My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I almost gave this 5 stars. The only reason it gets four is that I noticed a couple of what I consider inaccuracies, but they were in obscure areas where I just happened to have different information, and I’m not really sure which of us was right but I think I was. Most of what this book covers as far as mythology, religion and history I have to take on faith, not being an expert, so it bothered me to find a couple of things I do know about that weren’t quite right. These were just little niggling details that I thought could have been researched more thoroughly. But the author warns us up front that although he researched and did his best he’s not an expert in some of these areas.
Over all, though, I think the conclusions drawn make a lot of sense. In nearly every culture that has a phonetic alphabet, there was a kind of culture shock that occurred, first when the alphabet was developed and a lot of people became literate, and later when printing became common. These culture shocks caused waves of violence and/or oppression, especially against women. These periods of time, at least in the West, also coincided with the growth and spread of monotheistic religions and reformations of those religions, particularly those that viewed images as bad and the written word as good. In addition to these effects coinciding with the spread of religion, they also coincided with the spread of scientism and Cartesian ideals, as well as with atheism and Marxism.
I won’t go into much detail, because really the details need to be read as they’re presented in the book in order to make the most sense. There’s too much detail involved for me to remember enough of it for me to make sense. But I recommend this book and, in my opinion, those tiny inaccuracies I think I noticed are excusable considering the amount of information the author sifted through to draw his conclusions.
If you’ve ever wondered what happened to the Goddess in ancient belief and myth, why She vanished, as well as why women have been treated so abysmally at certain times in history in nearly every culture, this makes fascinating and disturbing reading.
If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about and want to know more about SOPA and PIPA, what they would do and why they would be bad for the Internet, here’s an informative video that I found extremely helpful (about 11 minutes in length):
Understanding PIPA / SOPA & Why You Should Be Concerned (YouTube)
P.S. There are two Democratic Senators in California who’ve had my vote term after term, but will lose my support to a third party instantly if they vote for SOPA or PIPA. These bills are just plain WRONG for the United States and for the global Internet.
I request that you vote against SOPA and PIPA. The Internet does not need any censoring. If people were more educated as regards copyright law there would be a lot fewer violations.
I’m a creative writer whose copyrights have been violated, with some of my poetry and an entire novel. I handled those instances on my own. It cost me no money, since the owners of the sites were cooperative as soon as they learned of the violations by their users. Those instances occurred because of lack of education of the public as to copyright law and fair use, and I don’t feel that SOPA or PIPA would have been the answer. We already have laws regarding copyrights. It’s possible we have too many protections, with a corporation able to hold copyrights (for material produced by employees) in perpetuity rather than just one person’s or their heir’s lifetime. I am in fact in support of returning US copyrights to their former limited time span.
Again, I’m a creative writer, but I think there should be a point at which all intellectual property reverts to the public domain.
The Internet represents the first time that everyone in the US (who can afford or use a computer) has had free speech in my lifetime. All other forms of public expression are controlled by moneyed interests with their own agendas and are not readily or freely available to all citizens as a forum for expression. Please don’t let the Internet’s availability for self-education and expression disappear because a few large corporations think it would be more convenient for them.
SOPA and PIPA are wrong, and they will not protect jobs. They will censor all of us unnecessarily and wrongly. Please vote against them.
I’m not a Buddhist, but I’m curious about many spiritual paths. I admire many Buddhist teachings, and I find information about the Tibetan tradition intriguing.
Everyone deserves clean, healthy water, including Mama Gaia and everything that grows on her. Please start the year fresh by supporting Waterkeeper Alliance. If you’re on Twitter, you can help by following @waterkeeper and helping them reach their end of year goal of 20,000 followers.
I’ve never been one for New Years resolutions, with one exception. In January 1995 I was determined to do two things: 1) lose a lot of weight and 2) take on and complete a large, intense creative project, one with depth, one that I felt passionately about, one that was personally risky, emotionally and in the time and energy I needed to invest in it.
I don’t consider myself high in the willpower department, and though I was never sure exactly what set me back the other times that I failed to carry through with something, it never surprised me. I thought of myself as an underachiever. What I’ve found most years is that if I set a resolution, it doesn’t pan out. But in 1995 I accomplished both my big goals.
Why? First, they were goals that were both important to me, things I felt strongly about at the time, and they’d been on my mind for months and even years before the point of crystallization that caused me to go for them.
