Miscellanea

So, what have I got in store for you this time?

To start with, here’s a little Laibach:

And a little Jemaine:

As well as Terri Windling talking about Italian imaginative literature:

“I remain impressed by how the subsequent traditions of Italy flowed together,” comments Midori Snyder, a fantasy writer who has spent the last year living in Milan; “. . .not so much a crisis as in the Celtic countries, where Druids slammed against the oncoming church, but where all these strands of faith and storytelling merged, sometimes quite playfully. Italy is a country where satyrs and saints sat down together to dine.”

Also, did you know that in Egypt reporters can get in trouble for reporting the news?

A few days ago Bikya Masr reported that one Arab-American woman had been “stripped of her pants, assaulted and beaten by a mob of men in the center of the square.”

“Surprisingly,” says Bikya MAsr, “this led to a backlash against us, in comments on the article, emails and on a private listserv here in Cairo.” Journalist Joseph Mayton says he

received a number of emails condemning reporting such incidents, with the correspondence saying Bikyamasr.com is “anti-revolution,” “Orientalist,” and even patronizing and victimizing toward women by detailing the sexual violence that was perpetrated in the square.

This misses the reality. Sexual violence in Egypt, and around the region is not new. It seems to occur whenever large crowds gather in this country. As a media outlet, we can only do our best to report on such incidents. Many argued that we did not contextualize the situation by reporting the story of the woman being assaulted.

They argued Tahrir was “safe” for women and that even men were protecting women throughout the day. Certainly, this was correct, but it misses the point. Sexual assault needs no contextualization. Assault is assault, in our view.

Apparently in Egypt it’s a controversial view.

Here’s Wicker Man done with Muppets.

And a collection of sources on Neoplatonism.

Did you know that Medieval English ducks said “Queck” not “Quack”? It’s true!

Also, did you know that Canadians believe that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are spawns of Satan and encourage children to practice witchcraft?

[Holding a Bepop toy] “This is one of the villains of the [Teenage] Mutant Ninja Turtles. When we say ‘villains’… the hero is using white magic or eastern mystic or ‘good powers,’ such as ‘Star Wars’ taught us — the good side of the Force, and the bad guys are using the bad powers, the black side of the Force. But it’s the same powers, exactly, when you look at it from a biblical viewpoint.”

Sadly, it’s not just Canadians who feel this way:

From Daniel Glassner in Louisville, KY:

“I like your fighting but I don’t like the meditating. I think it’s Satanic so I haven’t bought any of your comic books for a while now. I am asking that you take out all the meditating now, thanks.”

Did you know that exorcising demons can have unpleasant side-effects?

Since the oil had restored many possessed people to health, he [Aredius] placed some of it on the head of one man who possessed, I think, a more hideous demon. Immediately the man expelled the demon in a blast of air from his bowels.

Here’s an article on childbirth votives and rituals in ancient Greece:

This dissertation provides the first comprehensive account of private worship associated with childbirth throughout the ancient Greek world. It documents the rituals performed by individuals during various stages of the reproductive cycle and the different types of votives that were dedicated to the gods for fertility and birth. My work on this subject builds upon previous studies, which have collected much of the available evidence, by asking new questions of the material. In particular, I have sought to define the patterns of childbirth rituals that occurred in the lives of Greek women and to examine how the dedication of childbirth votives fits within this larger pattern of worship.

Pete Helms wants to share the stories of our Pagan warriors:

Consider this a call for submissions. I want to share the stories of vets and service members in our community. If you served, in any country, wartime or not, please share your story, and I’ll put it up. Even if you aren’t a vet or member of the armed services, feel free to honor your ancestors by sharing their stories. What did/do these stories mean to you? How do they affect you spiritually? These are the things I think our community needs to hear.

Are your co-workers witches? Kenyans will help you spot them:

Do you have workmates who carry the same bag everyday, mostly yellow or brown in colour even if it is dirty and torn and belongs in the dustbin? And why has this other one been wearing the same green coat for the last ten years, or that greyish old sweater the whole year, whether it is hot or cold? Do they reject a hug or handshake all the time? Do they refuse to take office tea and always remove their shoes and walk around the office bare foot? Do they visit the toilet more than three times a day? Do they sneeze whenever the boss summons a colleague to his or her office? What about the male colleagues who never wear socks?

Isidora discusses one of my favorite Isiac myths:

What are we to make of this? Is Isis just another underhanded and tricky female? Perhaps we should consider Her as one of the Trickster Deities. She’s a Divine Magician, after all, and magicians are always tricky. Or maybe Isis was forced to resort to magical artifice to break through a Divine glass ceiling. Think of royal women in the Egyptian court. Because they did not have outright power equal to men’s, they would have used tricks, subterfuge, perhaps even poison, as a path to power. We must remember that it is always human beings who tell these stories, thus all stories come through a human filter.

Robert Garland has released a video discussing ancient Greek religion.

M. Horatius Piscinus has put out a series of really good introductory posts (here, here and here) on Roman religion and ritual.

