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Part One
Lily pulled on her warmest coat and snow boots, ready for an adventure outside. Snow had been falling for several hours and she loved the quiet that descended when the ground was blanketed in fluffy white snow. Even the coziness and warmth of her cottage could not entice her to stay inside and miss the chance of walking at sunset through the woods that bordered her home.
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Let me tell you the story of how, as a young man, I committed a theft. From a church, no less.
A friend had invited me to a service at his Lutheran church. Afterwards, during coffee hour, I wandered into the church library. There on the shelf, I saw it.
Of all unlikely things to find in a church library: a copy of Robert Graves' iconoclastic 1946 novel, King Jesus.
Don't be put off by the title, or the subject matter. This novel is Graves' revisionist Goddess history of that erstwhile Jewish prophet, and—Graves being Graves—it's matriarchy versus patriarchy in the Battle of the Millennium.
Spoiler alert: the Goddess wins.
(No big surprise there. Anybody that knows Her knows that, in the end, the Goddess always wins.)
Although it lacked a dust cover, the book was otherwise in pristine condition. I pulled it off the shelf and opened the cover. It was a first edition.
I checked the “Date Due” card in back. The book had belonged to the church for more than 20 years. (No doubt someone had donated it: unread, to all appearances.) In all that time, it had never once been checked out. So I stole it.
Ah, the things you do for love.
If you haven't read (or reread) Robert Graves' King Jesus lately, let me recommend it.
Don't be put off by the title, or the subject matter. This novel is Graves' revisionist Goddess history of that erstwhile Jewish prophet, and—Graves being Graves—it's matriarchy versus patriarchy in the Battle of the Millennium.
Spoiler alert: the Goddess wins.
(No big surprise there. Anybody that knows Her knows that, in the end, the Goddess always wins.)
Written at roughly the same time as Graves' “grammar of poetic myth” The White Goddess, King Jesus is equally filled with savory tidbits of lore, but—with its iconoclastic narrative to buoy it up—it's eminently the more readable of the two.
Among the riches that you'll find there is this delightful little carol. We generally sing it to the tune of the traditional Appalachian song The Cherry Tree Carol.
The dragon woke up! Having a high standard is lovely. … Being a perfectionist isn’t lovely.
A few years ago, I had to cut back a wild rosebush because it was threatening the wiring on a utility pole. I seasoned some of the wood, for talismans.
The other day, I looked at a crooked stick of wood from that culling and saw a dragon.
Portrait of me by author & artist Louise Hewitt. Louise entitled this piece “She Who Wears the Antlers’ not knowing that my name in the ‘real’ world is ‘She Who Wears Antlers’
I am a product of the land I am from. If you were to cut me open you’d find that my bones are made from her compacted soil, my lungs carry her air and her rain and thunder still flow in my blood.
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We're modern people, not Bronze Age Minoans. But in Modern Minoan Paganism, we do some things that ancient people would have found familiar. Among those is the presentation of offerings to the gods. We do this quietly on our home altars or a bit more loudly sometimes, in group ritual.
A while back, I wrote about the kinds of offerings we make to the various gods and goddesses - what they like and what they don't. But the way we make offerings, or more specifically, the kinds of containers we use for them, take their inspiration from the Minoans.
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