibited the use of "any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration." A distant remnant of Old World religious paranoia, the antiquated statute also specifically made fortune-telling and the divination of lost and/or stolen items punishable by law.

Conveniently, over the past few decades, the law has been mostly forgotten except in a few cases of blatant fraud, where Canadian citizens had been the prey of pseudo-psychic scam artists. In these cases, Section 365 was used to add more legal weight to the sentencing in question.

However, the Canadian Pagan communities have been outspoken in their disdain for the law, since it obviously not only infringes upon religious freedom but criminalizes things as innocuous as Tarot readings. Thankfully, the government has heard their grievances and are overhauling it, along with other centuries-old laws no longer relevant to today's age, such as stipulations concerning dueling.

News from The Witches' Almanac

Glad tidings from the staff

At long last we have implemented our a new shopping cart. Drop by TheWitchesAlmanac.com, there is plenty to look at, in addition to some fun bells and whistles. We have consolidated many informational features into the new Resources. In addition to Seasonal Recipes, Sites of Awe and Almanac Extras, you will find Author Bios, In Memoriam and Merry Meetings. These new features are tributes to those who have impacted our community, as well as contributing to The Witches Almanac. The new site will allow us to promote special reductions, bundle discounts and more (allowing us to occasionally offer free shipping on select titles). But most of all, the new flexibility allows us to respond to the needs of our readership.

In January we brought you a wonderful new tome, Paul Huson's Dame Fortune's Wheel Tarot. Based upon Huson's research in Mystical Origins of the Tarot, Dame Fortune's Wheel Tarot illustrates for the first time the earliest, traditional Tarot card interpretations unadorned by the occult speculations of Mathers, Waite or Crowley. Rather Huson provides...