Did you know that Jake Reilly spent a whole 90 days without his social media, cell phone or e-mail? Wow, he’s a veritable modern-day Symeon Stylites.

Galina Krasskova talks about doing divination well:

Divination by itself is an overarching term for the many practices that allow one to access a person’s wyrd, read the state of their luck, and ferret out patterns, possibilities, and potentialities of their fate and future. It can refer to any number of techniques, which may, to varying degrees, involve the development of the gift of precognition. Certainly being a good diviner involves an ability to follow many disparate threads to their source, to read patterns extrapolating on the macrocosm of a querent and his or her situation by examining the often confusing and fragmented aspects of the many little microcosms that so often make up the tapestry of our history and our choices, combined with an exquisite sensitivity to emotional and energetic currents. The good news is that to some degree all of these skills can be developed, though having some measure of inborn precognition is very helpful.

And Columbine talks about the mouse Apollon:

Sminthian Apollon. Is he the protector of mice, or the destroyer of mice (and are mice really just an obscure metaphor for mortals, in the overall view of his relationship toward us)? Does he cause, or does he repel the infestation? I say yes, yes and yes. Smintheus, the Plague-bearer, revealed to us in all his terrible glory in the Iliad, is the root cause of pestilence. While, as the Healer, the god is also in the ultimate position of control over its outcome. Mice are host to a range of diseases, but they are also instrumental in the development of modern medicine.

Ruadhan waxes poetic about the incomparable Isadora Duncan:

“If we seek the real source of the dance, if we go to nature, we find that the dance of the future is the dance of the past, the dance of eternity, and has been and always will be the same… The movement of waves, of winds, of the earth is ever the same lasting harmony.” Isadora Duncan

Nicole Danielle reminds us of the beauty of mistakes:

I think it can be said, rather fairly, that we live in a society that downplays the human capability for making mistakes. Take a look at the American political system and this becomes obvious. In order to be a succesful politician there needs to be an appearance of near perfection. No flubs, no fuck ups, no slips of the tongue (both figuratively and literally) and most importantly, no changing your mind.

Beans made Cara Schulz cry:

One younger lady looked so lost, staring and staring at the cans and bags, that I asked her if she was a fan of beans (ice breaker). She wasn’t. Had not much idea what to do with them. But money was so tight and the costs of all staples and gas and utilities had left them with $20 to spend for food for the week. I told her, “We can do this. I can show you what to buy and give you some ideas on how to make it. Very simple and you’ll enjoy your meals.” And that’s what I did. Dried beans, split peas, lentils went into her bag. Bullion cubes. (Don’t judge) Garlic bulbs. Rice. A few cans of vegetables. Potatoes and that was it. She had some staples like salt and oil at home so that was good. While I was talking to her, showing her what to buy and writing down a few recipes on the back of a scrap of paper I had in my pocket, I noticed others listening in. As soon as she was on her way, they were asking me if I could help them, too. I looked at 3 ladies and 1 guy, standing there, looking ashamed. Fucking ashamed. And I was very, very angry. Yeah, this is how it is, now. A very old lady that was looking at the dried peas turned around and said she’d help the guy if I would help the women. So that’s what we did.

I would have cried too.

Here’s a piece by James O’Donnell on the demise of Classical Paganism:

I propose, therefore, that it is this unique feature of Christianity which makes the most sense of a division of Roman society in the fourth century into Christians and pagans. Pagans, by this interpretation, were those who held religion to be a largely private matter in which a variety of creeds and cults could exist side by side. One’s own private devotion to a particular deity stemmed perhaps from particular personal experience of the benevolence of that deity in a crisis, or from the habits of one’s family or associates, or from chance enthusiasm. At the same time, even (perhaps especially) the most philosophical of men recognized alternate forms of worship as profitable. This attitude is proverbial as far back as the time of Cicero: philosophical skeptics participating in the public cults for the good of society, reserving to their inner circle of philosophical friends their true interpretation of the rites in which they participated. Clearly this kind of paganism is not itself so much a religion or a religious movement as it is an attitude toward religion — a particularly tolerant one, at that. The point of difference between such individuals and zealous Christians, therefore, was just this attitude toward religion. But it must be emphasizedthat the line between pagans and Christians was considerably more blurred than it has been the custom to assume. For there was nothing in Christianity, as it presented itself to the masses of new converts who came to its embrace after its rise to be the state religion, which absolutely forbade men from privately regarding their Christianity with the peculiarly ‘pagan’ attitude which I have just been describing. To a fourth-century pagan, in fact, just as to many modern scholars, the unique characteristics of Christianity might not have been immediately obvious. It could be regarded as just another mystery cult from the East, and Christ could be taken as simply another powerful mediator between the human and divine levels of existence.

Jason of the Wild Hunt wonders whether witch-hunter Helen Ukpabio should be allowed to visit America.

Yup, I think she should. 1st Amendment and all that. But keep in mind that there are ways of handling people like her that don’t involve the government at all.