Flamekeeping Shift: Intense Dreams

My flamekeeping shift started at sunset last night.

I've been having intense dreams for the past several nights, though most of them have been of a mundane nature. Last night I had two intense dreams.

The first, there was fire and a presence in the heavens, a great god whose laughter mingled with the long rumbling of thunder. Everyone was terrified. The sky was bright, too bright — the white, rolling clouds parted here and there to reveal impossible liquid-fire light beyond them, golden tongues licking the mist-curled sides of each billow of cloud. Lightning dropped like rain, jagged liquid fire, thick and slow, not the usual quick and thin streak of electricity but something else. Some people said it was Jesus. The mighty presence laughed. I recognized some Pagans among the panicked crowds, making offerings and kneeling in supplication to Zeus or Thor. The god laughed again, turning his attention to fall on them like liquid lightning. Squealing, they dodged out of the way as the fire fell, impacting the earth with a huge roar and a blaze springing up where they had stood. Terror ran through me, a fear welling almost to an ecstasy. The god drew spiraling lines in the earth, trailing fingers of lightning along the ground until the rocks trembled and buckled, scorched scars raised in long lines almost as though some burrowing animal were tunneling just beneath the topsoil, pushing up its trail. The liquid-fire lightning dragged along, raising spiraling welts on the earth as people dodged out of the path. The lightning turned and danced, and I found myself caught between converging lines with nowhere to go. I stood rooted in place, willing every part of me — from bone, blood and breath to soul itself — into complete stillness, waiting for the moment of convergence. Then there in front of me was a man, wild grin shining and a noise like thunder. It was — gods forgive me — the Tenth Doctor. (Not actually him, in the dream, but his look — my mind probably seeking for some visual representation of the mingled terror and adoration I was feeling.) I trembled, saying, "But... I know you." And the implication of recognizing this god with a kind of terrifying intimacy bordering on triumph. Somehow, I communicated to him, "You're scaring people, you have to go." He offered me the body of a serpent, bloody and skinned, its scaled hide sparkling with a myriad diamond jewels in the impossible light and the length of its body cut into chunks of wet, red flesh with the white, round center of its spine peeking through the mess. I breathed, and said, "No, I don't eat meat," to the horror of those around me, who were bowed down to the ground and weeping in fear, unable to imagine refusing the god anything. The god laughed again, uproariously, and then he was gone just as suddenly, the whole scene settling like dust into a quiet stillness. And I looked down to see that I was holding a plastic bag full of wet, juicy honeydew melon chunks (one carved in the shape of the serpent's head).

I woke up at this point in a lot of pain, with my legs twitching terribly, and it took a long while to fall back asleep again. Once I did, I had a second dream.

