Valentine's Day Newsletter
February 10, 2005

by Curtis Lang		print version
		print version (graphics)

Welcome to the February 10 weekly edition of the Satya Center newsletter.

Tomorrow, February 11, 2005, is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. On this day in 1858, in a cave at Lourdes, France, the Virgin Mary appeared to a poor fourteen year old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous, and Our Lady visited Bernadette fifteen more times during the following week. The Shrine at Lourdes is the most visited spiritual site in the world, renowned for the healing waters found in a spring in the cave, which was discovered by Bernadette according to instructions from Our Lady.

Saturday, February 12 is the Roman Festival of Diana, known as Artemis to the Greeks, which is celebrated by Western neo-Pagans and Wiccans as a celebration of wildlife. Contemplate the web of life that connects humans to woodlands and to the wild creatures that inhabit the forests of the world.

Sunday, February 13 is the Hindu Feast of Basant Panchami, celebrating the commencement of spring in India, and is marked by worship of the Goddesses Saraswati and Lakshmi. Goddess Saraswati is that manifestation of the universal, Divine Goddess energy known as Shakti which manifests as human culture in the form of learning, creative writing and fine arts. Lakshmi is the Goddess who represents the manifestation of Universal Life Force Energy as material and spiritual abundance.

Monday February 14 is St. Valentine’s Day, celebrated in the Western world as a day sacred to love, romance and lovers. This holiday has pagan and heretical Christian origins, and interesting analogies with certain medieval Hindu practices, all of which celebrate the Universal Life Force Energy in its manifestation as sexual energy.

In ancient Rome, February 13 was the feast of the fertility god Faunus and February 15 was the Feast of Lupercalia, dedicated to another fertility god, Lupercus. The priests of Pan Lyceus would perform purification ceremonies designed to promote fertility among Roman women. Young priests would circle the city walls with strips of skin cut from sacrificial animals, scourging women they encountered along the way to purify them in preparation for pregnancy. The Latin februaue means "to purify" after this "Feast of Purification." Some sources say that the thongs from the skins of sacrificed animals—which the priests used on the evening of February 14 to whip women—were called februa.

At Lupercalia, young women wrote their names on slips of papyrus and put them in a box. Then young men would take turns withdrawing the slips of paper, and would pair off for the day with the women whose names they had picked.

In 12^th century southern France, “Valentine Clubs” appeared, which constituted a more playful, chivalric, and Christianized version of the ancient Roman fertility festivals.

Every year on February 14^th, the Valentines assembled in the local town square, according to John Rutheford’s invaluable guide to medieval gallantry, “The Troubadors”. Two couples, dressed as Cupid, Mercy, Loyalty and Chastity would lead a parade of couples around the town, accompanied by trumpeters and banner-bearers.

The procession would end at the local Hotel, where the celebrants performed a “mass” dedicated to the worship of Love. At the close of the ceremony, the couples dispersed, and a silver casket containing the names of all gentlemen present was presented to the ladies.

Each lady drew a slip, and Cupid then brought the ladies together with their chosen gentlemen. The newly formed couples were declared Valentines for the year. Gentlemen were required to be faithful to their ladies for the next twelve months, to provide their ladies with abundant flowers throughout the period, to offer regular gifts to their ladies, to escort their ladies wherever they so desired, to make songs and poems or to engage in jousts in her honor, and to guard her honor jealously. Marriage of any pair of Valentines was strictly forbidden.

As we celebrate today’s secular version of Valentine’s Day, let us all meditate upon the origins of the Feast, and celebrate the mysteries of Love and Life that are the traditional domain of the Goddess and the traditional rewards to those gallant gentle men whose spiritual veneration of the female principle provided entire medieval communities with the blessings of courtly love and chivalric romance, and served as a potent counterweight to the patriarchal, martial values of the feudal society, structured and stratified according to bloodline, personal battle skills and the ability to field a force of loyal soldiers in the quest for ever more lands to govern and control.

Top Satya Center Stories of the Week

Satya Center contributor Steve Breyman argues “Against Selfishness” in an impassioned article dissecting the President’s concept of the “ownership society”. Breyman says that Bush's ownership society melds a me-first 80s ethos with the crude Darwinism of Reality TV, celebrating the creation of a two-class society founded on power and privilege for the few.

In “Mind, Memory and Archetype, Part III”, Satya Center contributor Rupert Sheldrake explores the nature of consciousness. Is the mind located in the brain or is consciousness a field phenomenon? Is consciousness a byproduct of brain chemistry or does mind -- and soul --exist both within and outside our bodies? Included are some experiments you can do at home to explore the nature of consciousness.

Satya Center Founder Jane Sherry offers a recipe for delicious “Tomato Raisin Chutney”. It’s an East-West flavor fusion that combines fruity, sour, sweet and hot and goes well with rice and vegetable dishes or fish.

For a St. Valentine’s Day meditation on the joys and perils of love in the modern world, read “The Alchemy of Love” by Curtis Lang. “To summarize the wisdom of the great mystics of the East and the Alchemists of the West: On one thing all spiritual teachings agree. It is better to be loved than not to be loved, and it is far better to love than not to love.”

Mongolian-Native American Shaman Jade Wah’oo Grigori analyzes “Spirit’s Desire and the Nature of Soul”, and finds that we each have three souls. Jade differentiates between Spirit and our tri-partite souls, discusses the common modern dilemma of the “loss of soul”, and offers a shamanic solution – the ritual called “soul retrieval”. For those who are interested, Jade is available to perform this ancient ritual, which has benefited many grievously wounded in body, mind and spirit.

Satya Center contributor and herbalist Susun Weed offers “Wise Woman Ways to Boost Your Energy”, during this winter season when we all seek quickening, energizing, love and light. “Are there ways to boost energy that are effective and healthy?” Susun asks. “My guide, Grandmother Growth, gave me some ideas of how to help myself when I feel bone-tired. And I gathered together the best remedies I know, plus the wisdom of my Wise Woman friends, so you can help yourself too, when you are too weary for words.”

Valentine’s Day Specials in Satya Center Store

As a special Valentine’s Day offering, the Satya Center store now has a 33% discount on one of our most gorgeous crystal tabletop towers. This “Rutillated Gold Tabletop Wand” was $169, and is on sale for $111.

Be cautious when sending energy with this powerful crystal. This piece is VERY strong, very "electrical" and affects physical, etheric and astral bodies simultaneously.

Rutile is good at repelling negative energy and ending unwanted interference. Rutile promotes and strengthens stability in relationships and marriage, and works to eliminate emotional and physical imbalances. Gold rutile should be extremely beneficial for enhancing love in relationships.

Place this on the altar in your meditation room. By strengthening the mind and promoting active awareness this crystal can help to enhance the depth and duration of your meditation sessions and the strength of your connection to inner spiritual guidance and spiritual teachers. Read more about rutillated quartzand other types of quartz crystal at the SatyaCenter.com crystalshomepage. Check out the article "Using Quartz Crystals in Digital Technology, Healing and Meditation" for an overview of the metaphysical and mineralogical properties of quartz, and a step-by-step guide explaining how to cleanse, charge, and program quartz crystals for healing, meditation and other spiritual purposes.

The Satya Center Store also has placed “Priestess” on salefor Valentine’s Day -- a limited edition digital painting by Jane Sherry, now only $75, 50% off the regular price. This piece was originally a small talisman, a mixed media collage, scanned into the computer and turned into a digital painting. I literally painted every pixel in the computer, which gives it this dreamlike quality. Nothing in the image is hard focus, but rather a soft luminous surface of reflected light to enhance the inwardly reflecting image of the Queen who is depicted bare breasted, holding her scepter and wearing her crown. Her eyes are closed as she communes with the Divine. 

This represents an image of the High Priestess or Empress as she sits in rulership over the Lower Self, bringing the everyday actions of ruling our own individual kingdom into alignment with the Divine aspects of the Higher Self.

In the mythologies of many ancient civilizations women were represented bare breasted as a sign of strength. The Amazons of ancient Greek mythology were often depicted bare breasted. This bare-breasted sovereign commands respect for the archetype of woman as priestess. The piece is an affirmation of the beauty and sacred geometry of the human body which provides us a beautiful focus for mindful meditation, and through its connection with Mother Nature's sacred secrets, a path to the inner temple of worship. For we are each created in a state of perfection. The psyche, the temple and the body are interchangeable sites of transformation.

Top News Stories From Around the Web

For today’s top stories, don’t forget to check out Satya Center’s 24/7 newsfeed with breaking news headlines from Pacific News Service.

Other Top Stories on the Web

“God’s Politics: A Better Option – Why Can’t personal ethics and social justice – together – become a real political choice?”

Sojourners Magazine, Jim Wallis, February 2005

“Why can’t we talk about religion and politics? These are the two topics you are not supposed to discuss in polite company. Don’t break up the dinner party by bringing up either of these subjects! That’s the conventional wisdom. Why? Perhaps it’s because these topics are too important and too potentially divisive, or because they raise issues of core values and ultimate concerns that make us uncomfortable.

All over the country I feel the hunger for a fuller, deeper, and richer conversation about religion in public life, about faith and politics. It’s a discussion that we don’t always hear in America today. Sometimes the most strident and narrow voices are the loudest, and more progressive, prophetic, and healing religion often gets missed. But the good news is about how all that is changing.”

