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What I've been up to

Posted by panmankey on January 14, 2009 at 3:38 PM

It's nine degrees outside so I'm hiding out at work, steaming cup of coffee directly to the left of me, laptop in front of me, and books about Satan to the right of me. I should be done writing up the notes to my "The Devil is in the Details-The History of Satan" workshop tomorrow, and it's about time. It's been a mind numbing excercise in my note taking skills because it's not a topic I'm extremely thrilled about. I have no horse in this race. It's not like writing up a workshop on the greatness of Led Zeppelin or Pan, it's more like work, boring work, rehashing things in my brain I read eons ago.

The problem with Satan is that no audience I might end up talking to while doing this workshop really knows a darn truth about him. I mostly blame Milton and "Paradise Lost" for rewriting the Satan story, convincing people that the Devil was in the Garden of Eden. Part of the blame also lies with modern translations of the Bible, translations which refuse to use the word "Satan" properly throught the text, picking and choosing when that term appears. (The Hebrew Bible is a fascinating document, but it's never been the text of a fully realized tradition, it's more a text about the emergence of Yahweh as a universal monotheistic deity. Satan is another character that's developed throughout the text.) Milton also influenced generations of Pagans and Romantics, by turning Lucifer into a tragic figure and making him sympathetic. I'm sorry Pagan types, but Lucifer wasn't some sort of god of the dawn, it's simply Latin for morning star (that's the planet Venus ya know). It's a weird subject where everyone has an opinion, but it's always so full of bias and bad scholarship that it's muddied the picture to a large degree.

After finishing up the Satan notes I have an Aphrodite lecture to write, and I will also probably print up a pamphlet thing to sell while at Pantheacon and Convocation. A lot of that work was done a year ago, but there's still some clean up that needs to be dealt with. Aphrodite is an interesting deity to write about, but a devil of a deity to research. The amount of current, up to date information on her worship in ancient times is limited at best, and non-existant some of the time. Most anything written for general audiences about Aphrodite is full of errors and fallacies. One of my favorites was a whopper about how the ancient Greeks didn't sacrifice to Aphrodite, which is of course absolute tripe (much like a Burger King Whopper), but people make up this idealized images of ancient gods in their minds, images which they don't like to sully with the truth.

I'm ritualizing at both festivals next month too. I'm doing Morrison at Pantheacon, and a new one focusing on Pan at Convocation. I'm actually going to submit the Pan Ritual to Starwood next week, and try to weasel out of doing an homage to Jim there this summer. I like Morrison Rituals, but I need a break now and then, and besides, Pan is fun, and I could introduce some rock'n'roll into it if I really tried. One of the things I like about doing public rituals is that they are easy to do. In many ways they are more physically exhausting than lecturing, but the amount of prep work required to do them is much much less. I can write a great ritual in an evening or two (usually over a bottle of wine), a great worshop takes at least a month, and massive amounts of time. I try hard not to just talk out of my ass, though I can talk out of my ass on occassion too.

While impending workshop and ritual doom is occupying a lot of my time right now, my thoughts are also on the gridiron and the city of Pittsburgh as the Steelers are gearing up to play for a chance at the Super Bowl. My love of football is no great secret, and it consumes a lot of my time and energy. At (mundane) work I'm notoroius (beloved?) for my love of the Steelers, and people identify me with the team to a large degree. Not a bad thing to be known for I guess. My passion for the NFL affects my life in weird ways too. I lose sleep over it, I fret over it, and it controls what type of day I'm going to have. It also sometimes requires me to take vicodin or something so I can knock myself out and go to sleep. Nothing like getting wrapped up in something you have no control over.

For those that were unaware (this is being posted in three different places, so bear with me), my cat Princess was diagnosed with cancer around Christmas. Princess has been (and always will be) a part of my life for nearly 14 years, and it's hard to imagine a world without her. I actually got her when she was six years old, so she's ancient by cat standards, but it still hurts. I know that she's had a good life, and that she knows how much I love her, but it's still rough going. Worry about her is a constant dark shadow in the corners of my mind. The cancer she has is in her mouth, and it makes eating difficult for her. With the help of pain meds and appetite stimulants she continues to hang in there, but I do know her time is short. That's made writing difficult the past month, and even made the Steelers' playoff run a little less thrilling, but it's life I guess.

I hate ending on such a down note, but those are my thoughts and worries right now. If it weren't for football, January would be an extremely bleak month. All of the things I'm looking forward to right now (except for the AFC Championship Game of course, which, at the time of this writing, is only 4 days and 2 hours or so away!) are in February or beyond. "Watchmen" won't even be out until March! The new Black Sabbath album won't be out until April (and not the crappy version of Sabbath either, this is a "Ronnie James Dio at the helm" record), lots of things to be excited about in the coming months!

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