1. I’m going to be mulling over this story, hard, not because I want to copy it, exactly, but because they want an index for Project X and I hadn’t considered the creative potential of such a beast.
2. I really love this post. I also think that narcissism as an accusation feels different to women. It’s not just that we’re being accused of self-absorption, but that in being so, we’re neglecting the things we ought to be doing, like women’s work.
Oh, like you don’t have a researcher devoted at least part time to Lucifer? Please. What do you think the L in MLS is? Not that my Lucifer researcher has and MLS. I don’t actually know. I haven’t done a lot of research into my Lucifer researcher. Really, I’m not sure what qualifications one even needs to have to be a Lucifer researching. But if it doesn’t include and MLS or a Law degree, I’ll eat my hat.
How confident am I?
I don’t even have a hat.
Anyway, enough silliness. My Lucifer researcher stumbled upon the reason why Joseph Geefs’ statue may have been considered too racy for church, while his brother’s Lucifer, which is just dripping sex, was not. Turns out Joseph’s statue has an adorable tush. Like the kind that makes you hope against hope that, if you became a traditional witch, you… well… you know… might find that the old stories are true.
I wonder if there’s a good book about the overlap between Germanic paganism and Christianity. Wikipedia claims that a lot of ritual sites sacred to Odin were turned into shrines to St. Michael. And a lot of imagery of Christ would possibly have been familiar enough–the god who hangs from a tree, who is stabbed in the side with a spear, as a sacrifice. Different sacrifices, obviously, but still.
And it occurred to me, that you often hear that Jesus became blonder and more Baldr-looking the more north he moved, as if conversion were, in some part, like a soap opera, where characters stay the same, but the actors change, where backstories are re-figured to account for new facts. And so, as much fun as it is to look at St. Sebastian all sprawled out, the legend is that he was shot full of arrows. But a ton of the iconography shows just one arrow. Like Baldr. It makes me wonder.
It seems like we have a good understanding of how St. Peter or Lazarus is sometimes Legba, too.
And so I find it a little frustrating that I don’t know how other gods we might have wanted to save were, if they were. Though, it seems like, of course, they must have been–carried along in art and iconography until they faded away or were revived again under their own names.
I’d just like to know more about it.
My parents called last night to ask if I wanted mint chocolate chip cookies or regular chocolate chip cookies. Why they called to ask when they have their hearts set on making mint chocolate chip cookies, I do not know. But then they wanted to know what I was up to.
And you know what? I am up to glorious nothing. I’m reading a book. I have three squares on this afghan to finish up, but I’ll probably wait until I need something to keep my hands busy while people are here. And I’m resting Project X.
It’s very nice. Like a calm moment between busy waves.
Tiny Cat Pants 