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 Radio1 - The Body
Provided By: Achriel
Composer: Castalia
Title: The Thorn Tree
Radio2 - The Mind
Radio3 - The Soul
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It might look like I'm doing nothing, but at a cellular level I'm really quite busy.
-- Anon
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· Using Witchvox – a walkthrough
(Sep 02, 2009)
· Nutritionist Stephen Heuer Arrested in FDA Raid
(Jan 19, 2009)
· Spelling it like it isn't
(Aug 09, 2008)
· Funding the pagans
(Mar 08, 2008)
· Giuliani gets Robertson Endorsement
(Nov 12, 2007)
· The Dangers Of Feminism
(Aug 30, 2007)
· The secrets behind crazy airfare prices
(Aug 27, 2007)
· Petition To Rename Stretch Of 401 'Highway Of Heroes'
(Aug 24, 2007)
· Mummified Toronto child a newborn boy
(Jul 27, 2007)
· Quick Summer Meals without all the heat!
(Jul 18, 2007)
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 Topic: Books, Tomes & Grimoires
The new items published under this topic are as follows.
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Westward Dharma, by Charles Prebish & Martin Baumann
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Posted by: Makarios on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 - 04:00 PM
44 Reads
Reviewed by Fionnchú
Buddhism beyond Asia's explored by 22 scholars in this 2002 collection. It focuses on the transformation, since the later 19c, of the Buddha's teachings into Western, and cross-cultural, and analytical transformations that try to retrieve a purer, primitive, or truer original teaching. Thomas Tweed sums up these evolving trends: "If modernist Buddhists have de-mythologized and rationalized traditional Buddhism one may say that post-modernist Buddhist practitioners secularize and psychologize modernist Buddhism." (60)
Tweed distinguishes a "migrant religion trajectory" from a "missionary-driven transmission," in turn separate from a "demand-driven transmission" as the three methods of current transfer. (62-3) He notes how the 'foreign' religion might have deliberately been fetched from abroad by sympathizers and initial converts. In the case of Buddhism, texts in Asian languages were transmitted and published, Buddhist ideas and practices were adopted, and Asian teachers were invited to lecture." (52) Westerners rely on Eastern exchange, as transport, globalization, and immigration thicken the ties rather than allow the crude models of Orientalist domination or imperial manifestation to control the emergence of a dharma-practice adapted not only to secular First World settings, but contemporary capitalist and countercultural markets all over Asia, Brazil, Oceania, and North America.
Read the complete article: Blogtrotter
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Everyday Life of the Pagan Celts, by Anne Ross
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Posted by: Makarios on Monday, March 08, 2010 - 10:00 AM
89 Reads
Reviewed by CelticScholar
Anne Ross is a well-respected writer on the Celts most of her books are on the Celtic Reconstructionist lists and that tells you a lot because as a rule they are very picky. This book is a part of a series called Everyday Life Of…The other two books in the series are The Everyday Life of the Vikings, and The Everyday Life of the Anglo-Saxons.
The book is copy righted to 1970 so right off you know it is an old book, with outdated information, though not much of it is. People who are not new to the Celtic history will probably not find anything new in this book. What impressed me though is the fact that she not only talks about the history of the Celts but their culture, society, and religion too. She starts her survey when the Celts first burst onto the scene, and ends it at 500 CE. Up front she tells you the limitations of the book and the aim she hopes to achieve with it. The limitations are as follows: limitations in the evidence available (this of course has changed from the 1970s to now), and limitations of space. The aim of the book is to find out something about the pagan Celtic world; about its origin; about the people who lived in it, what they did and how they conducted their day-to-day affairs.
