Natural events

This photo was taken on Saturday, October 30, 2010, over Kittilä, Finland, by photographer Sauli Kosk. I found it posted on SpaceWeather.com.

"Yesterday in Kittilä, Finland, photographer Sauli Koski witnessed a brief but unforgettable display when the rising sun shone through a morning cloud of wintery ice crystals. Fortunately he had his camera. "These were the best ice halos I have ever seen," says Koski. 'They were there for only about 10 minutes and then gone. What a delight!'

" 'It was a gem of a halo display,' agrees atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. 'Koski saw at least 13 different arcs. Some, including two types of Parry arc, are rare. Three more arcs, the helic, Parry supralateral arc, and Moilanen arc are exceedingly rare.' "

In religious iconography, represented in nearly every culture that produced religious art, a 'halo' is a ring of light that surrounds a person to represent their sacred or holy status. Our friend Rob Robb says that he 'sees' people as glowing colors. In his many books starting with The Teachings of Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda describes the sorcerer's view of people as like luminescent egg-shapes. Western iconography tended to depict halos as rings or disks around the head. Eastern art usually had the glowing light around the entire body, and sometimes represented by the image of flames.

The physics of solar atmospheric halos, as shown in Kosk's fine photograph above, involves sunlight shining through clouds of ice crystals suspended in air.  The fire of the sun filtered through ice prisms.

Fire and ice.

Fire and ice was a metaphor mentioned in the ACIM urtext,

"Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls, before the intrusion of fire and ice made this impossible."

The reference is to a poem by Robert Frost and I wrote about it here a few years ago.

-oOo-

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky
on Scribd.com