Some of you might’ve noticed that you haven’t noticed Venus in the last few days. Well – this is because Venus is directly behind the Sun. She’s going to be there for a while. She’s as far away from us as she kinda can be… you know on the Far Side of the Sun. This is called an Occlusion in Astronomy terms and its very rare. What’s interesting about this is that it means this is the midway point between the 2 transits of Venus that occur in our lifetimes (assumption). A transit is when Venus crosses in front of Sun. The first took place on June 8 2004 and the next on June 5-6 2012. But prior to 2004 it had not happened for 125 years and after 2012 it won’t happen again for another 118 (ish). I think this is pretty cool. Captain Cook invented Australia while going on an expedition to Taihiti to observe the Transit of Venus in 1769 so there are some pretty major events linked to the rarity of these transits.
Sure right now we can't see anything happening but I find it quite interesting just thinking about how Venus really is all that way away from us hiding behind the Sun. And I can only BEGIN to imagine what's going down on Venus while its so well hidden from the prying telescopic eyes of Earth's astronomers.
The shots I have included here are ones that I took from the UK of the 2004 event.
Here’s a useful link.
http://www.transitofvenus.org/
Now, to the what’s really at stake here… with Venus being absent from our skies we are deprived of one of the more common and reliable methods of acquiring a wish.
“Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have this wish I wish tonight!”
Yeah – every time you see that First star you get a wish… but not possible right now.
I am writing a segment about Wish Theory and I need some of your help. I am collating all the known methods of Wish Acquisition. Here is what I have so far, its pitifully short but it’d be great if you can add some more or provide any of the underlying sub clauses to these methods:
1. Evening Star
2. Birthday Wish (but there’s a lot of rules about candles being all blown out in one go and cutting the cake without the knife making a noise on the plate)
3. Aladdin’s Lamp – Rub it – Genie – 3 wishes etc
4. 8 sneezes in a row
5. Wishbone (chicken – 2 people break it – whoever gets the largest section gets the wish)
6. Fairy Godmother
7. Shooting Star
8. Walk on shit with your left foot (this is strictly Parisian)
9. You get a Bay leave on your plate.
10. 7 wishes at new Year in Brazil from Yemanja (Goddess of the Ocean – you have to jump over 7 waves in the sea though)
11. Find an eyelash on your face (one version holds that you close your eyes, make the wish, blow the lash off the person’s finger then to make it come true you have to kiss that person. Some people say the eyelash is on the person who found its finger and you press your finger to theirs and then whoever has the eyelash on their finger after THAT gets the wish)
And its good to know all of these as let’s face it wishes are useful and extraordinary things. And no matter how wonderful your lives are this world is not at peace so we can all at least put any garnered wishes to damn fine use.
But please send me all the others I do not yet know…
Incidentally things that are 'lucky' like 4-leaf clovers are not includable as they don't convey wishes they just add luck...
That’s me my lovelies, off to bed in this Southern African Winter.
x
