Grey School Newspaper 24

WHISPERING GREY MATTERS 2 ISSUE 24

Faculty Advisors: Moonwriter & Jymi X/0

Editor-In-Chief: Starwynd Panther

Publisher: Jymi X/0Assistant Publishers: Laneth & Calyxa

Copy Editor: silverlocke

GSW DESKEditor: Silver Raven Sapphire Soleil

NEWS DESKEditor: Jymi X/0 (temp) Sapphire Soleil, Silverlocke

WIZARDING DESKSection Editor: Pratus Jymi X/0, Areeya (on hiatus)

SCIENCE DESK Editor: Calyxa Moonwriter, Silver Raven

OPINIONS DESKEditor: Sapphire Soleil Areeya (on hiatus), Silthoron

ARTS & CULTURE DESKEditor: Jymi X/0 (temp)SilverLocke, Pratus

FOOD DESKEditor: Moonwriter (temp)

ART DESK Currently overseen by the Publishing Minions

UNPLACED WRITERS: Relache, Belenus, Artemis Gryphon Snowhawk

Whispering Grey Matters is a quarterly newslet-ter produced by and for the students and faculty of The Grey School of Wizardry (www.greyschool.com). All contents herein are © 2009 Grey School, except where otherwise noted. Copyrights revert to original authors and artists upon publication.

Whispering Grey MattersLiteral Magick

Faculty Advisor’s Article .................................... 3

NEWSSanteria Priest Wins Right to Sacrifice Animals ... 4

WIZARDINGOther Worlds: The Astral Plane ......................... 5Ancient Runes Today ...................................... 6Tarot: The High Priestess ................................... 7

SCIENCEOn Other Worlds ............................................. 8Synthetic Landscapes ...................................... 9LCROSS .................................................... 10-11Is There Another Earth? .................................. 12

OPINIONMy Life as an Ant ........................................... 13

FOODOut of This World Squash .............................. 15

ART & CULTUREReview: Rising Sign ........................................ 16The Wizard’s Grotto ..................................... 17

GSW NEWSA Report from your GSW Captains ............. 18Cosmology Class: December 21, 2012 ........... 19Oregon Conclave 2009 .............................. 20-21New York Conclave 2009 ............................. 22

STAFF CONTENTS

ISSUE 24 SAMHAIN 2009


Whispering Grey MattersLiteral Magick

Other worlds!

What does the idea conjure up in your imagination...

Astral travel? Space exploration? Discovery of new people and cultures? Maybe just curling up with a good storybook and letting the author take you somewhere else?

My favorite otherworldly place to visit is the Inter-net. I project my consciousness through the screen, and I can go anywhere I want. It takes some digital dexterity -- you have to dance your way between the silly copycat cut-n-paste home pages and those mortgage-refinancing ads with the inane dancing cartoons. But underneath all the fluff, the ‘net con-tains some priceless treasures.

One of the Internet worlds in which you’ll often find me is called Second Life. It’s a 3d social networking site, where users can obtain or create their own cus-tom bodies (or “Avatars”), clothing and (if you want to drop a little money into it every month) a piece of digital land all their own. We design fashions, con-struct fantastic buildings and other objects, and write programming scripts to bring the objects in the world to life. Some people like to go dancing or shopping. Others enjoy role-playing games (there are plenty of Harry Potter groups!) or finding like-minded people

to chat with. I just like building things. Some days I’m hard at work on my own creations, other days, I like to fly all over the grid and see what other cre-ators have come up with. (The main site is adults-only, but there is a Teen Second Life, for the younger crowd who can’t wait to check it out!)

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that I believe this is the next step in human evolution: the ability to unhook our consciousness from our bodies at will, ei-ther via traditional “astral travel” techniques or mod-ern techno-neuromancy, and enter environments that we’ve created for ourselves. (Not necessarily via the Second Life program, but something along those lines.) Some sci-fi stories, and a few semi-serious philosophers, have suggested that this very world that we call “real” is the result of just such a scenario, and we’re just digital blips moving through someone else’s programmed environment! If that was true, how could we tell? If you found out that this was the case, would you change the way you live?

Some people believe that anything we can think about is actually physically real on some plane of existence. What makes a world “real,” anyway? Is the Grey School real? Sure it is. But where does it exist? Where are you when you chat on the Forums or study your lessons? You body may be in a chair in room, but your mind -- your awareness -- is...where?

Then there are the days when anything seems better than the world we’ve got right here in front of us. It’s sometimes tempting to think that our lives would be better if we were living them somewhere else. However, traipsing off into other worlds -- whether you reach them by book, by computer, by spaceship or otherwise, isn’t the answer to most problems. No matter what avatar you’re wearing, that’s still you underneath it!

As if One World Wasn’t Enough to Worry About! -- Jymi X/0

Geek Alert! My avatar in Second Life reading AD&D 2nd Edition manuals.


The city of Euless, Texas last year barred Santeria priest and Puerto Rican native Jose Merced, 46, from sacrificing goats on his property despite Merced’s claim that such a ban deprived him of his free exercise of religion. Merced had been conducting such animal rituals for over 15 years, but “a couple” of anonymous complaints triggered the action by the city which claimed such sacrifices jeop-ardized public health and violated an animal cruelty ordinance. Merced asked the city for a permit to slaughter animals, but his application was denied and he claims he is unable to initiate new priests. A U.S. District Judge later upheld the ban imposed by the Fort Worth suburb.

But recently a federal appeals court in New Orleans reversed the ban, ruling in a final judgment last month that such a ban violated Merced’s religious rights and “… placed a substantial burden on his free exercise of religion”. U.S. District Judge John McBryde also ordered the city of Euless to pay for Merced’s court costs.