Not as detailed as the first. I was in a cart, somewhat like a cross between a roller coaster car and an open-topped railway train car, with rows of bench seats across it with seat belts. There were carts in front and behind mine, too, in a long chain and the train seemed to be underground in a long, dark tunnel with rough, earthy or rocky sides. The dream is only vague impressions for a while — there were many people in all these carts, loading and unloading as the train went back and forth along the line making stops, and many of the people seemed somewhat young, though not exactly children. I remained on the train the whole time, never getting off, and almost always sitting alone on the bench seat as people shuffled around me. Then, at one point, a man sat down next to me — I could best describe him as a stereotypical redneck hick — his hair was blond and short, cropped in a kind of bowl cut with bangs hanging down across his forehead, and he had large teeth and an overbite, barely a chin to speak of, and when he spoke he had an obnoxious stereotypically southern accent that seemed at once idiotic and overly cheerful. But his eyes seemed sharp and intelligent. He sat down next to me, and again there was a sense among everyone around me that this was somehow an honor bestowed on me. Everyone around treated him with a great deal of respect, almost reverence, and deferred to him as a kind of leader. I found, mingling with my distaste for him, a vague sense of familiarity, as though this were some kind of disguise that he was wearing. Again, the dream was only vague for a time, with the sense that we were about the embark on a much longer journey, not the same shuffling back and forth between the same few stops, and that this man next to me was somehow in charge of the journey or leading it. I noticed he wore a blue coat with a few metal pins and sewn-on patches and stripes here and then, almost like a military uniform though I didn't recognize it at all. It seemed too big for him, sticking out at the shoulders, so that he seemed like a child wearing his father's clothes, but there was still that intelligent look in his eye and a sense of authority that he carried about him. We were moving along on the journey now, people settled into their seats, and the tunnel beneath the earth seemed to stretch on in front of us forever with no light in sight except for the torch lights mounted every once in a while that passed us as we moved. The man acted towards me as though we knew each other and were good friends, and I had that vague sense of familiarity (though I was out of the dream enough that I couldn't place why I felt I recognized him). As we moved, the train sped up, faster and faster, and suddenly there was a great lurch as though we'd been struck from behind. The man next to me stood up in his seat, gazing back into the darkness past all the other carts, and his face changed briefly, the expression of soft, cheerful idiocy replaced by a hard, intelligent, penetrating look as though the disguise for an instant had fallen away and the full power of his presence came through. I felt, then, that we were good friends, that I did know him (though I still couldn't say how or from where) and that I trusted him completely. He dropped back down into his seat next to me and whispered that a great serpent was following us, quickly catching up to the train. If people realized what was happening, they would start to panic. He was able to call up or get in touch with the person at the very front of the train and instruct them to veer off the track as we passed an opening in the tunnel — because of his inexplicable authority, nobody argued with him. We veered and suddenly the train was plunged into an icy underground river, the carts now floating like boats or rafts all chained together in a long line. The wheels churning the water beneath the carts sped us onwards, faster and faster, taking twisting turns and bends in the rocky tunnel, now without any light but a kind of eerie very dim blue light that seemed to infuse the air and come from everywhere and nowhere. Behind us, the huge serpent was gaining on us and people were beginning to panic. Its eyes glinted like sharp blades in the darkness, its forked tongue flicking, its massive body writhing in the waters behind us.

I feel as though something happened then in the dream, just before I woke up, but it's gone now, I can't remember it. I don't remember waking up frightened at all, though there was a lot of energy coursing through me. I wish I knew who the man was, or what happened at the end of that second dream. It's no coincidence, I think, that both dreams involved a serpent, as well as other people who were in danger and frightened. But I'm not sure I know what either of the dreams mean.

Flamekeeping Meditation

Fire and Water in the Earth of my body,
I honor you, Brigid, Bright Goddess of Flame,
I honor you, Lady of Wellspring and Starlight,
And inscribe in my heart your thrice-holy name.

The candle is the center way, open between the worlds. I hold my hands as though in prayer, then slowly bring them apart to rest, palms upturned, on my knees. Above the soft sound of my breath as it rocks back and forth, ebb and flow within my body — the rustle of the wind in tree branches.

I am in a forest, rich and thick with the scent of evergreen. Tall pines stand all about me like the buttresses and columns of a great cathedral, shivering and shifting in a breeze. I feel as though I can sense every thin, green needle spread like whiskers, scenting the wind, turning this way and that. I stand in awe for a moment, unsure where to go or what to do. I place my hand against the rough, red trunk of one of the trees. Sticky sap seeps beneath my fingers, clinging to my skin.

A figure behind me — it is She, the Bright Goddess, this time draped in subtle, shifting green like the pine trees, her hair in radiant, auburn braids plaited thick and draped about her shoulders like a luxuriant fringe. "Taste," she seems to say with a small gesture, "the sap is sweet." Like the amber was once, I find myself thinking as I raise my fingertips to my lips and lick the sap from my hands. "The amber that once flowed through the veins of ancient trees," she agrees. "What is it that makes the sap sweet?" I do not know how to answer her. "It is the connection between earth and sky, the roots seeking deep for water, the limbs reaching, striving towards sunlight." She watches me as my gaze drifts beyond her back to the great trees of the forest. They seem to dwarf both of us, and I'm struck again by how small her form is. "It is the movement between the realms, the connection that flows through living veins, that makes the sap sweet."

