{"id":206,"date":"2004-06-10T02:54:00","date_gmt":"2004-06-10T02:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=206"},"modified":"2004-06-10T02:54:00","modified_gmt":"2004-06-10T02:54:00","slug":"206","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=206","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Current Reading<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chasclifton.com\/graphics\/euro_paganism.gif?w=625\" align=\"left\">I will be leaving tomorrow for a long festival weekend; paradoxically, I hope to get some reading done, toward the paper that I&#8217;m writing for the Bath Spa UC <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bathspa.ac.uk\/schools\/historical-and-cultural-studies\/sophia\/conferences\/exploring-consciousness.asp\"> &#8220;Exploring Consciousness&#8221;<\/a> conference. So it will be a weekend in the woods with some of the old-timers: <a href=\"http:\/\/id-www.ucsb.edu\/fscf\/library\/RUSSELL\/home.html\">Jeffrey Burton Russell<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sscnet.ucla.edu\/history\/ginzburg\/\">Carlo Ginzburg<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pfd.co.uk\/scripts\/get.py\/books\/?authors%20COHNN\">Norman Cohn<\/a>, and others.<\/p>\n<p>I just received a copy also of Ken Dowden&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.routledge-ny.com\/books.cfm?isbn=0415120349\"><em>European Paganism<\/em><\/a>, illustrated with ornate 19th-century engravings of muscular, curly-bearded barbarians. Not cheap, even through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\">Powell&#8217;s<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Dowden writes, &#8220;I wanted to show paganism in action, see what it looked and felt like, let the reader see the evidence and listen to the authors, even boring old Caesarius of Arles and grumpy Maximus of Turin.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>And all the while contemporary Paganism will be in action in the temporary autonomous zone of festival-time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Current Reading I will be leaving tomorrow for a long festival weekend; paradoxically, I hope to get some reading done, toward the paper that I&#8217;m writing for the Bath Spa UC &#8220;Exploring Consciousness&#8221; conference. So it will be a weekend in the woods with some of the old-timers: Jeffrey Burton Russell, Carlo Ginzburg, Norman Cohn, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-206","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6627,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6627","url_meta":{"origin":206,"position":0},"title":"By Lugh, I Think They&#8217;ve Got It","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Reading the Pueblo Chieftain newspaper in a coffee house on Sunday morning, I turned to the weather\/almanac page and learned something new. The coming weekend marks the ancient Celtic [sic] solar festival of Llamas. That was a divinely inspired typo. Given the prevalence of the subspecies dramaticus in the Pagan\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6627#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"llamas","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/llamas.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":930,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=930","url_meta":{"origin":206,"position":1},"title":"The Right Architecture for Reading","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I played hooky and went to Taos last weekend. I spent part of two mornings reading In Search of Zarathrustra (interview with author Paul Kriwaczek here).The book is both an exploration of how Zorastrian ideas influenced Western monotheisms and an travel book about Iran, Afghanistan, and other regions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"New Mexico\"","block_context":{"text":"New Mexico","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=new-mexico"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":528,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=528","url_meta":{"origin":206,"position":2},"title":"This post is fillerI don't\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"This post is fillerI don't normally let a week go by without blogging, but thing happened, like being asked by a magazine-editor friend to write a 2,000-word \"think piece\" on the dilemmas of a being an \"evacuee\"--from a forest fire in my case, but with obvious relevance to Katrina and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":869,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=869","url_meta":{"origin":206,"position":3},"title":"What I Will Be Doing for Beltane","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, \"will be doing.\" Some people look at the calendar and say that Beltane is this evening and tomorrow. Others celebrated last weekend, according to the \"weekend nearest the cross-quarter day\" rule. Only by that rule, it comes next weekend.By the Sun, it falls on Saturday the 5th, as this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13997,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13997","url_meta":{"origin":206,"position":4},"title":"Have a Happy All-These-Things Festival Weekend!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 3, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"(image by Grok 3, which was having trouble with \"Feliz\" and \"Cinco\")","rel":"","context":"In \"Beltane\"","block_context":{"text":"Beltane","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=beltane"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/feliz-6.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/feliz-6.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/feliz-6.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/feliz-6.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":100,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=100","url_meta":{"origin":206,"position":5},"title":"Haifa Wehbe Watch","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 21, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Ever since my original post about Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe (or Wahbi), this blog has been receiving sporadic hits from the Middle East: Israel, Syria, Egypt, Dubai . . . Apparently she and some of her peers have really undermined traditional Arab ideas of beauty. But I say this to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Aphrodite\"","block_context":{"text":"Aphrodite","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=aphrodite"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}