Animal sacrifice has been a routine and accepted practice in nearly all the world’s major religions at some point in history. Jews abandoned the ritual after a temple devoted to animal sacrifice was destroyed—such sacrifice cannot be resumed until a new temple is designated by God. Muslims commemorate the end of the Hajj by sacrificing a sheep. Christians consider that Jesus’ death on the cross replaced the need to sacrifice animals.

Eric Rassbach, attorney for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who repre-sented Merced said, “ … goat sacrifice is never going to be particularly popular in Euless, Texas but that’s not the point. Religious liberty protections are only as good as they can be for the religions that need the help.”

Merced himself told The Associated Press, “Now Santeros can practice their reli-gion at home without being afraid of being fined, arrested or taken to court.”

Works Cited“Santeria Leader Fights Religious Ban”. Diaspora Orisha Network. 05 Jan 2007. <http://diasporaorishanetwork.yuku.com/topic/366/t/Texas-Santeria-Lawsuit.html>.

“Euless to ask court to rehear Santeria animal sacrifice case”. Dallas News. 10 Aug 2009. <http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/religion/stories/DN-sante-ria_10met.ART.State.Edition1.4bd9280.html>.

Santeria Priest Wins Right to Sacrifice Animalsby silverlocke

http://http://www.dallasobserver.com/2009-10-22/news/a-court-case-forced-a-santeria-priest-to-reveal-some-of-his-religion-s-se-crets-it-s-ritual-of-animal-sacrifice-he-revealed-on-his-own/

http://http://www.dallasobserver.com/content/printVersion/1560451

For more information about this story, follow these links:


Astral projection is a very interesting sub-ject, and talking to people you can hear many different things. For instance, some may say it is dangerous, it is amazing, it is just a dream, and many other comments. I want to take us through the door way into the fantastic astral plain.

Everyone has had the weird dreams before that didn’t make sense, but what if they did and we just remembered them wrong. For instance, you dreamed a giant hot fudge sundae was chasing you down the street of ancient Egypt and then the great god Zeus threw a lightning bolt at the sundae to stop it, and when the sundae was struck it turned into Jennifer Love Hewitt who then climbed Mount Rushmore with you...okay maybe that was only me!

Raymond Buckland says that they are prob-ably jumbled up dreams and that is why they don’t make sense. In my case I could have been hungry or craving ice cream when I went to bed, so I could have dreamed of going to the local ice cream shop and had a giant sundae. I then could have eaten too much and got a horrible tummy ache. I could’ve dreamed of going to Egypt which is somewhere I have always wanted to travel. Some of my favorite legends are of the Greek pantheon and I dream of Zeus quite often. For the last dream I could’ve dreamed that I was climbing Mount Rushmore, another place on my bucket list, and I think Jennifer Love Hewitt is self explanatory!

So what if traveling in your dreams is ac-tually possible. What if you could do your bucket list from your own bed? Of course, there have been stories of astral projections for thousands of years, as examples there were the shaman path walking, spirit walk-ing, and there again the astral projections.

Oberon Zell Raven-Heart gives a great ex-

planation on attaining and training yourself for the astral projection using the visual-ization technique. You can read over it in the “Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard” on page 210. It tells you to use a long mirror so that you can start to ready your astral self; so that you will be able to see yourself from your astral and physical self.

Once you have the visualization technique, or while you are doing this make sure you keep your dream journal, and write in it ev-eryday right when you wake up. If you have a dream wake you up during the night, keep your dream journal on your night stand, or right next to your bed so you can record it. Don’t do anything until you have written the dream down.

Learning to control or freely astral project takes a lot of time, practice, and patience. Once you start to feel like you are “going” to these different places, start controlling your-self, one example is look around to see your physical body. Start giving yourself places to visit; it doesn’t have to be a place you have seen before. When you wake up write down the dreams you remember, and every detail you can think of in the back ground and look on the internet for the pictures of the areas you believe you sent yourself to.

As time goes by, as long as you keep prac-ticing, you will get better and better. There are many ways to use this wizardly gift of walking the astral world. I believe it is a very important practice to learn.

References:

1.Zell-Ravenheart, Oberon. “Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard”. Franklin Lakes, NJ: NewPage Books, 2004.2.Buckland, Raymond. “Gypsy Dream Dic-tionary”. St. Paul, Minnesota: Llewellyn Pub-lications, 1999.

Other Worlds:The Astral PlaneBy Pratus Ater Lupus


I really enjoy the runes column and have en-joyed it in WGM since it was started. I am sad to say that Areeya was not able to do this article. I do hope that soon she will be able to pick the column back up, but until then I will continue the runes column because I think runes are a very important and powerful magick symbols. I do hope you will continue to enjoy the column.

I have decided to send us on a magickal journey using the rune named Raidho. Raidho is won-derful for traveling or in a ritual for internal or external changes, so I think we can mix this rune with a little mirror magick. We are going to go on a wonderful journey using the runes and a mirror.

The mirror has been used for centuries for all types of magick, from cleansing energy and your soul to creating and holding spells to great adventures, like Alice’s when she entered the looking glass. The perfect thing about mirrors is that they reach down into the deepest part of our psyche and helps to pull it forward to our conscious minds.

First we need a mirror. You may want to add some aesthetics like seashells, flowers, or any-thing that strikes your fancy, remember if you are a young apprentice to have a parent help you! Then again you can just buy one and skip these last few steps!

Take a small piece of wood and burn or carve the rune raidho into it and glue it on the mirror. Once raidho has been settled where you would like it on the scrying mirror get familiar with the mirror and use some sage incense on the mirror reciting in a dreamy voice:

Mirror of magick,Door of the worlds,Shimmer and glow with power,Assist me in my safe travels within and without.