I kneel down at her feet as she speaks these words. But she raises me up again with a gesture or a glance, or simply by her refusal to be an object of groveling or subordination. What do I need, what can you give me as guidance and aid? I try to ask her. But she says, almost sharply, "You already have everything you need." The amber sun — "Yes, the drop of liquid fire, the sweet sap of life-blood connecting the three realms. And the spiral shell? She smiles and looks to the new amulet I now where around my neck, the blue goldstone surrounding the glistening spiral forged of silver. "The dark waters of space, the depths of source and creation — do you think this amulet is so different from the spiral shell you were given at the wellspring?" And the sword? The missing piece, the gift I could not yet quite see — is it the sword of starlight? The simple athame? In answer, I find the small knife in my hands, lengthening into a sword glistening, pulsing with a light of its own, starlight or moonlight in the twilight beneath the trees.

I swing the sword, as though to test its sharpness and my strength. It slices through the image of the lady standing before me, slices it in half as though a flimsy veil, and the reality of the woods flap loose like a rip in space itself. Through the tear, a glimpse of dark night scattered brilliant with endless stars. I peer through, and seem to hear her voice coming from that beyond-place, reassuring me that I have not hurt her, only cut down the image of her to a larger reality. I wonder if this is the threshold between my inner landscape and the deep places of the realms beyond, the collective unconscious, the place of Spirit and soul. I remember the card I drew this morning, the image of the wanderer stepping out onto the thin earth-bridge made by the very act of stepping, a bridge created by the journey. I step through the tear and into the gulf of space.

Below my feet, it seems a thin foot bridge solidifies, bearing up my weight. I step again, moving farther out into space, and farther. The bridge, which at first seemed made of earth and brown stone, starts to sweat star-stuff like condensation, drips of night sky gathering like dew along its edges, running down the slope back towards the rip in space that leads back into the pine forest. The droplets of star-fire space sparkle darkly like pieces of tumbled blue goldstone, and I gather a few as amulets and charms, thinking somehow to bring them back for others. The bridge beneath my feet is soon coated completely with the shimmering dark surface, lit from within and glittering with stars, so that the bridge itself seems made of night and starlight instead of earth. All about me, the black abyss of space yawns open, the distance and nothingness sending a brief sense of thrilling vertigo through my body. Still, I keep walking — ahead of me, She is there again, her hair loose and flickering upwards like a flame, her form now draped in dark blue velvet robes that catch what little light there is in this place.

I can go no further, but far in the distance I seem to see the faint flickering of orange forge fire. I ask her if she can take me there, to the place where the stars are forged. She takes both my hands in hers and lifts me gently from the bridge, waltzing me across the distances, our feet trailing rippling mists like the tails of comets. When we reach the forge, it glows warm and pulsing like an ember nestled in a cave-like nook of nighttime. The hiss of steam and the noise of the bellows surround us, the ringing sting of the hammer against the anvil — and I see the forms being created there, tiny round discs of silver with curling rays, like miniature suns. They look quite like my own sun charm, except that their centers are empty. I ask this goddess of the Star Forge where is the amber, why the charms are incomplete. "Don't you see?" she seems to say. "These are only tools and symbols, but the amber is the life-blood, upwelling from the source — it must arise from you, from your life and your work. Only then will the sun become complete."

My mind wanders to the prayer beads I have crafted, and how I might make more to use as a tool for prayer. She laughs at me as though indulging the amusing obsessions of her child, chiding me a little for always wanting so much to make things, instead of allowing my work to be the upwelling of my life to fill in and complete what I have made. As I ponder this thought, I seem to hear the ocean waves in rhythm on the shore. In time with my breathing, they seem to draw me back to my inner landscape, and I find myself wandering down out of the tall pine forest to the pebbly beach, the ocean stretching out deep blue and etched with rising star light as, on the western horizon over the mountain, the sky blazes orange and red with the sunset. I sit for a little while, watching the dusk fade to blues and purples, holding a small memory of that fiery sunset within me as I prepare to keep the flame from this sunset to the next.

Bring my hands together again, I bow my head in gratitude for the wisdom shared. I slip the small flamekeeping pendant over my head, and breathe deeply as I sing my awen and promise to carry Brigid's Fire and Water in the Earth of my body. The meditation has ended, and I speak the words of peace as my breath moves through me like the tides beneath a night sky.

DOTR Lesson 2: Sea

It began with a few tenuous notes turning and echoing out across the waters, the keening of the violin striving against its own tension and yearning. I was there, on the same familiar rocky cliff that curved in around a small bay, the dark waters of the ocean stretching out far beneath me. The murmuring wash of waves among the pebbles of the beach below, rocking in rhythm until the music faded again into silence.

Above me, the stars began to slip out into the night, one by one, as though disrobing from the dark veils of the night sky. One by one, they turned and shot a gasp of brilliance blazing out in a spiny halo of light around them, then pulled back again, glistening and humming with a silent energy. I lifted my head to ask them for their wisdom. It seemed as though one beckoned to me, glimmering more brightly than the rest. The vertigo of a wild night sky thrown open from horizon to horizon swept over me as my gravity seemed to shift — and then before me, solid as stone it seemed, a staircase spiraled upwards into the starscape. Step by step I climbed, my feet steady, my eyes on the scattered specks of light. Each step fell thick and heavy as though on stone draped over with the deep, plush fabric of night and darkness and stillness. As I reached the final stair, the star before me stepped close as a woman, dark and brilliant with features that seemed to shift as she turned, as though I gazed into her eyes from across countless light years. She smiled, and lifted her hand to caress my cheek and temple.

Then all at once, her other hand was at my throat, grasping my jaw firmly. With one quick motion she wrenched my face away, palm hard against my forehead, and I felt my spine snap as my body crumpled beneath her hard, cold fingers.

My body tumbled as it fell from the sky, loose and undone. I felt almost relaxed, my body buffeted and slowed by the wind, as though some tension in me had snapped and let me drop. I fell like a limp dead thing, which is what I was, and when I hit the ocean's surface, it gave way with almost as little resistance as the air, opening its dark mouth in a crater-like wave that closed over me again as I sank down beneath the waters.

Down and down I sank, making no attempt to swim or even draw a breath. My body became as heavy and dark as the oceans themselves, and creatures glided past me in the dark glistening a wet gold, slipping in and out of sight almost like stars. It seemed to me that all this time, I could see the stars shining above me, above the surface of the water, though only dimly — so dim that perhaps it was no more than a memory. My body lay on the rough bottom of the sea for a long while, its limbs swayed only by the slow, sluggish motions of the currents. I do not remember making the decision to move again — and maybe it was only the ocean itself that gradually pushed and pulled and turned me towards the shore — but eventually I found myself on hands and knees, stumbling and crawling up the pebbled beach, waves dragging at me as I gasped and sought for a hold.

Exhausted, I could not go far, but sat just above the highest reach of the waves where they ran themselves out between the wet, rounded stones. I sat for a while, catching my breath as it returned and letting the ocean water drip from me until I found I was quite dry, though chilled beneath the night sky once more. Then down the beach came the white hound, old companion of this place, bounding with joyful greeting towards me. I flung my arms around her in an embrace and buried my face and hands in her warm, dog-scented fur. Life, with that warmth and panting breath and bounding joy, began to return to me and I felt happy and grateful to have found her again after so long an absence.

Yet, in the midst of our joyous reunion, she stopped — and a low growl began to build in her throat. At first, I thought she was growling at me, and a moment of panic at another betrayal swept through me. But then I realized she was looking past me, towards a figure that loomed up out of the dark some ways down the beach. I turned and ventured closer — the dark figure outlined against the sky seemed huge and thin, featureless as worn stone, and I soon realized it was not a person, but a statue: a thin, lank, faceless man standing on a dais, like an oscar carved from rock and weathered by the sea and wind. I turned to reassure the white hound by my side, who glanced up at me with a look of that showed a clear dislike for the figure — then the dog squatted and pissed on the dais and trotted off up the beach again as though her sentiments had been made clear. I followed her back to where we had been, and sat down once more on the pebbly shore, the dog curled up on my left while my hand ran over her long, white fur in gentle strokes.

