Hermes, the God who presides over language, was formerly very properly considered as common to all priests; and the power who presides over the true science concerning the Gods is one and the same in the whole of things. Hence our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of Hermes. – Iamblichus (On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians)
Section 1: The Grey Area
(Speculation) 9
When you ride an airplane, do you want a pilot who confidently believes they know how to fly, or do you want a pilot who actually knows how to fly a plane? If all points of view were of equal value, there would be no difference between driving with your eyes open and driving with your eyes closed. So, why did I just point out the obvious? Because sometimes, people close their eyes and confidently think they are going somewhere awesome.
I remember two friends who lived next to each other. Then I looked at a map, and their houses were not next to each other. I was so sure that they lived next to each other. Now, I realize that memory can not be trusted. So, how do we know if we know anything? This chapter is about Mercury. Of all the planets we can see with an unaided eye, Mercury is the hardest to find. Finding mercury requires knowledge and thinking.
Sometimes, people don’t want to learn and just want to debate. These debaters repeat unreliable information off web pages while ignoring anything you say. The ignorant will always claim to win the debate, and the ignorant enjoy doing their little victory dance. A better way for us to learn from each other would be to compare notes, review each other’s sources, and research the issue together. Knowing how to check information and make corrections distinguishes those who learn from those who claim victory.
I am not trying to pretend to be a scientist. Mystics, like me, have unreliable ideas, though such ideas may serve a useful purpose when ideas stir the imagination.
“The purpose of science in understanding who we are as humans is not to rob us of our sense of mystery, not to cure us of our sense of mystery. The purpose of science is to constantly reinvent and reinvigorate that mystery.” (Sapolsky, 2003)
Imagine your mind flowing in a path shaped like a number eight. On one side, sensory organs gather information; on the other, emotions react to the information. Information influences your emotions, affecting how you process this information and changing how you respond to the information. The way the reactions feel will influence what information your senses let in. Though this model could be entirely wrong, it does not have to be right; the gray perspective is neither black nor white and represents uncertainty.
In everyday situations, our senses help us find our way in the world, ideas get meaning from what we learned or felt in our environment, and the way something makes people feel affects how we see it. Environmental factors include any changes made to your environment. Your choices affect the environment, so in a way, your choices create you, and at the same time, your environment influences your choices. Of course, I could be overestimating how much the environment influences individual behavior. Notice how Europeans in tropical countries still dress in clothes designed for colder weather. Perhaps traditions better explain a lot of what people do, and how we think extends beyond the individual when words get meaning by how people use them with each other.
Consider how the words you use have definitions you did not invent. No individual could ever know all the meanings given to these words since every word has a million stories. People say stuff without knowing every story, so your words can get you in trouble. Have you ever had a girlfriend get mad at something you said, and you have no idea why? And that time, you were not just pretending not to know; you actually do not know. However, your girlfriend does not have better insight into facts than you do. Since stories change every time people speak, the meaning of words is obscure, like in modern art. This obscurity allows us to think that a special group of other people knows what the art says. Certain people want to look smart, so they pretend to be those others. Actually, there are no others, and art says nothing. Everyone is pretending to know what they say.
Bad opinions happen when people let beliefs rather than facts decide opinions for them, and we usually believe whatever seems normal in our culture; however, the culture never does all our thinking for us. Your unique experience can call forth unique thoughts. Also, our inner Nature motivates as well as guides individuals to explore our world, causing each to use words in unique ways. However, each of us only has a partial view of this world. Someone could walk over a cliff without knowing the cliff was there, and opinion does not save us from reality. Only Wile E. Coyote continues walking as long as it does not look down.
We can assume culture influences how we see the world. I am also going to assume that the environment influences culture. Modern cultures change the environment, and these changes affect how people feel. These feelings influence how we choose to change the environment. Strange ways create strange situations, which produce strange ideas and encourage strange ways. For example, people who claim our sisters can’t learn might prevent them from going to school, and this prevents those people from ever realizing that our sisters can learn.
Homo Sapiens see the world in a particular way. Another species would have different software and see differently. Since we belong in a tribal life, not being in that tribal life must be affecting us. Perhaps some social problems in modern society happen because we do not live as natural people. If cultures think unnaturally when detached from Nature, more contact with Nature would help us learn how to be natural.
Section 2: The Devil
(Speculation) 8
“They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.” (Deuteronomy 32:17).
Early Christian writers considered pagan gods to be evil Demons, and when Christianity replaced the pagan religions, people forgot the meanings of the pagan gods. Our reconstruction of the old pagan cult also has a devil because evil can win over good, nor is the end of the tunnel always lighted, and no divine law makes our expectations the purpose of the universe. The imaginary mind who guides the world can seem to have a wise guiding hand or can appear to deceive us on purpose. This mind is an Angel or a Devil who goes by the name of Eshu and personifies the beginning of a journey, which begins at the crossroads where we find paths to choose.