Sometimes when you are just beginning a cup of mugwort tea will help you get into the mode.

Concentrate on your image looking yourself in the eyes reaching into your deep subconscious. To do this use what I call your wizard glare, which is stare you use when you aren’t really concentrating on one particular thing. Use this mirror in any manor of travel; you can use it to go to your happy place, to concentrate on astral projection, to visit far away places from your own sanctuary. A scrying mirror will also do you well in this type of situation.

Ancient Runes TodayBy Pratus Ater Lupus

ancient runes today


The Fool has gained his bearings and stepped into the role of the Magician. What’s the first thing he sees when he continues on his path?

As we know, magical pow-ers are just the beginning of the adventure. We’ve still got a long way to go, and in many cases, the stakes get higher from here on. The High Priestess sits at the doorway to the real tests. She represents balance, true, but it’s not a given; this balance must be nur-tured and maintained within the Self in order to forge the direct-line spiritual connec-tion between the Creator and our own ideal worlds that we, in turn, Create for ourselves.

The High Priestess has been interpreted as a “Papess,” or female Pope, as a feminine counterpart to the Magician, but it’s more likely that she represents the Mother God-dess in her prime function -- the womb as the forma-tive chamber of the Self (where the Fool accepted his potential and became the Mage), and the birth canal as gateway to a world of our own making.

The High Priestess is shown sitting between two col-umns. In the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life design, she is associated with the Middle Pillar, and the 13th Path, Gimel. Imagine this path as a cord that connects the Mind of God to each individual Self. This cord is the only link that we have through the Daath, the Abyss that separates our chaotic “real world” from eternal stability and perfection. There are two other seg-ments to the Middle Pillar: the 25th Path, Samekh, which connects the Self to the Astral plane where the Archetypes dwell. This path corresponds to the

Temperance Trump (mean-ing: the passage of time, the necessity of trial and error). The third segment is Tau, the 32nd path, and the fi-nal Trump, “The World.” This path connects the Archetypes to the Material World of Mal-kuth.

The two columns on either side of her, one black and one white, represent the Pillar of Mercy and the Pillar of Sever-ity on the Tree of Life. They are said to correspond to the columns at the doorway of Jerusalem’s First Temple, built by demonic forces under the command of the Biblical Wizard, wise King Solomon. In many decks, the columns they bear the letters “B” and “J” -- these are initials of two Biblical characters, Boaz and Joachim, whose stories sym-bolize the qualities we seek in order to achieve that per-fect equilibrium: the recovery of our rightful estate and the realization of the Unity of All Things. In other words, if we accept our roles and respon-sibilities as Creator-Gods, we can combine our personal en-ergy with that of the Omni-

verse without losing our Selves in the process.

WORKS CITEDSources of the Waite/Smith Tarot Symbols: The High Priestess. Tarot Passages. Accessed 6 October, 2009. <http://www.tarotpassages.com/old_moonstruck/oneill/2.htm>

Troward, Thomas. The Hidden Power. New York: R.M. McBride & Co. 1921. Accessed 6 October, 2009, from the Internet Sacred Text Archive.<http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/thp/thp22.htm>

The High Priestess: Doorway to Elsewhere

by Jymi X/0

“The High Priestess” from the Rider-Waite Tar-ot deck, illustrated by Pamela Coleman Smith

ancient runes today

On Other Worlds...By Relache

... you won’t be the same age as you are on the Earth. Days and years are based on how long it takes the Earth to rotate on its axis and how long it takes to make one orbit around the Sun. No two planets have a rotation or orbit that matches an-other since they are all different sizes and different distances from the Sun. If you are 14 years old on Earth, you’ll just be a little over one year old on Ju-piter and you’ll almost be 50 years old on Mercury!

Your Age On Other Worlds:

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/age/index.html

... you won’t weight the same as you do on Earth. Your “mass” can be thought of as how much of you there is. The actual weight of your mass depends on the gravitational force of the planet you are on. How big the planet is will change the gravitational force. If you weight 100 lbs. on Earth, your weight on Jupiter will measure just over 236 lbs and that’s with your body staying exactly the same size! And if you took a trip to the Moon, you’d find you only weighed about 16 lbs.

Your Weight On Other Worlds:

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/weight/

... plants might not be green! Although there are some plants on Earth that aren’t green, most of them are. Have you ever wondered why that is? It turns out it’s due to the color of the light that comes to us from the Sun. Plants use sunlight to convert nutrients into energy, a process called photosynthe-sis. The wavelength of light that reaches Earth is af-fected by the type of star our Sun is, and how our atmosphere filters it. On other worlds, if they had a different type of star as their Sun, and a different at-mosphere, that would mean that very different light would reach the planet, and plant-life will be differ-ent. In order to be able to absorb the spectrum of light, plants on other planets would most likely evolve as some other color than green in order to survive.

Resources:

Exploratorium: the museum of science, art and hu-man perception, http://www.exploratorium.edu/in-dex.html,

The Color of Plants on Other Worlds, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-color-of-plants-on-other-worlds, © April 2008.

Image: Sapphire Trees on New Marsia by Calyxa



Synthetic LandscapesBy Calyxa

The word ‘synthetic’ originally meant to create a new thing out of two or more sources. More recent-ly the word has taken on the implication of being artificial, made by humans rather than by a natu-ral process. For example, synthetic fabrics are cre-ated through creating chemical chains which do not occur in nature. Synthetic music is created by using electronic waveforms to drive the speak-ers directly. Synthetic landscapes are digital imag-es created with a computer program. Sometimes this type of computer generated landscape art is called a fractal landscape because of the mathe-matics which make creating such images possible.