Then there was the dark star goddess beside me again, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, feet bare against the wet rocks, the hem of her deep blue robes clinging with damp to the stone. I was not afraid, but comforted as she drew my head down to rest on her shoulder and she stroked my cheek again just as I stroked the dog's warm fur. Though she did not say a word to me, I came to understand the killing blow she'd dealt me was not a violence or punishment, but her gift to me: a change in perspective that sent me plummeting into the depths. Too many are striving towards the stars, climbing those steep ladders and struggling with all their might towards the heights to catch a glimpse of something marvelous.

She turned a little so that we could look one another in the eye. Sitting there on the beach, she was barely taller than I was, her face shifting in and out of shadow, her eyes shining, her hair seeming sometimes wet and dark as to be almost black in long, flowing locks, and sometimes like a liquid fire, deep amber and auburn, strands curling and licking along the pale, perfect skin of her face and shoulders like tongues of flame. Leaning forward, she pressed her little lips against my forehead in a lingering kiss. I felt the warmth of that kiss seep into the depths of me, blossoming and opening outwards from within. The sky above me seemed expansive and infinite in the darkness. The ocean spread like a black, rippling plain of reflected starlight so vast and great and deep that it stole all breath from my body. The stone and earth below me shuddered with solidity and power, hard and warm and heavy like a great weight on which I walked like some delicate, fragile thing. The three realms loomed in majesty, surrounding me in glory where I sat stunned in awe on the threshold, that liminal space where land and sea meet sky. I was so utterly small — and yet, a witness to this greatness, I held all this in the intimacy of my own body, concentrated and unfurling through the three realms, the elements of my being a microcosm of this larger world.

The goddess of starlight and transformation leaned away from me, a small, slight figure full of power and primordial energy churning in the dark. This is it, she seemed to say, this is what you are here for. To be the witness to the wild, overwhelming wonder of the world — to be small and simple beneath the sky, to drift light and buoyant upon the sea, to dance fragile and always half-rootless across the land. No other view is better than this one right here, no other view is meant for you. You cannot become big by strife and struggle. You can only participate in the vastness of creation, you can only join in relationship with the greatness of the world, by staying here to attend to your place in it with openness and gratitude. You are not in service to your self alone; you are in the service of greater things than you.

The kiss lingered still, flooding my senses with the slow opening of light and energy and song. I felt as though I were slipping into deeper trance... yet soon I found myself opening my eyes, the meditation over, the mundane room around me and the candle flickering in its holder, amber-rose in the bright sunlight thrown in slanted rays across the coffee table. Still, the energy flowed through me, and the vision remained.

"Lady of the Star Fire" Chant

I just loved Ellen's chant, so much that I wanted it to be longer! Here's an expanded version I've been playing with. I tried to incorporate some more of the themes we've been experiencing and exploring in the "Lady of the Stars" TNC group, tying them back to the poet/healer/smith triplicity more traditional to Brigid. For me, this triplicity expresses itself more abstractly as "inspiration, integration, transformation" as a kind of process of both creativity and love (i.e. the "forging" of relationships). So in the first three stanzas, I tried to capture those themes... With the "exploratory" ritual in mind, I wanted to incorporate a kind of "appeal" to her for guidance in the final stanza. Here's what I ended up with (to Ellen's tune):



Lady of the Star Fire, speak to me, speak to me!
Spark of inspiration, Goddess of light!
Shaper of the Darkness, shine on me, shine on me!
Ember of creation, burning in the night!

Lady of the Star Fire, speak to me, speak to me!
Healer at the hot springs rising from the heart!
Fire in the Water, flow in me, flow in me!
Sweet the restoration deep within your art!

Lady of the Star Fire, speak to me, speak to me!
Queen of transformation, Forger of Worlds!
Hammer on the Anvil, sing to me, sing to me!
Ancient spiral turning, galaxies unfurled!

Lady of the Star Fire, speak to me, speak to me!
I am your apprentice, Worker of the Fire!
I have heard your starlight calling me, calling me!
Show me how to answer, guide my hope's desire!

Earth/Stars

Be humble for you are made of earth;
Be noble for you are made of stars.

(Serbian proverb.)

