:: the other side ::

:: The Blessings of Hygeia

"I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asklepios, and Hygeia, and Panakeia, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation ... " - Hippocrates, The Hippocratic Oath

To my long time friends, Phil in Redondo Beach and Josh in Palo Alto, the healing powers of Hygeia. And for these children of the 80s, some music to go along with it. Phil, here is Aha! in a song that always makes me smile, and for Josh, it's got to be the Beach Boys.



Hygeia,in this brilliant painting by Klimt, is a goddess of healing and continued good health. She came to be associated with the moon and is most often seen at the side of her father the physician Asklepios.

Labels: friends, history, media, moon

:: From the Archive: Chick Sent Me High "in the Zone"
The entry Chick Sent Me High: Trading "in the Zone" was posted over at my actio-et-reactio site in April 2005, just before I created this page to better focus on "inner" issues. "Chick Sent me High" is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose work on Flow has earned him much acclaim, including a Wiki entry.

Although you'll see various lists of how to recognize "flow", I found the list Brett Steenberger adapted for his article Find the Zone (Word document) the most concise and observable:

• There are clear goals every step of the way;


• There is immediate feedback to one's actions;


• There is a balance between challenge and skills;


• Action and awareness are merged;


• Distractions are excluded from consciousness;


• There is no worry of failure;


• Self-consciousness disappears;


• The sense of time becomes distorted;


• The activity becomes autotelic (pleasurable in its own right).

The very first characteristic is not only observable, but actionable. Setting goals must, however, be kept bite-sized so as not to overwhelm or discourage, and conversely, not so tiny that the monitoring of them becomes the task. Another word for goal would be "trading plan", that grouping of patterns, setups, and risk control items that you must have before and after each trade, at the end of the trading day, and for periodic assessment.

I spent a good bit of time today at Brett Steenberger's site, reading his many articles on trading and trading psychology. What a wealth of knowledge he shares! There surely is something for everyone, something perhaps even for what is needed right now for you.

Labels: attitude, history, trading

:: Autumnal Equinox :: Lunar New Years
I hope you've discovered Wikipedia, a sort of Every Man's, er, Every Person's.. Encyclopedia. While its creators and contributors might not agree, perhaps its greatest value is the immediacy of information. In a flash, an article on the autumnal equinox is at hand. I would agree that Wikipedia's leap of imagination this: a collaborative self-balancing mechanism for information: outrageously biased or misinformed entries are challenged and edited, and depth is added where new discoveries refine older consensus.

equinox: the equinoxes are the two days each year when the center of the Sun spends an equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on Earth

So if the Equinox is about the sun, how does the moon relate to the Autumnal Equinox? Calendar historians probably could answer this with far more accuracy, and precision. But the simple answer is that linking a great solar event with its nearest important lunar event is just a natural affinity. Moon/Sun, Sun/Moon, what's so complicated?

Friday marked Rosh ha-Shanah, the first day of the seventh month, called Tishrei in the Jewish calendar, the new year 5767 in the Jewish calendar. It is, according to the Talmud, the day man was created. It is the Day of Judgement, for which the faithful have prepared during the preceding month of Elul, the last month of the year. This first day of man's new year is a call to go within and clarify what is of genuine importance in life.

Islam too marks Rash Hasana, the first lunar day of the ninth month in the Hijri (Islamic) calendar, better known as Ramadan. A central event of Ramadan is fasting, "... said to redirect the heart away from worldly activities, its purpose being to cleanse the inner soul and free it from harm", per the Wikipedia entry. Here is a wonderful collection of Ramadan inspired photos on flickr.

Christianity has, curiously, sidestepped this particular transformational time, having left St. Matthew as the lone guardian of 21 September, and instead making inner contemplation a focus during the Easter Tide, the Resurrection of Christ, both calendrically linked to the first Spring Moon (and Vernal Equinox). All Hallow's Eve seems to stand out as the most prominent autumnal festival.

I find a curious affinity with this Western ghostly period and that of a number of Eastern autumn festivals also centered around ghosts, the most prominent being O-Higan in Japan, celebrated at the first new moon near the Autumnal Equinox, and Ghost Month during the seventh lunar month in the Chinese tradition. Both share similar roots: the idea that the doors to the underworld are opened and ghosts wander the land, In Japan, this time is used to revere ancestors, while in China, much is made of providing these ghosts food and lucre (hell money).

In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition O-Higan is a time of inner reflection on right-living, thereby coming full circle to the precepts of Rosh ha-Shanah and Ramadan. Right-Living is best represented by the Six Paramitas

"Paramita is a Sanskrit word, which means to cross over to the other shore. It implies crossing over from the Sea of suffering to the Shore of happiness, from the Samsara of birth and death to Nirvana and from ignorance to enlightenment."

Labels: attitude, history, moon