Ganesha's sitting on my desk with his head cocked, staring at me. A member of my personal pantheon, he brings fortune in business-related matters. Maybe he can help inspire my blog.
Heck, books do a better job :)
TIDBIT:: The name PERSEPHONE=slayer of pigs. In ancient times, women used to run farms themselves, keeping pigs for meat. Pigs are natural rooters, so they would dig up all the stones in a field and their feces would fertilize the land. Women were not so dependent on men for sustenance. You gotta wonder why two major religions stemming out of early civilizations prohibit pork—the best way to reduce women's livelihood to a dependency on men, so it seems. Sigh... and there's still more to the whole pigs/taboo scene....
I'm somewhat of an amateur astrologer, but moreover, I am a strong believer in the collective un/consciousness underlying all of existence. Joseph Campbell's Jungian explorations of mythology is what got me hooked in 1997, and here Valerie Vaughan takes us beyond the mindless drivel of cheap newspaper horoscopes into the world of the ancients.
Her studies (see above book link and below mention of ASTROMYTHOLOGY) examine how myths entwined with natural cycles to become dominant ways of thinking in culture. And one of the biggest and most mysterious spheres of natural cycles would be the night-time sky. So, there we have star lore in its best form, before the Scientific age began 300 years ago, causing astronomy to splinter off from its ancient origins in astrology.
Some of the most interesting studies focus on the time of Judea and the Messiah—but I have yet to find a conclusive text that works out the contradictions. Vaughan does attempt to examine what exactly the Star of Bethelem was, in her earlier book, ASTROMYTHOLOGY. Pretty cool.
Also, the stuff about Sirius being a red star is mysterious—stars can only progress from blue to red, and Sirius, only 8 light years away from here, is still blue. Astronomers cannot figure out why the ancients classified Sirius as a red star. Some connections: the dog days of August/Sirius's annual helical rising, "seeing red" as an indicator of anger/aggression during hot periods of the year.
Back to PERSEPHONE—another text that examines the gradual/sudden losses of feminine mysticsm and spirituality as an equal power in society would be Leonard Shlain's THE ALPHABET VERSUS THE GODDESS.
Supplemental reading list:
THE ALPHABET VERSUS THE GODDESS—Leonard Shlain
ASTROMYTHOLOGY—Valerie Vaughan
SEX IN HISTORY—Reay Tannahill
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