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Topics held in common by the first three pre-Socratic philosophers from Miletos in the Sixth Century B.C.E., Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, and by Xenophanes[1] from neighbouring Colophon, taken together may be viewed as constituting the agenda of a "Milesian School".
The agenda included a survey of the known kosmos (the orderly arrangement of the inhabited world surrounded by regularly moving heavenly bodies); redefinitions of divinity; and theories of the natural processes, constantly in operation, by which both kosmos and divinity are to be understood. It also included explanations of phenomena most men deemed terrifying: thunder, lightning, earthquakes, eclipses, and periodic destruction of the kosmos itself. It set about to explain these phenomena in terms of the same elemental processes (transformations of water, rarefaction and condensation of air, separating out of fire, air, water and earth, periodic reabsorption of these elements into a state of dynamic equilibrium) as it invoked to explain the orderly arrangement of the earth and the heavenly bodies. In so doing, it implied the baselessness of the traditional Olympian religion which attributed lightning and earthquakes to whims of Zeus and Poseidon and world-destructions to battles of the sky-gods.
The ultimate Milesian agenda may therefore have been to liberate people from paralysing fear of the immediate recurrence of celestial disturbances in the recent past. By insisting that world-destructions occurred only in vast cycles of time (such as a "great year" whose winter solstice was Deluge and summer solstice Conflagration) the Milesian School was schematically distorting memories of recent disturbances, and its activity may be seen as part of a general pattern of oblivion and psychological distancing common to all cultures after the end of the Bronze Age catastrophes. But by insisting that these world-destructions occurred only as the result of unalterable elemental processes, it was also erecting a proto-scientific bulwark against apocalyptic thinking and behavior.[2]
A legendary soothsayer and healer, originally of Pylos, who ruled at Argos. He introduced the worship of Dionysus, according to Herodotus, who asserted that his powers as a seer were derived from the Egyptians[2] and that he could understand the language of animals. A number of pseudepigraphal works of divination were circulated in Classical and Hellenistic times under the name Melampus. According to Herodotus and Pausanias (vi.17.6), on the authority of Hesiod, his father was Amythaon, whose name implies the "ineffable" or "unspeakably great";[3] thus Melampus and his heirs were Amythaides of the "House of Amythaon".Again, there isn't much of a factual nature about Orpheus though there is a lot of speculation about Orphism. So, Wikipedia again:
In Homer's Odyssey,[4] a digression concerning the lineage of Theoclymenus, "a prophet, sprung from Melampus' line of seers",[5] sketches the epic narrative concerning Melampus with such brevity that its details must have been familiar to Homer's audience. With brief hints, a sequence of episodes is alluded to, in which we discern strife in Pylos between Melampus and Neleus, who usurps Melampus's "great high house", forcing him into heroic exile. Melampus spends a year as bondsman in the house of Phylacus, "all for Neleus' daughter Pero". At his extremity, Melampus is visited by "the mad spell a Fury, murderous spirit, cast upon his mind. But the seer worked free of death" and succeeded at last in rustling Phylacus's cattle back to Pylos, where he avenged himself on Neleus and gave Pero in marriage to his brother Bias. But Melampus's own destiny lay in Argos, where he lived and ruled, married and sired a long line, also briefly sketched in Homer's excursus.
A work attributed in antiquity to Hesiod exists (Melampodia) in such fragmentary quotations and chance remarks that its reconstruction, according to Walter Burkert,[6] is "most uncertain." (Wikipedia)
In recent years, a larger percentage of precipitation has come in the form of intense single-day events. Nine of the top 10 years for extreme one-day precipitation events have occurred since 1996And some unseasonable snow events:
With El Niño conditions brewing for later in 2023, cold temperatures will bring ice, sleet, and snow in January and February to those living on the I-95 corridor, between Washington D.C. and Boston.Again, are we witnessing the first stages of an ice age?
The Sun has entered into the modern Grand Solar Minimum (2020-2053) that will lead to a significant reduction of solar magnetic field and activity like during Maunder minimum leading to noticeable reduction of terrestrial temperature. - Zharkova, 2020Time will tell. Just remember that natural climate changes are not linear and periods of calm can be followed by sudden and rapid changes. Look for the signs and prepare accordingly.