Traveling hero meets a beautiful female November 4, 2008
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: ancient, ceremony, complex, conflict, dangerous, dealing, epic, hate, hero, literature, love, magic, magical, myths, poet, powers, pyre, ritual, roman, sacrifice, underworlds, wishes
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Much of ancient Roman literature dealing with magic are, basically, retellings of Greek myths. Roman poet Virgils’s Aeneid for example describes an interestng magical ceremony. The hero of the epic, Aeneas, who has landed on the coast of North Africa after fleeing from Troy, meets Queen Dido. She has just begun to build the city of Carthage. Dido falls in love with Aeneas, and wishes him to stay as her prince consort. The rest of what happens is easy to imagine. As usual, a traveling hero meets a beautiful female who is potentially dangerous, although kind and hospitable as long as her love for the hero lasts.
Thus the future conflict is set when goddess Fate decrees that Aeneas leave Dido to found a city of his own. Inevitably Dido’s love turns to hate. Enraged queen seeks to use a complex magical ritual to bring her former lover back to her. She builds a gigantic pyre in the main courtyard of her palace and prepares an elaborate sacrifice to the powers of the underworld.
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How it progressed in the United States September 19, 2008
Posted by egabriel in History of Astrology.Tags: articles, astrological, astrology, attempt, books, columns, complex, concepts, contention, controversy, descriptions, factor, forecasts, interest, journalists, magazines, materials, modern, newspapers, period, points, popular, position, practice, public, readers, result, serious, sun, war, writings
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The serious and complex writings on astrological practice and concepts in America progressed into a new period of popular. Many complex astrological materials were simplified to attempt to carve a clear line through points of contention and controversy.
Great public interest in astrology made publishers realize that millions of readers were interested in astrological forecasts and the interest grew ever more intense with the advent of America’s entry into the First World War. The war heightened interest in astrology. Journalists began to write articles based on character descriptions and astrological forecasts were published in newspapers based on the one and only factor known to the public: the month and day of birth, as taken from the position of the Sun when a person is born. The result of this practice led to modern-day publishing of Sun-Sign astrology columns and expanded to some astrological books and magazines in second half of the twentieth century.
Beyond Your Imagination 