Comprehending the Great Vowel Shift

I love reading about the history of the English language. If I have 20 minutes to fill in my rhetoric class, I can give an impromptu lecture on that history, which I title (to myself) as “Why the English Language Is Like a Club Sandwich.” But never having formally worked with the International Phonetic Alphabet in a linguistics class, I never felt that I truly comprehended the “Great Vowel Shift” that marks part of the transition from Middle to Early Modern English.

Thanks to the Web, this site, by Melinda Mezner of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, makes it all comprehensible. Read the IPA text, listen to the sounds. After that, the diagrams might make more sense. Warning: lots of small sound files to download.

Barbie, the Hot Pagan Witch

I am in debt to Mark Morford’s SF Gate column on the latest, must-have Barbie doll. (Mattel offers a dark-complexioned version as well.) She would be just right to look down on you and your plushies while you are reading some of Llewellyn Publications’ latest teen-witch fiction.

Witchcraft Medicine

Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants is a collaboration between three German anthropologists: Claudia M =üller-Ebeling, Christian Rätch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I’ll read anything that R?tsch has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The translator here is Annabel Lee, whose work also appears in the journal Tyr — see the October 18 entry.

The book is more a study of cultural transformation using texts and art work. The three “explore the demonization of nature’s healing powers and sensuousness, the legacy of Hecate, the sorceress as shaman, and the plants associated with witches,” to quote the back-cover blurb.

This book is more historical than hands-on; from a practitioner’s position, I would rank it behind Dale Pendell’s work. But it’s still fascinating and inspiring.

One warning: don’t trust anthropologists making etymological arguments. “Cathar” (the heretics) does not derive from the German word for “tomcat.” (Storl gets it right: it’s from the Greek word for “pure.”) Nor does Boogie-Woogie, I will bet, derive from the same Indo-European root as the Russian Bog, “god.”

Witchcraft Medicine

Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants is a collaboration between three German anthropologists: Claudia M =üller-Ebeling, Christian Rätch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I’ll read anything that R?tsch has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The translator here is Annabel Lee, whose work also appears in the journal Tyr — see the October 18 entry.

The book is more a study of cultural transformation using texts and art work. The three “explore the demonization of nature’s healing powers and sensuousness, the legacy of Hecate, the sorceress as shaman, and the plants associated with witches,” to quote the back-cover blurb.

This book is more historical than hands-on; from a practitioner’s position, I would rank it behind Dale Pendell’s work. But it’s still fascinating and inspiring.

One warning: don’t trust anthropologists making etymological arguments. “Cathar” (the heretics) does not derive from the German word for “tomcat.” (Storl gets it right: it’s from the Greek word for “pure.”) Nor does Boogie-Woogie, I will bet, derive from the same Indo-European root as the Russian Bog, “god.”

Witchcraft Medicine

Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants is a collaboration between three German anthropologists: Claudia M =üller-Ebeling, Christian Rätch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I’ll read anything that R?tsch has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The translator here is Annabel Lee, whose work also appears in the journal Tyr — see the October 18 entry.

The book is more a study of cultural transformation using texts and art work. The three “explore the demonization of nature’s healing powers and sensuousness, the legacy of Hecate, the sorceress as shaman, and the plants associated with witches,” to quote the back-cover blurb.

This book is more historical than hands-on; from a practitioner’s position, I would rank it behind Dale Pendell’s work. But it’s still fascinating and inspiring.

One warning: don’t trust anthropologists making etymological arguments. “Cathar” (the heretics) does not derive from the German word for “tomcat.” (Storl gets it right: it’s from the Greek word for “pure.”) Nor does Boogie-Woogie, I will bet, derive from the same Indo-European root as the Russian Bog, “god.”

Witchcraft Medicine

Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants is a collaboration between three German anthropologists: Claudia Müller-Ebeling, Christian Rätsch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I ordered it because I’ll read anything that Rätsch has written, and, unfortunately, not enough of his work has been translated from German to English. (The translator here is Annabel Lee, whose work also appears in the journal Tyr — see the October 18 entry.

The book is more a study of cultural transformation using texts and art work. The three “explore the demonization of nature’s healing powers and sensuousness, the legacy of Hecate, the sorceress as shaman, and the plants associated with witches,” to quote the back-cover blurb.

This book is more historical than hands-on; from a practitioner’s position, I would rank it behind Dale Pendell’s work. But it’s still fascinating and inspiring.

