Andrew Theitic - The Witches Almanac: Spring 2018-2019: The Magic of Plants

CONTENTS

Baten Kaitos

by Timi Chasen

BREATHING TIME An Assistant Professor from Harvard Medical School has been showing the world how regular meditation and mindfulness practices have profoundly positive effects upon brain function and structure.

In a documentary called The Connection, as well as in an interview with the Washington Post, Mass General Hospital neuroscientist Sarah Lazar explains how MRI imaging has been able to demonstrably show the benefits of meditation, and how routine practice can change both brain chemistry and quality of life.

Studying two separate groups of individuals over a span of merely eight weeks, with one engaged in a regimen of regular meditation and the other not, Lazar was able to find increased brain activity and the thickening of tissue in areas of the brain associated with learning, memory, empathy, visualization, cognition and compassion, while noting a marked lessening of activity in those areas of the brain that monitor stress and anxiety.

This victory means more mindfulness studies are sure to come, as Harvard and other Ivy-League institutions such as Brown University are tasking some of their best and brightest in the Religion, Psychology, and Neuroscience departments to dig even deeper.

However, we at The Witches' Almanac see it as another instance of modern science verifying something that mystics have been saying for thousands of years.

THE MEDIEVAL PYRAMIDS OF EAST ST. LOUIS While Europe was dealing with the tumultuous invasions of the Dark Ages, cyclopean mounds and towering pyramids were being constructed alongside the swamplands of the Mississippi River. Immigration to this new settlement began in earnest around 900 CE, as thousands flocked from miles around.

The city was thriving by 1100 and would have had a population of approximately thirty thousand peoplelarger than both Paris and London at the time. Officially, it is currently deemed the largest pre-Columbian city found within continental US territory.