Of Thespiae - Latest Comments

Re: The classic Hellenistai Forum is re-opened

Apuleius Platonicus — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:10:06 -0000

Ah. You raise yet another matter for which I have no good excuse.

Re: The classic Hellenistai Forum is re-opened

Ruadhán J McElroy — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:42:31 -0000

Thanks!

Now if people will start using it like they should....

Re: The classic Hellenistai Forum is re-opened

Apuleius Platonicus — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:05:52 -0000

I have no good excuse for why I never managed to move my butt over to the new forum, but I am glad the old one is back! Thanks, Ruadhán!!

Re: Demetre and the Palace of Kadmos

Ruadhán J McElroy — Tue, 15 May 2012 02:30:47 -0000

Also, I'd wager about 2/3 of this post revealed itself to me after that bizarre and uniquely insomniac "high" took hold. I only barely remembered writing it and so I had to re-read it. I'm starting to get less surprised at how much sense I make whilst writing in this blog in that state.

Re: Demetre and the Palace of Kadmos

Ruadhán J McElroy — Tue, 15 May 2012 02:21:21 -0000

That would make sense. I also begrudgingly admit that I have something of a soft spot for Hamilton, cos hers were the first "grown-up" books about ancient Greece and its mythology that I read. Yeah, I know her presentation can be simplistic and / or problematic at times, but I can't deny that she was clearly well-educated for her time, and some of her ideas made a lasting impression on me. Also, her sister went to U of Michigan medical school, which I used to like a fifteen minute walk from, and where I continue to get my medical care; I'm a sucker for those sorts of connections I can make.

Re: Demetre and the Palace of Kadmos

thehouseofvines — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:05:05 -0000

It's been ages since I read Hamilton, but I think she was just riffing off of the speech from Tieresias in Euripides' Bakchai which argued for the supremacy of Dionysos and Demeter in mortal affairs. This, in turn, became a common trope of later poets beginning in Rome and continuing through the Renaissance, especially in the form of Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus which was repeatedly recycled.

Love this piece, by the way. Much to think about here.

Re: Boiotian Theoi: Demetre & Persephone

Ibgreenie3 — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:05:38 -0000

Excellent information & shines a light showing The Goddess Demeter as She so rightly deserves. Blessings.

Re: Would you give your delicious monies to a book?

Ruadhán J McElroy — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:57:39 -0000

Thanks!

I was hoping that at least a fair number of people potentially interested would be of the opinion that exclusive content would be more like a perk than a driving force behind their decision to get the book. I mean, for starters, I have no idea what I'd even add aside from some of the more obvious ideas (well, obvious to me), like a poem of dedication, or maybe an article about how I specifically became drawn in to Boeotian traditions rather than Attic.

Re: Would you give your delicious monies to a book?

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:20:22 -0000

1) YES!

2) Your essays, articles, and re-told myths are excellent, and it would be great to have them in a "between-two-covers-on-dead-trees" collection. Book-exclusive content would always be nice, but not utterly necessary...just as added bonus if it were there.

3) Certainly!

Re: Would you give your delicious monies to a book?

Ruadhán J McElroy — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:40:56 -0000

Well, to be fair, you can always go back and read the archives any time you like. I use plenty of tags and categories to keep things easier to find. ;-) But yes, I'm intending on revising, updating, and expanding at least a few things on most, if not all pieces. I'm also *probably* going to keep the "primary source" snippets on each deity that I collected from Theoi Project in their introduction, since just about everything quoted is a translation in the public domain, and legally, I'd simply have to give acknowledgement to Aaron from Theoi Project --it helps that I'm pretty well-versed in copyright law, for a layman. I'm not sure yet what I'll write exclusively for the book, even though my decision to do it cemented last night, but like I said, I'm giving myself about two years to do it; ultimately it's my decision what to include, but I'll still weigh out people's suggestions.

Re: Would you give your delicious monies to a book?

Ruadhán J McElroy — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:30:01 -0000

Thanks!

Re: Would you give your delicious monies to a book?

Duffi McDermott — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:47:00 -0000

What Jennifer Lawrence said, below. I'd love a book on these dieties, I'd prefer essays, and I enjoy book-exclusive content. Since I just found you, via Sannion, publication of previous blog posts would be useful. I'd tell all six of my followers on my currently-being-renamed-and-restructured blog, and retweet publication details. Not too shabby, eh?

edited for spelling and punctuation, because my brain's faster than my fingers, dammit.

Re: Would you give your delicious monies to a book?

