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Showing posts with the label Mythology

The Mythical British Isles

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Every once in a while, talk around the campfire turns away from strategies for riding herd and so forth to mythology. Some cowboys feel that they've talked wendigo or other scary native legends out, so they move on to myths of history. One that gets brought up every once in a while is the story of Great Britain. Amazingly, a few cowpokes actually believe it existed. Some self-styled intellectuals speculate that England (a part of the British Isles) exists in a parallel universe. The story goes that the British Isles (a few big ones and about six thousand smaller islands) were a popular place for commerce and some amount of science. Sadly, the Brits rejected the true God and indulged in paganism, especially evolutionism. Their paganism, surrender to Moslem influences, atheism, and unjustified intellectual arrogance led to the utter destruction of Britain. Yep, the whole shootin' match sank beneath the waves of the Atlantic, never to be seen again.

The Gods Are Petty

While listening to an audio book of Homer's Odyssey, I was once again struck by the way the false gods in Greece and other cultures are very human. Oh, they were supposedly mighty gorgeous and powerful, but they were vindictive sidewinders. "...Eurytus came prematurely by his end, for Apollo was angry with him and killed him because he challenged him as an archer." Apollo and Diana, by Battista Tiepolo, 1757 Those beings considered gods had civil wars, jealous rivalries (including if another of their number got romantically involved with a human), murder, and more. Cronos-Saturn devored his own children, and that gruesome image became an allegory for the passing of generations. They were tricky, too , taking human form and walking among us when they got the urge. You never knew what they would do next on a whim; Minerva killed some people, but assisted Ulysses because she had a soft spot for him. In the Epic of Gi lgamesh , which contained one of the oldest variat