Read the complete article: Celtic Scholars Reviews and Opinions
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Lady with a Mead Cup
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Posted by: Makarios on Saturday, March 06, 2010 - 02:00 PM
170 Reads
Ritual, Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from La Tene to the Viking Age
Reviewed by Beth
<snip> The first section uses Beowulf as a jumping-off point for examining the rites of sacral kingship—more specifically, how the scope of kingship evolved from tribal leader to warlord commanding men from many different tribes. In order to bind together such a disparate group, it was necessary to create a fictive kinship, and the easiest way to do this was for the warlord to assume the position of father while his wife took the role of mother. For this reason, the warlord was often referred to a hlaford, or loaf-giver (the one who provided food for his people). Enright argues that it would be only natural for the queen, therefore, to take on the role of the provider of drink. In this way, liquor service in the mead hall not only served as reinforcement of oaths (spoken over the horn), it also helped to create a family structure which formed the backbone of the comitatus, or warband. He also argues that the Germanic comitatus structure, along with many of the traditions connected to it, originated in Celtic custom in the late Iron Age, which the Germanic upper-class mimicked because the Celts were the more advanced culture at that time.
From here, we move into a discussion of historical warlords (especially Civilis, who controlled access to the seeress Veleda), the role of Germanic women as described by Tacitus, and females as instigators in the Icelandic sagas. Contrasting the general perception of “everyday” Germanic women as having a little bit of prophetic power with the overwhelmingly masculine monopoly on performing divinations for both the family and the state, he concludes that prophetess-queens such as Wealtheow or seeresses controlled by warlords, such as Veleda, were the exception to this, and that such women were regarded as “honorary men.”
Read the complete article: Gate of the Slain
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Beyond Belief: Skepticism, Science and Belief in the Paranormal
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Posted by: Makarios on Wednesday, March 03, 2010 - 04:00 PM
138 Reads
Reviewed by Peter Rogerson
This book by an Australian academic and member of the Australian skeptics movement, is not particularly concerned with refuting specific paranormal claims, but with a more general defence of skepticism as a mode of thought. It includes a brief history of skeptical thought from the Greeks onward, including a detailed examination of Hume's position on miracles, an examination of the scientific method, and its contrasting with various protoscientific, cryptoscientific and pseudo scientific claims.
He next examines the nature of paranormal claims and makes the interesting point that if any of these claims could be verified and subject to real scientific study, by many definitions of paranormal, they would be immediately cease to be paranormal and become part of normal science. He might have gone on to argue that if scientists then used these new findings or principles to explain further tranches of anomalous phenomena, they would be accused of 'explaining away' by paranormalists.
Read the complete article: Magonia Blog
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For All the Tea in China, by Sarah Rose
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Posted by: Makarios on Wednesday, March 03, 2010 - 12:00 PM
116 Reads
Reviewed by Fionnchú
Subtitled "How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History," so part of a genre of how one product changed our lives. Perhaps Britain more than America was so altered by the export of cheap, tasty black tea in Victorian times. Yet, Rose shows how globalization, the drug trade, rapid transport, and botanical espionage and corporate deceit managed to boost Robert Fortune into his modest role as the East India Company's operative who'd pluck Chinese tea seeds and smuggle them out in glass boxes to India, where they would become the hybrids mingled with Himalayan plants to make the black tea we enjoy today.
This would earn billions for a British empire tangled in the opium trade with a restive China, and replace that nation's supply of tea with that grown by its more reliable subjects in India. This shift kept English domination, expanded globalization, set off quicker tea clippers to bring tea to an invigorated porcelain and clay manufacturing region, and would increase health standards as less beer and more water was boiled and then brewed.
Read the complete article: Blogtrotter
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Traversing Eternity: Texts for the Afterlife from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt
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Posted by: Makarios on Tuesday, March 02, 2010 - 08:00 AM
215 Reads
Reviewed by T. G. Wilfong
Egyptian funerary texts of the Graeco-Roman period are less well known than their Pharaonic predecessors. This relative obscurity is partly due to their "lateness" in Egyptological terms, but also because of their diversity and complexity. Modern scholars have tended to group the earlier funerary texts into large corpora (e.g., Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, etc.), but the later texts defy such broad categorization. Many later compositions were used in a variety of configurations, and the boundaries between individual "books" could be fluid. The complexity of these later funerary texts has made their study as a whole difficult, but the volume under review here will significantly change this situation. In Traversing Eternity, Mark Smith provides an authoritative overview of the funerary literature of Graeco-Roman Egypt, with translations of some sixty texts, extensive introductory material for each and a general introduction for the corpus as a whole. For the first time, the majority of this diverse body of texts is gathered together in a single volume that is an essential resource for anyone interested in Egyptian funerary beliefs and practices of the later periods.
