Oct

31

Word Of The Week: October 31st, 2009

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

October 31, 2009 | 3 Comments

Having had pagan friends for most of my life, I’ve been familiar with the holiday Samhain, but it wasn’t until I looked it up that I realized it was not, at least to modern pagans, October 31st, but the day after, November 1st. I’m not sure why this is, although maybe the answer lies in [...]

Oct

10

Word Of The Week: October 10th, 2009

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

October 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment

In contemporary society we often take a very lighthearted look at folk beliefs, particularly spirits and “little people”, even though at one time people believed in and took mythical creatures very seriously. The evolution of the term pixie is an excellent example of this. The Oxford English Dictionary is fuzzy on the term’s origins. Like [...]

Oct

3

Word Of The Week: October 3rd, 2009

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

October 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment

One of the qualities of paganism is that everything–stone, tree, house, sometimes even a room–has its own resident spirit that doesn’t just watch over it. The spirit inhabits the space. The Russian ovinnik, for instance, is a mischievous, even destructive, creature that, according to Russian pagan belief, inhabited the barn (the threshing barn where grain [...]

Apr

1

Would I Trick You?

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

April 1, 2009 | 1 Comment

One morning when I was supposed to be writing a paper I was watching cartoons instead, and I had an epiphany. The roadrunner and coyote cartoons of Chuck Jones were miniature summations of the existentialist philosophy of Sartre and Camus. In addition they were like miniature versions of the plays of Samuel Beckett. In fact [...]

Feb

23

Book ‘Em: The Return Of Gilgamesh.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

February 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment

It seems strange that there’s never been a stage adaptation, that I know of, of the epic of Gilgamesh. I’ve written about Gilgamesh before and included a list of all the versions I knew of as well as various cultural references. The real Gilgamesh was a Sumerian, and the Sumerians began the legends which were [...]

Feb

18

Immortal Beauty.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

February 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment

When I first saw Bertel Thorvaldsen’s statue Ganymede And The Eagle, it reminded me that, even though I’ve heard the story of Ganymede referred to repeatedly throughout the years, even though I think about it every time I see the planet Jupiter in the night sky or look at it through a telescope and see [...]