Round the Herne

I gave this talk in 2018 as part of the public lecture series run at the college I lecture in - each month a different person spoke on a wide variety of topics (history, science, politics, art etc.). This talk explores concepts of Celtic identity and culture through the medium of poetry, with a number of readings from various different poets - Welsh, Irish, Scottish etc. and one English (me). My Gaelic is dreadful, but bear with!

A couple of recordings to make potential students aware of the degrees which I lead at the University of Suffolk. If you know of any possible Religious Studies and/or Ethics students, do share the link - or get them to contact me via robin.herne@wsc.ac.uk ETHICS RELIGIOUS STUDIES

On Tuesday 16th May the Religious Studies & Ethics department have organised their annual conference, at which I will be one of the speakers (talking about Roman and Greek notions of sexuality). The theme for this year is Gender & Sexuality. It is a free event - contact me at robin.herne@wsc.ac.uk if you wish to attend. The programme of speakers is as follows: 10.00                Welcome and introduction to the day 10.15                Are there Only Two Sexes?; John Hadlow 11.00                Same Sex Marriage in Liberal Christianity; Reverend Matthew Smith 11.45                The Caring Sex?; Dr Will Thomas 12.30            ...

This is the version of the Great Royal Myth of Egypt recorded for my Religious Studies students (one of their essay questions is about it). I've used the Egyptian transliterations of the divine names rather than the Greek. The classes are three hours long, but I wish we had more time to discuss what the myths mean and how they can be interpreted. Setekh gets a bad reputation in this story, but he is a fascinating presence and there is a great deal more to him than some pantomime villain.

I'm not a massive fan of the elemental framework that Empedocles and others built up, or the four humours promoted by Galen and other medics. It strikes me as rather too simplistic. However, it does form a convenient tool for exploring ideas. Much is made in education of learning styles, but we might as equally talk about teaching styles. Earth teachers (Jung's sensation function)  are practical people who prefer to demonstrate skills which students can then emulate. Not that I've ever attended such a class, but probably best suited to teaching pragmatic crafts like carpentry, car mechanics or catering. The hands-on approach to mastering the implementation of talents. Air teachers (thinking function as Jung would have it) develop the intellectual approach, uses the tools of chalk and talk to stimulate the minds of students. Discussion and debate are regular features of the air/thinking class. Air teachers are those who find their own specialism fascinating, and convey t...

Returning on the train from Norwich's Pagan convention today (at which I was speaking, and more of which shortly) I had the opportunity to be sat across from a middle aged man and someone whom I presumed to have been a niece or possibly a future daughter-in-law. Their conversation was mostly insipid, but took a turn which distracted me from the spectral realms of Montague Rhodes James. For some reason they were talking about schools and the behaviour of some adolescent relative, when the fat man (let's call him McCabe, because I'm not feeling very imaginative tonight) started recollecting his own salad days. The salad presumably being a bit of limp lettuce in his greasy burger. With consider relish on that burger, he told various exploits involving reducing one teacher to tears, being part of a gang that drove another teacher into a nervous breakdown, locking another in a tool shed etc. Now lots of kids do grotty things and eventually grow out of it when they achieve some...