Jennifer Lawrence — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:06:09 -0000

I'd buy the Boeotion book. :) Also a book on urban polytheism.

~Jennifer/BrigidsBlest

Re: Would you give your delicious monies to a book?

Ruadhán J McElroy — Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:31 -0000

Thanks! I'd definitely make up for my lack of degrees on the subject with an extensive bibliography of my sources, so while the meat-and-bones of such a book from me would certainly be more conversational and devotional, I think at best it would seem more "well-read academic laity" than "omg, what fresh crap is Llewellyn churning out this week?"

And as I said, at the soonest, I see myself finishing such a project over the next two years, and knowing me, I'd probably revise and update every four-to-seven years, at the very least. As I keep up on the academic theories and archaeological discoveries, it may just warrant that kind of upkeep.

Thinking about it, though, I don't really have a minimum of people in mind whose interest I'd like to pique on this before finalising a decision to book it —I think I just wanted to make sure it would interest somebody at first, and assume that further interest will eventually build up.

Re: Would you give your delicious monies to a book?

Ryan — Sun, 06 May 2012 23:26:35 -0000

I just recently discovered your blog (through Sannion actually), and I am personally very attracted to Boeotian deities/religion (Boeotia and Arcadia are my two favorite sections of Pausanias . . . and yes I'm such a Hellenic geek that I have favorite sections of Pausanias), and I would certainly be interested in a book on the subject. For what it's worth (and I can only speak for myself here), I would be most excited to read about any specific aspects of your personal practice/ritual/devotions that you felt like writing about, essays about the deities from a Boeotian enthusiast's perspective, and any festivals or calendar information would be fascinating as well. - Ryan

Re: Start Your Week Off Right: A Round-Up

Ruadhán J McElroy — Tue, 01 May 2012 16:42:23 -0000

Oh, I figure people get busy —no worries about that.

I just found the juxtaposition odd, considering my experiences, and knowing that there are still plenty of Orthodox Jewish communities in Western societies who sport tichels, and so for pagan women to wear the same thing, is to pretty much imitate a culture they're not a part of —which is the reason I see as the most common one to avoid anything hijab-styled. To me, avoiding something hijab-like for the reason stated whilst adopting a tichel or something barely distinguishable from said is akin to saying "I don't mind being perceived as a part of a culture I'm not a part of, just as long as that culture isn't perceived as Scary & Mean™". [shrugs] No real skin off my back, I found it funny in a contradictory way, and thinking about it, I thought that there might be at least a few women using that reason paired with that choice as a subtle and possibly subconscious way of hiding Islamophobia from themselves.

Yeah, I really can't give Ms Foster credit for quoting only public blog posts — if that's all she was really going to quote, she could have conducted her investigation by just sending a questionnaire to people who'd made public posts, or at least been a tad more up-front in the group, asking if anybody wanted to be interviewed for it. Quoting and linking public blog posts is an established blogging practise when attempting an article like that —she did what was expected of her? I don't know about you, but I only pass out the cookies for people who go above and beyond "accepted" into the realm of "exceptional".

It's the whole air of sneakiness she adopted for that article that bothered (and continues to bother) me; learning that made it come off like she started from the mind-set that this habit (pun not intended) was some kind of scary cult that can't be trusted. I mean, seriously, "infiltrating" the group like that is the same kind of shit Kirk Cameron gets mocked for on The Wild Hunt, that's the same shit PeTA pulls when they're trying to get videos from slaughterhouses, that's the same shit the government pulled on New Left groups in the 1960s. To sneak in like that under an unknown name, ask questions under the guise of "personal curiosity" when her real intent is to write an article, is to operate from the assumption that a group cannot be trusted to tell the truth if they know the truth. It's appalling behaviour from some-one who spends so much time on the Internet both talking about how she really wants to see "pagan unity" and talking about how so many pagans aren't working toward it and that's just "omgz TEH SADD :'(". She has proved that she really doesn't want to work toward pagan unity, either, she just wants to puff up her own perceived importance to the community —I used to sympathise with her "omgz, pagans are MEAN TO EACH-OTHER" posts, and now I don't, since now I know for a fact that she's a major contributing factor to why people are "omgz MEAN" to her so much.

Re: Start Your Week Off Right: A Round-Up

Naiadis — Tue, 01 May 2012 10:30:30 -0000

Responding late -- I was away from the computer for a few weeks, so I'm only seeing this now -- I only want to toss in that I didn't read this part of your post as you coming down on people for what they wanted to wear. As an "insider" to the group in question (take that for what it's worth -- I'm by far an active member of that board; really it's grown a bit too large for my comfort zone) I just wanted to share some of what I'd seen in the style decision making process, just so it would be out there.

