This Is Now

As Christianity spread, pagan holidays were often incorporated into Christianity in order to ease the transition.

This is well documented historically and includes things like Christmas (winter solstice…) and Easter.

Eastrus was a pagan fertility goddess. Symbols of fertility include eggs and of course rabbits… so when the pagan fertility holiday was co-opted, eggs and rabbits were incorporated as well.

This can also be related to the term estrus - meaning n. The periodic state of sexual excitement in the female of most mammals, excluding humans, that immediately precedes ovulation and during which the female is most receptive to mating; heat. 

The Christians took the fertility and altered it to be a holiday celebrating the end of death and resurrection (the end of winter, and the beginning of the life with the fertility of spring).

 

by Terje Sorgjerd

This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide. Spain´s highest mountain @(3718m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.

The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. There was a lot of hiking at high altitudes and probably less than 10 hours of sleep in total for the whole week. Having been here 10-11 times before I had a long list of must-see locations I wanted to capture for this movie, but I am still not 100% used to carrying around so much gear required for time-lapse movies.

A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.

Interestingly enough my camera was set for a 5 hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32.