Transfiguration

"The Transfiguration Cathedral in Pereslavl, Russia" by Anastasia Usvayskaya. The cathedral was built by the Grand Duke Yuri Dolgoruky in 1152.

The transfiguration of Jesus is one of the "miracles" of Christianity and reffers to the moment when Christ's "true nature" was revealed to his disciples. The event happen on top of Mt Tabor and was witnessed by Peter, James and John. It was described in gospels like this:

This is an Icon from The Transfiguration Cathedral in Pereslavl, depicting the moment when "Christ's true nature shone out of him like the sun"...

The Feast of Transfiguration has been celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox church since at least the 6th century, It is celebrated on the 6th of August. Why on this date?

The beginning of August marks the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. This change is marked by the Day of St Elijah the Thunderer. He brings the first autumn rains and cooling of the northern hemisphere. Which is why Serbs say that "From St Elijah, sun becomes ever dearer"

This is the time of the year when a major shift in the balance of power in the Sun-Earth system takes place. The power and influence of the sun (Yang) is at its maximum and starts to decrease. The power and influence of earth (Yin) is at its minimum and starts to increase...

I talked about this in detail in my post "Yin and Yang".

So there is definite change in nature in the Northern Hemisphere that starts at the beginning of August...Maybe this is the reason why it is then that we celebrate the feast of Transfiguration?

By the way, it turns out that the arrival of the St Elijah's thundering chariots corresponds with a natural phenomenon which was only discovered very recently: the yearly maximum of the bouncing of the solar winds off the tops of the clouds...

I talked about this in my post "The thundering sun god".

Interestingly, Elijah, who is in Serbian folklore both Perun (Thunder god) and Veles (Sun god), basically old Sky God, Dabog, is present at Jesus's transfiguration...

In Serbia people believed that the Feast of Transfiguration is "Dan kada se preobražava i voda i gora" (The day when both water and forest are "changing")...

The usual explanation for this belief is that it comes from the fact that at the beginning of August leaves on trees start getting yellow and water in rivers and lakes starts getting cooler...

But there is another interesting scientific discovery which shows that the beginning of August is the time when water changes in another, less obvious way...

According to the Serbian folk calendar, the year only had two seasons. White, Warm part, between St George's Day (start of May) and St Mitar's day (start of October). And Dark, Cold part, between St Mitar's day (start of November) and St George's day (start of May). I talked about this in my post "Two crosses". 

The Feast of Transfiguration which is celebrated at the beginning of August, falls right in the middle of the old Serbian White, Warm half of the year (today end of summer beginning of autumn)...

Recent study by the Belgrade school of mereorology has shown that the rainwater in Serbia is getting more acidic between St George's day and The Feast of Transfiguration (summer) and is getting less acidic from The Feast of Transfiguration to St Mitar's day...

The water indeed "changes", gets "transfigured" around the beginning of August.

I wanted to check if this was just a local fluke. What I found is that this annual fluctuation of the rainwater ph value has been observed in other parts of Europe too...

Diagram showing annual fluctuation of rainwater acidity from Portugal. From: "pH of rainwater in Coimbra, Portugal: the seasonal variation" by J. S. Branco & S. J. Formosinho

Diagram showing annual fluctuation of rainwater acidity from France. From: "Cadmium contamination of three bivalve species (oysters, cockles and clams) in Nord Médoc salt marshes (Gironde estuary, France): Geochemical survey and metal bioaccumulation kinetics"

If anyone has any links to similar studies from around Europe, please let me know.

Anyway, I think that this is seriously cool stuff...

Another coincidence most likely...not. :)

Just found this out. 

Yearly UV radiation in the US

Yearly UV radiation in the UK

I want to thank to my farmer friend who alerted me to this. You can see that the amount of UV radiation starts to drop jus before the transfiguration...

Are theses things linked?

PS:

If it rained on Maundy Thursday (Thursday before Easter) people used to run out with pots and pans to catch it. When bottled it would last for a year and a little used in preparing bread would stop the dough being heavy...

I wonder how much this has to do with Christ and how much has to do with the PH of rain water,  which is in late spring approaching it's lowest yearly value...Acidic water (low PH) helps bread rise... 🙂