Thelemic torture? Bah.

"But Alden's purpose is not merely sex: he is an adept of Aleister Crowley's early 20th-century occult faith of Thelema; and part of his research for a musical composition with which he hopes to attain enlightenment (and success on Radio 3) is based on recording Joan's physiological responses to sexual torture."

The book is Vocational Girl, the reviewers Kate Holden and Rowan Pelling. Pelling calls it "fearful tosh", which is probably the funniest expression I've heard in a long time. (Yes, I'm easily amused. And no, I don't plan to read it.)


Vocational Girl

Olympus on my mind

Until I read this article about a community college production of Olympus on my Mind I had no idea that such a musical existed. You can read the synopsis here, or listen to some samples at Amazon. (Personally, I'm not impressed. It sounds very generic, somehow.)

Not just golems

"So, if you are planning to attend someone else's Halloween party this year (should a Jew really be hosting his own?), a Jewish zombie is definitely an option; and its better then a run-of-the-mill zombie - they only groan, while you get to tell people off."

Rabbi Dennis shares some Jewish lore about the undead.

How many Greek gods can dance on the head of a pin?

Visit micro sculptor Willard Wigan's site to find out. (Found through Neatorama.)

Argonautika

"Mary Zimmerman brings us Argonautika. An older story and a stranger one than The Odyssey, Argonautika recounts the adventures of Jason and his crew aboard the Argo on a perilous mission to cross the forbidden ocean in their quest for the Golden Fleece. There is danger at every turn as they encounter sea-monsters and water nymphs, wicked and savage kings, a city of women and an army of warriors sprung from the earth. But no danger proves as great as the overwhelming love of a young sorceress named Medea. Join Jason and his crew aboard the Argo for the world's first sea voyage."

More at the Lookingglass Theatre Company web site.

Wiccan weight loss

Of all the questions people have asked themselves, this has to be one of the strangest.

Can eating a wiccan diet actually help you lose weight?

The Mysteries Revisited

It ought to be criminal, writing an article about a museum exhibition without including a single picture - especially when the exhibition in question is The Mysteries Revisited, inspired by the Villa dei Misteri outside Pompeii. (Okay, so I found a picture on the museum web site, but still. Criminal.)


Villa dei Misteri

Eos on wheels

This is the new Volkswagen Eos, "named for the Greek goddess of the dawn who every morning rises of the eastern sea to bring daylight to the world". Well, yawn?


Eos

Mythos

"Registration is now open for Age 6 of Mythos, the free online RPG/Strategy game based around Greek Mythology. Age 6 will actually start on Tuesday, October 31, 2006.

As always, several improvements have been made to the game for Age 6, such as the severe altering of the Plunder attack type to help out small cities, and the addition and change of several skills."

Visit www.MythicWars.com to join the world of Mythos!

Source: Multiplayer Online Games Directory

I'm sort of tempted to sign up, but knowing myself I'd become completely absorbed and cease having a life for the duration of the game. Must resist...

The Dark is Rising

"David Cunningham (The Path to 9/11) has been tapped to direct The Dark Is Rising, a fantasy film based on Susan Cooper's book series, Variety reported. The film is being produced under the co-financing alliance between Walden Media (The Chronicles of Narnia) and 20th Century Fox reached in August.

The Dark Is Rising is part of Cooper's five-book series, focusing on a youth who discovers at age 11 that he's a Sign Seeker, the last of a group of immortals dedicated to fighting a growing presence of dark forces.

Cunningham has already headed to Romania, where he'll prep the film for an early 2007 start and a Sept. 28, 2007, release, the trade paper reported."

Source: SCI FI Wire

The divine Pez dispenser

From Trying Neaira, page 106:

"The herm was a common form of statuary in Greece. With one obvious difference, it looked like a large Pez dispenser: a stone pillar topped by a bust, usually of the god Hermes, and sporting an erect phallus."

Debra Hamel explains what Greek statuary really looked like.


Herms

Geomythology?

