August 21, 2017 marks the date of the only Total Solar Eclipse that most in the United States will ever see in our lifetimes (for some anyway). It will make its way across the country hitting specific spots at certain times. We hope you'll be able to see this amazing event and going into the Path of Totality... this soulful event, some say, can change your life.
"Shrouded in night are your heads and your faces and your knees beneath you. . .and … of ghosts that hasten down to Erebus beneath the darkness, and the Sun has perished out of heaven, and an evil mist hovers over all."
- Homer, The Odyssey
A passage foreshadowing of night to come, of darkness to fall but breaking the darkness is a ring of burning starlight; a total solar eclipse (also called the "diamond ring").
Reading these ancient texts stirs up all kinds of feels: the giggles, first and foremost, but also reverence for life. I laugh because the seriousness and poetic/theatrical usage of words to paint a picture, which I totally love with guilty pleasure. I recall a teacher once telling my peers and I, “comedy is serious business”; we laugh when we find light in our dark moments with others that share similar experiences. True story as laughter to me feels like a freeing of emotions, causing a sonic boom of energy that reverberates inside us.
Since life is sometimes serious business, finding light in those moments seems like good practice. The fact that you can bend the rules and experience two different head-spaces simultaneously (laughter with focused and contemplative thought), ignites in me that reverence for life. A cellar door into quantum theory.
Appropriately enough, Erebus, mentioned in the quote above, was the personification of deep darkness in Greek mythology. Erebus was married to Nyx, the Goddess of the Night. Erebus was the son of a primordial god, Chaos, who also created other primordial gods, such as Gaea (earth), Tartarus (underworld), and Eros (love) [2]. I like to think that we embody all of these deities, and perhaps that was the purpose for their creation; to make them larger than life and to make them mirror images of ourselves. They are a reflection of our potential once tapped into the power we possess as individuals and how we collectively share our abilities and experiences with one another.
We see through these and other ancient texts our ancestors attempting to use language as a measurement of experience; giving weight to them and attempting to breathe life into them. These tall legends and myths are an anthology of the human experience and how it connects to a higher sense of reality, nature, existence, and of ourselves, all of which are mirrored in the cosmos. In the words of the #goat, Carl Sagan “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”.
Source: Time and Date
I can’t help but to link this with the old, Socratic adage, “Know thyself”; perhaps in exploring and discovering who you are, you may also know the Universe. Perhaps it was the humbling experience of witnessing these awesome natural phenomena that have caused generational shifts in human consciousness and set us off into the cosmic void on a perpetual quest to find our place in the cosmos. After all, we are cosmic voyageurs navigating the dark waters of our underworld, using the cosmos as our map. A profound drive to reach our highest power. The enlightenment that we seek draws from the same light we came from; a legacy that radiates inside us.
And what better starlight to guide us than that of our beautiful sun. Even at night it showers us with moonlight. So take a moment for yourself, disconnect from the matrix, and look up (with solar glasses) at the sky on August 21st; let your mind and imagination take flight and lose yourself in wonder. Reconnect with the past, be present in the moment, and look forward to the future.
[1] Homer. The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA.,
Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919.
[2] "Erebus." Encyclopedia Mythica from Encyclopedia Mythica Online.
<http://www.pantheon.org/articles/e/erebus.html>