Beliefs and expectations say where each path might lead; the truth is where each path leads. A lot of expectations never happen. Imagine the Zodiac as the truth at the end of each path, which contains everything surrounding us, and Mercury personifies a point of view in this Zodiac. Each step starts a new beginning, and you learn from each step. Be careful not to destroy the old self, to start a new self. Instead, let each step be a natural continuation of your life, or you will wind up fighting yourself, which is the wrong path.
We see Eshu as the Devil when events lead us down the wrong path; however, going the wrong way leads to good if people learn from their mistakes. If Eshu sent everyone down the right path all the time, we would learn nothing. Ironically, false beliefs can get people somewhere. For instance, Columbus wanted to go to India yet found the Americas. Our ability to think has created a wrong path called civilization, yet the success of civilization does not make it right.
Eshu as the rising Sun contains each moment as a fresh beginning where Eshu remains young. A mature person lives at the end of the road. Try to become a mature person, but you will never completely grow up or reach the end; you always have more to learn and there is always another hill to climb. And if anyone assumes they reached the end, Eshu will trick them again. We never leave the crossroads.
People who finish nothing are always starting over. People who go nowhere have only themselves to blame since their choices are a continuation of past decisions. While the environment affects how people feel, your biggest environmental factor is you. In other words, the wrong path leads to wrong ideas, which leads people farther down the wrong path. Sometimes, the wrong attitude prevents people from getting out of an uncomfortable situation, and too many of us fail to realize we create our own Hell with bad habits. Don’t search for a light at the end of the tunnel. The light never existed, and the tunnel was only a fantasy. The monsters were fake, and the angels were fake. Only a slight change of mind would end your personal wars.
Besides, since thoughts consist of ideas learned from others, you will never be certain if your intentions are your own. We try to fit all ideas into old patterns, and changing opinions challenge us and make us invent new patterns. In the long run, no particular definition or idea stays true forever. And this will panic some. Others get used to it. Like it or not, every time you speak, new information changes the meaning of your words.
Have you ever noticed how ignorant people confidently assume that they know more than actual experts?
“The incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.” (Dunning, 2014)
Anyone taking the time to learn stuff might discover how little they know. Some might get frustrated and give up. Others might feel inspired to keep searching.
Throughout history, people have assumed the universe obeys certain patterns. For example, Euclid’s geometry, Ptolemy’s cosmos with the Earth at the center, and the clockwork universe operating according to Newton’s laws of motion. These models seemed reasonable until discoveries changed how people understood the universe. The universe has no obligation to conform to what we think. Consider how our experience of the world tells us that something cannot be both a particle and a wave. Then, when people tested how stuff behaves at a subatomic level, scientists had to invent strange models to make accurate predictions.
Section 3: They who see
(Conjecture) 11
The Shawnee Prophet became Tenskwatawa after a great vision. The name means Open Door (Edmunds, 1985 ch. 2). This prophet was not the first to use the word door in this way, and this prophet was not the last.
In large civilized cultures, thousands of clerics work together until organized religions become a big business, whereas small cultures have no large organized church telling everyone what to do. Instead, everyone depends on each other’s opinions, including personal visions of their culture’s values. I assume the holy person in a small culture has to perform multiple jobs, including a medic, social critic, director of ceremonies, and entertainer. New Age books call the holy person in primal cultures a Shaman.
Shaman is a Siberian word. Russians would send their outcasts to Siberia. Some of the outcasts wrote about the people in Siberia, and some of what they wrote might have been rumors. The writers might have projected their own image onto others. The Siberian Shaman is depicted as someone whose visions make them a link to the divine, and they are depicted as a psychologically troubled outcast.
“The first change of sentiments among educated European observers toward the tribal archaic techniques of ecstasy coincided with the rise of Romanticism, which injected into the writings of travelers and explorers an element of attraction to both the bright and the dark “Gothic” sides of shamanism.” (Znamenski, 2007)
Similarly, during the early twentieth century, the term vision quest shows up in the literature about Native Americans. Students looking for answers to the meaning of life thought Native Americans were also looking for answers in a vision quest. Unfortunately, the students did not listen to the Natives and wrote what they thought the natives would say.
I do not know if any Native Americans ever went on a vision quest before the students wrote about it. The description of the visionary in the vision quest resembles the story about Siberian Shamanism. White Australian writers also claimed Aboriginal Australians did something similar to the vision quest in a walkabout. Eventually, writers all over the world claimed their natives also had Shamans. Joseph Campbell believed these stories and helped spread the image of the Shaman as an eccentric visionary in a popular book about primitive mythology (Campbell, 1959).