There was one other secret that I’m now convinced got me through that year.
I didn’t tell a soul about these two goals.(more…)
I’m hoping that this is not just a few new posts, but a new trend for me, that I’ll find my blogging muse again. It’s nice to be here doing a little scribbling and checking in on some other people’s blogs again. I spent quite a lot of time at Facebook in the past couple of years until becoming thoroughly disenchanted and feeling nostalgic for my blog.
I’ll likely not open comments, for now, but if you want to contact me, just use the contact page. (Link in upper right menu.) It will be nice to be in touch again if we’ve lost touch. Thanks for visiting and being patient with my absence for so long.
In spite of it freezing up Firefox on me (hopefully a problem unique to my computer setup), I’m sharing this awe inspiring video from PBS of winter in Yellowstone. The wildlife footage is some of the best I’ve ever seen, including a pack of wolves taunting a herd of elk stags, and a red fox diving into the snow after voles or mice. I’m a fan of nature documentaries, and this one is astounding. Stark evidence that there’s a reason they call it “Wild Wyoming.” Enjoy! (more…)
I’m not usually a painter, though I love the medium, admire great painting, and can’t help dabbling now and then. You wouldn’t think advice for painters would help me that much to nurture my whole creative self. But then I saw this post at JanasJournal.com: (more…)
I’ve decided to begin an in-depth Tarot study in 2009, not of any particular deck, but of the 22 major arcana and the 14 levels of minor arcana — Aces through 10s, Pages, Knights, Queens, Kings — using several decks. I’ve been using Tarot, mostly for personal insight, for 20 plus years, so this will be a different journey than it would’ve been as a beginner. Tarot is something that one never really finishes learning. It’s as multifaceted as a string of diamonds, and continues to sparkle for me after all these years. I’m nurturing a new interest in Carl Jung and his methods and writings, so that will be a side focus of this study, since Tarot archetypes relate so well to his work.
At first I planned to go through these individual cards and groups of four cards in order, first The Fool through The World, and then the four Aces through the four Kings. But then I thought I could also turn this into a comparative reading for my year ahead. I removed all but one suit and the majors from a deck, shuffled the remaining cards, then drew a card for each one- to two-week period, which may stretch out into longer periods if life interferes. I’m not going to rigidly adhere to a schedule, so interested parties will have to be patient sometimes waiting for the next Tarot Study post.
The four Kings will be the first focus of my study.
My process will be flexible and will include studying the cards from up to about 9 favorite decks. I may change which decks I use in the course of the study. I have some decks that I haven’t yet used very much, such as the Golden Tarot by Kat Black, which I’ve had for a few years but have sadly neglected since purchasing it, and my more recently acquired Haindl Tarot by Hermann Haindl, as well as the Motherpeace Tarot by Karen Vogel and Vicki Noble. I’ll journal sometimes about the cards (in my personal journal, not necessarily to share here), I’ll also read about them, meditate with them, and do a little sketching and painting, since I hope to create my own deck eventually, for my personal use. (I’m not sure how much artwork I’ll share here either.)
Please note that what I share here won’t be everything, and the pattern may vary from post to post, depending on my time and what I get out of the particular card. Some posts will describe cards, others will be more about what I’ve learned from books, from thinking about the concepts involved, and so forth. If there’s something you’d like to see more of, feel free to let me know, but I can make no promises because of the time involved and the fact that I plan to take this as it goes and, again, be as flexible with myself as possible so I’ll keep up the study and not feel too constrained. My goal is to post something every week up to every few weeks regarding this Tarot study. What that something will be, I won’t know until I post it.
I have my new weekly calendar set up to chart my way through this study, in pencil (smile). I plan to blog more about Tarot anyway, whether as a part of this study or not, since Tarot was the main focus of this blog when I started it, and has become a strong focus for me once again.
I’m finally shopping my novel around, so I have more time to take care of the rest of my life. There’s something about a book-length writing project that shuts out too much else from the range of my attention, so I’ve decided that unless I sell this novel it’s going to be smaller creative projects for a while, like poetry, short stories, and some needlework and painting. I’m interested in art journals, at the moment, and in playing my guitar more. I’m a rank beginner, but I find music puts my brain into a completely different frequency or something, and I like it there.