“A Life Lived Whole”

YES! Magazine, by Parker Palmer, Winter 2005

“‘There is in all things … a hidden wholeness.’ Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and mystic who wrote these words, was speaking of the human world as well as the world of nature. But in our every­day lives, Merton’s words can sound like wishful thinking. Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished, or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities and become separated from our own souls. We end up leading divided lives, far removed from our birthright wholeness.”

“Guidelines from Gandhi for Building a Culture of Justice and Peace”

The Fellowship for Reconciliation, by Janet Chisholm

January/February 2005

“The ultimate measure for us is not where we stand in moments of comfort and convenience—but where we stand in times of challenge and controversy!”

A nonviolence trainer was quoting Dr. King to me. He had been studying and praying over an Electoral College map filled with red and blue states, he said. The implications were clear. He had a responsibility as a southerner to organize and teach about active nonviolence throughout the South. “We can’t leave it to someone else. We must prepare ourselves now for whatever the future holds.”

We live in a culture where social and economic inequities are expanding, elections are tumultuous and hate-filled, and argumentation is hostile. In another unsettled empire during the twentieth century, Mahatma Gandhi labored to counteract the accommodation, dependency, hopelessness, and exploitation that paralyzed Indians. He envisioned the people pouring energy into the creation of a new, lifegiving culture. Some of his principles for constructing the new culture may inspire us today.”

“There Is No Tomorrow” 
The Star Tribune, By Bill Moyers,  01/30/05

“One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. 
 Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.”

“Global warming: scientists reveal timetable”
UK Independent, by Michael McCarthy, 03 February 2005

“A detailed timetable of the destruction and distress that global warming is likely to cause the world was unveiled yesterday.
It pulls together for the first time the projected impacts on ecosystems and wildlife, food production, water resources and economies across the earth, for given rises in global temperature expected during the next hundred years. . .

It is when the temperature moves up to 2C above the pre-industrial level, expected in the middle of this century - within the lifetime of many people alive today - that serious effects start to come thick and fast, studies suggest.”

“World Social Forum: A Tale Of Two Presidents”
Znet, by Roger Burbach, 02/04/05

“Porto Alegre, Brazil. Criticized by some for being little more than a debating society and a ‘one stop shopping center for the left,’ this year’s fifth annual World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil marked a major break through for the Forum. It served as a pivotal venue for the discussion and critique of progressive political, social and economic strategies to make ‘another world possible.’ 
 Three hundred and fifty two proposals and calls for action came out of the more than 2000 panels and workshops held at the forum. At the end of the Forum, a group of 19 comprised of key founders of the WSF and its International Committee issued a manifesto called the Consensus of Porto Alegre, urging the 120,000 who registered at the WSF to sign on to the Manifesto if it reflected their work, ideas and programs for the future.”

“Half of Bankruptcies Due to Medical Bills --US Study”
By Maggie Fox, Reuters News, Wed Feb 2, 4:29 AM ET
“Half of all U.S. bankruptcies are caused by soaring
medical bills and most people sent into debt by illness are middle-class
workers with health insurance, researchers said on Wednesday.
The study, published in the journal Health Affairs, estimated that medical bankruptcies affect about 2 million Americans every year, if both debtors and their dependents, including about 700,000 children, are counted.”

“Tapes Show Enron Arranged Plant Shutdown”
  The New York Times, by Timothy Egan, 02/04/05
  “In the midst of the California energy troubles in early 2001, when power plants were under a federal order to deliver a full output of electricity, the Enron Corporation arranged to take a plant off-line on the same day that California was hit by rolling blackouts, according to audiotapes of company traders released here on Thursday.
  The tapes and memorandums were made public by a small public utility north of Seattle that is fighting Enron over a power contract. They also showed that Enron, as early as 1998, was creating artificial energy shortages and running up prices in Canada in advance of California's larger experiment with deregulation.
  The tapes provide new details of market manipulation during the California energy crisis that produced blackouts and billions of dollars of surcharges to homes and businesses on the West Coast in 2000 and 2001.”

“Iraq reconstruction funds missing” 

BBC Radio, 02/06/05
“The BBC's File On 4 programme has learnt that  out of over $20bn raised in oil revenues during US-led rule, the  use of $8.8bn is unaccounted for. The missing $8.8bn is more than 40% of Iraq's oil revenues
Almost $9bn (£4.7bn) of Iraqi oil revenue is missing from a fund set up to reconstruct the country.
 The BBC's File On 4 programme has learnt that out of over  $20bn raised in oil revenues during US-led rule, the use of  $8.8bn is unaccounted for.
 US government auditors criticise the Coalition Provisional Authority for failing to manage the money properly.
 In one case, auditors say the key to a safe holding millions  of dollars was kept in an open backpack in an office.”