The documents translated in this volume come from the Ptolemaic Period (332-30 BCE) and the first two centuries of the Roman Period (30 BCE-c. 200 CE), a time when Egypt was under foreign rule and the Greek language dominated written documents in Egypt, but also a time when indigenous language and religion were still active and vital forces. The conjunction of cultures can be seen in the funerary artifacts of the time, in which Egyptian and Greek elements combined to create a new and distinctive synthesis.
Read the complete article: Bryn Mawr Classical Review
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The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science
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Posted by: Makarios on Saturday, February 27, 2010 - 02:00 PM
257 Reads
Reviewed by Y. Tzvi Langermann
Kevin van Bladel has produced an admirable study of the Arabic Hermetic tradition, fleshing out in considerable detail the evolution of Hermes' image, his identification with Qur'anic prophet Idris as well as the forces driving this transformation, and his connections, real, imagined, and still controversial, with the Harranians, the last organized group of astrolators to continue functioning within Islamic civilization. To do this, van Bladel constrains his use "Hermetic" to refer "only to texts attributed by name to Hermes" (p. 21), a definition that he admits is a bit too severe to apply throughout, but which serves well the purpose of weeding out much "Hermetic" nonsense that has no place in his book.
Part One, "Background", comprises three chapters. In the first of these, "Introduction", van Bladel establishes that the Greek Hermetica were produced in Roman Egypt. The remaining two chapters are devoted to Sassanid astrologers and the Harranian pagans, since these are the only two "special group[s] credited with possessing works attributed to Hermes and transmitting them into Arabic" (p. 66). The evidence for this transmission is very carefully reviewed. Van Bladel shows that some of the Arabic Hermetica were translated from Middle Persian. Though the texts in that language that may have been utilized by the Arabic translators are extremely scarce, the philology of Paul Kunitzsch and others prove a Persian origin. An important part of van Badel's story is taken up by complex narratives of the recovery of ancient wisdom. The Sassanians who translated Greek texts were, in their own eyes, repossessing part of the Perisan cultural heritage that had been plundered by Alexander the Great.
Read the complete article: Bryn Mawr Classical Review
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On Monsters: an Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears
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Posted by: Makarios on Saturday, February 27, 2010 - 10:00 AM
181 Reads
Reviewed by Peter Rogerson
Monsters, prodigies, ill omens, images of raw wildness and chaotic disorder haunt the human imagination and have done, presumably from earliest period of our humanity. Whether manifesting as huge, lumbering beasts, or physically or morally deformed human beings, they have inspire terror and awe through the ages.
Philosopher Stephen Asma here traces reactions to these monsters in the western tradition from classical and biblical times to the modern period. The monsters change over time, and have gradually become secularised from signs of God's wrath to either genetic flaws (which are now seen as providing important evidence for evolutionary development theory) or zoological or cryptozoological creatures. Once fearsome beasts such as wolves and gorillas are now re-presented as warm loveable creatures.
Whatever form they take monsters remain however as images of the "other", in which this "other" becomes "the worst thing there is".
Read the complete article: Magonia Blog
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Religion Is Not about God, by Loyal Rue
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Posted by: Makarios on Saturday, February 27, 2010 - 08:00 AM
238 Reads
Reviewed by CelticScholar
The author, Loyal Rue, is a professor of philosophy and religion at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. His writing style in this book is easy to follow even when he was explaining a complex thought.
The basic premise of the book is the idea that religion is not about God or Gods but about us. Religions that are successful are ones that influence our human nature so that we could think, feel and act in ways that are good for us, both on the personal level and on society level.
The book itself is divided into three parts.
