The new year is coming and I've been thinking a lot about time and cycles and beginnings and endings.  Astrology seemed like a good topic numerically for the 12th month of the year, as well.  I am going to do a couple of charts and hopefully learn a few things that might be of use to others.

I'll be referencing The Only Astrology Book You Will Ever Need by Marion D. March.  (I'm hoping that neither book is really the only way to learn and that they will complement each other.)  I can tell already that Marion March's book is hard going.  Though I don't doubt that a person would learn from it.

I have tried Astro123,  and AstroWin.  They are, I'm sure, quite accurate and they circumvent the math which is no small thing, but the stored latitude and longitude file is tiny.  Astrolabe on the other hand has a online chart calculator with a larger data base.  It provided the coordinates, a chart and a very basic report for free.  I am going to try, I think, to use a combination of free software and books try to write my own report.  The generated reports leave no room for intuition anyway.

I will also be wrapping up Mike Barra's book, The Choice, this month and commenting on that, and trying to get some kind of handle on astronomy but have not decided on a reference. 

I read Isaiah today.  The Chaldean sky scanners were not well thought of by the prophets.  That's a fact but there is probably more to it. than just that fact.  There are tons of things I don't know about the Chaldeans (commonly called Babylonians) and the Jews had plenty of reasons to dislike them.  

Still the Chaldean's were astronomers and they had a knowledge base, as did the  Sumerians, Maya and Egyptians.  This makes it interesting to me and I hope to others.  I'm going to look into it going forward.

Scrying is the practice of divining through visions seen on a reflective or other smooth surface such as a mirror, polished stone or a pool of standing water.

The word scry (to see) found in reference to divination in several medieval texts including a 1549 narrative calling Thomas Malfrey and an unnamed woman "scryers of the glasse" (Oxford English Dictionary).

But the practice of scrying is much older, going back thousands of years to the land of ancient Egypt as evidenced in the biblical account of Genesis and beyond. 

The use of the cup, while probably part of the "trick" Joseph played upon his brothers, is an obvious reference to scrying.  One that Joseph expected his family, who were from far away Canaan, to understand.  It seems likely that scrying was known in the ancient middle east and can be found in other sources such as the Persian Legend of the Cup of Jamshyd in which, it was said, the entire universe could be seen.

Divining by direct use of a physical object was undoubtedly performed by the ancient Israelites through the use of a pair of mysterious objects, called the Urim and Thummim.  Carried in the breastplate of Aaron (Exodus 28) and subsequent high priests of Israel, these objects were used to answer questions of great importance but are never described.

Unfortunately, scholars are not in full agreement in regard to the linguistics making it difficult to speculate about the way they were used but it's likely that using these items was a variant on the ancient practice of casting lots which is still used today when working with the runes.

Moving forward into the book of Exodus, a possible, albeit tenuous, association between pooling water and biblical prophecy appears in the story of Miriam, the sister of Aaron and Moses, called Miriam the prophetess (Exodus15:20).

Though no details of Miriam's prophecy in the biblical narrative, Jewish oral tradition (as contained in Sefer Ha-Aggadah) tells several such stories.  It also tells of the Well of Miriam.  Traditionally described as a literal portable source of water, which followed the Israelites through the desert for the forty years of their wandering. We are not told how transporting this portable well is done or why the well was associated with Miriam.

Did Miriam, or any other biblical figure for that matter, scry?  The research is, as I see it, inconclusive.  The cup of Joseph was I think, only a cup, and we have no idea how the Urim and Thummim of the high priests of ancient Israel were employed.  The Well of Miriam, while fascinating, seems to me a remnant of a story told outside of the biblical text as we know it today.  I consider it a mystery that is almost certainly lost, and probably best understood symbolically.

From the temples of ancient Sumer to the forests of Native America, the owl appears as a frequent and remarkably consistent symbol of the spirit world.

First drawn on prehistoric cave walls, the owl can be associated with religion as early as 2000 BCE as evidenced by the The Queen of the Night Relief, a 4000 year old terracotta base relief presently located in the British Museum in London.  The relief depicts a  winged Sumerian goddess flanked by two large owls and the owls are not decorative but highly symbolic. 

The goddess was called Inanna or 'Divine Lady Owl'.   She was  strongly linked to the underworld through 'The Descent of Innana' a story which some modern scholars see an as allegory to the movements of Venus, Mercury and Jupiter.

The myth is related on a series of clay tablet from the Queen of the Night period and tells of Inanna's descent into the underworld during the dark of the moon. She was to associated with the planet Venus and known to the as Ishtar. Though there is no direct connection, authors such as Cashford and Baring have associated Inana with Lilith whom the ancient Hebrews.

In Pagan Europe, the ancient Celts also saw the owl as a symbol of the underworld - an association that has perhaps survived as the owl of Merlin - while in other cultures the symbolism centered on the soul.  In Australia the aboriginal people believed owls to be the souls of  women while the  Ainu of Japan held the Eagle Owl to be alternately a a divine ancestor or a messenger of the gods.  In Romania, folktales say that forgiven souls fly to heaven in the guise of Snowy Owls. 

In the Americas, the Aztec god of death, Mictlantecuhtli, was often depicted with owls and the Hopi god of death was believed to be an owl.  In Mexico, the Little Owl was called "messenger of the lord of the land of the dead", and flew between the land of the living and the dead.  In the Sierras, native peoples believed that the Great Horned Owl captured the souls of the departed and carried them to the underworld.  Several different Native Northern American traditions including the Mojave, said that the soul turned into an owl at death.

The mythology of multiple cultures places the symbolism of the owl firmly in the spirit world.  His mythic role however is largely positive.  As a messenger of the gods he is sacred, a bearer of divine knowledge and a facilitator of communication between the worlds.  As a guide, he bridges the gap between life and death, but more correctly: the space between this reality and the next.