A fractal you may have heard of is the Mandelbrot set. Beniot Mandelbrot is a mathematician who spe-cialized in the study of complex dynamics, a branch of mathematics pioneered by Gaston Julia at the be-ginning of the 20th century. The name ‘fractal’ refers to how the equations describe a space having frac-tional dimensions. A sheet of paper can be thought of as a two-dimensional space, having height and width. A sculpture is a three-dimensional object, having height, width, and depth. Fractal mathemat-ics used for generating synthetic landscapes can be thought of as having two and a half dimensions.

A student of Mandelbrot’s, F. Kenton Musgrave wrote his doctoral thesis on synthetic landscapes in 1993. Mandelbrot called Musgrave the first true fractal-based artist. Musgrave’s work was presented at a computer graphics conference where it was seen by many people including a man named Eric Wenger. Wenger was so inspired by what he had seen in Musgrave’s work that he wrote a computer pro-gram using Musgrave’s principles to create his own synthetic landscapes. Wenger showed his program to Kai Krause who developed a friendly user inter-face for it. The resulting software was called Bryce. It was one of the first commercially available com-puter programs for creating synthetic landscapes.

Today there are several more, ranging in price from free to as much as thousands of dollars. Bryce is cur-rently at version 6.1, but the earlier 5.5 version is available for free. For a while, Musgrave worked on the Bryce team when version 4 was released. Shortly afterwards, he went on to form his own company and to “do it right” as far as a synthetic landscape software program goes. His product, MojoWorld, was not a commercial success, but it remains one of the most powerful commercial packages for generat-ing synthetic landscapes. All of the images accom-panying this article were rendered with MojoWorld.

Synthetic landscapes had been created before the mid-1990s with software also based on fractal mathematics. The 1982 film, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, included a sequence of a fly-through ani-mation when the Genesis device gets detonated on the barren planet. The original version of this fly-through included a hastily cut trench through one mountain when the camera’s path acciden-tally was routed through the synthetic terrain. Since that time, the use of synthetic landscapes in movies has become more and more common.

Resources:

Ebert, D., Musgrave, K., Peachey, P., Perlin, K., and Worley, S. Texturing and Modeling: A Procedural Ap-proach. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Pub-lishers, 2003.

Internet Movie Database - Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084726/goofs> Oct. 2009.

Kitchens, Susan, and Victor Gavenda. Real World Bryce 4. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 2000.

Synthetic Landscape Images by Calyxa


Over the last few weeks, those with an ear to the ground and an eye to the sky probably heard that NASA was planning to crash an unmanned probe into the Moon. Sounded outlandish, right? The project even had its own Twitter feed. Did you believe it, or pass it off as some sort of joke-SPAM or conspiracy theory?

This time, you should have believed it. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was an unmanned satellite designed to observe and then crash into the lunar surface. The purpose? A search for water.

Scientists on Earth have long considered the Moon to be a dead world, at least geologically. The Moon missions of the 1960s and 70s were aimed at land-ing on the lunar surface, gathering samples of soil and rock, and examining the geology around the landing site. Those missions lacked the ability to probe deeper beneath the Moon’s surface, but even so, no one believed we’d find water on the Moon.

This all changed in 1999, when NASA’s Lunar Pros-pector mission revealed unexpected evidence of wa-ter or water ice deposits in the Moon’s polar regions.

In September 2009, Science magazine added to the fun by reporting evidence that solar wind par-ticles release tiny amounts of water from the moon’s soil all the time—constantly. Granted, the amounts of water are minute, but real: which means there is water on the Moon. The question is… where?

Hungry eyes have seen the Moon as an untapped source of minerals and natural resources. The prob-lems with gathering or using these potential re-sources are real and significant. In order to har-vest lunar materials, a facility would have to be built on the Moon’s surface, capable of manned or unmanned drilling and collection, as well as the ability to transport materials back to Earth.

Long before any such operations could be consid-ered comes the need to figure out what really lays under the Moon’s surface. In particular, NASA has been anxious to discover whether sources of liq-uid or frozen water exist on the Moon, for if a hu-man base was to be established there, a water source would be essential. Water would also be critical in terms of manufacturing or drilling and

LCROSS: Crashing an SUV into the MoonBy Prof. Moonwriter

Image: The LCROSS impact flash, shown at three different levels of magnification, courtesy of NASA.


could be used as a source of hydrogen-based fuel.

In seeking to explore the Moon’s depths, present-day NASA scientists had two choices. The most labor-in-tensive and expensive option, would have been to set up a test drilling site, either semi-permanently or through a series of manned missions. The second option was simpler, cheaper, and much less elegant: NASA could simply crash a rocket probe into the Moon and see what sprayed up around the impact site.

And that’s exactly what LCROSS did. Launched on June 18, 2009, a carrier spacecraft (the shepherding spacecraft, or SS) guided a second-stage Centaur rocket to a pre-selected site on the Moon. The site was in the shadowed area of a prominent regolith (a rocky outcropping covering an area of bedrock) in Cabeus crater, near the Moon’s south pole. Temperatures in shadowed areas on the Moon don’t rise much about -300 deg F. at any time; this type of cold site may have the greatest likelihood of concealing a source of water or ice, particularly in the coldest polar regions.

Once in correct position, the Centaur rocket (about the size of a sport utility vehicle) separated from the SS and propelled itself into Cabeus crater at a speed of about 6000 mph. The impact took place at 4:31:19 AM, GSW Clocktower time, on Friday, Octo-ber 9. While this was happening, the SS monitored the descent and crash as well as the plume that fol-lowed the crash. Minutes after the impact, the SS be-gan a descent towards the plume and the lunar sur-face, analyzing and sending back data as it traveled.