Brigid of Amber, Brigid of the Stars

I frequent a forum called The Cauldron, where I belong to a flamekeeping Cill dedicated to the goddess Brigid. I began flamekeeping with them just before Imbolc of last year. (Mine is the third day in the rotation of twenty, and my shift has fallen more than once on days of special personal significance to me — which others have told me often happens during the first year of flamekeeping for a new Cill member.)

Recently, some wonderful and fascinating discussions have been going on in the Celtic Polytheism SIG, "Hazel and Oak," focusing on Brigid of the Forge as a creatrix/star goddess. The conversation has sparked (no pun intended) the suggestion of designing a group ritual. I want to plunge in and get involved in this work, journaling some of my thoughts and potential liturgical ideas on this blog, so I thought I would just mention this as an introduction for future reference.

I'll add to this later, but for now, here is a response I posted to the forum tonight, regarding the possibility brought up by others (and echoed in my own personal ritual experiences over the summer) of amber being a "stone" sacred to Brigid.

Part of the reason I did the three gifts meditation was to prepare for my trip to Northern Ireland (for a spiritual retreat focused on peace activism and social justice), and I was hoping for some images/icons to "carry with me" to meditate on during my time there. When the shadowy, robed figure outlined against the flames of the sacred fire reached into the heart of the fire and handed to me a droplet of amber, I think I actually laughed out loud in the middle of the ritual.

It suddenly seemed so obvious to me: first and foremost, amber as a "stone" of living fire or fire-in-water, the life-blood of the tree borne of the intermingling of the underground waters drawn up from the roots and the sunlight cascading down from the sky, cupped and drunk by the leaves. The prayer I use during my flamekeeping shifts begins: "Fire and water in the earth of my body, I keep your sacred flame." Amber as the sap or resin of ancient trees seemed like the perfect symbol of this idea.

And then, of course, is the fact that amber is especially well-known for containing the preserved remains of ancient insects, some of which contain the blood/DNA of ancient animals. So in another way, amber represented the "preservation and protection of life" and the continuation of ancient traditions and primordial energies or spirits. The fact that I was going to a retreat in the land of my ancestors that was focused on peace activism seemed to align perfectly with this idea.

I have wondered if anyone else made this connection to amber. While I was on the retreat, just after I'd found the amber sun amulet at the farmer's market, I had a discussion with someone at the retreat who was a former Pagan — he pointed out that amber and jet was a common combination for jewelry (especially among Wiccans, I think, if I'm remembering correctly what he said). But he said that amber was mostly associated with the God rather than the Goddess, being more "active/yang" and masculine. This deflated me a bit and so I kept my musings about any possible Brigid-amber connection to myself. So it's been wonderful for me to see others validating that connection and sharing some of their own thoughts!

And in keeping with the themes of fire-on-water and creation, I suddenly see amazing connections to the very first of the Rosary Poems I wrote back in college (of which, at the time, my advisor said, "Some poems just show up whole and perfect the way they are, like a gift"):

Annunciation

The light shines in the darkness,
and the
darkness has not overcome it. JOHN 1:5

Her yes becomes flesh
in flesh, white-winged fire swept
along sweat as if over the agitation
of waves, sharp spine of sunlight
in a slow serpentine across
the waters of her body —
there is no rushing it, no cascade
into the long cry of rising — only
a breath, a word, and the pouring
in of everything, even God.

More thoughts on all of this when I'm a bit more "together" and coherent.

DOTR Lesson 2: Sky

(Images courtesy of Google Image Search and Nasa's Astronomy Picture of the Day)

DOTR Lesson 2: Sky

Some basic research into the sky, the atmosphere and weather, and the solar system as part of DOTR Lesson 2 work.

