Lmst

To those who celebrate, may you receive the gift of wisdom. Blessings at #Epiphany.

Sally Bosken told me all #astronomers had to have a #starofbethlehem speech ready. Thanks to her, I do.

#calendar #timekeeping #seasonoflight #12daysofchristmas #astronomy #histsci
detail from "Mary and Child, surrounded by angels" by "Master of Sant'Apollinare", photograph by N. A. Thune (CC-BY-SA 2.5), courtesy Wikimedia Commons

3 men richly dressed in tunics, hose, shoes, cloaks, and peaked red hats offer gifts. The one farthest to the right has white hair and a beard. The one farthest to the left has black hair and a beard. The middle is beardless with brown hair. In the background, green palm trees stand out against a golden sky and the names Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar. A small 8 point star is in the upper right. At their feet, there is a carpet of green grass with some flowers and shrubs. At the very bottom is a geometric boarder.

Epiphany is also the day for La Befana! The latest in my slightly sinister winter holiday folklore collection: the Italian Christmas witch. La Befana is a witch of Italian folklore who brings sweets & gifts to good children and coal or cinders to bad children on Epiphany Eve. She flies on her broom and comes down the chimney. It’s dangerous to watch her. She’s both grandmotherly and a witch, beloved & ridiculed. 🧵

#linocut #printmaking #Epiphany #Christmas #folklore #Befana #12daysofchristmas

My 8” x 8” linocut print with 4.5” x 6” printed area in dark blue ink shows La Befana, a crone or which standing on an tiled Italian rooftop by a chimney, carrying a large hamper of toys on her back. She’s wearing a dress with patched apron and patchwork shawl and pointed witch hat. She has scraggly hair, wrinkled face and large eyes that look directly at the viewer. The night sky behind includes stars and crescent moon.

Epiphany is time for my #linocut of Perchta, also known as Frau Perchta or Berchta (or Bertha in English), a figure from Alpine folklore, who visits during the 12 days of Christmas. Her name may come from “the bright one” or the German word for the feast of the Epiphany and her history is linked to white robbed goddesses like Holda who oversaw spinning and weaving or the goddess Frigg and she emerged from Germanic and 🧵

#printmaking #folklore #Perchta #winter #Berchta #12daysOfChristmas

My linocut card of Perchta in pale blue on white agains a background of birch trees. She is illustrated like a playing card with two versions: right side up young and beautiful, with crown, fur coat and holding a flame in her hand and upside down a terrifying crone in a hood with a knife. Text at the top reads “Happy Holidays” and at the bottom “Perchta.”

Today is the 12th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with knowledge of New Testament toilets https://toilet-guru.com/biblical_new.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 12th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with the story of how King Hezekiah once ritually defiled a shrine to Ba'al with a latrine https://toilet-guru.com/blog/7.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 12th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with the story of how King Jehu once ritually defiled a shrine to Ba'al with a latrine https://toilet-guru.com/blog/51.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 12th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with knowledge of Old Testament toilets https://toilet-guru.com/biblical_old.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 12th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with knowledge of New Testament toilets https://toilet-guru.com/biblical_new.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 12th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with the story of how King Hezekiah once ritually defiled a shrine to Ba'al with a latrine https://toilet-guru.com/blog/7.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 12th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with the story of how King Jehu once ritually defiled a shrine to Ba'al with a latrine https://toilet-guru.com/blog/51.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 12th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with knowledge of Old Testament toilets https://toilet-guru.com/biblical_old.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 12th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with knowledge of New Testament toilets https://toilet-guru.com/biblical_new.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 12th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with the story of how King Hezekiah once ritually defiled a shrine to Ba'al with a latrine https://toilet-guru.com/blog/7.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 12th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with the story of how King Jehu once ritually defiled a shrine to Ba'al with a latrine https://toilet-guru.com/blog/51.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 11th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with knowledge of New Testament toilets https://toilet-guru.com/biblical_new.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 11th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with the story of how King Hezekiah once ritually defiled a shrine to Ba'al with a latrine https://toilet-guru.com/blog/7.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 11th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with the story of how King Jehu once ritually defiled a shrine to Ba'al with a latrine https://toilet-guru.com/blog/51.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Today is the 11th day of #Christmas! Impress your family with knowledge of Old Testament toilets https://toilet-guru.com/biblical_old.html?s=mb #history #12DaysOfChristmas

Across twelve days we’ve explored sensory boundary resets — taste, sound, light, movement, calm. Today they converge. Physical proximity signals safety. Shared ritual lowers cognitive load. Emotional resonance deepens regulation.
Like an ensemble — melody, alto, tenor, bass — coherence arises from difference, not uniformity.
Marvin settles at the room’s centre of gravity, content. Nothing needs fixing. Boundaries are doing their job.
The final gift of Christmas is this:
togetherness that leaves everyone more regulated than they arrived.

#HybridMind42 #MarvinMoments #12DaysOfChristmas
#TheGiftOfGathering #BoundaryIntegration #HQP #ComplexSystems

🐈‍⬛ Marvin’s 12th Day of Christmas: The Gift of Gathering 🎁
On the twelfth day, the gift is integration.
As people gather, each arrives with their own rhythms — attention, breath, emotion, energy. And yet something measurable happens: voices adjust, movements synchronize, pauses align. Boundaries don’t vanish; they coordinate.
Neuroscience and systems theory describe this as phase alignment in coupled oscillators. Hybrid Quartet Principle predicts the same: stability emerges when complementary roles are held in balance, not collapsed into sameness.

#HybridMind42 #MarvinMoments #12DaysOfChristmas
#TheGiftOfGathering #BoundaryIntegration #HQP #ComplexSystems

#12DaysofChristmas

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