It is a powerful celestial moment, the moon is full and just fully eclipsed, the winter solstice is upon us, and the Earth is soon to reach perihelion where we are closest in orbit to the sun. The shortest, darkest day of the year is today so what better time to duck into the dark alignments of the universe and make magic.

The full moon amps up all of our psychic abilities and is perfect for dream spells, fertility spells and spirit conjuring. Consider setting your intentions and goals for the new year not on New Years Eve but tonight with the power of the cosmos at your back!

Or borrow a solstice ritual, perhaps you’d like to:

*Cover your doorhandles with butter for Beiwe the Saami goddess of sanity and fertility, who needs fat for her journey through the dark sky to dispel winter and seek spring’s greenery…

* Repel unwanted ghosts by preparing Patjook and sprinkling it around your home or office, as the winter solstice is a notoriously haunted day on the Korean calendar…

*Give gifts of salt, coal or whiskey to your  friends or neighbors to bring luck and plenitude to their households in the year to come, a tradition my pagan Irish grandmother celebrated on the solstice rather than Yule designated to the 1st by the Church.

New video from the gorgeous album Swanlights

It has been a year today, can you believe it? You can’t win, child.

Excerpt from Antony Hegarty’s Op-Ed via Stereogum:

“It is no surprise that as the sea turns black in the gulf with no end in sight in the midst of the biggest ecological disaster in US history, CocoRosie are the only ones to hit the zeitgeist with an album filled with psychic omniscience, entitled “Grey Oceans.” And yet it seems to be the album the indie US press doesn’t want to talk about. Bianca and Sierra Casady paints pictures of lost children across a broken land, feral, elemental spirits who roam the dreamscapes of our world, naming perpetrators, painting their memories, recovering and reclaiming power. They are unafraid to manifest their vision that the application of magical creativity could be a balm for aching souls in a struggling world.”

[Hey true believers: CocoRosie were profiled by Trinie Dalton in Arthur No. 10 way back in 2004! Still available at the Arthur Store for $5 postpaid... —Your friendly neighborhood Arthur Editor]

SpaceWeather.com gives us

SPACE STATION RAINBOW: “On May 12th, the International Space Station passed high over Queensbury, New York, where John E Cordiale was waiting … with a prism. When the bright light of the streaking spacecraft passed through the glass, it spread into all the colors of a rainbow”

and! “…Ready to make your own space station rainbow? Grab a prism and check the Simple Satellite Tracker for flybys.”

Los Angeles, the space station passes over us this weekend so keep your prisms to the sky!

According to the Griffith Park Sky Report: “On Monday, May 17, the ISS makes its best evening pass, crossing the sky from northwest to south-southeast between 8:53, and 8:57 p.m., appearing 53 degrees high in southwest the at 8:56 p.m., P.D.T.”

and! there are planets all over the place too, “The planets Venus, Mars, and Saturn are all bright and easy to see at sunset or shortly thereafter. They are the brightest objects forming a line across much of the sky, from northwest to southeast during the evening twilight. Orange Mars, in Cancer the crab, is close to Leo the Lion’s bright star, Regulus, and yellow Saturn, in Virgo the Maiden, is between Regulus and Virgo’s bright star Spica.

Planet Jupiter is 19 degrees high in the east-southeast at 5:00 a.m., appearing brilliant and with a cream-yellow hue. Use binoculars or a telescope to see its four Galilean satellites.

The waxing crescent moon returns to the evening sky on Friday, May 14. It may then be found 17 degrees to the lower right of Venus, and just above the west-northwest horizon starting half an hour after sunset. On Saturday night, the moon is only 4 degrees to the lower left of Venus, and on Sunday, 8 degrees to the upper left of the planet.”

Space out everybody!

As tax season slowly releases its grip on April USA Today reports on the amazing tax policy in Mexico in place since 1957 that allows artists to pay their taxes with artwork, creating an invaluable collection for the nation.

“Some of the art is explicit, but no matter.

‘There’s no censorship here,’ says Julieta Ruiz, a curator at the museum.

If anything, the temptation to needle the taxman makes the art even edgier.”

magick=math?  what say you Gworld?

The tendril network of a slime mold is a near match to Japan’s railway sytem. Photo via Science/AAAS

Miraculous Mold! Invade LA’s public transport please…

The LA Times reports the slide is still moving. Way to go geology, rock and roll.

Müller told New Scientist. “It’s as if the black hole is like a mirror.”

Jim Henson, of course…on the Tonight Show 1974.

Los Angeles! Just added to the Largo Lovin’ Haiti series Arthur 26 cover star Becky Stark performs along with Jenny Lewis, Azure Ray, Johnathan Rice, Jason Boesel and Morgan Nagler…snap up your spot they’re going fast!

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Show starts at 8pm to benefit Habitat for Humanity and Save the Children > GO