While it would be easy (for some people perhaps, not me) to set a list of goals to accomplish, and stick to that set list, I’m more of a drifter. I look forward to browsing my creative urges for a while to see where they lead me. Hopefully they’ll lead into a little more organization and housecleaning. Writing a novel can really upset your housecleaning routine — if you even have one to start with, which I don’t.
The local birds seem to think our yard is a good place to visit while the last bits of fire and smoke die down, and they’ve come through in flocks as well as individually. At one moment this morning they seemed to be throwing a bird party in our side yard. I stepped outside and saw four or five hummingbirds, a flock of common bushtits (which don’t normally show themselves in the open), a sparrow, something else I couldn’t identify hopping around in the bougainvillea, and a mockingbird displaying the white of its wings and singing its heart out. All this in the space of a minute while I just watched, mesmerized by their activity. We normally don’t get so many at once, though we feed hummingbirds and scrub jays regularly. I suppose some may have been displaced by the fires.
There’s still a lot of smoke in the air, but it’s great to be home. I keep wanting to post some of my thoughts and even a little critique regarding the evacuations and information channels, but it feels so good just to be home after being away for four days last week, and I’m thrilled with how much was saved. I don’t want to seem in any way critical of the people responsible for that. Suffice to say, if you’re a local government official, the more information you can feed evacuees (in as many languages as needed please, for everyone’s safety), and the faster you can get them home after the danger is past, the more willing people will be to evacuate in the future. It may seem that some people are hard cases about evacuating, but I think most who seem that way have their reasons. We have a natural homing instinct that makes it very difficult, particularly added to the stress of a disaster, to be away from one’s home, to feel that one can possibly know enough about what’s happening there. One wants to do something, and it’s difficult to relinquish control.
My husband, dog, and I were blessed to be able to stay with loving family members who put up with our stressed-out state of mind, and we were blessed again to come home and find our house still standing, in fact our entire neighborhood and downtown area untouched except by smoke. There’d been no looting — not that anyone would want my old things anyway — and the power hadn’t even gone out, so our minor fear that we’d have to restock our freezer turned out to be unfounded. Today the smoke still lingers, and the dry weather and heat keep everyone on alert, in the knowledge the fires are contained but not necessarily out. We’re cautious yet immensely grateful.
Many thanks to all our firefighters, and to all the visiting firefighters, including those from out of state and Canada, who came through to help save lives and homes, as well as to all the other officials and support people who worked so hard to ensure things went smoothly here in San Diego County.
This has been a good summer for butterflies in my little corner of the world. I’ve seen a lot more variety this year than in past years, and yesterday I sighted a Western Tiger Swallowtail in a pepper tree in the yard behind ours. It surprised me, and at first glance I thought I was seeing an oriole making like a butterfly, it was so large. I haven’t seen many swallowtails since I was a kid, and then I usually saw darker, smaller ones, maybe the Anise Swallowtail, which looks more familiar to me. I think the most common butterfly of my childhood was the Mourning Cloak, but I rarely see those now.
We had to say goodbye to our little gray cat Emily today. We think she was about 20 years old, but we’re not sure, because she adopted us just over nine years ago, appearing in our back yard to steal our puppy’s food. She had a lot of problems, resulting from having nearly starved on her own without front claws, and having possibly been abused. She was missing half her teeth when she found us, and we think she suffered the cat version of PTSD. But over time she warmed up to all of us and became an integral part of our family. We like to think we were able to give her a nice retirement here, after all her troubles. She helped us say goodbye to another dear cat friend, Merlin, in 2000, and today we said goodbye to her.
I’ll miss her purrs, her silky, silver-gray fur, and the gentle tap of her paw when she wakened me in the mornings.
Just a few nights ago, The Lord of the Rings trilogy played on television again. We didn’t watch, because I intended to watch our DVDs again soon, but we caught the tail end of Return of the King, and the final song.
For days that song has stayed in my mind, popping into consciousness at odd moments. Today it did again, and I wondered about it, because I couldn’t recall the singer’s name, the name of the song, or the lyrics. The music just kept haunting me. So I looked it up, and remembered as soon as I sat down to do a search that it was Into the West. Annie Lennox sang it for the film. I love this song. Right now it’s helping me say goodbye to Emily. I learned that it was partially inspired by the death of young New Zealand filmmaker, Cameron Duncan, and first performed in public at his funeral. That makes it seem even more appropriate as Emily’s song of passage.
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain
