Pope Francis attributed a second miracle to Carlo Acutis, one of the last steps toward canonization.
A tapestry featuring a portrait of Carlo Acutis hung at the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi during the beatification ceremony.Credit…Pool photo by Vatican
Pope Francis cleared the way for an Italian teenager to become the first millennial saint by attributing a second miracle to him, the Vatican announced Thursday.
The teenager, Carlo Acutis, is often called the patron saint of the internet among Roman Catholics because of his computer skills, which he used to share his faith. He died of leukemia in 2006 when he was just 15.
Carlo was born in London to Italian parents and moved with his family to Milan when he was a child. His passion for Catholicism bloomed early, his mother, Antonia Acutis, told The New York Times in an interview in 2020. At 7, he began attending daily Mass. His faith inspired his mother to rejoin the church, she said.
He was called to serve, finding ways to help those less fortunate and donating to the unhoused, she said. In the months before his death, Carlo used his self-taught digital skills to create a website archiving miracles. He also enjoyed playing soccer and video games.
After he died, Ms. Acutis told The Times that people from all over the world had told her about medical miracles, including cures for infertility and cancer, that happened after they prayed to her son.
More on the Roman Catholic Church
An Anti-Gay Slur: The Vatican said that Pope Francis “extends his apologies” after reports that he used an offensive slang word referring to gay men at what was supposed to be a closed-door meeting.
Rules for Supernatural Claims: The Vatican unveiled new guidelines for evaluating visions of the Virgin Mary and other supernatural faith-based phenomena in a document that offers detailed instructions to bishops.
“Carlo was the light answer to the dark side of the web,” his mother said, adding that some admirers had called him an “influencer for God.”
Carlo’s life “can be used to show how the internet can be used for good, to spread good things,” Ms. Acutis added.
Carlo’s journey to canonization began in 2020, after the Diocese of Assisi, where his family owned property, petitioned the Vatican to recognize him as a saint.
In February 2020, Pope Francis attributed the healing of a boy with a malformed pancreas to Carlo after the child came into contact with one of his shirts. Carlo was the first millennial to be “beatified,” or blessed by the church, another step on the path to sainthood.
A final step is for the pope to approve a second miracle.
According to the Vatican, the second miracle involved the recovery of a Costa Rican university student who suffered severe head trauma after falling off her bicycle in Florence. The woman needed major brain surgery, and doctors warned survival rates were low. The woman’s mother traveled to Assisi to pray for her daughter at Carlo’s tomb at the Sanctuary of the Renunciation and ask for Carlo’s intercession.
The young woman quickly began to show signs of improvement in her breathing, mobility and speech, the Vatican said. Ten days after the woman’s mother visited Carlo’s tomb, a CT scan showed the hemorrhage on the woman’s brain had vanished, and she was later transferred to a rehabilitation facility.
The Pope said Thursday that he would convene a meeting of cardinals to consider Carlo’s sainthood. The Vatican did not announce a date for the formal canonization ceremony.
Carlo’s path to becoming the first millennial saint is a milestone, said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and the author of the book “A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American.” Carlo used the internet and his computer skills to spread his faith, offering the Catholic Church an opportunity to show a more positive side to social media, she said. Making Carlo a saint may also help the church connect with young Catholics, many of whom have become increasingly disengaged, she said.
“This is an example of a person like them, that hopefully can draw them back into the church,” Professor Cummings said.
Looking for a good movie to pass the time this Memorial Day weekend? The New York Times’s chief film critic, Manohla Dargis, and movie critic, Alissa Wilkinson, have you covered. Here are their top picks for the year so far. All are in theaters or available on demand.
The story: Glen Powell is a philosophy professor who moonlights for the police in New Orleans when he finds himself undercover posing as a hit man in this Richard Linklater movie. An encounter with Madison (Adria Arjona), a housewife looking to hire him, raises the stakes, comedically and romantically.
Alissa Wilkinson’s take: “If I see a movie more delightful than “Hit Man” this year, I’ll be surprised. It’s the kind of romp people are talking about when they say that “they don’t make them like they used to”: It’s romantic, sexy, hilarious, satisfying and a genuine star-clinching turn for Glen Powell, who’s been having a moment for about two years now.” Read the review.