Scientists at NASA began analyzing from the SS as it poured in, looking for evidence of water (ice or vapor), hydrocarbons (organic materials that involve water in their formation), and hydrated (“water soaked”) mate-rials. The SS moved through the Centaur crash plume and crashed into the lunar surface about four minutes after the Centaur impact, at 4:35:45 am, GSW time. The crater created by the two impacts is estimat-ed at 60-100 feet in diameter and 12-15 feet deep.

For many who stayed up late to watch the impacts, the results were disappointing. Scientists had be-lieved the crash plume would be visible from earth, but observers saw nothing. Although dust was blown hundreds of feet into space, there was no vis-ible plume. The prevailing theory seems to be that the trajectory of the impact caused much of the material to blow laterally, rather than straight up.

Information from the SS sensors, Hubble telescope, and Earth’s giant terrestrial telescopes will keep sci-entists busy for months analyzing visual, sensor, and spectrographic data from the LCROSS impacts. Be-sides looking for water, scientists will examine the impact crater itself, gaining valuable insights into the natural history of lunar impacts and geology.

The LC mission cost US taxpayers $80 million—cheap, as space missions go, yet many question the ethics

of spending this kind of money on something seen as “frivolous,” especially during an economic recession. Nonetheless, scientists continue to tout the value of learning more about the universe around us. The US government—along with NASA—continues to consid-er the future possibility of colonizing the Moon, with a ready supply of water being an important first step.

One wonders what LCROSS thought as it hurledtowards the Moon. Around the world, many conjured words from Douglas Adams’ Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to frame the possible reactions of the LCROSS probe:

“What’s this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round ... it needs a big wide sounding name like ‘Ow’, ‘Ownge’, ‘Round’, ‘Ground’! ... That’s it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it’ll be friends with me?”

Resources:

Adams, Douglas. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. 1979

Cowen, Ron. “Water Found on the Moon.” 23 Sep-tember 2009 <http://www.wired.com/wired-science/2009/09/water-moon/ >

Day, Brian. “LCROSS.” October 2009 <http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/>

“LCROSS_NASA on Twitter.” 9 October 2009 <http://twitter.com/Lcross_Nasa>

Want to learn more about the Moon?

Sign up for the GSW classes “Naked Eye As-tronomy 101” or “Moon 201: The Science.”

Check out the Office of Cosmology to find out what’s visible in tonight’s night sky!

ACADEMIC CITATION TUTORING BY CALYXA

Unsure about how to properly attribute your sourc-es? I was recommended by Dean Moonwriter as a tutor in academic citation. If I don’t know off the top of my head how to properly attribute your sources, I know where and how to find out! Email me at: HYPERLINK “/mc/compose%[email protected]”[email protected] and please include “GSW citation help” in the subject header.


Is There Another Earth?By Silver Raven

The existence of other habitable planets has been on mankind’s collective minds for years, maybe even centuries. We know that our Earth is a “diamond in the rough” in our Solar System. But could there be other planets like ours out there? Scientists around the world have been trying to answer this question.

Let’s look at how extra-solar planets are discov-ered. We know that planets do not make their own light. They rely on their host stars for that. Basi-cally, this makes it hard to spot them. It’s kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack. This means we must find them using other means. Astrono-mers have developed four ways to hunt for planets. Each way is very different, and lengthy to explain. As such, I will only mention each type in this piece.

We have Doppler Shift, Astrometric Measurement, Transit, and Gravitational Microlensing. Each of these methods have been proven to work. So much so that we have discovered well over 300 extra-solar planets.

If you’d like to learn more about these methods, feel free to visit the links in the article resources below.

So far, most of the planets that have been found are ex-tremely large; larger even than mighty Jupiter. There have been, in recent years, the discovery of smaller, rocky planets like ours. But we aren’t sure if these are habitable. More research is needed on this subject.

Maybe in a Galaxy far, far away, there is anoth-er planet like Earth. Maybe ours is an anoma-ly, existing only here. Only time, and research, can answer these questions. I, for one, will re-main hopeful that another planet like ours will be found. I hope after reading this and other articles like this, that you will hope for the same thing.

Resources:

Nasa 2009 http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/sci-ence/science_index.cfm

Nasa 2009 http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/science/finding_planets.cfm

Image: Another Earth by Calyxa


This is a true story.

While working at my desk in the College of Education one day, the subject of life on other planets came up. One of our masters students piped up:

“There is no life on other planets,” he said with a voice of absolute authority. I just stared at him for a moment and started to laugh.

“What makes you say that?” I asked when I got myself under control again.

“They would have contacted us by now. No one has, so there is no life on other planets.”

He was completely serious. I tried to explain my point of view regarding extraterrestrial worlds and he just kept saying no, no, no. Eventually, I gave up. When someone is that adamant, changing their opinion is an exercise in futility. But I was amazed that a person training to be an educator (and not only that but a science educator) could have such a closed mind on any idea. What happened to the scientific process? As far as I know no one has disproved life on other worlds, even if it hasn’t been absolutely proven either.

As I walked home that night, still pondering his answer, I purposely lifted my foot over a trail of ants making their way down the same path I was taking. I stopped and looked at those ants. They did not notice me. They were busy doing what ants do. Did they even think about other life around them? Probably not (well, not until the moment it is about to kill them.) Here I was, a “higher” species with a capacity for rationale thought and self-awareness. I saw the ant, but could I, with my huge brain in comparison to that ant, com-municate with it? Nope. I could not tell them to move out of the human path for their own safety, nor could I direct them to a better source of food. For all my “greater intelligence” I couldn’t communicate with an ant. I could but observe them and try not to kill them.

I wished that masters student had been present. I would have said. “Look, I can’t speak to an ant!! Maybe we are ants to another world’s inhabitants. They are observing us, but we are so much smaller they can’t even let us know they exist. We just keep doing what we do, in ignorance of their presence.”

I always wonder what he would have said to that.

We Just Do What We Do: My Life as an AntSapphire Soleil

COSMOLOGY TUTORING BY SILVER RAVEN

Have you ever gazed at the nighttime sky, and wondered what else is out there? Have you looked at the classes here at GSW, and told yourself that you’d never get those parts of Magick?

If you answered yes to either question, then do I have a service for you.

Greetings to all, I am Silver Raven. I am a Cosmology Major, and your Cybermage of Support. I have accepted the role of Tutor within the Office of Cosmology. Together with a few other dedicated individuals, the Dean of Cosmology included, we look into the Heavens for guidance.

If you have an assignment related to Cosmology, or within its many fields of interest, and feel like you can’t get anywhere with it, come see me. Click on the Office of Cosmol-ogy, and look around for my Help Desk.

I wish everyone a great Samhain, and may the Cosmos guide you always.


Photo by Relache


Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F.

2. Cooking the squash - Put about an inch of water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Put in the squash, cover and cook until they are just tender, about 10 minutes. Pierce with a knife to test.

3. Making the saucers - When squash are done, removed from sauce pan. You will want to trim just a little bit off the bottom of the squash with a sharp knife so that they can sit upright on a plate. Slice off a little of the top and save aside, then scoop out the insides using a small spoon or melon baller, being careful not to break or crack the squash shell. Leave the shell 1/4” to 1/2” thick. Save the squash you scoop out, as it is used in the stuffing. Put squash shells on a baking sheet and set aside.

4. Making the stuffing - If you are going to do the bacon or chicken variation, cook that first, crumbling the bacon or dicing the chicken when done, and set aside. In a clean skillet, heat the olive oil and then cook the onion until it turns translucent. Then add the garlic and cook until the garlic gets really fragrant (about a minute). If you are doing bacon or chicken, add at this

point. Add the squash that got scooped out of the shells and cook the mixture for one to two minutes. Turn off the heat, then add the bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese and mix all to-gether. Add salt and pepper to taste.

5. Stuff the squash - Get your baking tray of squash shells and gently fill them with the stuffing mixture. You want each squash to be overfilled a bit. For the final baking, cover the stuffed squash loosely with some aluminum foil and then slide the tray into the pre-heated oven and bake for about 15 minutes. You want ev-erything to get heated all the way through.

6. When you serve the squash, put the tops back on for a decorative touch.

OUT OF THIS WORLD SQUASHby Relache

4 saucer squash (aka scallop or patty pan squash)1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil1 clove of garlic, mince or pressed1⁄2 C. onion, diced3/4 C. soft bread crumbs1/4 C. Parmesan cheese, grated1/4 C. crumbled bacon or diced chicken (optional)Salt and pepper

TUTORING BY OBSIDIANSTORM JAGUAR

ObsidianStorm JaguarLore Major/Divination Minor

As a University graduate, I offer Grey School stu-dents my expertise in a wide range of essay related skills, including proofreading papers; formatting reference lists and inserting images into papers. I take the time to work closely with each student and give each paper or project the attention it deserves. I am also happy to recommend additional sources to the students if it will help them.


The prologue grips us with the introduction of an enigmatic phrase uttered as prophecy, “When thousand spins of Terra twins ...” A little girl named Sereny records the phrase in her spiral notebook as her mother speaks them while in a trance-like state and later, asks her, “What does it mean?” Her mother responds for the first time since hav-ing the vision, “It means that it is starting.”

Tim Dalis seems an ordinary enough young man with an apartment and a cat and people who give him grief at his job. His friend Nell (although pre-occupied with a new boyfriend) tries to cheer him up by taking him to a reading by a psychic (named Sereny) where he learns about Astrology and the existence of The Gathering, a group formed to not only watch for the appearance of the Signs--eleven other people like Tim who happened to have been born with ten planets under their sun sign and known collectively as The Guardians--but also for the Star Child who will be born when each planet will be in its natural sign and each sign will be in its natural house.

And then one night after discovering his cat has run off, Tim meets the first of the other Guardians and is whisked into a whirlwind of activity and action as The Gathering expends all its powers to collect the twelve Signs, fight Merel and the As-tranihl, and to locate and protect the Star Child. Oh, and along the way he finds his cat, strangely transformed and much more communicative.

If this first volume is any indicator, readers of the trilogy are in for a very enjoyable, imminently readable, fast-paced, action-adventure fantasy set within the vast cosmic framework of Magick and Astrology.

RISING SIGN Book 1 of The Star Child Trilogyby Starwynd Panther (writing as Jared R. Lopatin)

First Edition: May 2009. Available at starchildtrilogy.com in a special edition and at Ama-zon in both printed and Kindle editions.

Review by silverlocke


Do you expect to see Gollum from the Lord of the Rings when you look at this picture? It does seem like a perfect home for him. What you are viewing isn’t another world, it’s the “Wizard’s Grotto,” part of the Lost River section of the Lehman Caves National Monument in Nevada. In 1965, a movie called “The Wizards of Mars” was partially filmed in the cave. This low-budget, space adventure was a take-off of the Wizard of OZ, where four astro-nauts (Dorothy, Steve, Charlie, and Doc) journey to Mars. The underground grotto was the set for the planet Mars.

To learn more, you might like:

http://www.nps.gov/grba/historyculture/lehman-caves-national-monument.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Mars

The

Wizard’s Grottoby Relache


Greetings to all at Grey School!

