Supernova
darkstaronline.com Newsletter
Issue #2 |
 Aries
March/April 2004
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Welcome to Spring and A New Season!
Spring is in the air (ah, smells good), and Dark Star Philosophia begins another season. Happy to be talking to you again. The deep rest of winter is over, and new things start happening here as everywhere. We have some new “stuff” ready, and we would like you to check it out. I also thought you might be interested in reading about the meaning of our name, Dark Star Philosophia. We cover this and more in this the second edition of Supernova, our newsletter.
New Stuff
Quartz Rings from Earth Echoes: From Earth Echoes Crystals come rings. Bill hand-picked some very interesting quartz pieces to make into rings, then had his friendly silversmith set them. The stones and the settings are unique. Quartz Rings are no longer available.
New from Geshe Gendun Gyatso: Our good friend Geshe Gendun Gyatso
returns each winter to his monastery in Southern India.
This year he has again gone shopping for us. A stop in
Bangkok produced these great pendants with Tibetan designs.
Tibet under Chinese occupation is pretty much off-limits, so Gendun
was very happy to find these symbols from his culture. We are very
pleased to offer a new selection of Silver Jewellery with Tibetan designs.
We think you will like them as much as we do.
Gendun also returned with new incense, Jumur, produced by his sister’s small factory not far from his monastery. It is a very mild, extremely wonderful incense, and you’ll have a very hard time finding it elsewhere.
Again we will be offering Tibetan Hair Oil and
Tibetan Healing Tea from Sorig. Those of you who have visited our shop may remember these from last year. I use the hair oil regularly – when I ran out last fall, I suffered with great impatience until Gendun returned with more this month. You can be sure I will keep a good supply on hand this year! I cannot sing the praises of Sorig’s Tibetan Healing Tea highly enough. For myself, at least twice this winter I warded off illness with a cup of this tea, sweetened with sugar. My mother – an elder who will not allow me to tell you her age – is subject to respiratory illness. As her congestion got worse and worse, we began to wonder if she was developing pneumonia. Perhaps she needed to be in the hospital? Two cups of Tibetan Healing Tea was all she needed for quick recovery. Remember to add the sugar (in this case sugar is preferable to honey), as it adds to the healing.
And, of course, we continue to offer
Gendun’s Tibetan Singing Bowls
and Prayer Flags. A portion of the profits from the sale of any of these items from Geshe Gendun Gyatso goes to help support his work in this country. Currently Gendun is running a retreat in Colorado. His primary work in this country is Spiritual Counseling and Spiritual Teaching. He visits regularly in this area, teaching at the Jabberwocky Bookshop in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He and a fellow monk have created several sand mandalas at Jabberwocky. You might like to visit their website: jabberwocky.booksense.com. To see pictures of one of the sand mandalas, click on Past Events
The Meaning of Our Name
One day several years ago, when Steven Spielberg was making a movie in Rockport, an interesting man who was working with Mr. Spielberg came into Dark Star Philosophia. He was excited by our name. He had made a movie of his own a few years earlier, a movie about the Dogon people of West Africa. I had seen his movie: The Dogon are a tribe of people whose religion centers on the Sirius Star System. Sirius, a very distant star, is the Dog Star. The star we see from Earth is Sirius A, but are usually unaware of his companion star, Sirius B. Sirius B is an extremely small star and very dense - astronomers have estimated that a single cubic meter of its matter weighs about 20,000 tons. It is invisible to our eyes because of the nearby brilliance of the much larger Sirius A. Thus, it is a “Dark Star” (even though it is a white star!). No one knows how the Dogon came to know of this companion star to Sirius.
The Dogon also describe a third star in the Sirius system, not yet identified by astronomers, called "Emme Ya" ("Sorghum Female"). They add that a single satellite orbits this star. You can read more about The Dogon Theory of Creation at www.crystalinks.com/dogon2.html
A dark star is a star that is either too far away or too dim to be seen with the naked eye. When we were searching for the right name for our new shop and gallery, we thought for a while of calling it Distant Star, but chose Dark Star for its mystery. Many people want to know if we got our name from the Grateful Dead’s classic song, Dark Star. Much as I love the Grateful Dead, no we did not.
Then we had to find a logo. I am not much of an artist (although my father was). Drawing a star was out of the question. Finding one in a book to use would have violated copyrights. I never even thought of hiring a graphic artist. I was stymied.
Until the day I sat looking at a pin that had belonged to my grandmother. As I sat counting the points (there are 8), I suddenly realized that I held a star in my hand. And that this pin was a star made of dark red garnets – a dark star!
To me the significance of the dark star is its mystery. All creation is made up of opposites. As the Chinese would say, all the world is yin and yang. Positive and negative, masculine and feminine. Which brings us to the second part of our name: Philosophia.
I was a philosophy major in college. I did not get too much out of that course of study (if you talk classical philosophy with me, know that I will not remember much) – still, philosophy is a lifetime interest. No, it is much more than an interest. It is my nature.
One of the things I have found is that great truths tend to be paradoxes. What one great truth expresses will find an equally great truth with an opposite meaning. I think it is a matter of different perspectives. The resolution of a paradox only comes when you raise and deepen your perspective, and see the issue from an entirely different level. The nature of physical creation is yin-yang. Opposites. Paradox is resolved when you raise your perspective to the spiritual level, to even greater truth – to a truth that unites the other two.
To get back to Dark Star. The very name is composed of opposites. A star is a creature of light, a source of light. It is only dark from our perspective here on Earth. I am not subject to visions, but I do occasionally have an insight. There came a day when I saw the point at which the two opposites – light and dark – unite. For those who are curious, this is the meaning of our name: Dark Star Philosophia.
Rock Your World
This month The Stone Lady focuses on Amethyst. Wait until you see the Amethyst point from Earth Echoes Crystals – it’s 2 feet tall and weighs 58 pounds. She has some very interesting things to say about this and other amethyst selections:
Rock Your World
Rockport Through the Seasons
This was definitely a hard winter. Spring teased us all through March, but Winter kept kicking back, and we were bounced around between the two. Ah, but it was all beautiful. We have some pictures for you in
Rockport Through the Seasons
Feng Shui Energy Forecast
Jami Lin’s Feng Shui Energy forecast provides you with little things you can do in your home to enhance good energies and/or deflect nasty ones. These energies change from month to month. Check out her insights for this month:
Feng Shui Energy Forecast for April 2004.
Breaking News
Dark Star Philosophia is a happening place. We mail out our e-newsletter, Supernova, monthly, but it appears we will have things to tell you in-between times. We will keep you posted on our website. So see Supernova for the most current information!
Finale
Your comments on our newsletter, Supernova are most welcome.
Please send them to info@darkstaronline.com.
This concludes the second issue of Supernova. Thanks for listening.
~ gera
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