Kirsten Dunst plays a war photographer in Alex Garland’s “Civil War.” Credit…A24, via Associated Press
The story: Set in the near future, “Civil War” depicts a United States that has devolved into conflict between the Western Forces of California and Texas (yeah, yeah, we know) and the federal government. As photojournalists played by Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura and Cailee Spaeny make their way to Washington, D.C., they encounter dangerous and unsettling scenes, painting a disturbing portrait of America in this Alex Garland drama.
Manohla Dargis’s take: “Hollywood’s longstanding, deeply American imperative for happy endings maintains an iron grip on movies, even in ostensibly independent productions. There’s no such possibility for that in ‘Civil War.’ The very premise of Garland’s movie means that … a happy ending is impossible, which makes this very tough going. Rarely have I seen a movie that made me so acutely uncomfortable or watched an actor’s face that, like Dunst’s, expressed a nation’s soul-sickness so vividly that it felt like an X-ray.” Read the review.
From left, Raka (Peter Macon), Noa (Owen Teague) and Nova (Freya Allan) in “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”Credit…20th Century Studios
The story: Picking up generations after the last trilogy ended, Wes Ball’s action-adventure follows Noa (Owen Teague) after his clan has been attacked. On his own now, he meets up with Raka, a disciple of Caesar, the leader in the earlier movies, as well as a mute human (Freya Allen).
Alissa Wilkinson’s take: “‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ is set in the future, but like a lot of science fiction … there’s a knowing sense that all this has happened before, and all this will happen again. That’s what makes ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ powerful, in the end. It probes how the act of co-opting idealisms and converting them to dogmas has occurred many times over.” Read the review.
‘Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World’
Ilinca Manolache plays Angela in “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World.”Credit…MUBI
The story: In Radu Jude’s scathing comedy, a foulmouthed production assistant named Angela (Ilinca Manolache) drives around Bucharest, Romania, looking for injured workers to interview for a workplace safety video.
Manohla Dargis’s take: “As she changes gears, and the movie switches between black-and-white film and color video, Angela flips off other drivers, acidly critiques all that she encounters, creates TikTok videos and effectively maps the geopolitical landscape of contemporary Romania.” Read the review.
David Dastmalchian in “Late Night With the Devil.”Credit…IFC Films/Shudder
The story: In this horror show from the brothers Cameron and Colin Cairnes, David Dastmalchian is a Johnny Carson-like late-night host desperate for ratings and awards. The film purports to be the footage of the episode that “shocked a nation.”
Alissa Wilkinson’s take: People watch late-night TV “to laugh, to be entertained and to feel some kind of companionship when the rest of the world goes to bed. ‘Late Night With the Devil’ twists that camaraderie around on itself, layering in familiar 1970s horror tropes about demonic possession, Satanism and the occult. The result is a nasty and delicious, unapologetic pastiche with a flair for menace. I had a blast.” Read the review.
‘Evil Does Not Exist’
In theaters.
Ryo Nishikawa in “Evil Does Not Exist.”Credit…Sideshow/Janus Films
The story: In a rural hamlet outside Tokyo, a developer tries to sell skeptical locals on the benefits of a glamping resort. As the residents push back against the prospect of tourism upending their quiet rhythms, the developer’s representatives come to see their point of view in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s deceptive drama.
Manohla Dargis’s take: “I have watched ‘Evil Does Not Exist’ twice, and each time the stealthy power of Hamaguchi’s filmmaking has startled me anew. Some of my reaction has to do with how he uses fragments from everyday life to build a world that is so intimate and recognizable — filled with faces, homes and lives as familiar as your own — that the movie’s artistry almost comes as a shock.” Read the review.
The musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto in the film.Credit…Janus Films
The story: In this documentary from Neo Sora, the influential Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto plays his entire final concert. It was filmed in a studio with only the crew watching.
Alissa Wilkinson’s take: “Even for the viewer without much knowledge of Sakamoto’s work, ‘Opus’ holds its own as the rare cinematic space for contemplation. There’s no context given, no attempt to create a narrative. Instead, the visual space is carefully filmed and the lighting manipulated to subtly shift the mood.” Read the review.
Seydou Sarr, left, and Moustapha Fall in “Io Capitano,” directed by Matteo Garrone.Credit…Greta de Lazzaris/Cohen Media Group
The story: Matteo Garrone’s drama tracks Seydou and Moussa, two Senegalese cousins (Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall),as they try to reach the West on a journey that takes them through the Sahara to a brutal stay in Libya, and then eventually to the edge of the Mediterranean.