Part one examines the evolutionary story and especially the evolution of behavior. Chapter one traces the evolutionary story from the first moment of creation to the emergence of life. Chapter two continues with the evolution of behavior from simple molecules to complex neurological systems. Chapter three concentrated on aspects of human nature that are open to manipulation by religious traditions. The author focuses on the dynamic interactions between emotional, cognitive and symbolic systems. Chapter four changes focus from human nature to spiritual traditions. This chapter talks about (in general) what is religion, its structure, its origins, and its function.
Read the complete article: Celtic Scholars Reviews and Opinions
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Voudou Money Magic, By Kenaz Filan
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Posted by: Makarios on Friday, February 26, 2010 - 04:00 PM
246 Reads
Reviewed by Diana Rajchel
Stop here for a mature, concise and realistic guide to enlisting the aid of the Lwa, the ancestors and spirits of Voudou, to help you provide for your family’s survival. Filan takes great care to communicate the details of real Voudou practice, and makes it clear that such information is hard-won. For those with rigid ideas about “right” and “wrong” prepare to be uncomfortable. Voudoun might be classified by some as a “pagan” religion but it bears no resemblance to Wicca or Wicca’s similarly-shaped religious brethen. While most neopaganism has an element of transcending the commonplace, Voudon is a religion of the common person. Those who practice Voudou ask their spirits for things that some might find blunt, frightening or overtly sexual as a part of making money or having the food needed to survive. Filan takes great pains to establish an understanding of Voudon within Haiti’s historical context. The conditions he describes makes it clear why Voudon blurs moral boundaries as most people understand them. In the process, the author answers questions about paying for initiation and the nature of offering. Voudou Money Magic is rare in how deftly Filan handles practice, theory and background.
Read the complete article: Facing North
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Pagan Parenting, by Kristin Madden
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Posted by: Makarios on Thursday, February 25, 2010 - 12:00 PM
186 Reads
Neo-Paganism has come of age. When I first became a Pagan in the 1970s, very few Pagans I knew had children. This quickly changed, of course, as people started forming families, both traditional and non-traditional. Unfortunately, only recently have books aimed at helping Pagan parents raise their Pagan children been published.
In her deceptively short book, Pagan Parenting, Kristen Madden covers the basics of raising a child in a Pagan home. She provides games, exercises, and rituals for children of all ages and their parents to help a child develop his or her psychic and magickal abilities. Most are simple and easy for a young child to understand (shielding as being inside an egg, for example) and are designed around a child’s attention span.
Read the complete article: Vici Blog
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The Asatru Edda : Sacred Lore of the North
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Posted by: Makarios on Thursday, February 25, 2010 - 10:00 AM
206 Reads
Reviewed by Siegfried Goodfellow
This is a work of tremendous care, and labour of love. Its meticulous compilation of source-texts into a coherent epic form has been accomplished, for the most part, with grace and with dignity. There is a rhythm and a pulse to the work that slows down the mind and lends a meditative quality to the verses and rich language quoted and flowed in to the well-laid pathways and grooves. These pathways are evidently the result of many great summonings of rede.
There are positively beautiful moments, and interpretations. Take the stunning yet instantly evident interpretation that the Llosalfar are in fact that tribe of elves in Dagr's line who prepare and accompany the daily pageant of Sol across the skies. "At each horizon of Jormungrund there are horse-doors, which the Ljosalfar ride through on their journey to and from the sky. Near the eastern horse-door lies Dellingr's hall, in Alfheimr, where he gives aid to Natt and her kinsmen. Near the western horse-door is Billingr's domain, who does the same. Dellingr is the jarl of the Ljosalfar and lord of the dawn. Billingr rules over twilight." (p. 18) This explains Snorri's positioning of the Ljosalfar in the various heavens as Sol parades across the skies.
