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Calliope

calliope@grimoire.social

Joined 1 year, 1 month ago

Ph.D. in literary and cultural studies, professor, diviner, writer, trans, nonbinary

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2024 Reading Goal

33% complete! Calliope has read 22 of 65 books.

Geraldine Pinch: Egyptian Mythology : A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (2004) No rating

You're either interested in this topic or not, but if the question is whether this book is good at that topic, then yes, it is. It's very good.

It packs a lot of information into a quite short book.

It's in four broad sections. The first is an introduction and outline of Egyptian history. The second is a narrative "history" of Egyptian myth, beginning with the creation of the world and moving through the retreat of the goddess and the contention between Horus and Seth, and so on. The chapters here indicate how many different gods could fulfill the roles of each narrative event. The third section is an A-Z of gods, places, and groups, often filling in the narrative from the previous section. The final section is an extensive bibliography.

Benebell Wen: Book of Maps: Revelation Edition (EBook) No rating

The Book of Maps is the companion guidebook for the Spirit Keeper's Tarot, a black …

Book of Maps (Wen)

No rating

I like this deck a lot. And the book is often necessary because cards will depict gods and historical figures that aren't necessarily recognizable in sight.

But the book sometimes gets its mythology wrong, refers to worrying ideas like theosophical Akashic records, and tries to brute force a thesis about prisca theologica that's as unnecessary as it is culturally flattening. The book will often talk about how "all cultures" do something that's factually untrue, like believing in "the light."

It does feature a more systematic mapping of I Ching trigrams to tarot cards, which was interesting. And much of the myth and history is still good.

avatar for calliope Calliope boosted
Peter Grey: Apocalyptic Witchcraft (2013) 2 stars

i wish he'd be veiled again

2 stars

The introductory polemic is superb; i wish the author would read it and reconsider his support of people derided as "fascists" and "transphobes", and rejoin the actual left. But the amount of binary, cissexist thinking throughout the rest of the book suggest that he won't. Nevertheless, it has a few great ideas, and the writing is beautifully florid. Pirate it.