Manohla Dargis’s take: “Garrone doesn’t spare you much, but if the movie never turns into an exercise in art-house sadism, it’s because his focus remains unwaveringly fixed on his characters who, from the start, are fully rounded people, not props, symbols or object lessons. … His great strength here is the tenderness of his touch.” Read the review.
William Shakespeare’s – Macbeth** – The play Macbeth will be the subject of the evening, Enlightening viewpoints will be shared by the Actors and directors from some of the productions of the plays & movies, to give us insights as to the culture, the characters, and even the playwright of the play. Followed by the best part of the evening, our conversation on the film.
*Salon A salon is a gathering of people with the aim “either to please or to educate”. Calvin’s Salons are in the tradition of the French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries. An intimate gathering of diverse people hosted by a salonnière who moderates conversation in the pursuit of cognitive growth and artistic experience. Salon Calvin’s Updated method involves videos, movies, and books as cultural entertainment and insightful commentary and analysis for Salon participants to discuss, exchange ideas, and enjoy.
**Side note for Prosperos Students, know that this material being discussed is on the list of recommended Books from Thanes High Watch Reading List.
Robert De Niro speaks in support of U.S. President Joe Biden outside Manhattan Criminal Court. The actor branded Donald Trump a dangerous
29 may 24 (RSN.org)
After a news conference outside the Manhattan courtroom where Trump is on trial, De Niro mixed it up with a crowd of protesters who called him a “little punk” whose “movies suck.”
President Joe Biden’s campaign held a news conference outside the Manhattan courtroom where Donald Trump is on trial in his hush money case, with actor Robert De Niro and two officers who defended the Capitol from the Jan. 6 mob in 2021 warning about the dangers of re-electing the former president.
“The Twin Towers fell just over here, just over there. This part of the city was like a ghost town, but we vowed we would not allow terrorists to change our way of life. … I love this city. I don’t want to destroy it. Donald Trump wants to destroy not only the city but the country, and eventually he can destroy the world,” De Niro said.
“I don’t mean to scare you. No, no, wait — maybe I do mean to scare you,” De Niro continued. “If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted. And elections — forget about it. That’s over; that’s done. If he gets in, I can tell you right now, he will never
After the news conference, on the way back to his car, De Niro mixed it up with some pro-Trump protesters, who yelled that he’s a “wannabe,” “paid sell-out” to the Democratic National Committee, “nobody” and a “little punk” whose “movies suck.”
“You’re not going to intimidate,” De Niro replied. “That’s what Trump does. … We are going to fight back. We’re trying to be gentlemen in this world, the Democrats. You are gangsters. You are gangsters!”
“You’re washed up,” a protester yelled.
“F— you,” De Niro shot back.
The Trump campaign also had a news conference mocking the Biden campaign’s enlistment of De Niro. Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt went after “elitist out-of-touch Hollywood actors like Robert De Niro who have no idea the real problems that people in this city and across this country are facing.”
“The best that Biden can do is roll out a washed-up actor,” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said.
On Friday, the Biden campaign released a new ad featuring De Niro — who was nominated this year for an Oscar for the movie “Killers of the Flower Moon” — that will air on television and digital platforms across battleground states.
In the scuffle Tuesday, there was at least one De Niro fan in the crowd who yelled out, “I loved you in ‘Taxi Driver’!”
Few people have enchanted the popular imagination with science more powerfully and lastingly than physicist Richard Feynman (May 11, 1918–February 15, 1988) — the “Great Explainer” with the uncommon gift for bridging the essence of science with the most human and humane dimensions of life.
“My heart stopped,” Gleick tells me. “I have never had an experience like that as a biographer, before or since.”
In a mass of unread papers sent to him by Feynman’s widow, Gweneth, Gleick found a letter that discomposed his most central understanding of Feynman’s character. A generation after computing pioneer Alan Turing tussled with the binary code of body and spirit in the wake of loss, Feynman — a scientist perhaps uncommonly romantic yet resolutely rational and unsentimental in his reverence for the indomitable laws of physics that tend toward decay — penned a remarkable letter to a physical nonentity that was, for the future Nobel-winning physicist, the locus of an irrepressible metaphysical reality.
Richard Feynman as a youth
In high school, the teenage Richard spent summers at the beach in his native Far Rockaway. There, he grew besotted with a striking girl named Arline — a girl he knew he would marry. Both complement and counterpoint to his own nature, Arline met Richard’s inclination for science with ardor for philosophy and art. (The art class he took just to be near her would lay the foundation for his little-known, lifelong passion for drawing.) By his junior year, Richard proposed. Arline accepted. With the eyes of young love, they peered into a shared future of infinite possibility for bliss.
Richard and Arline, 1940s
But they were abruptly grounded when a mysterious malady began afflicting Arline with inexplicable symptoms — a lump would appear and disappear on her neck, fevers would roil over her with no apparent cause. Eventually, she was hospitalized for what was believed to be typhoid.
Gleick writes:
Feynman began to glimpse the special powerlessness that medical uncertainty can inflict on a scientific person. He had come to believe that the scientific way of thinking brought a measure of calmness and control in difficult situations — but not now.
Just as Feynman began bombarding the doctors with questions that steered them toward a closer approximation of the scientific method, Arline began to recover just as mysteriously and unpredictably as she had fallen ill. But the respite was only temporary. The symptoms returned, still shorn of a concrete explanation but now unambiguously pointing toward the terminal — a prognosis Arline’s doctors kept from her. Richard refused to go along with the deception — he and Arline had promised each other to face life with unremitting truthfulness — but he was forced to calibrate his commitment to circumstance.
Gleick writes:
His parents, Arline’s parents, and the doctors all urged him not to be so cruel as to tell a young woman she was dying. His sister, Joan, sobbing, told him he was stubborn and heartless. He broke down and bowed to tradition. In her room at Farmingdale Hospital, with her parents at her side, he confirmed that she had glandular fever. Meanwhile, he started carrying around a letter — a “goodbye love letter,” as he called it — that he planned to give her when she discovered the truth. He was sure she would never forgive the unforgivable lie.
He did not have long to wait. Soon after Arline returned home from the hospital she crept to the top of the stairs and overheard her mother weeping with a neighbor down in the kitchen. When she confronted Richard — his letter snug in his pocket — he told her the truth, handed her the letter, and asked her to marry him.
Arline and Richard, 1940s
Marriage, however, proved to be a towering practical problem — Princeton, where Feynman was now pursuing a Ph.D., threatened to withdraw the fellowships funding his graduate studies if he were to wed, for the university considered the emotional and pragmatic responsibilities of marriage a grave threat to academic discipline.
Just as Feynman began considering leaving Princeton, a diagnosis detonated the situation — Arline had contracted a rare form of tuberculosis, most likely from unpasteurized milk.
At first, Feynman was relieved that the grim alternative options of Hodgkin’s disease and incurable cancers like lymphoma had been ruled out. But he was underestimating, or perhaps misunderstanding, the gravity of tuberculosis — the very disease which had taken the love of Alan Turing’s life and which, during its two-century heyday, had claimed more lives around the globe than any other malady and all wars combined. At the time of Arline’s diagnosis in 1941, immunology was in its infancy, the antibiotic treatment of bacterial infections practically nonexistent, and the first successful medical application of penicillin a year away. Tuberculosis was a death sentence, even if it was a slow death with intervals of remission — a fact Richard and Arline faced with an ambivalent mix of brave lucidity and hope against hope.
Meanwhile, Richard’s parents met the prospect of his marriage with bristling dread. His mother, who believed he was marrying Arline out of pity rather than love, admonished him that he would be putting his health and his very life in danger, and coldly worried about how the stigma attached to tuberculosis would impact her brilliant young son’s reputation. “I was surprised to learn such a marriage is not unlawful,” she scoffed unfeelingly. “It ought to be.”
But Richard was buoyed by love — a love so large and luminous that he found himself singing aloud one day as he was arranging Arline’s transfer to a sanatorium. Determined to go through with the wedding, he wrote to his beloved:
I guess maybe it is like rolling off of a log — my heart is filled again & I’m choked with emotions — and love is so good & powerful — it’s worth preserving — I know nothing can separate us — we’ve stood the tests of time and our love is as glorious now as the day it was born — dearest riches have never made people great but love does it every day — we’re not little people — we’re giants … I know we both have a future ahead of us — with a world of happiness — now & forever.
On June 29, 1942, they promised each other eternity.