One warning: don’t trust anthropologists making etymological arguments. “Cathar” (the heretics) does not derive from the German word for “tomcat.” (Storl gets it right: it’s from the Greek word for “pure.”) Nor does Boogie-Woogie, I will bet, derive from the same Indo-European root as the Russian Bog, “god.”

Demeter on a John Deere

I love a good conspiracy theory, especially when it involves what I always thought was one of the most innocuous of fraternal orders. You will find a calmer discussion here.

Smile When You Say ‘Tradition,’ Partner

Last week I found in my campus mailbox the first (only?) issue of Tyr: Myth-Culture-Tradition, a new journal focusing on Asatru-Odinist-Heathen thought. It’s quite a bit like The Pomegranate started out to be for the more broadly defined Pagan community (including A-O-H), before The Pom morphed into a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. The first issue of Tyr was dated June 2002. I cannot find a web site to link to, but here is one online review. (UPDATE: Link is dead, so I removed it)

I’m always interested in what Joscelyn Godwin has today on esoteric subjects–here, he writes about the man who put the T in Tradition, Julius Evola–and on the evolution of the followers of the Indo-Europeanist Georges Dum?zil. But the trouble is, you never know when you are going to step over the edge when reading Tyr. Turn the page and someone is claiming that the his Heathen rock band’s music “resonates” with people of European origin because “DNA will out, you know.”

Uh, yeah. I once thought that that was why I was so thunderstruck the first time that I heard bagpipes playing when I was a child–my sliver of Scottish ancestry. On the other hand, I always liked blues music too–even did a blues show on my college FM station. Maybe my banks-of-the-Mississippi River ancestry is more important than DNA? Who knows? This “blood and soil” stuff so easily can be warped.

More information: Utrdisc@aol.com

Subscriptions US $16 domestic; $25 foreign (airmail)
Ultra, P.O. Box 11736, Atlanta, Georgia 30355

Smile When You Say ‘Tradition,’ Partner

Last week I found in my campus mailbox the first (only?) issue of Tyr: Myth-Culture-Tradition, a new journal focusing on ?satr?-Odinist-Heathen thought. It’s quite a bit like The Pomegranate started out to be for the more broadly defined Pagan community (including A-O-H), before The Pom morphed into a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. The first issue of Tyr was dated June 2002. I cannot find a web site to link to, but here is one online review.

I’m always interested in what Joscelyn Godwin has today on esoteric subjects–here, he writes about the man who put the T in Tradition, Julius Evola–and on the evolution of the followers of the Indo-Europeanist Georges Dum?zil. But the trouble is, you never know when you are going to step over the edge when reading Tyr. Turn the page and someone is claiming that the his Heathen rock band’s music “resonates” with people of European origin because “DNA will out, you know.”

Uh, yeah. I once thought that that was why I was so thunderstruck the first time that I heard bagpipes playing when I was a child–my sliver of Scottish ancestry. On the other hand, I always liked blues music too–even did a blues show on my college FM station. Maybe my banks-of-the-Mississippi River ancestry is more important than DNA? Who knows? This “blood and soil” stuff so easily can be warped.

More information: Utrdisc@aol.com

Subscriptions US $16 domestic; $25 foreign (airmail)
Ultra, P.O. Box 11736, Atlanta, Georgia 30355

Smile When You Say ‘Tradition,’ Partner

Last week I found in my campus mailbox the first (only?) issue of Tyr: Myth-Culture-Tradition, a new journal focusing on ?satr?-Odinist-Heathen thought. It’s quite a bit like The Pomegranate started out to be for the more broadly defined Pagan community (including A-O-H), before The Pom morphed into a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. The first issue of Tyr was dated June 2002. I cannot find a web site to link to, but here is one online review.

I’m always interested in what Joscelyn Godwin has today on esoteric subjects–here, he writes about the man who put the T in Tradition, Julius Evola–and on the evolution of the followers of the Indo-Europeanist Georges Dum?zil. But the trouble is, you never know when you are going to step over the edge when reading Tyr. Turn the page and someone is claiming that the his Heathen rock band’s music “resonates” with people of European origin because “DNA will out, you know.”

Uh, yeah. I once thought that that was why I was so thunderstruck the first time that I heard bagpipes playing when I was a child–my sliver of Scottish ancestry. On the other hand, I always liked blues music too–even did a blues show on my college FM station. Maybe my banks-of-the-Mississippi River ancestry is more important than DNA? Who knows? This “blood and soil” stuff so easily can be warped.

More information: Utrdisc@aol.com

Subscriptions US $16 domestic; $25 foreign (airmail)
Ultra, P.O. Box 11736, Atlanta, Georgia 30355