Do visit The Juggler, a new collaborative Pagan blog with a strong group of contributors. I have put a permanent link on the right.

Trojans, anyone?

I have always wondered why sports teams and condoms were named after the Trojans too, but these guys do it so much more lucidly.

And the word is that the movie totally ignores the gods. What’s the point without that essential flavor of human futility that the Olympian backstory adds? But the Notorious M.C. has been commenting on how buff Brad Pitt is looking these days, so maybe we will see it anyway.

Inexpectatus

I had started a letter to a friend in England that mentioned, among other things, the annual return of the broadtailed hummingbirds on April 16. (They then had to endure two snowstorms, but that is the way of the hummingbird). There are no hummingbirds in Europe, but apparently there once were, millions of years ago: a fossil has been found.

Wicca and the Navajos

Continuing my uploading of essays and papers to my web site, I have now added one of my favorite pieces of Pagan autobiographical writing, Malcolm Brenner’s “A Witch among the Navajos,” which originally appeared in 1998 in Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions.

Far too much Pagan writing is either advice-giving, instructional, fiction, or something else: There is a definite shortage of well-written “creative nonfiction” such as Brenner supplies here.

Bull-leapers, then and now

Archaeologists — but not some goddess-worshippers — generally accept that Arthur Evans basically invented the popular conception of Bronze Age Crete, the “Palace of Minos,” the Cretan Labyrinth, and so on. (More Bronze Age archaeology resources here.

But the famous fresco of the “bull leapers” is in all the art-history books, and the combination of (mechanical) bull + barely clad girl is still potent, as this site (not safe for work) attests.

There is a paper waiting to be written here. . .

“Bless that pet”

Ship of Fools, the (mostly Anglican) Christian humor e-zine, collects humorous captions of liturgical pet-blessing under this introduction: “Animals used to get sacrificed by priests, but in these liberal times, they get blessed up instead.”

And speaking of Anglicans, this blog, by a female Episcopal seminarian, gives me a chuckle, insofar as I was raised a Broad-to-High Church Episcopalian myself, until I bailed out at age 15. She writes that she is “one year closer to being ordained a priest.”

It’s funny how Episcopalians speak of ordained women as “priests,” i.e., as honorary men. Perhaps the word “priestess” carries too many connotations of flickering flames, tinkling cymbals, diaphanous costumes . . . and erotic Paganism.

Fine wine, rich coffee

It’s always nice to have your lifestyle validated. Maybe the study shows correlation rather than cause and effect, but why take a chance?

Explosive Fruit

Checking my blog visitor log the other day, I saw that someone had used Google’s translation service to read it in French. The phrase “originally published in The Pomegranate” had been translated as “? l’origine ?dit?es dans la grenade.”

“La grenade” . . . of course! The Engish word “pomegranate” comes from the Old French pom grenate. That connection trickled into my consciousness after a moment’s thought. (Hence “grenadine,” the syrup made from pomegranates or currants.)

But I still enjoyed the metaphorical possibilities: our journal–which is now at the printer–as a grenade tossed into seminar room of religious studies. It sounds like a poetic image by one of the more violent Futurists of the 1930s.

In early 20th-century American slang, small bombs thrown by hand or launched by a rifle have been called “pineapples” (cast iron fragmentation-style) or “lemons” (sheet metal fragmentation-style) — but not, so far as I know, “pomegranates.”

Explosive Fruit

Checking my blog visitor log the other day, I saw that someone had used Google’s translation service to read it in French. The phrase “originally published in The Pomegranate” had been translated as “? l’origine ?dit?es dans la grenade.”

“La grenade” . . . of course! The Engish word “pomegranate” comes from the Old French pom grenate. That connection trickled into my consciousness after a moment’s thought. (Hence “grenadine,” the syrup made from pomegranates or currants.)

But I still enjoyed the metaphorical possibilities: our journal–which is now at the printer–as a grenade tossed into seminar room of religious studies. It sounds like a poetic image by one of the more violent Futurists of the 1930s.

In early 20th-century American slang, small bombs thrown by hand or launched by a rifle have been called “pineapples” (cast iron fragmentation-style) or “lemons” (sheet metal fragmentation-style) — but not, so far as I know, “pomegranates.”

Explosive Fruit

Checking my blog visitor log the other day, I saw that someone had used Google’s translation service to read it in French. The phrase “originally published in The Pomegranate” had been translated as “? l’origine ?dit?es dans la grenade.”

“La grenade” . . . of course! The Engish word “pomegranate” comes from the Old French pom grenate. That connection trickled into my consciousness after a moment’s thought. (Hence “grenadine,” the syrup made from pomegranates or currants.)

But I still enjoyed the metaphorical possibilities: our journal–which is now at the printer–as a grenade tossed into seminar room of religious studies. It sounds like a poetic image by one of the more violent Futurists of the 1930s.

In early 20th-century American slang, small bombs thrown by hand or launched by a rifle have been called “pineapples” (cast iron fragmentation-style) or “lemons” (sheet metal fragmentation-style) — but not, so far as I know, “pomegranates.”