Richard and Arline on their wedding day
Gleick writes:
He borrowed a station wagon from a Princeton friend, outfitted it with mattresses for the journey, and picked up Arline in Cedarhurst. She walked down her father’s hand-poured concrete driveway wearing a white dress. They crossed New York Harbor on the Staten Island ferry — their honeymoon ship. They married in a city office on Staten Island, in the presence of neither family nor friends, their only witnesses two strangers called in from the next room. Fearful of contagion, Richard did not kiss her on the lips. After the ceremony he helped her slowly down the stairs, and onward they drove to Arline’s new home, a charity hospital in Browns Mills, New Jersey.
Meanwhile, WWII was reaching its crescendo of destruction, dragging America into the belly of death with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now one of the nation’s most promising physicists, Feynman was recruited to work on what would become the Manhattan Project and soon joined the secret laboratory in Los Alamos.
Feynman’s Los Alamos badge
Arline entered the nearby Albuquerque sanatorium, from where she wrote him letters in code — for the sheer fun of it, because she knew how he cherished puzzles, but the correspondence alarmed the military censors at the laboratory’s Intelligence Office. Tasked with abating any breaches to the secrecy of the operation, they cautioned Feynman that coded messages were against the rules and demanded that his wife include a key in each letter to help them decipher it. This only amplified Arline’s sense of fun — she began cutting holes into her letters, covering passages with ink, and even mail-ordered a jigsaw puzzle kit with which to cut up the pages and completely confound the agents.
But the levity masked the underlying darkness which Richard and Arline tried so desperately to evade — Arline was dying. As her body failed, he steadied himself to her spirit:
You are a strong and beautiful woman. You are not always as strong as other times but it rises & falls like the flow of a mountain stream. I feel I am a reservoir for your strength — without you I would be empty and weak… I find it much harder these days to write these things to you.
In every single letter, he told her that he loved her. “I have a serious affliction: loving you forever,” he wrote.
Richard and Arline at the Albuquerque sanatorium
In early 1945, two and a half years into their marriage, Richard and Arline made love for the first time. He had been too afraid of harming her frail health somehow, she too afraid of infecting him with the deadly bacterium consuming her. But Arline insisted that this pent up desire could no longer be contained and assured Richard that this would only bring them closer — to each other, and to the life they had so lovingly dreamt up for themselves:
I’ll always be your sweetheart & first love — besides a devoted wife — we’ll be proud parents too… I am proud of you always Richard –[you are] a good husband, and lover, & well, coach, I’ll show you what I mean Sunday.
But heightened as their hopes were by this new dimension of shared experience, Arline’s health continued to plummet. Her weight dropped to eighty-four pounds. Exasperated by the helplessness of medicine, which Feynman had come to see not as a manifestation but as a mutilation of the scientific method, he invested all hope in an experimental drug made of mold growths. “Keep hanging on,” he exhorted Arline. “Nothing is certain. We lead a charmed life.” She began spitting blood.
At twenty-seven, on the precipice of a brilliant scientific career, he was terminally in love.
On June 16, 1945, while working at the computing room at Los Alamos, Feynman received a call from the sanatorium that Arline was dying. He borrowed a colleague’s car and sped to the hospital, where he found her immobile, her eyes barely tracing his movement. Early in his scientific career, he had been animated by the nature of time. Now, hours stretched and contracted as he sat at her deathbed, until one last small breath tolled the end at 9:21PM.
The wake of loss has a way of tranquilizing grief with the pressing demands of practical arrangements — a tranquilizer we take willingly, almost gratefully. The following morning, Feynman arranged for his beloved’s cremation, methodically collected her personal belongings, and on the final page of the small spiral notebook in which she recorded her symptoms he wrote with scientific remove: “June 16 — Death.”
And so we arrive at Gleick’s improbable discovery in that box of letters — improbable because of the extreme rationality with which Feynman hedged against even the slightest intimation of metaphysical conjectures untestable by science and unprovable by reason. During his courtship of Arline, he had been vexed by her enthusiasm for Descartes, whose “proof” of God’s perfection he found intellectually lazy and unbefitting of Descartes’s reputation as a champion of reason. He had impishly countered Arline’s insistence that there are two sides to everything by cutting a piece of paper and half-twisting it into a Möbius strip, the ends pasted together to render a surface with just one side.
Everything that appeared mystical, Feynman believed, was simply an insufficiently explained mystery with a physical answer not yet found. Even Arline’s dying hour had offered testing ground for conviction. Puzzlingly, the clock in the room had stopped at exactly 9:21PM — the time of death. Aware of how this bizarre occurrence could foment the mystical imagination in unscientific minds, Feynman reasoned for an explanation. Remembering that he had repaired the clock multiple times over the course of Arline’s stay at the sanatorium, he realized that the instrument’s unwieldy mechanism must have choked when the nurse picked it up in the low evening light to see and record the time.