Read the complete article: Heathen Ranter
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Days in Midgard: A Thousand Years On, by Steven T. Abell
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Posted by: Makarios on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - 08:00 AM
234 Reads
Reviewed by Henry
Open The Poetic Edda at a random page – particularly Lee Hollander’s canonical and nigh-unreadable translation – and you might find Norse mythology to be altogether too bizarre and cryptic to connect with. Such a reaction would be very understandable – Icelandic poetry is insanely complex and the stories seem to have been composed for an audience that already knew the background to the situations and characters. How, then, can we moderns find our way in? How can we translate the connection in our hearts into a form that permits speech and words?
As if attempting to solve this conundrum, some authors have attempted to retell the myths in a more modern vernacular. This has produced mixed results – some of these attempts are very successful, but even the best of these is vulnerable to well-intended but disappointing simplifications and distortions. Blunders such as painting Loki as one-dimensionally “evil” or Freya as a simplistic love goddess really fail to do this complex and subtle mythology the credit it deserves. Thankfully Steven T. Abell has found a nigh-on perfect solution, and he presents this solution with wit, wisdom, and a knowing wink in the form of Days in Midgard: A Thousand Years On.
Read the complete article: Elhaz Ablaze
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Greek Mythology: Poetics, Pragmatics and Fiction
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Posted by: Makarios on Monday, February 22, 2010 - 02:00 PM
235 Reads
Reviewed by Sterling Garnett
<snip> Those who have kept abreast of the substantial body of work, in Greek poetry and (what is typically called) mythology, of Claude Calame, the tremendously learned and tremendously opinionated Director of Studies at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, will find much that is familiar herein. This slim but dense volume is nothing less than an assertion, and a justification, of the particular methodology (and, perhaps, ideology) expressed in his earlier works, both a practical essay for students in the field and, in his own words, "a kind of act of faith" (ix) containing a "genuine personal sense of commitment" (266), an expression of opposition to structuralist analyses that over-universalize their subjects, focusing excessively on the common factors of diverse symbologies while neglecting their specific qualities and (particularly) performance contexts.
This is by no means an overall study of critical approaches to classical mythology; indeed, Calame's view of "structuralism", the approach against which this book is a polemic, could well be argued to be an unfair pastiche thereof. Despite Calame's qualifier, in the preface to this edition, that these approaches are "totally legitimate", and merely taken too far (ix), his interpretation reads them as contributing to a nefariously colonialist scholarly zeitgeist.
Read the complete article: Bryn Mawr Classical Review
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Sexual Personae, by Camille Paglia
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Posted by: Makarios on Monday, February 22, 2010 - 12:00 PM
198 Reads
Reviewed by Fionnchú
Her first chapter dazzles. 39 pages astonished me with her passion. I wondered if she'd sustain this intensity.
"Out with stereotypes, feminism proclaims. But stereotypes are the west's stunning sexual personae, the vehicles of art's assault against nature. The moment there is imagination, there is myth. We may have to accept an ethical cleavage between art and reality, tolerating horrors, rapes, and mutilations in art that we would not tolerate in society. For art is our message from the beyond, telling us what nature is up to. Not sex but cruelty is the great neglected or suppressed item on the modern humanistic agenda. We must honor the chthonian but not necessarily yield to it."(39)
So section one concludes.
Read the complete article: Blogtrotter
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Why We Love, by Helen Fisher
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Posted by: Makarios on Sunday, February 21, 2010 - 08:00 AM
224 Reads
Reviewed by Fionnchú
Playing devil's advocate teaching "Othello," I argued to my class about Iago's sensible, rational view of lust as nature's trapping us into coition, genetic reproduction, and then our own obsolescence. I wondered if any scientists backed him or me up, so I read this popular survey by a leading anthropologist of romance.
Fisher sprinkles literary allusion and ethnographic musings throughout a brisk, accessible, if summarily brief text. Iago gets a nod, as he should, for Shakespeare's confrontation of rational control (although Iago's hardly in the long run the epitome of detachment) over one's longings appeals if by its very un-humanness to us four centuries later. Fisher maps, congruently, why we find ourselves enslaved to passion, and then calmed by peace-- until the next onslaught brought on by perhaps a passing glance, a flirtatious gesture, or a past flame's return.
Read the complete article: Blogtrotter
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