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Reviews For Moon Fire
I'm a little concerned you're Christianising the old gods. Firstly, Selene is the Ancient Greek name for Luna (the Roman equivalent), and she was a Titaness of the moon; although as a deity she also presided over childbirth, magic, the moon, lunacy, the ocean tides, dew, night, the months and sight. By extension everything the moonlight touched could also come under her domain. BUT. You give a Greek named to a ROman deity. Some of the things you allot to Selene as opposed to LUNA. Luna is a general name for all deities of the moon, such as Juno and Diana (both of whom also presided over childbirth), and Luna herself was held as one aspect of the diva triformis; the other faces being Proserpina and Hecate. Luna is also one of the twelve deities who rule over agriculture. And this is where I start to become concerned. She is NOT EVIL. She is the Goddess of Springtime. The reason she is the Queen of the Underworld is a simple myth, you may have heard of it: the Rape of Persephone. That being her Greek equivalent. In both Greek and Roman mythology the Underworld is not a place of evil, it simply is. Tartarus (think Hell) is a section of Hades (the place). As Pluto in both religions he a stern ruler, and compassionate husband. As Hades he was passive, and maintained relative balance. He was one of the Cthonic deities, as was Hecate. Yes, there was blood sacrifice made, but 'cthon' simly means 'eath', 'of earth', 'eathy', and was often linked, yes, to the underworld. hecate, she whom you depict as evil was frequently depicted in triple form and variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, fire, light, the Moon, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, necromancy, and sorcery. She has also been described as having rulership over earth, sea and sky. In Hesiod's ''Theogeny'' Hecate is said to have been revered above all by Zeus. Many of the pre-Christian gods that you have mentioned you paint in very much a Christian sense of black and white, with none of the bleed over that you see in the ancient myths. As I very briefly (not that you'd believe it from the length of this review) outlined, just with Selene/Luna she is extremely complex, both as herself and as part of a tripartite deity. Especially given one of her other faces herself is a trimorphus deity. Seeing you say Hecate is the 'evil face' of Selene/Luna is just reductive and ignores just how much flow there was between deities and the complexities of their stories. Even Set, the person you call the most evil was also the god of the desert, storms, foreigners as well as darkness (the absent of light) and chaos. While Set is held in conflict with Horus and his kin, he also also depicted as the most powerful of Ra's protector's, protecting him (and light itself) from Apep - a snake god who is truly evil, and sought to slay. Set was only demonised in the Late period of Egyptian history. And even then Set was still worshipped in many places, whereas Apep was actively worshipped *against*. Even the most 'evil' gods generally aren't. And given Apep's a *snake* it would have made so much ore sense for him to be one of Apep's followers. You've oversimplified many things, and in the end I'm left with what I feel is only a vaguely pagan Christianity under a different name. It's kind of distracting because the potential for the Wizarding World to be a contrasting and conflicting set of ideals and ideologies is scarcely has a shade of grey to it even though virtually every single deity of ancient civilisations committed acts of great villainy, heroism and everything in between. Even Selene. She was Titan and Olympian. All Titans were sealed away when Zeus committed patricide for their crimes. Deities are grey,not black and white.
Great chapter!
I wanted to say, I had a dream which had me researching Cerridwen and realized the post I made about Brighid wasn't fully accurate as I think Selene was kind of branched for Wales between Brighid and Cerridwen, but Brighid is also an Irish Mother. I have much more researching left to do by any means. Oh, and before I forget, CS Lewis also had a Talking horse teach a boy to ride. Very interesting piece to read. I forget the name of the book as I only had an excerpt of it found in a book of horse stories. If you are interested, I can find the title. Anyway, I wanted you to know that the warp speed is much loved! |
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