A new school term is upon us and the school fairly buzzes with ex-citement and study. The Equinox saw the bi-annual changeover of Captains and Prefects. We’d like to send our heartfelt THANKS to our outgoing Captain Mysty for her marvelous work for GSW over the past year. Captain’s Terms take a year to complete and there is always so much happening it is hard to keep up, but Mysty made it all seem so easy. Big shoes to step into, but she blazed a clear and steady path to sail on. Thanks Cap’n!

I would also thank House Captain Raistlin Loreseeker for a continu-ing job well done and new Vice Captain Aamber Phoenix who is already ready to take the helm of the good ship Grey School.

Also a hearty “well done” to our outgoing prefects: Calyxa (Stones) Artemis Gryphon Snowhawk (Winds) Borkya (Waters) Laneth (Flames) Crystalfire (Gnomes) Tree Nymph (Undines) and to two who are continuing: Dragon of Anubis (Salamanders) and X-Wolf the White (Sylphs).

And lastly, Welcome! To the new prefects! Snoopy Alchemist (Stones) Swirlsdancing (Winds) Earth Song (Waters) and Nydia (Flames) Let me tell you, these folks are active and ready to tackle any issue as well as lead us in some fun activities in the next six months.

Thanks and Welcome Everyone!

Sapphire SoleilCaptain, Grey School of Wizardry

A Report from your GSW Captains

by Sapphire Soleil


As Dean of the Cosmology department at Grey School, I am always thinking about what classes would be relevant for our students. During a discus-sion with some other faculty one evening, we came up with the idea for a class on the subject of Decem-ber 21, 2012, the future date that many prophecies have picked out as a time of tremendous change for us on our planet.

The subject of this class will encompass many ideas and areas of study. Well just take a look at the de-scription Rilana and I came up with. She is co-writing the class with me:

The class will cover the prophecies about the date of December 21, 2012 and the implications of those prophecies. The class will review the historical re-cords of these prophecies and the mythologies of the cultures in which they occur, as well as the astro-nomical science involved in the predictions about this future time on planet Earth.

The history of the use of astrology and other meth-ods used by prophets such as Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce will be examined, as well as modern astrological interpretations of the date. The use of math, modern science, and current world trends will be covered as they relate to the prophecies and pre-dictions about the importance of this date, and the

question of whether it is likely to be a “doomsday” scenario vs. a transitional period for humanity’s spir-ituality will be examined.

Modern Astrological Interpretations

That same evening, I took a look at the chart of the date from the location of Washington, DC. The rea-son for this location is that according to many as-trologers, what happens at the location of important cities and centers, can be extrapolated to the rest of the country or world more easily. The District of Columbia is arguably the power center of the world, currently.

Taken out of the conversation, this is what I saw that evening in the chart for that date.

It doesn’t look like any ordinary day at all! There is a Yod (a planetary configuration for a fated day) involving two of the malefics, Pluto and Saturn, with the object of the Yod being Jupiter. The other Ma-lefic, Mars is found in the house of death and end-ings. The Sun is square Uranus, the Sun being the most important point in a chart (the self) and it is in a hard aspect to Uranus the planet of sudden and drastic change and revolution. The moon is in Aries that day a moon of war or at least lots of energy and impatience.

The slow moving planets involved in the Yod are in almost exact aspect, just a few minutes off among the three. That is highly unusual, and the object (the problem to be solved) is Jupiter and it’s found in the fourth house of the home. If home here is the world and the tools to solve the problem involve, power, death, time, and limitations, we have a recipe for a very important day indeed.

There is much more, but I’ll save it for the class. Hope to see you there!

Cosmology Class Pre-view:

December 21, 2012By Belenus


Oregon Conclave 2009by Moonwriter

The third Oregon Conclave took place on August 10-14, 2009 at Silver Falls State Park in Oregon’s Cascade mountains. Led by plan-ners Flamekeeper and Kalla, the event was a rousing success and a vast amount of fun. Grab your Time-Turners and give them a spin or two, taking you back to ….

Monday, August 10. We checked in on a sunny afternoon, greeting old friends and other times ex-changing first hugs with new ones. Participating this year were Calyxa, Catafreyja, Corvin, Ebon Hawke, Feriluce, Flamekeeper, Glanecia, Jymi x/0, Kalla, Psylchi, Relache, Rainmaker, Rowan Sylva-nus, Stargazer, Treeotter, and three canines: Owen, Ringo, and Sadie. Check-in involved the issuance of color ties and Conclave field guides for all, as well as selecting campsites among the sky-high Doug-las-fir trees covering the site. It was fun watching everyone get set up. Moonwriter put up her walk-in Hobbitat, Relache festooned her small tent with gorgeous strings of Goddess flags, and Stargazer created an entire camping complex, guarded by Stanley the Gnome. Later in the week Stargazer could be heard shouting, “Hey you kids—get off my lawn!”

Our evening campfire followed the “Earth” element and featured a mini-ritual of thanks, in which we added our own ashes and home earths to the com-munal fire pit. We took time for star study and set-tled into our tents for an excellent night’s sleep, the sounds of the forest close around us.

Tuesday, August 11. Classes began! Moonwriter led a Nature Studies internship and taught nature journaling. Rainmaker once again taught her Con-clave chants class, and Kalla did a terrific introduc-tion to Icon Magick. Dinnertime found everyone back in Rainmaker’s campsite, where she taught the miracle of the one-pot camp meal, i.e., her famous Mulligan Stew. Relache led the evening campfire, following the “Air” element. The festivities included singing, music, and a ritual of “letting go.” It rained in camp that evening, but the rain came and went quickly, and we escaped pretty much unscathed.


