Thursday, April 14th

Thursday is the day of the planet Jupiter, dedicated to Thunor(Thor), God of thunder and agricultural work. His parallels in various European traditions are Zeus, Taranis, Perun, Perkunas and St. Olaf. The faith of the Northern Tradition holds Thursday sacred, just as Islam reveres Friday, Judaism the Sabbath(calculated from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday), and Christianity, Sunday. This is why almost all adages about Thursday are positve, such as “Thursday’s child has far to go,” “Sneeze on Thursday, something better,” or “Cut nails on Thursday for wealth.” Thursday rules controlled optimism, energetic growth, physical well-being and material success.

Deity: Thor

Zodiac Sign: Capricorn/Pisces/Sagittarius

Planet: Mercury

Tree: Oak

Herb: Henbane

Stone: Turquoise/Bloodstone/Topaz

Animal: Fish/Goat/Aurochs

Element: Fire

Color: Brown/White/Orange

Number: 3

Rune: Thorn

Celtic Tree Month of Fearn (Alder) – March 18 to April 14th. Alder signifies protection in times of conflict, enability in time of change.

Celtic Tree Month of Saille (Willow) begins April 15th and runs through May 12

Runic Half Month of Ehwaz (horse) – March 30 to April 15th

Goddess of the Month for March 20 to April 17th is Columbina
 

Source

The Pagan Book of Days
Nigel Pennick

The Witches Musts for Thursdays

Try wearing some honeysuckle-scented perfume to encourage prosperity. Bewitch someone by wearing deep royal blue or brighten up a dreary day by wearing lucky, prosperity-drawing green. Brew up a pot of mint tea to help increase your cash flow. Try adding a pinch of nutmeg or cinnamon to an unscented candle to encourage some fast cash. Bake up a loaf of wheat bread for the family, and celebrate abundance and be thankful for all that you have.

Conjure up a witchy craft and create a philter or two for your magickal needs. Work with the deities and the magickal plants corresponding with Thursday.

How did the energies of the plants of Jupiter enhance your magick? What did you learn by working with Juno, Jove, or Zeus? The truth is that by adding these new techniques and information into your spellcasting repertoire, you will indeed advance your skills, thereby moving up in the ranks to become a more adept magickal practitioner

Just by believing in yourself and working toward creating abundance, health, and prosperity, you have already begun to transform your outlook on life. Put your game face on; think positively. Work with Thor for perseverance and courage, and apply those qualities to your own prosperity spells and healing witchery. Break out the tarot cards; How could you incorporate that symbolism into other spells of your own design?

Use your imagination, check Thursday’s correspondence list, and see what other bewitching things you can conjure up for prosperity magick all by yourself. Call on the gods and goddess of Thursday and bring some positive change, abundance, health, and prosperity into your life!
 

Source

Book of Witchery: Spells, Charms & Correspondences for Every Day of the Week
Ellen Dugan

Thursday’s Witchery

Today is the day for prosperity work of all kinds. It can also be used for healing work, whether that is a physical healing of an illness or an emotional healing. Also remember that you have to follow up your healing work and prosperity magick and physical action.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have met new witches who complain to me that their prosperity spell or “I need a better job” spell did not work as they expected. They’ll ramble on and on about how much time and money they spent working their magick….but, alas, they had no glorious manifestation of wealth or fabulous job that suddenly dropped out of the sky and landed in their laps.

Then, when I gently ask them, “Did you enchant your resume or application when you filled it out? Did you do a little confidence-boosting spellwork when you went to apply for the job or went to the interview?” typically they give me a blank, confused stare.

Nine times out of ten, their response is, “You mean I have to go out and actually look for the job too?” Um, yes, my dear, you certainly do. Magick follows the path of least resistance, which means it’s going to manifest along the simplest, quickest route. Get out there and hit the pavement. See what you can find. Times are tough and competition for good jobs is fierce, so you need whatever edge you can get. For folks like us, we’re going to get the edge by using our magick and our spellcraft.

Thursdays have such a rich source of magick for us to draw upon that, honestly, the sky is the limit. This is the day associated with the gods of the sky and heavens, after all. Get to know these deities and add their wisdom and magick into your days
 

Source

Book of Witchery: Spells, Charms & Correspondences for Every Day of the Week
Ellen Dugan

Thursday

Jupiter’s (Thor’s) day

⦁ Middle English – thursday or thuresday
⦁ Old Norse– thorsdagr – Thor’s day
⦁ Old English– thunresdæg – Thunder’s day
⦁ Latin – dies Jovis – “Day of Jupiter”
⦁ Ancient Greek – hemera Dios – “day of Zeus”

The name is derived from Old English and Middle English Thuresday (with loss of -n-, first in northern dialects, from influence of Old Norse Þorsdagr) meaning “Thor’s Day”. Thunor, Donar (German, Donnerstag) and Thor are derived from the name of the Germanic god of thunder, Thunraz, equivalent to Jupiter in the interpretation romance.

In most Romance languages, the day is named after the Roman god Jupiter, who was the god of sky and thunder. In Latin, the day was known as Iovis Dies, “Jupiter’s Day”. In Latin, the genitive or possessive case of Jupiter was Iovis/Jovis and thus in most Romance languages it became the word for Thursday: Italian giovedì, Spanish jueves, French jeudi, Sardinian jòvia, Catalan dijous, and Romanian joi.

This is also reflected in the p-Celtic Welsh dydd Iau.

The astrological and astronomical sign of the planet Jupiter is sometimes used to represent Thursday.

Since the Roman god Jupiter was identified with Thunor (Norse Thor in northern Europe), most Germanic languages name the day after this god: Torsdag in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, Hósdagur/Tórsdagur in Faroese, Donnerstag in German or Donderdag in Dutch. Finnish and Northern Sami, both non-Germanic (Uralic) languages, uses the borrowing “Torstai” and “Duorastat”. In the extinct Polabian Slavic language, it was perundan, Perun being the Slavic equivalent of Thor.

There are a number of modern names imitating the naming of Thursday after an equivalent of “Jupiter” in local tradition. In most of the languages of India, the word for Thursday is Guruvar- var meaning day and guru being the style for Bṛhaspati, guru to the gods and regent of the planet Jupiter. In Thai, the word is Wan Pharuehatsabodi—referring to the Hindu deity Bṛhaspati, also associated with Jupiter. En was an old Illyrian deity and in his honor in the Albanian language Thursday is called “Enjte”. In the Nahuatl language, Thursday is Tezcatlipotōnal meaning “day of Tezcatlipoca”.

Thursday’s Conjuring

Thursday – is associated with Jupiter

Candle colors – Green, Purple, Orange, or Blue

Conjure for: Business, Gambling, Power, Material Wealth, Luck, Road Opening

— Old Style Conjure Wisdoms, Workings and Remedies, Starr Casas,

The Sky This Week: April 14 – 17

Thursday, April 14
Asteroid 6 Hebe currently lies among the background stars of eastern Leo the Lion, just a stone’s throw from 2nd-magnitude Denebola. This region rides high in the southeast during the early evening hours and peaks in the south around 11 p.m. local daylight time. This evening, 10th-magnitude Hebe lies some 2.5° due north of Denebola.

Friday, April 15
Although Jupiter reached opposition and peak visibility over a month ago (on March 8), it remains a stunning sight from dusk until the start of morning twilight. The giant planet shines at magnitude –2.4 against the backdrop of Leo the Lion. Turn a telescope on Jupiter and you will see a 43″-diameter disk with lots of atmospheric detail. And this evening, you also can observe the shadows of two of its large moons. Volcanic Io casts its shadow onto the jovian cloud tops starting at 6:55 p.m. EDT (unfortunately still during daylight), but the black dot doesn’t leave the disk until 9:10 p.m. If you miss Io, you don’t have to wait long for icy Europa’s shadow to show up. It traverses Jupiter from 9:32 p.m. until 12:18 a.m.