A lot of folks were upset about how Ms Foster handled her "investigation." Me? I don't care all that much one way or the other. The quotes she published were from public blogs, not private conversations, so at least there's that

Re: Start Your Week Off Right: A Round-Up

Ruadhán J McElroy — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:06:33 -0000

The problem that I saw a lot of the TS/TG commenters in your post making, after the unreasonable holding of 1970s writings to 2010s standards (after all, while it's far to assume that people who held 2010s standards did exist then, they were not known to be in a significant-enough number to advance those standards any faster than they did), is the inability to realise that cissexism and transphobia are certainly measurable traits, and only past a certain threshold is it fair to call some-one a bigot based on those traits. It's certainly fair to assume that even a majority of trans people in 2012 possess a lot of transphobic ideas that aren't merely internalised; Internet fora for trans women and men alike are often junked-up with "Do I pass?" threads, and responders are often not just obsessive, but downright vicious in picking apart every little thing about a person's appearance. Is it fair to call those responders transphobes? They're certainly displaying outwardly transphobic behaviour. Hell, in comparison to some TS/TG people, Dworkin's words are especially trans-positive.

In all honesty, at worst, I think it's clear she had some residual transphobic ideas left over from any combination of her own personal background and the communities she participated in, and maybe she didn't examine them perfectly, but it's clear that she realised it was wrong to hate on trans people, she realised it was wrong to dismiss trans women as "mutilated Frankenstein creations", as Mary Daly did, it was wrong to deny TS/TG persons the medical transitions sought, and it was wrong to recognise TS/TG persons as anything but another natural human variant on sex and gender. In a lot of ways, that thinking was ahead of its time, but it clearly possessed residual artefacts of the environment it came from. I'd certainly recommend her one essay that addresses this over anything from the Daly/Raymond Borg; Dworkin's thoughs on the subject were certainly no worse than Kate Bornstein has been on the subject, of late, that's for sure.

Re: Start Your Week Off Right: A Round-Up

DaisyDeadhead — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:32:49 -0000

Love me some Zardoz! (thanks for the link and thoughtful analysis)

Re: Hemara Gaia

Ruadhán J McElroy — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:42:58 -0000

Nope, just a regular copyright lawyer. Todd Jackson once called me a "muggle", so clearly it must be true!

Re: Hemara Gaia

thehouseofvines — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:26:35 -0000

A magic lawyer?

Re: Hemara Gaia

Ruadhán J McElroy — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:21:30 -0000

No, but I'll probably glare disapprovingly and contact a lawyer.

Re: Hemara Gaia

thehouseofvines — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:49:59 -0000

You’re free to use this small prayer I wrote in your ritual, but please re-print with credit, and do not publish formally without permission.

Will you put a hex on us if we do?

Re: Hex Me

Ruadhán J McElroy — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:26:52 -0000

Oh, believe me, all this occurred to me, as well. Either way, her threat is a double-edged sword that has put her in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position; if she really does hex people over something that she had previously encouraged for DECADES (if my Internet research is anything to go by), she's a petty old bird more concerned with a patriarchal-defined notion of "intellectual property rights" and "copyright infringement" than she is with the rights and integrity of her allegedly precious wombynnes; if she does nothing, she's merely throwing out empty threats for attention, and this casts doubt on her powers, as well.

But hey, I encourage her to prove that she's a petty old hag —to prove that, in reality, she cares more for her own personal gain than for the actual War on Women in the United $tates. Why is she whinging about the artistic liberty she offered people years ago and not the state-sactioned starvation, rape, and murder of women in this so-called "First World country"? Because she's an egomaniac and borderline sociopath who cares more about her own non-victimhood than she does about actual victims.

Re: Hex Me

thehouseofvines — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:06:23 -0000

Ah, my friend, there is no reason to fear because of this lovely creative effort*, a fact ably proven by the GOP's ongoing war against women. After all, if Z. Budapest was any kind of powerful and effective magic-user these politicians would not be able to indiscriminately pass this legislation the way that they have been because she'd whammy them but good. Hell, all she'd need to do is zap one or two publicly, putting the fear of the dreaded moon bloodz in the rest. Ergo, she is nothing but an impotent and delusional old bitty deserving not of our fear or respect but only our pity - or else she has the power but is completely indifferent to the suffering of her fellow wymyns.

* And it is quite nice, a significant improvement both theologically and artistically on the original.