Hi ya folks,
Sorry I haven't gotten back sooner, too much going on.
I thought the yew tree/visions was in one of my (better-researched,
still not infallible) how-2 books on Norse religion/ rune magic... but
now I think I may have originally seen it in Graves. But *not* sure.
My favorite book on the rune stuff is by Edred Thorssen (possible pen
name, not sure) and is undoubtedly weak in spots. But he seems to have
done a heckuva lot of research.
Meg, don't worry about warning your students about that one; they're
unlikely to run into it in the section of the bookstore they'd be
perusing for straight-historical research on norse religion! And
incidentally the berserker/vision question was phrased "vitki *and/or*
berserkers because I couldn't remember for sure who got what training.
BTW if any of you would be willing to point me at the currently
recognized Reliable Scholarship on these topics (Norse, Celtic stuff) I
would be most grateful. The academic stuff I have is probably out of
date.
Re "pagan":
Nope, *we* don't consider it derogatory, even though the original word,
I've heard, meant about the same thing as "hick". It's what some
sociologist call "reclaiming a word" - just ignoring its insult value,
or using it *because* it startles people - and hopefully makes 'em
think. It picked up the religious connotation because the folks out in
the sticks were the last to convert to the New "In" Religion.
If you're worried about offending Wicca/Pagan types with those words,
forget it - most of us neopagan types consider both words neutral;
"pagan" is just a more general term than xtianity or Mithraism or
Buddhism or whatever, and "Wicca" is a little more specific.
If on the other hand it's the Classical stuff you don't want your
students to think of as "evil", just say so - in my art history and
literature classes in college and high school, I don't remember any of
the students thinking greek/roman stuff was "evil". In fact I got the
impression from one college instructor's take on "The Wasteland" that
the more greek/roman stuff you referenced the Better your literature
was!
(Boy did I ratchet - This post was going to be 3 or 4 sentences!)
If you folks decide to put pictures up for this list, I have bookmarks
to several "geekstuff" sites that can help save bandwidth (and download
time) and other sites on optimizing graphics etc. But you may want to
start with a Bookmarks page and see what you get. Lotsa stuff out
there!
Thanks for your patience,
Heather
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