Tolkien once wrote in a letter to his son that he was "a Hwiccian (of Wychwood) on both sides."*
Curious words, are they not? My mind generated an entire alternate universe in which Tolkien was the granddaddy of Fam-Trad Witches, and all the things in our culture that would be different if it were so.
Ic seah wrætlice wuhte feower samed siþian swearte · wæran lastas swaþu swiþe blacu swift wæs on fore fulgum framrafleotgan lyfte deaf under yþe dreag unstille winnende wiga se him wægas tæcneþ ofer fæted gold feower eallū
The riddles of the Exeter Book give us oblique snapshots of everyday life for the monks in the Middle Ages. You can easily imagine the scribes fixing on something within site and coming up with a poetic and misleading description where metaphor can throw a reader off the track. But the metaphors reveal power, too.Riddle 40 (51 in the Krapp-Dobbie edition) refers to one of the ubiquitous items in their lives: the pen or quill.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...