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velocity of veins
I've been reading Piers Read's book about the Knights Templar and enjoying it quite a bit. it's a work of actual history, which means that it doesn't contain any of that cool stuff about Freemasonry and the Head of Baphomet and geomancy. if you (I) want that, you (I) should check out that wacky Holy Blood, Holy Grail book. erin has a copy which I'm going to have to borrow for a brief perusal.
anyway, Read's book (Read a book! take a ride on the reading! the Read See Scrolls. better read than dead.) is pretty damned cool. it sort of a quick dirty summary, in 300-some pages, of Karen Armstrong's History of God, John Julius Norwich's various Byzantine history books, and some book on the Crusades which I haven't read and may not actually exist. it makes occasional dips into Church history, including my personal favorite the Cathars, and European medieval politics. it also strikes me as eerily resonant with the zany shit going on in the Holy Land of late.
but none of that is my point.
my point is that I had a dream last night which probably arose from my recent reading. in it, I was some sort of crusader knight and some bad church person was chewing off my arm, both as a form of torture and for some weird eldritch purpose that was opaque to me. this had only gone on for a minute or two when I started laughing. "this can't really be happening!" I thought "because they didn't have potatoes in medieval europe and they can't possibly eat my arm with out a side of potatoes!"
I have a lot of dreams where someone mutilates my arm or does something weird with it. in one dream that I had in college, my arm was missing and I eventually found my mother playing the timpani with it in a symphony orchestra.
I wonder what all that means.
anyway, Read's book (Read a book! take a ride on the reading! the Read See Scrolls. better read than dead.) is pretty damned cool. it sort of a quick dirty summary, in 300-some pages, of Karen Armstrong's History of God, John Julius Norwich's various Byzantine history books, and some book on the Crusades which I haven't read and may not actually exist. it makes occasional dips into Church history, including my personal favorite the Cathars, and European medieval politics. it also strikes me as eerily resonant with the zany shit going on in the Holy Land of late.
but none of that is my point.
my point is that I had a dream last night which probably arose from my recent reading. in it, I was some sort of crusader knight and some bad church person was chewing off my arm, both as a form of torture and for some weird eldritch purpose that was opaque to me. this had only gone on for a minute or two when I started laughing. "this can't really be happening!" I thought "because they didn't have potatoes in medieval europe and they can't possibly eat my arm with out a side of potatoes!"
I have a lot of dreams where someone mutilates my arm or does something weird with it. in one dream that I had in college, my arm was missing and I eventually found my mother playing the timpani with it in a symphony orchestra.
I wonder what all that means.