Ring from Roman Britain with Latin inscription. (BBC)
Is this Roman ring the inspiration for J. R. R. Tolkien’s ring of power?
Maybe, maybe not. It makes for an interesting story, and at least you can say that he was thinking about magical rings before Lord of the Rings was written.
Some Pagan, occult, and academic news items of interest:
• I did not know that any of the “Group of Seven” were Theosophists — plus other influential Canadian Pagans and occultists in one list.
• “Unintended Consequences of the Affordable Health Care Act” for part-time college and university faculty. In other words, schools are reacting to Obamacare by cutting the hours of adjunct professors.
• I have been saying for ten years (!) that we need more Pagan biography and autobiography. So I was glad to read in The Wild Hunt that Deborah Lipp has written one.
• The Hopi tribal government is upset over an upcoming French auction selling some of their sacred masks. NAGPRA is no help internationally.
Historians say many Hopi artifacts were taken long ago by people who found them unattended in shrines and on altars along the mesas of the Southwest
Because if a shrine does not have a full-time caretaker, it must be “abandoned.” The “vanishing Indian” and all that.
This is interesting too; the American government will help foreign countries recover their artifacts here, but does not protect ours over there:
When a nation like Italy or Cambodia claims ownership of an object in the United States, it typically invokes international accords that require American officials to take up the cases. The Justice Department, for example, recently sent two lawyers to Cambodia as part of an effort to help that country seize an ancient statue that Sotheby’s planned to auction in New York.
The United States does not have similar accords that it could cite in support of the Hopi claim on the Paris auction items. Several experts and activists said the United States had never viewed its own cultural patrimony as a priority because the country is relatively young, has long embraced the concept of free trade and has not historically focused on the cultural heritage issues of American Indians.
Some fairies are said to live in boulders, others perhaps in purpose-built housing.
In this blog post, a professional gardener in southern Colorado moves from greenhouses to fairy houses (with her dad as maintenance man) to bee houses.
And please scroll to the bottom — it’s a long post — for a list of bee-killing garden products to avoid.
Went to town with M. today—it’s our secular Sunday routine of coffeehouse brunch, newspapers (v. trad, that’s us), and then the laundromat and the grocery store.
The coffeehouse is owned by (extremely low-key) Christian ex-missionaries. I had checked the Facebook page to see if they were closing today for Easter — nothing posted there one way or another, so off we went.
When we arrived, however, there was a sign on the door to the effect that they were closing at noon, and the lone barista was totally overwhelmed by a long line of people all ordering cinnamon-ginger-latte-Italian soda-extra large-and-sugary drinks that take five minutes to make. (Really, why don’t they just go down the street and get a milkshake and a cup of coffee, then pour them together?)
All too soon the noon siren at the fire department blew.
With the clothes at the laundromat, we then went to the supermarket. One item on the short shopping list was potting soil, because M. is starting seeds in the greenhouse. But it was closed.
“Let’s try the hardware store,” I said. Nope, closed. Oh, and I needed cash for the week, so I walked to the bank, entered the ATM lobby and — “Temporarily Out of Service.” Now that’s really not fair. I feel marginalized and oppressed.
A BBC piece examines EVP — Electronic Voice Projection — or the alleged recording of spirit voices on tape or digital recorders.
The simplest explanation is that EVP voices are just stray radio transmissions. Usually they are so faint and masked by static interference that it’s hard to make out what they are saying, and the EVP investigator has to “interpret” them for you.
That might seem like a weakness but that’s also their power. As Joe Banks, a sound artist, points out, a dead person speaking in studio quality wouldn’t be nearly so convincing as a voice you must strain to hear.
Banks has an ongoing project called Rorschach Audio. He suggests that the voices are the aural equivalent of inkblot tests devised by Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach. He argues that while the EVP experimenters think they are doing parapsychology, they are actually unwittingly carrying out psychology experiments.
Really?
Witchcraft at Second City Chicago? Magical warding for the building?
Or were those “demons” just metaphorical?
How come this was not part of last November’s “Occult Chicago” tour?
The “cave” is big enough to walk into if if you bend over.
My little patch of the southern Colorado foothills may not be great agricultural land, but it does (or because it does) have boulders. Big ones.
Ever since I posted about the Icelandic huldufólk (hidden folk) documentary, I have been scrutinizing them. Is this one . . . um . . . inhabited?
It is something that I accept in theory. And I have had some interesting dreams about the hidden folk/fairies/”UFO people” (all the same thing, probably) who live inside the house walls or in invisible houses.
So maybe I need a hidden-folk consultant, like the woman at the start of the documentary, who can walk around each boulder and give a nei or já as appropriate.
• Unitarians squirming over polyamory:
But as the issue of same-sex marriage heads to the Supreme Court, many committed Unitarians think the denomination should have a position, which is that polyamory activists should just sit down and be quiet. For one thing, poly activists are seen as undermining the fight for same-sex marriage. The UUA has officially supported same-sex marriage, the spokeswoman says, “since 1979, with tons of resolutions from the general assembly.”
• How do you honor your Christian ancestors?
When They first began contacting me, it was a cacophony of voices, questions like “Why did you stop going to church? Do you not like Fr. ___ anymore?” and “You can still pray with us, yes? (or ja?, dependent on the Ancestor)?” and many others. Their Catholic identity was so strong and intrinsic to Their Being that They carried it over with some part of Them into Death. If Their Catholicism is as deep, powerful, and purposeful a presence in Their life as Paganism is in mine, that it lasts well after They have crossed over, who am I to argue with Their spirits?
• While we are reclaiming formerly pejorative terms, why not reclaim “apostate?”
The word apostate is one such boundary. It is a word that requires confidence and defiance. People demand things when they hear it. It opens conversations and breaks down walls. It can also cause a great deal of pain and suffering in places that do not allow freedom of belief or thought
Things were hard for the people who built an instant capital city for the Dear Leader.
Researchers examining skeletons in the commoners’ cemetery in Amarna have discovered that many of the city’s children were malnourished and stunted. Adults show signs of backbreaking work, including high levels of injuries associated with accidents.
“We have evidence of the most stressed and disease-ridden of the ancient skeletons of Egypt that have been reported to date,” said University of Arkansas bioarchaeologist Jerome Rose (a National Geographic Committe for Research and Exploration grantee), one of the team of experts examining the dead. “Amarna is the capital city of the Egyptian empire. There should be plenty of food . . . Something seems to be amiss.”
Wikipedia describes Akhenaten’s new religion, which imposed on Egypt and which died with him, as “monolatristic, henotheistic, or monotheistic.”
Other ancient Egyptian workers’ skeletons show signs of hard lives, but apparently Amarna’s workers had it the worst.
Cara Schulz has written a tribute to Yana, a young Syrian Pagan woman (yes, there are a few) tortured and killed by Islamic militants.
Trying to make something positive of this sickening story, she has created a donation page for the group Doctors Without Borders in Yana’s name. You can read the whole story there. I donated, you should too. The campaign has almost reached its goal.
Oh, and Yana’s brother, you will pay in another currency. So much for Syrian family values.