How astonishing and how touchingly human, then, that Feynman penned the letter Gleick found in the box forty-two years later — a letter he wrote to Arline in October of 1946, 488 days after her death:
D’Arline,
I adore you, sweetheart.
I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.
It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.
But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.
I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures.
When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.
I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I — I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.
My darling wife, I do adore you.
I love my wife. My wife is dead.
Rich.
And then, with the sole defibrillator for heartache we have — humor — Feynman adds:
PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.
None of us feel too good when the Five of Cups, Lord of Disappointment, turns up in our readings. It almost always means that somebody somewhere is going to make us feel let down or sad about something. And often when that happens we can end up giving ourselves a hard time, and hurting ourselves unnecessarily.But there’s one important thing to consider when we get disappointed – we feel that way because an expectation we had is not fulfilled, whether by ourselves or by somebody else. So if you get this card coming up often, it’s worth taking a good look at your expectations. Are they unrealistic? Are they geared to the abilities and characteristics of the person you hold them of? Or do you expect too much – this is an attitude we tend to apply most viciously to ourselves. Are you expecting more than you have a right to? Are you expecting things that the person in question -yourself or somebody else – is simply not able to provide? If the answer to any of the above is yes, then if you change your expectation, you’ll stop being disappointed.When this card comes up, it warns us that either we have failed to resolved an old difficulty, or that – realistic or not – our expectations are about to be disappointed. Often this will happen in an emotional situation (because this is a Cup card) but can happen elsewhere in our lives too, because disappointment itself is an emotion and therefore belongs to Cups. Aside from locating where the problem lies, there’s rarely much that can be done except preparing ourselves to accept the inevitable consequence of being alive – into each life a little rain must fall etc.etc.One thing that is always worth bearing in mind with a card like this is that the feelings which arise when it occurs often scare us into failing to take another risk, failing to make another effort, hiding away where we can’t be disappointed again. But then if we give in to those sort of feelings we’re expecting to be disappointed again, aren’t we? So maybe we need to think about the Nine of Wands when we see the Five of Cups, reminding ourselves of that inner reserve of strength and capability we can all release inside us!
The eerie glow of a dead star, which exploded long ago as a supernova, reveals itself in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Crab Nebula./Photo: NASA and ESA; courtesy M. Weisskopf (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Welcome to the future of your education, Aries! Here are actions you can take to ensure you are exposed to all the lush lessons you need and deserve in the coming months. 1. Identify three subjects you would be excited to learn more about. 2. Shed dogmas and fixed theories that interfere with your receptivity to new information. 3. Vow to be alert for new guides or mentors. 4. Formulate a three-year plan to get the training and teachings you need most. 5. Be avidly curious.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Poet Emily Dickinson was skillful at invoking and managing deep feelings. One scholar described her emotions as being profoundly erotic, outlandish, sensuous, flagrant and nuanced. Another scholar said she needed and sought regular doses of ecstasy. Yet even she, maestro of passions, got overwhelmed. In one poem, she wondered “Why Floods be served to us in Bowls?” I suspect you may be having a similar experience, Taurus. It’s fun, though sometimes a bit too much. The good news is that metaphorically speaking, you will soon be in possession of a voluminous new bowl that can accommodate the floods.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): All of us periodically enjoy phases I call “Freedom from Cosmic Compulsion.” During these times, the Fates have a reduced power to shape our destinies. Our willpower has more spaciousness to work with. Our intentions get less resistance from karmic pressures that at other times might narrow our options. As I meditated on you, dear Gemini, I realized you are now in a phase of Freedom from Cosmic Compulsion. I also saw that you will have more of these phases than anyone else during the next eleven months. It might be time for you to get a “LIBERATION” tattoo or an equivalent new accessory.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Bold predictions: 1. Whatever treasure you have lost or are losing will ultimately be reborn in a beautiful form. 2. Any purposeful surrender you make will hone your understanding of exactly what your soul needs next to thrive. 3. A helpful influence may fade away, but its disappearance will clear the path for new helpful influences that serve your future in ways you can’t imagine yet. 4. Wandering around without a precise sense of where you’re going will arouse a robust new understanding of what home means to you.