Wednesday, August 12. What a fun day! Flame-keeper taught a fabulous set of classes, including ritual basics, defensive techniques, spell writing on the fly, and a participatory class on circle energy. During the day, Conclavians worked on class projects and outdoor tasks, including individual service proj-ects toward their Nature Studies Internships. Calyxa shared her Elemental Hexagons deck, which was fas-cinating.

The Wednesday evening campfire featured the ele-ment of “Water.” We held a bardic circle and allowed time to “Ask the Elders.” We also held a water-shar-ing ceremony in Oberon’s honor, and asked for heal-ing for him, Morning Glory, and our absent friend Aaran’s brother, Scott.

Thursday, August 13. After a morning Nature Stud-ies session, Flamekeeper taught a class on “paying attention.” Then everyone trooped into the lodge kitchen for Rainmaker’s class on magickal eggs, in-cluding natural dyes and making “spelled eggs.” Next up was Jymi with a fabulous presentation on Quan-tum Physics; this was videotaped and has since been made into a GSW class. Wrapping up the class day came Kalla with a session on energy techniques: gathering, directing, and grounding. Treeotter went missing at one point—we found her about fifteen feet up a tree. So much for grounding!

As always, one of the best parts of Conclave was the chance to simply hang out with fellow magickal people. We spent as much time with heads together over cups of coffee or relaxing in conversation next to the fire as we did in classes. At any moment, one might be talking tool craft with Rainmaker, dark arts with Kalla, protective magicks with Catafreyja, al-chemy with Relache, or the merits of wearing Ughs and prom dresses (together!) with Treeotter, also fondly known to us as Cabinet Girl.

The last night in camp is traditionally a time of Con-clave ceremony, and this was no exception. We be-gan with a stupendous potluck feast, then donned magickal garb for our closing campfire. We honored the “Fire” element, bringing the week’s energy to a peak as we shared good times, exchanged gifts, and presented awards and recognitions. The evening fea-tured an Ordo Erronum induction, with Stargazer be-ing tapped for membership. Flamekeeper and Kalla handed out awards to everyone and began a brand new northwestern Conclave tradition, the presenta-tion of the “Wizarding Weiner.” This wizard-garbed dachshund figure was declared a spirit award and presented to Rowan Sylvanus, along with the charge to return next year and present it to another Con-clavian. Moonwriter capped off the evening with a Dutch oven peach cobbler, after which we sat around visiting as the fire ebbed into coals.

On Friday morning, we met after breakfast for our closing ceremonies, honoring the element of “Spirit.” Kalla led a poignant ritual and then we signed Gri-moires and scooped up shares of the campfire ashes. We broke camp, everyone pitching in to help every-one else and to police the entire campground. In a final moment together, we instituted what will surely become a northwestern Conclave tradition; the sa-cred “I’m a Little TeaPot” ritual. Nothing more may be said of this—it is secret knowledge of the highest sort, kept safe by those who were there.

Leaving was bittersweet…. But it was time to go, and we knew we’d see each other again in 2010. As Flamekeeper wrote in a beautiful poem on the last page of our Conclave field guides, “My soul tells me it’s time to begin the long journey home.”


The 2009 New York Conclave was a great place to be in August - despite the flooding that threatened us all! The Great Blue Her-on site was magnificent, including the Festi-val of Lights held during our stay. Conclave participants were asked to don magickal regalia and walk the path during the Festi-val. We could speak about our garb, school or anything else to those who attended the Festival. Some of us didn’t have cloaks with us, but were able to wear cloaks thanks to the ‘closets’ of Luna Bear and Farielover! The Festival was absolutely beautiful thanks to those who helped string lights and clear paths while the rest of us went to Lily Dale.

Lily Dale is a community founded in 1879 by the Fox sisters of Rochester, New York for those interested in spiritualism. The most powerful experience while there happened while visiting a place in Lily Dale called In-spiration Stump. You can feel the magick while standing near this stump. It is a won-derful little town filled with psychics, me-diums, spiritualists, shops and a wonderful library right on the lake!

Classes were plentiful. We made manda-las so everyone could take a piece of the other Conclavians home. We made beautiful wands or staffs thanks to Zu Dragonfly Elm; the herb walk helped us learn how to look at things in more than one way - such as wood sorrel, which many of us took to be clover.

No class was more important than the LBRP and Elemental Connections which tied to-gether with three rituals. One was for the Head Masters’ operating team to have steady hands. The second was to see Ober-on through the operation safely and to heal well. The last was held on one of the last nights of the Conclave, with the four defen-sors leading the LBRP.

Movie night was exciting. ‘Camping’ out on the stage and watching Race to Witch Moun-tain we snacked on leftovers. Next year, we’ll have pizza!

No one seemed to mind taking kitchen duty. We rotated so each day was a new pair of people making the meals, cleaning up and keeping everyone happy with food.

Fire tenders diligently made the fire each night (after the rains, of course) and Fari-elover made use of these fires. She was the official fire-keeper and s’mores-maker ex-traordinaire.

Our last fire was emotional; no one was ea-ger to part. We all promised to meet at the same place next year!

New York Conclave 2010 will be held again at the Great Blue Heron from July 26 to Au-gust 1, 2010. Bring your regalia!!! A day trip to Niagara Falls and another movie night are in the plans!

2009 new york conclave

is a wrap!by Artemis Gryphon SnowHawk

WHISPERING GREY MATTERS 23 ISSUE 24 P

ho

to b

y J

ym

i X

/0

Whispering Grey Mattersis a quarterly publication created

by and for the students and faculty of the

Grey School of Wizardry.

We’re always looking for talented artists and writers to add to our staff!

Contact one of our friendly, not-at-all-scary Faculty Advisors today:

Professor [email protected]

or Jymi X/[email protected]

JOIN US!

Bring your...ideas!

artwork!imagination!

...and pizza!

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