Culty cults
“For 1,000 years, a cult worshipped the hero of the Odyssey”
Isabelle Gerretsen writes for the BBC: At the start of the Odyssey, the epic poem’s war-weary protagonist finds himself trapped on a remote island by the goddess Calypso. She promises Odysseus immortality and eternal youth if he chooses to stay with her. But after 10 years of waging war against the Trojans alongside other Greek heroes, Odysseus … Read more“For 1,000 years, a cult worshipped the hero of the Odyssey”
“The Cult of Natureboy”
“First three months were great. Waking up in Paradise.”
“The Runaway Child”
I first came across this poetic essay by the controversial anarchist philosopher Peter Lamborn Wilson – more widely known as Hakim Bey, author of the TAZ theory among many other provocative ideas – sometime in the early ’90s. I lost track of it over the years and only recently rediscovered the text, which (faint bell) … Read more“The Runaway Child”
“Girls Gone Greek”: The Bacchic Underpinnings of “Yellowjackets”
Sakhi Thirani writes for JSTOR on the Maenadic/Bacchic themes underpinning the TV series Yellowjackets: Forget the hype likening Showtime’s Yellowjackets to Lord of the Flies. Pungent, witty, and downright disgusting, the hit series about a high school soccer team whose plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness is far more than a rigid gender swap. Yellowjackets, set to launch its second … Read more“Girls Gone Greek”: The Bacchic Underpinnings of “Yellowjackets”
Religions of Oz
Gregory Maguire’s Wicked series of novels deepens L. Frank Baum’s classic Oz mythos by expanding their psychological, cultural, political and religious themes. In Baum’s stories, the only religious impulse even alluded to is a faith in Lurline the Fairy Queen, who was in a sense the creatrix of Oz in that she was responsible for … Read moreReligions of Oz
American Gods
Speculations on the future of American religion in a post-United States: The fragmented, multipolar political landscape of future America will tend over time towards something like a feudal or tribal condition. As above, so below—polytheistic paganism will appeal in this cultural habitat in a way that it doesn’t under a more centralized and hierarchical social … Read moreAmerican Gods