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Denmark’s King Canute IV (1043–1086) wasn’t bashful about asserting his power. He claimed ownership of all the land. He insisted on the right to inherit the possessions of all foreigners and people without families. Goods from shipwrecks were automatically his property. But once, his efforts to extend his authority failed. He had his servants move his throne to a beach as the tide came in. Seated and facing the North Sea, he commanded, “Halt your advance!” The surf did not obey. “You must surrender to my superior will!” he exclaimed, but the waters did not recede. Soon, his throne was engulfed by water. Humbled, Canute departed. I bring this up not to discourage you, Leo. I believe you can and should expand your influence and clout in the coming weeks. Just be sure you know when to stop.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo-born Irène Joliot-Curie craved more attention than she got from her mother, Marie Curie. Mom was zealously devoted to her career as a chemist and physicist, which is one reason why she won Nobel Prizes in both fields. But she didn’t spend sufficient time with her daughter. Fortunately, Irène’s grandfather Eugène became his granddaughter’s best friend and teacher. With his encouragement, she grew into a formidable scientist and eventually won a Nobel Prize in chemistry herself. Even if you’re not a kid, Virgo, I suspect there may be a mentor and guide akin to Eugène in your future. Go looking! To expedite the process, define what activity or skill you want help in developing.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I have a fantasy that sometime in the coming months, you will slip away to a sanctuary in a pastoral paradise. There you will enjoy long hikes and immerse yourself in healing music and savor books you’ve been wanting to read. Maybe you will write your memoirs or compose deep messages to dear old friends. Here’s the title of what I hope will be a future chapter of your life story: “A Thrillingly Relaxing Getaway.” Have you been envisioning an adventure like this, Libra? Or is your imagination more inclined to yearn for a trip to an exciting city where you will exult in high culture? I like that alternative, too. Maybe you will consider doing both.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): An Instagrammer named sketchesbyboze advises us, “Re-enchant your life by making the mundane exciting. You are not ‘going to the drugstore.’ You are visiting the apothecary to buy potions. You are not ‘running an errand.’ You are undertaking an unpredictable adventure. You are not ‘feeding the birds.’ You are making an alliance with the crow queen.” I endorse this counsel for your use, Scorpio. You now have the right and duty to infuse your daily rhythm with magic and fantasy. To attract life’s best blessings, you should be epic and majestic. Treat your life as a mythic quest.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): I invite you to invite new muses into your life in the coming months. Give them auditions. Interview them. Figure out which are most likely to boost your creativity, stimulate your imagination, and rouse your inspiration in every area of your life, not just your art form. Tell them you’re ready to deal with unpredictable departures from the routine as long as these alternate paths lead to rich teachings. And what form might these muses take? Could be actual humans. Could be animals or spirits. Might be ancestral voices, exciting teachings, or pilgrimages to sacred sanctuaries. Expand your concept of what a muse might be so you can get as much muse-like input as possible.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The Japanese have a word for a problem that plagues other countries as well as theirs: karoshi, or death from working too hard and too much. No matter how high-minded our motivations might be, no matter how interesting our jobs are, most of us cannot safely devote long hours to intense labor week after week, month after month. It’s too stressful on the mind and body. I will ask you to monitor yourself for such proclivities in the coming months. You can accomplish wonders as long as you work diligently but don’t overwork. (PS: You won’t literally expire if you relentlessly push yourself with nonstop hard exertion, but you will risk compromising your mental health. So don’t do it!)
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Typically, human fertility is strongest when the temperature is sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit. But I suspect you will be an exception to the rule in the coming months. Whether it’s ten below or ninety in the shade, your fertility will be extra robust—literally as well as psychologically and spiritually. If you are a heterosexual who would rather make great art or business than new babies, be very attentive to your birth control measures. No matter what your gender or sexual preference is, I advise you to formulate very clear intentions about how you want to direct all that lush fecundity. Identify which creative outlets are most likely to serve your long-term health and happiness.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Here’s a key assignment in the coming months: Enjoy fantasizing about your dream home. Imagine the comfortable sanctuary that would inspire you to feel utterly at home in your body, your life, and the world. Even if you can’t afford to buy this ultimate haven, you will benefit from visualizing it. As you do, your subconscious mind will suggest ways you can enhance your security and stability. You may also attract influences and resources that will eventually help you live in your dream home.
