Will peace guide the planets?

NEW YORK, Jan. 14 (JTA) — Who knew that a Magen David in the sky would usher in the Age of Aquarius? Several planets — Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn and Pluto — will be in rare alignment, and be joined by the sun, with the full moon opposite them all, to form the astral equivalent of a Jewish star on Jan. 23, which is also the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat. On that day, people all over the world — from New York to the Pyramids in Egypt to a Mayan temple in Palenque, Mexico — will join together to worship what is being called the “Jerusalem Star of David Synchronicity.” The event is being organized by a group calling itself The GaiaMind Project, which is suggesting that at 12:30 p.m. EST that day people all over the world pray or meditate “or do whatever brings them closer to the divine.” The project, created for the sole purpose of spreading awareness of this pastoral alignment, wants people to contemplate for five minutes the “miraculous value” of the “perfectly symmetrical mandala” formed by the heavenly bodies. Then participants should “envision light together for one minute in unison,” say the project’s Mill Valley, Calif.-based founders. According to a statement from project founders Juliana Balistreri and Jim Fournier, “perhaps by envisioning how everything, including that which seems most wrong to us, might be part of the ebb and flow of an evolutionary process, we may accelerate the awakening of global consciousness.” In a telephone interview, Balistreri described her group as an “international, transdemoninational” effort. She said her group was “a lightening rod for New-Age thinking.” A page on the project’s Web site (www.gaiamind.com) details the importance of the Star of David shape in a few different religious traditions. It also translates into New Age groovy-speak the meaning of the Hebrew words, Magen David, which means “shield of David.” The Magen David “represents the dispensation of ongoing manifestation.” “In other words, the double triangle represents the one way pouring itself out into the next dimension just like the way a seed pours itself out until it becomes a fruit. “This is the sacred process and the sacred path.”