I’ve decided to start a new series of photo posts that will be published on Thursdays in honour of Jupiter (or Thor – god from Norse mythology) entitled Thursday’s Special, and I would like you to join me and to share your work with me.
A few facts about Thursday, the origin of the name and the reason why I chose it as the day of my new special posts series:
According to some international standard adopted in most western countries, Thursday is the fourth day of the week. In countries that use the Sunday-first convention, Thursday is defined as the fifth day of the week such as in Portugal where it is called “quinta-feira” meaning fifth day of liturgical celebration (the first being Sunday) after Latin “feria quinta” used in religious texts where it was not allowed to consecrate days to pagan gods. In other Romance languages the name for Thursday was clearly derived from Jupiter such as “jeudi” in French, “giovedi” in Italian, or “jueves” in Spanish. In Slavic languages again the number is used such as in Croatian where “četvrtak” means the fourth day. In Hindi the word for Jupiter is Brhaspati, and Thursday is called Brhaspativar, also known as Guruvar in the South Indian languages.
The name Thursday is derived from Old English Þūnresdæg and Middle English Thuresday, which means “Thor’s day”. And who is Thor if not Jupiter (Latin: Iuppiter, Iūpiter) (also called Jove), in Roman mythology, the god of sky and thunder, the king of all gods. The Planet Jupiter which is visible to the naked eye in the night sky and occasionally in the daytime too when the sun is low, was named after it.
Jovian is the adjectival form of Jupiter. The older adjectival form jovial, employed by astrologers in the Middle Ages, has come to mean “happy” or “merry”, moods ascribed to Jupiter’s astrological influence.
This takes us to the symbolism of Jupiter. Jupiter is said to influence all the good and noble things of life, and lead each of us toward a higher purpose. It reflects the fullness of life and absolute freedom.
With this in mind I’ve decided to dedicate these “sacrificial” posts to Jupiter, a jovial god of light to enlighten us and help us expand.

**This is not a challenge; and there are no rules. I will not be giving you themes, but I am inviting you to share with me what inspires you, and makes you happy. If you like my widget, feel free to use it when linking to Thursday’s Special, or just place it somewhere in the widget area on your blog. If you want to take part, it will bring me great joy.
Addendum: At the beginning of 2015 Thursday’s Special turned into a photo challenge and the participants are given weekly themes every Thursday. In a year and a half of posting this event I realised that bloggers are happier when given specific themes for the challenge. The novelty is that as of January 2015 you are invited to participate as guest challengers on my blog and give themes to others. For more details please see Scheduled Challenges page.
When you make a post on the given theme, link it to my challenge post and leave a link to your post in the comments section.

Leave a reply to restlessjo Cancel reply