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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in literature

Posted by on in Paths Blogs

Tolkien once wrote in a letter to his son that he was "a Hwiccian (of Wychwood) on both sides."*

Curious words, are they not? My mind generated an entire alternate universe in which Tolkien was the granddaddy of Fam-Trad Witches, and all the things in our culture that would be different if it were so.

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Can modern fiction be sacred literature?

I've spent a large part of the past two years writing a novel. It's not my first one, and it won't be my last one. But it's the first one that has brought up an interesting question: can modern fiction also be sacred literature?

The novel, titled The Last Priestess of Malia, is set in ancient Crete - so it's historical fiction. Here's the summary of the story:

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Mariah Sheehy
    Mariah Sheehy says #
    I look forward to reading it! I love well-done world-building & description- Ursula K. Le Guin & Marion Zimmer Bradley come to min
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    Did you find yourself gaining new religious insights from writing this novel? (That's a phenomenon I'm familiar with.)
  • Laura Perry
    Laura Perry says #
    I did, and in ways that I didn't expect. Writing it was definitely a transformative experience.
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I remember reading a magazine; Green Egg I think, in which an author wrote about how meaningful the Lord of the Rings was to her a
  • Laura Perry
    Laura Perry says #
    I always listen to what my beta readers say about typos and continuity errors; I'm a professional copyeditor but even I can't alwa

Posted by on in Studies Blogs
Walpurgisnacht

Walther knew.  But he could not resist,what ten-year-old could?  Every year was the same.  Grandmother Dunkelhaus would shake her finger at him and warn, “Walpurgisnacht, the devil’s night—you stay indoors.  Devils,witches, ghosts—they come, they get little boys, eat you.”  Then she would snap together her shiny wooden teeth—clack!—as if she knew the flights of witches first hand.

 

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Title: Goddess: A Celebration in Art and Literature

Publisher: Abrams/Stewart Tabori and Chang

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Nothing in excess, Augustus

I realize that the usual wheelhouse of this blog is "popular" culture - comics, video games, stuff like that. The peculiar artistry of nerds. Today, however, I need to talk about something a little closer to "literary" culture (which, ironically, has far less mainstream exposure than any artifact of the geek fraternity.)

I stole Gore Vidal's 1964 novel Julian from a friend back in 2010. ("Stole" is the proper verb. I borrowed it from her and then moved away without giving it back.) I intended to read it as research for a novella I was writing. I never got through it back then, partially because squeezing yet another 500 page novel into one's final semester of graduate school is quite difficult, and partially because I knew the ending would break me in half. But I knew I would have to finish it someday. I picked the book up again this fall, incited by Vidal's death earlier this year, and finished it this morning.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Rebecca Buchanan
    Rebecca Buchanan says #
    Thank you for the wonderful review. I have had Vidal's book sitting on my shelf, half-read, for years; I really need to get back
  • Eric O. Scott
    Eric O. Scott says #
    I have read The Last Pagan. (Indeed, it makes an appearance in the novella I mentioned.) I, uh, stole it from my friend too..

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

Being a devotee of *cough* "lesser-known" Deities does occasionally suck. In my case, while I honor well-known Deities such as Hermes and The Muses and Artemis and Hekate, I am also very devoted to The Charites.

The usual response to that statement is "who?"

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

Like many Pagans, I am a lover of literature. It was in books that I first discovered the Gods. I devoured tales of Artemis and Apollo and Isis and Anubis and Brigid. And -- like many -- the first thing I did after my (re)discovery of the Gods was build an altar.

I felt most drawn to the Hellenic Gods, but I had no real guidelines for the proper construction of a Greek-style altar. I found a basic diagram in Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, and used that as a template: bust of Apollo and a gold candle on the right, bust of Artemis and a silver candle on the left, bowl of dried flowers, small cup of earth, small cup of water.

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