Round the Herne

Some thoughts on a dripplingly hot day, as I skulk in the shadows, about the nature of narrative and its relationship to polytheist religions as well as to our own lives as individuals. Narratives can be both positive and negative (or a parson's egg of both) and the prime purpose of this podcast is to get my listeners - both of you - to think about the role story plays in your life and the lives of the communities of which you are a member. Touches a little bit on Baudrillard's idea that we are living in a synthetic bubble as a result of the impact of cinema and TV on our expectations of reality. Could go into this more from a pagan point of view (do we expect our religions to be more like the things we see on TV than reality), but an hour of waffle seem sufficient for one day. Also brings in Collette Dowlings now somewhat dated ideas from the Cinderella Complex as an example of the potential negative impact of a widespread story.

The final installment about epistemology within polytheism, including a short muse on how Foucault's ideas on the Regimes of Truth could potentially apply. If viewers have any questions to pose, I could address them in future philosophical asides.

According to newspaper accounts (which, as we all know, are completely trustworthy and reliable), on September 26th 1449 two dragons met to fight it out in a meadow in the Suffolk village of Great Cornard. The black dragon had come from Kedington Hill in Suffolk whilst the red dragon had flown over from Ballingdon Hill on the nearby Essex borders. For some reason that remains inexplicable to this day, the red dragon won and both beasts returned to their hills. Afterwards the meadow became known as Sharpfight Meadow (I have no idea what it was called before that). The newspaper accounts offered of explanation for why this battle took place, so I made up the bit about witches and wizards for the sake of shameless embroidery. It may have been a garbled memory of a clash between two rival armies (or sports teams, or boy scouts, or who knows what else) each flying a dragon pennant. The esoterically inclined might consider the dragons to be ancient land guardians and the clash between th...

An additional meander through the realm of epistemology, branching out into ontology and cultural shift. thanks to viewers for the questions posed in response to the previous podcast - they (eventually) get answered in this recording. If anyone has any further questions in response to this waffle please let me know. There will, at some point, be a third and hopefully final addition to this diversion into philosophy.

Finally a visit to the barber today, so I look less like someone who sleeps in a ditch and shouts at pigeons. To mark the day, here is a meander through some philosophical concepts around epistemology from a polytheist stance - how do polytheists know what they claim to know? How can the truthfulness of claims be assessed (and what do we even mean by truth anyway)? There will be a follow-up to this at some stage, as there are other ides that I want to explore - and if anyone has any questions or reflections of their own, it will help to shape where the next video ramble goes.

This seminar (conducted as part of my day job) gives a basic introduction to some ideas from within Analytic and Archetypal Psychology, which might be of interest to some of the people who subscribe to this blog. If there is sufficient interest, I'll do a more in-depth one next year.

This story is set in Ireland but combines a number of different elements from various cultures - particularly French rural tales. A woman encounters a faoladh - one of the werewolf-like creatures of Irish folklore - and eventually has a strange child. The story is also partly inspired by the visual image of Danielle Dax as the wolf girl in the brilliant 1984 film "Company of Wolves". There are a number of Central and Eastern European traditions of wolfherders - sometimes people with magical powers over wolves, or sometimes werewolf-like creatures which occasionally brush up against humanity. At some juncture I will record stories about the volcko, lloberus, dzgyrag, Puldu Kaldana and others. The rather stunning artwork inset is, I believe, by Caitriona Maire MacDougall. This is recorded partly to celebrate the summer solstice and partly because this weekend would have been the Wolfshead Pagan Camp (which has been running for several years in Suffolk). Unfortunately th...