The Delphic oracle, whose possible methods of intoxication have been much debated recently, isn't alone in catching the attention of scientists. Next year the Geological Society of London will publish a set of peer reviewed papers discussing the geological reality behind some myths and legends. Steve Connor reports about the reality behind the folklore.

The Fall of Troy

An archeologist arrives at Hissarlik, convinced that he has found the mythical Troy of the Iliad. He's determined to prove that the Trojan war was a historical reality, and he won't let anyone or anything get in his way.

Sound familiar? Heinrich Obermann, the protagonist of Peter Ackroyd's The Fall of Troy, is, of course, based on German amateur archeologist Heinrich Schliemann. Add some drama (hardly necessary!) and supernatural elements to the original story, and you have the reason I fear my book budget for November will be spent before October has ended.

Kabbalah for the masses?

A historic forum will take place in San Diego, December 18-19, 2006, entitled "Kabbalah for the Masses? The Promise and Problems in Mainstreaming Jewish Mysticism." Tiferet Institute, dedicated to excellence in the study and teaching of Kabbalah, will convene eminent scholars and rabbis to deliberate on the popularization of Kabbalah and its impact on the future of Judaism, Christianity and the emerging globalization of spiritual culture.

Read the rest at PR Web.

They must have heard the recent news about Geri Halliwell's interest in Kabbalah, and decided that enough is enough.


The Zohar

Science as Icarus

"Pope Benedict told scientists on Saturday that by believing only in "artificial intelligence" and technology they risked the fate of the mythical Icarus, whose home-made wings melted when he flew too close to the sun. "Letting yourself be seduced by discovery without paying attention to the criteria of a deeper vision could lead to the drama the myth speaks of," he told the Pontifical Lateranense University at the inauguration of a new academic year."

Story at Yahoo.

The Monastery

In TLC's new reality show five men of varied backgrounds go off to live at a Benedictine monastery for forty days and forty nights. Producer Sarah Woodfort says that "The point has not been to create traps for hapless people to fall into. We're interested in exploring how people like us can live a good and purposeful life and what the 1,500-year-old monastic tradition can teach modern people."

I guess that means they're not excommunicating a participant at the end of each week.

Visit the Monastery.


Saint Benedict

Happy Satanic Halloween!

"Devil worshippers who will gather in Brisbane for Halloween have promised to hold a series of "shock rituals", outraging church leaders and prompting police to step up patrols of cemeteries.

The Church of Satan has sent emails to members nationwide, urging them to attend a gathering at a secret "grotto" in the city on October 31. Details of the meeting emerged after a goat was beheaded on Friday the 13th this month at a church in Bellbowrie in western Brisbane."

Read more at Sunday Mail.

Two thoughts.

Firstly, the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, condemned the killing or harming of animals for ritual or magical purposes. He's been dead for nine years, but the church has not changed that policy, nor is it likely to.

Secondly, wouldn't Halloween be the worst night of the year for trying to shock people?

Pagan birds of the Summer Isles

"An artist has created several new species of unsual birds after holidaying in the area which inspired the occult thriller The Wicker Man. Mr Summerton said: The history and mythologies surrounding the Summer Isles and its relation to the Wicker Man somehow leaked into the images I had worked with, hatching some strange breed of pagan birdlife."

See some of Edward Summerton's birds at BBC News.

Occult fashion report

This winter's hottest accessory? The occult tome. (You don't actually have to read the book, just make sure you're seen holding it.)

"Pink is dressed in a straight black wig and plays a goth/vampire character who reads the mysteriously titled book A Suggestive Inquiry Into Hermetic Mystery, Mary A. Atwood's 1850 volume on the occult speculated that the goal of the dark arts is to reach spiritual perfection."

Read the rest of the story at VH1.

More mythological names

"It’s no secret that Google has long replaced Open Source as Enemy Number 1 within Microsoft’s Redmond HQ and beyond. In their quest to thwart Google, and given their appetite for mythological names, maybe Messrs Gates and co should consider Nemesis - the Goddess of Retribution and Vengeance – as its new name for the long-awaited Microsoft adCenter. That’s if they ever get round to a full launch."

