Argh! Been tagged by a meme!
I rarely do this sort of thing, but here you are:
The Rules:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.Don’t you dare dig for that “cool†or “intellectual†book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest, then tag three people.
The book is The Witch’s Goddess by Janet and Stewart Farrar, because I’m working on references.
“The lover’s unveiling of a woman’s body is a sacred gesture as old as man himself. In our rationalized world, which no longer believes in ritual but which constantly and unwittingly re-creates it, this act has become the strip-tease, an aberrant form of religious worship debased to the level of commercial spectacle” (Markale, Women of the Celts, p.144). We mean it here in the original sacred sense.
If I had arranged my stack of current reference books differently, you might have gotten information on a species of swan, or on medieval technology.
I don’t think I’ve ever tagged anyone in my life, because I’m not fond of being tagged for time-consuming things myself so I don’t do it to others (this was fun, though, which is why I did it.) So with no imperatives involved, I’d be interested in knowing what Meallanmouse is reading, and what books are near Sandman7‘s computer, and I’m always interested in knowing what volumes Dr. Anne has on the go because she is Terribly Smart, and Witty to boot. And frankly, if any of my Gentle Readers are interested in sharing sentences six through nine on page 123 of the closest book, consider yourselves tagged and share!
“Keep raw cut garlic and onions, pungent cheeses, and highly spiced foods tightly wrapped and away from fresh eggs. While eggs in the shell last longer than most fresh foods, once out of their shells they deteriorate quickly and require special handling. If storing eggs out of the shell, it’s best to separate the whites from the yolks.”
A metaphor from an old tract advocating racial segregation? The protection of our “fresh” Innocents from Spiritual and Bodily corruption at the hands of “raw. . .pungent . . . and highly spiced” heathens from the Darker Nations?
Nah. . . Just some sage food storage advice from the ever-reliable Joy of Cooking. There are no bookshelves within reach of our computer desk, and currently no books on the desk (and I refuse to consider the Sony Portable CD Player handbook a real book, and anyway it only has 33 pages), but the Joy of Cooking was just behind me on the dining room table.
Thanks for playing!
If my “To Read” pile was sorted differently, my quote would have featured McLuhan, a history of comic books, or a history of circumnavigation…
Eclectic bunch, aren’t we? :)
“Garlic is also extremely protective. Sailors carry some while on board ship to protect against its wreckage. Soldiers wore garlic as a defense in the middle ages, while Roman soldiers ate it to give them courage.”
Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs by Scott Cunningham. Though it was a tossup as to which was closer — this, the OCD or Be Blessed were all pretty muche equidistant.
Ceri, what’s up with the garlic? My excerpt is about keeping it away from eggs, and yours is about using it for protection. Are the cosmic muses trying to tell us something?
From: ‘The Shambala Guide to Taoism’ chapter 8 “Divinational Taoism” by Eva Wong
DIVINATION IN THE MING AND TODAY
“When the Sung dynasty fall, in 1279 CE, it was replaced by the Yuan dynasty of the Mongols. Less than a hundred years later, the Yuan was replaced by the Ming dynasty. It was aid that in overthrowing the Mongols, the founderof the Ming dynasty, Chu Yuan-chang, had the assistance of a Taoist magician and diviner, Liu Po-hun, who was an expert in not only magic and divination but also military strategy and logistics.”
Ya… I am delving into the Taoist readings in prep for my classes in this starting September.
I left my mark on my blog with a link about the book that the text comes from. You can all shake your heads in laughter, but sometimes you just have to read fluff.
Pasley — yes, and just last night a friend had a dream that I was running into the Black Forest in Germany armed up like a Valkyrie. Clearly, we are being warned about an influx of vampires. German Vampires.