PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.
Specific paths such as Heathenism, blended traditions, polytheist reconstructionism, etc.
When two societies engage in extensive cultural exchange, there's usually still a distinction between the two.
The whole eastern Mediterranean was a single giant cultural exchange milieu during the Bronze Age. The Minoans borrowed from the Levant, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. The Egyptians borrowed from the Minoans, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamians... You get the idea.
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You've probably heard about the AIs that people are using to make art these days. These are software programs that take a phrase the user inputs and turns it into a digital painting. But the software doesn't make these digital paintings from scratch. It creates them using a collection of art that's already in existence, that they gather and turn into a database. Where does this collection of art come from?
The AIs scrape it off the Internet.
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A Flash of White
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The Etruscans are every bit as enigmatic a civilization as the Minoans. People like to speculate about the Etruscans and wonder who they really were and where they originally came from. Part of this process often includes the possibility that there's a connection between them and the Minoans. But is that really the case? Or can we even tell?
First, let me be clear that the two cultures don't overlap in time or space. The last major Minoan city, Knossos, was destroyed around 1350 BCE. Anything resembling Minoan culture on Crete that may have remained after the cities fell then disappeared altogether during the LBA collapse, around 1100 BCE.
...Like tides, lives have high and low times. Sometimes you're riding on top of the wave, sometimes you're impossibly riding inside the tube of the wave and it is so cool and amazing, but sometimes you're in the trough. You can stand up and yell "Make wave!" or just wait it out and it's coming around the same either way.
If you're feeling low, and feeling like you aren't doing enough with your religious and magical practice, this advice is for you.
...The Poetic Edda is one of the basic texts of The Lore, the collectively decided cannon of Asatru and related Heathen sects. Thorstein Mayfield has made a new translation, with extensive footnotes. It was sent to Witches and Pagans Magazine for review.
This new translation of the Poetic Edda is subtitled A Heathen Study Edition: Mythological Poems. Author Thorstein Mayfield holds a Master’s in Literature from the University of Houston at Clear Lake. He is a founding member of Woden’s Folk Kindred in Texas, the organization that owns the publishing company which published this book.
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Love. It. 
