This and That

Good on the Daytona Beach News Journal for an informative, correctly-capitalized article about Pagan Pride Day in New Smyrna Beach. None of the "they don't worship Satan" nonsense and a decent description of what "Pagan" means. More like this.


I've never seen conservatives as willing to accept witchcraft as some of Christine O'Donnell's fans are turning out to be.

It's been out for a bit and I'm still waiting to find it. Terry Pratchett's new and brilliantly-titled book, I Shall Wear Midnight, sounds great. I can't wait to get ahold of it.

I Shall Wear Midnight picks up Tiffany's story as she settles - or not - into life as "town witch" on The Chalk, taking care of the things people generally don't like to think about.

There, with the assistance of the spectacularly argumentative, kilt-wearing, wee but hardy Nac Mac Feegle, she tends to the needs of her village, always riding a knife-edge between being useful and being an object of suspicion who meddles in unmentionables.

But Tiffany's skills as a witch have caught the attention of the Cunning Man (surely one of Pratchett's spookiest villains), a no-eyed spectre who menaces our heroine as she goes about the business of seeing her village through a change in baron.

Archeologists have found a wall painting of Tyche, the Greek Goddess of fortune, during excavations on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee. The picture appears to date from the 3rd to 4th Centuries, C.E.

Her head is crowned, her youthful gaze is focused, and she has abundant brown hair beneath her crown.
. . .

Apart from goddess Tyche, researchers also found a wonderfully etched relief of a maenad, one of a group of female followers of Dionysus, the god of wine on a bone plate.

(I believe the author meant to say that researchers also found a wonderfully etched relief, on a bone plate, of a maenad, not that Dionysus was the God of wine on a bone plate. )

And, in Egypt, a recently re-discovered tomb includes paintings of astrological scenes and the Goddess Nut.

The room is in very good condition and contains beautiful painted scenes in vivid colors. Blue and yellow dominate the ceiling, as the goddess Nut welcomes with raised arms the body of the deceased.

(Not clear if the author meant "astrological" or "astronomical," at least from the article. )