What is the sky? What strikes me immediately, scanning through the wikipedia page (as good a place to start as any), is the rather ineffable nature of the sky, hard to nail down with a single definition. We begin with the understanding that the "sky" is the view of everything not-earth that can be seen from the vantage point of earth — the atmosphere, outer space (and we expand this by saying it is this same view afforded from the surface of "any astronomical object," by which I assume they mean, f'ex, meteors or other plants, not any object that happens to be incredibly large). During the day, you could reasonably say that the sky is only our atmosphere and the few bits of our immediate solar system that manage to assert themselves: the sun, the moon, sometimes very bright planets or comets, but otherwise, the "sky" is that approximately 11 km of atmosphere closest to the earth's surface, where most of its weather takes place. Yet at night, "sky" becomes almost infinite, from our perspective reaching out into the darkness of space where stars trillions of kilometers away are shining, reaching their light towards us from the past. The night sky is (nearly) infinite in both space and time, then, while the day sky is wrapped close around the land. Poetically, you can imagine the sky — as an intentional object (phenomenologically speaking) — breathing or pulsing, in and out, wider and closer, as the earth turns. Strange that the dark, so often associated with a turn inwards towards the center, is also the time when the sky "expands" the farthest.

The atmosphere. Some fun facts about the earth's atmosphere. Dry air contains about 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases, as well as an average of about 1% water vapor. The atmosphere acts as a kind of gaseous "skin" enveloping the earth, that both deflects harmful radiation and retains a certain amount of heat from the sun, helping to modulate night and day temperatures.

The atmosphere has five basic layers, delineated according to temperature rise or fall. The troposphere begins at the earth's surface and extends to between 7 km (at the poles) to 17 km (at the equator); within this layer, temperature decreases with an increase in altitude, mainly because of heat transfer from the surface of the earth which makes the lowest part of the troposphere the warmest. The name derives from the Greek "trope" meaning to turn or overturn, and indicates the nature of vertical mixing that occurs within this atmospheric layer. The next layer, the stratosphere, extends from the upper edge of the troposphere to about 51 km, and within this layer temperature increases with altitude, limiting the amount of mixing and turbulence. The lower portion of the stratosphere contains the ozone layer, which can vary in thickness. The mesosphere extends from the upper edge of the stratosphere to about 80-85 km, and is defined by a decrease in temperature as altitude increases. The upper threshold of this level might be considered the "coldest place on Earth" (averaging around -85˚C or -121˚F). Above the mesosphere is the thermosphere, extending to about 690 km above the earth's surface, and in which temperature again increases with height. Within the thermosphere, the Kármán Line (at 100 km) marks what is commonly accepted to be the unofficial "boundary" between earth's atmosphere and outer space, as it indicates the place where the air becomes too thin to be practically useful for aeronautics purposes (in other words, in order to generate enough lift, a vehicle at this altitude would have to travel faster than the orbital velocity). Above the thermosphere is the exosphere, composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, with free-moving molecules so far apart that the atmosphere no longer behaves "like a fluid." Within the exosphere, temperature remains constant; although you could arguably describe the exosphere as ending at about 10,000 km, there really is no hard-and-fast line for its end — rather, it grows progressively thinner and thinner as altitude increases.

Light and color. The daytime sky appears blue because of Rayleigh scattering — shorter wavelength light (such as blue and violet) scatter more than longer wavelength light (such as yellow and especially red), giving the sky a blue gradient in which it appears lighter towards the horizon and darker towards the zenith, while the sun itself appears yellow due to longer-wavelength light from father away not being scattered (from outer space, the sky appears black and the sun appears white). Since I don't exactly understand this (though I have observed this effect with clouds), I'm going to quote directly from the wikipedia article on this one:

In other words, the red light scatters also; if it does so at a point a great distance from the observer it has a much higher chance of reaching the observer than blue light. At distances nearing infinity the scattered light is therefore white. Far away clouds or snowy mountaintops will seem yellow for that reason; that effect is not obvious on clear days, but very pronounced when clouds are covering the line of sight reducing the blue hue from scattered sunlight.

Weather and climate. I have no real insight to include on this particular topic, other than to note the usual distinction between weather (the hot/cold, wet/dry, calm/stormy, clear/cloudy, etc. descriptions) of a local area as the day-to-day changes and conditions, while climate indicates the patterns and averaging of weather in an area over an extended period of time. For more detailed discussion, I'll include the wikipedia page in the sources list. I can also make an effort to consult my National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Weather on a regular basis and record the conditions in my local area as part of my daily diary.


Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_atmosphere
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_line
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather
• xkcd: Height
• National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Weather