Saturday, April 16
Mars pokes above the eastern horizon just after 11 p.m. local daylight time this week and remains prominent until morning twilight is well underway. The Red Planet’s eastward motion relative to the background stars of southern Ophiuchus comes to a halt today; it then starts moving westward at the start of its so-called retrograde loop. This is a sure sign that Mars is approaching peak visibility, which it will reach at opposition in late May. Our neighboring world currently shines at magnitude–1.0, trailing only the Moon, Jupiter, and Sirius. When viewed through a telescope, Mars appears 14″ across and should display a prominent north polar cap as well as subtle dark markings.

Sunday, April 17
The waxing gibbous Moon’s motion through the night sky carries it near Jupiter tonight. The night sky’s two brightest objects appear only 2° apart, or about four times the Moon’s diameter.
 

Source

Astronomy Magazine

 

Your Daily Sun & Moon Data for Thursday, April 14th

Sun
Sun Direction: ↑ 91.78° E
Sun Altitude: 18.57°
Sun Distance: 93.250 million mi
Next Solstice: Jun 20, 2016 5:34 PM (Summer)
Sunrise Today: 6:21 AM↑ 77° East
Sunset Today: 7:29 PM↑ 283° West
Length of Day: 13 hours, 8 minutes

 

Moon
Moon Direction: ↑ 10.39° N
Moon Altitude: -36.81°
Moon Distance: 240447 mi
Next Full Moon: Apr 22, 201612:23 AM
Next New Moon: May 6, 20162:29 PM
Next Moonrise: Today12:46 PM
Current Moon Phase: Waxing Gibbous
Illumination: 54.1%

 

Source

timeanddate.com

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2016 April 12

Combined Solar Eclipse Corona from Earth and Space
Image Credits: J. Vilinga (Angola, IAP), LASCO, NRL, SOHO, ESA, NASA;
Processing: R. Wittich; Composition & Copyright: S. Koutchmy (IAP, CNRS)

 

Explanation: Sometimes, a total eclipse is a good time to eye the Sun. Taking advantage of an unusual juxtaposition of Earth, Moon and Sun, the featured image depicts the total solar eclipse that occurred last month as it appeared — nearly simultaneously — from both Earth and space. The innermost image shows the total eclipse from the ground, with the central pupil created by the bright Sun covered by a comparatively dark Moon. Surrounding the blocked solar disk is thetenuous corona of Sun imaged in white light, easily visible from the ground only during an eclipse. Normally, this corona is hard to track far from the Sun, but the featured montage matches it to false-colored observations of the Sun from NASAand ESA’s space-based, Sun-orbiting, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Observations like this allow the study of the constantly changing magnetic activity both near and far from the Sun, the same activity that ultimately drives Earth’s auroras.

Moon in Winter Circle on April 12

Tonight – April 12, 2016 – look for the moon and Winter Circle stars. It’s difficult to convey the humongous size of the Winter Circle, this lasso of brilliant stars that fills our western sky at dusk and nightfall. But you can see the circular pattern of stars around the moon tonight.

The Winter Circle stars aren’t the brightest star-like object in the sky on these April, 2016 evenings. Instead, the brightest “star” in the evening sky is actually the planet Jupiter. The king planet will be hard to miss, because Jupiter ranks as fourth-brightest celestial body to light up the heavens, respectively, after the sun, moon and the planet Venus. But throughout April of 2016, Venus will sit in the glare of the rising sun and will not be all that easy to catch before sunrise (especially in the Northern Hemisphere).

The Winter Circle can be seen from the Southern Hemisphere, as well. If you’re in that part of the world, the star Sirius will appear at the top of the Circle and the star Capella at the bottom (if you can see Capella at all; it’s far to the north on the sky’s dome).

No matter where you live worldwide, observe the Winter Circle at dusk/nightfall because the Winter Circle stars that loom low at nightfall will sink below the horizon by early evening.

Bottom line: Use the moon on April 12, 2016, to find the bright stars of the Winter Circle!

 

Author

Bruce McClure

The Words of Confucius

I want you to be everything that’s you, deep at the center of your being.