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove • May 28, 2024 • Thomas Moore, PhD, is the author of the number one bestseller Care of the Soul and thirty other books on the depth psychology of everyday life. He has been a psychotherapist for over thirty years and frequently lectures for Jung societies, medical conferences, spirituality conferences and therapy organizations. His most recent books include Soul Therapy and The Eloquence of Silence. Thomas shares his thoughts on soul and soulful living—in particular in our connection to nature. He emphasizes that it is important to approach the world as living, as alive and enchanted, so we can deeply listen and receive guidance without any interference. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:07 Defining soul 00:07:17 Transcendentalists and nature 00:16:12 Practices and divine guidance 00:26:23 Jung the magician 00:31:48 Redefining religion 00:38:10 Flow and the source of knowledge 00:46:45 Reenchantment and the world soul 00:53:13 Ideological versus spiritual 00:57:46 Thoreau and social justice 01:02:20 Intelligent action Edited subtitles for this video are available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish. New Thinking Allowed Guest Host Leanne Whitney, PhD, is a depth psychologist and transformational coach based in Los Angeles, CA. She is the author of Consciousness in Jung and Patañjali and currently serves as Executive Director of Center for Transformation and Integration. Her website is https://leannewhitney.com/ To learn about Leanne Whitney’s upcoming Transformational Coaching Certification Course with an emphasis in Somatic Integration Therapy, please visit: https://leannewhitney.com/coaching-ce… Producer: Megumi Nishikura Editor: John Hartmann (Recorded on April 3, 2024)
André Duqum • Apr 9, 2024 • Know Thyself Podcast – Full Episodes Go to https://rb.gy/upd3es and use coupon code KNOWTHYSELF to save 15%. Rosicrucian Spiritual Teacher Dr. Robert Gilbert is back on Know Thyself this week for a deeper discussion into structuring the subtle body, awakening higher knowledge, and avoiding spiritual pitfalls. He and André discuss how to cultivate true sincerity on the spiritual path: a resonance that is essential for proper development and missing in many teachings. Robert shares his story of awakening and how he followed the messages that led him to his true destiny. He reveals how to cultivate a stronger inner vision to be able to have deeper clarity into your unique path and master self observation. He also dives deep into merging wisdom from different spiritual traditions, decoding the mysteries of sacred geometry, and the strong significance of the number 12. André’s Book Recommendations: https://www.knowthyself.one/books ___________ Timecodes: 0:00 Intro 2:29 How to Properly use Spiritual Knowledge 13:27 Spiritual Sincerity & True Resonance on the Path 22:30 Robert’s Story: From Military to Spiritual Teacher 38:46 Spiritual Experiences That Shifted His Perspective 44:00 Cultivating Conscious Vision: Backward Review Exercise 56:13 Decoding Messages in Our Dreams 1:01:26 Tools for Mastering Self Observation 1:10:07 Merging Wisdom From Different Spiritual Traditions 1:19:51 Harnessing the Potential of Sacred Geometry 1:31:26 What Cymatics Reveals About Us 1:35:16 Opening our Perception to Different Realities 1:40:23 Applying this Knowledge for Structuring Subtle Body 1:47:28 Significance of the Number 12 2:02:50 Reality of Birthing the New Golden Age 2:09:37 Conclusion ___________ Robert J. Gilbert Ph.D. is a former U.S. Marine Corps instructor in NuclearBiological-Chemical Defense, with over 30 years of research into both mainstream and holistic health methods. He holds a Ph.D. in International Studies, and contributed to the first academic textbook on Transformational Politics. Dr. Gilbert has extensively studied French methods of Vibrational Radiesthesia from the early 1900’s, sponsoring the translation of many rare texts into English for the first time. Dr. Gilbert was also the first non-Egyptian to be granted Instructor status in the Egyptian system of BioGeometry®, founded by Dr. Ibrahim Karim of Cairo. Dr. Gilbert is currently the Director of the Vesica Institute for Holistic Studies in Asheville, North Carolina. He teaches both live and online courses, the latest of which is the Online series entitled Vibrational Testing and Healing.
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Robert De Niro speaks in support of U.S. President Joe Biden outside Manhattan Criminal Court. The actor branded Donald Trump a dangerous
Feynman began to glimpse the special powerlessness that medical uncertainty can inflict on a scientific person. He had come to believe that the scientific way of thinking brought a measure of calmness and control in difficult situations — but not now.