Linus Gregoriadis offers some (mostly) helpful advice in What digital giants can learn from Greek mythology.

What's in a name?

There exists a dominatrix called Hera. This fact boggles my mind. Why a domme would name herself after the Greek goddess of marriage is beyond me. I mean, what does she do? Flog single men until they vow to marry? Whip married men until they promise to be faithful to their wives?

I understand the allure of using names from mythology, but the effect is completely ruined when you don't bother to read the myths and learn about their significance. Would you fly with Icarus Airlines? Yes, they really did exist.

On the other hand, sometimes a carefully selected name gives away too much of the game. I'm hardly the only one who watched the first season of HBO's Rome wondering what dreadful fate would befall the lovely Niobe. (No idea what I'm referring to? Read this Mythography entry that explains it all.)


Niobe

Gorgeous gorgons?

I was surfing Amazon. Because I have purchased a number of books about Greek religion from them, all sorts of related products show up whenever I visit the site. Related, in some vague, barely comprehensible sense of the word. Example? Women who read Homer are expected to want to wear a Medusa costume for Halloween. If I had Medusa's power of turning people into stone I'd start with the guy who wrote the algorithm behind these inane recommendations.

Folding Medusa

Origamiwolf's Medusa might be the most impressive origami creation I have ever seen.


Medusa

Starstruck

This is probably only moderately interesting if you don't live in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, but it made me happy so I'm posting it anyway. The University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh Science Outreach will present a show called “Monsters of the Sky” at the Buckstaff Planetarium Oct. 20, with shows at 7 and 8 p.m, telling the myths behind the constellations. More information is available at the Advance Titan.

So why did this make me happy? My introduction to Greek mythology was a children's show that told the myths of how Orion, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, and various monsters and animals ended up in the sky. Twenty-four years later I'm still hooked.


Orion, courtesy of the U.S.
Naval Observatory Library

I don't watch CSI:NY...

...but that might change. Being geographically challenged I'll have to wait a while for Hung out to dry, the episode shown the other day, but I hear Greek mythology played an important part, in the form of t-shirts with divine motifs and encoded messages.

The tees are made by edoc laundry, a clothing company that's part of the alternate reality gaming scene. From their web site:

"Woven into everything we make are hidden messages and codes most people can’t see. Edoc clothes break across the traditional categories of street, skate/surf, and classic by creating a new category that spans our entire line: Covert. Every piece of gear is a trapdoor into a hidden world. Check it out. We’ve got nothing to hide."

It does sound fairly entertaining, the t-shirts don't look bad at all, and solving a puzzle would give me something to do while I wait for Hung out to dry to reach this side of the pond and hopefully provide me with some snark material. The deities and monsters involved are Hades, Hypnos, Argus, and the hydra, meaning, of course, that the foobar potential is infinite.


The original hydra

Return of the Roman

"Why are so many novelists in the modern age drawn to write about the ancient world, especially Rome but also, to a lesser extent, Greece? The line of those who have done so goes back at least to Edward Bulwer-Lytton and The Last Days of Pompeii, written at a time—the 1830s—when classical studies were central to education throughout western Europe. Some such genre novels are actually very "literary"—Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean, for example. But most, whatever their literary quality, aim to be popular, which is to say that they have a strong narrative, striking characters and richly dramatic scenes."

Allan Massie writes about historical fiction in the November issue of Prospect Magazine.



Julius Caesar

Ramayana

Dadasaheb Phalke’s debut film Raja Harishchandra set the trend for mythological films in Bollywood. It was in 1913. In circa 2006, mythological and theological characters, particularly Gods and deities, are back in vogue. The similarities: stories are from religious texts and folklore, the difference: the budget and, of course, star cast.

In 2007, Rajkumar Santoshi will begin work on his magnum opus — Ramayana. With a budget of Rs 100 crore, he has roped in one of Bollywood’s most popular couple, Ajay Devgan and Kajol to play the part of Lord Rama and Sita.

Read more at Hindustan Times.



Ravana, king of Lanka