“U.S.-Israel plan to strike Iran’s nuclear sites finalized”
Al Jazeera, 2/6/2005 4:00:00 PM GMT
”Experts from the U.S. Defense Department, the Pentagon and Israel have put final touches to a plan to launch a military strike targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities, experts at the European Commission based in Brussels, revealed on Sunday.
The experts added that the implementation of this plan rested on a number of factors including the U.S. continuous efforts to hamper the EU-Iranian negotiations to persuade Iran to suspend all activities related to uranium enrichment, with the aim of justifying a military strike against the Islamic republic if it refused to bow to U.S. pressures.”

“Ecuador: What's the deal at Manta?”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Michael Flynn
January/February 2005  pp. 23-29 (vol. 61, no. 01) © 2005
“. . . ‘All of Ecuador is being used as a base for U.S. military operations in Latin America,’ says Moran. He claims Manta is part of a broader U.S. imperialist strategy aimed at exploiting the continent's natural resources, suppressing popular movements, and ultimately invading neighboring Colombia.
 Moran is not alone. Observers from Latin America to Europe regard the base as an integral part of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Colombia--and potentially as a staging ground for direct American involvement in the conflict there. Ecuadorians worry that the U.S. presence here could ultimately pull their country into such a conflict, or possibly make Ecuador a target of Colombian guerrilla or paramilitary groups.
 The base is also at the center of a growing controversy regarding U.S. efforts to block mass emigration from Ecuador, which during the last five years has seen several million of its citizens leave for Europe or North America.”

“Liberal Hawks Ally with Project for the New American Century:
Neocons and Liberals Together, Again”
International Relations Center, by Tom Barry | February 3, 2005

“The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government’s national security strategy with a new public letter stating that the “U.S. military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume.” Rather than reining in the imperial scope of U.S. national security strategy as set forth by the first Bush administration, PNAC and the letter’s signatories call for increasing the size of America’s global fighting machine.
 The January 28th PNAC letter advocates that House and Senate leaders take  the necessary steps “to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps.”
 Joining the neocons in the letter to congressional leaders were a group of prominent liberals—giving some credence to PNAC’s claim that the ‘call to act’ to increase the total number of U.S. ground forces counts on bipartisan support.”

“Dealing with Runaway Oil Prices”

AsiaTimesOnline, by Andrew McKillop, 02/10/05

“Very large investments are needed if both OPEC and non-OPEC suppliers are to blunt the arrival of structural undersupply in world oil markets, which is likely to be imminent without much higher prices. These (higher prices) will both limit demand growth in the energy-saturated OECD countries, enable continued growth of oil demand by the New Industrial Countries and enable financing of increasingly risky, higher-cost exploration-development. . .

Moving up to new price bands can be the focus of serious and committed international attention to the risks facing all players at this time. Runaway price rises in a free-for-all bidding process following supply loss of no more than 5% (as occurred during the 1979 fall of the Pahlavi regime in Iran) is the worst possible scenario. . .

Under any scenario, the basic need is for higher and less volatile oil and energy prices, accompanying serious and committed energy conservation, transition to renewable energy and restructuring for a low energy economy, habitat and society. This will be forced on energy consumers worldwide through increasing annual depletion losses, and slower additions of net supply - firstly for oil (around 2008) and then for natural gas (latest by 2015-2018). However, at present, energy transition is discarded as utopian and unworkable by current political decision-makers.”

“What the President Didn’t Say About Social Security”

The Century Foundation, by Greg Anrig, Jr., 02/07/05

“In his State of the Union address, President Bush proposed a transformation of Social Security, a program that has been largely responsible for reducing poverty among the elderly from more than 35 percent before 1960 to just 10 percent today. He proclaimed, ‘We have to move ahead with courage and honesty.’

Unfortunately, his discussion of Social Security's future lacked those two virtues.”

Weekly Meditation: Some Day on Earth

It happens all the time in heaven,
And some day
 
It will begin to happen
Again on earth
 
That men & women who are married,
And men & men who are
Lovers,
 
And women and women
Who give each other
Light,
 
Often will get down on their knees
 
And while so tenderly
Holding their lover’s hand,
 
With tears in their eyes,
Will sincerely speak, saying,
 
“My dear,
How can I be more loving to you?
 
How can I be more Kind?”




(By Hafiz, a Sufi Persian Mystic Poet)




(Photo Credits: First Painting of Mary by Nicolas Roerich, Chivalric Love is Clip Art, "Priestess" painting by Jane Sherry, Hindu Statue is Clip Art)