Supposedly, a young Shaman will feel the curse in a total mental breakdown; however, an older Shaman may help the younger Shaman develop the vision. Without this help, the young visionary becomes confused and never finds the full potential of the gift. Campbell thought visionaries tuned into the unconscious of society to serve as the artist of culture. The seeker would feel Nature’s ways while feeling society’s needs and then use this knowledge to guide the seeker to follow the right path. A person on such a vision quest would seem quite mad. Campbell’s story about the Shaman might not be completely wrong. Visionaries have played a vital part in all societies. Natural selection could have molded us into a species that produces a few visionaries.
As a kid, my mind was developing unorthodox thinking. I needed someone who would help me understand my strange thoughts or at least help me put them into context. There were friends of the family who practiced Spiritism. In this practice, the afterlife resembles a giant internet cafe where the dead try to communicate with their living relative, and Brazilians like to mix this practice with all kinds of images that look African or Native American. However, my friends had little understanding of how the practice worked and did not seem to have the information that I was looking for.
I did not act the same as the other kids and spent a lot of time alone. My school teachers did not understand, and they wanted to destroy my illusions by using psychology, yet these illusions felt like something worth keeping. Though most of the visions were junk, occasionally, they gave a view of what other people could not see because they were trained not to look. Fortunately, a stubborn need to discover different ways of understanding the world helped prevent civilization from destroying my sight.
Without a guide, people need to build their own answers. Spending long periods of time alone will severely warp a mind, and the music of Ozzy Osbourne and movies starring Vincent Price provided a dark and dismal world for this mind to live in. And as I got older, my interest in the god Exu grew. But this is not the life of a witch doctor or wizard. I do not sell spells or heal the sick. Instead, people like me search and make up stories.
My interpretation of the Brazilian God Exu imitated the Roman Catholic concept of the Devil. This is not the traditional African Exu. The sun rises at birth, matures at noon, and dies at sunset. Imagine a story about an old man who met Exu in the rising Sun at the center of the crossroads of life. Do not live separate from society, and do not remain alone with Demons, or you could grow to be like me. I understand because chaos called my name. The madness brought the key to unlock the door where the obsession wants to enter. Hopefully, you will have a different path because you do not want to take this one.
Lots of people disapprove of my choices, and they are right to do so, but I never ask for their acceptance. These people usually expect everyone to conform to roles that they consider respectable, and they feel protected by a respectable society. I adapted the Jaguar as the symbol for that which lives outside the protected area. South American culture includes a wide variety of icons, such as the Jaguar. These gods contribute to their culture in ways that I will never know because I was raised as a Christian and was only told bits and pieces about the other religions. When I grew up, I read books about those other religions; however, something seemed to be missing. Perhaps I could have been a better visionary if multiple generations developed my ideas.
Civilization has no place for such visionaries; those who see it will end up confused social rejects, their magic bundle will look like a bag of junk, their activities will seem pointless, and the places the seeker goes will seem strange and possibly illegal.
Section 4: Two Sides
(Portrayal) 9
The key to the door can be found in the fire Prometheus gave us (Theogony 565). Odin found the sacred letters of this voice while hanging on a tree (Havamal 138). This tree grows in the middle of the Earth’s circle, and Black Elk saw this tree become weak when civilization infected the circle of the people; Black Elk also knew the tree would bloom again. The tree will bloom when the ancient Gods rise again. The Holy Person becomes the Door through which myths act upon the Earth, showing us ways to walk in a sacred manner.
Adding an S for learning to YEUO spells Yesuo, the name of our Body. Eshu spelled ESU appears in the center of Yesuo. We can find ESU in the path of life between the East and West. EUO lives in the West, where the Sunsets. My idea for EUO came from EUOI, which ancient Greeks said during the ecstasy of someone celebrating Dionysus. I found the word in a comedy play, Thesmophoriazusae by Aristophanes (line 990). Modern witch cults pronounce it Evohe (Starhawk, 1979 ch. 6). We can use the word to represent the present facts of life.
During the winter solstice, the creator unites with Mother Nature to conceive the seasonal God, who gets born in the spring, reaches maturity during summer, and dies during the fall. The star of six points inside a gray circle signifies this seasonal god. Two grey circles depict eight, the number of the priest. This eight has the Door living in the middle where a red line of imagination crosses the center of the shape of eight and cuts it into two Fours. Imagine a mystical Door used to enter the world of ideas: a Door between this and that.
Uniting two triangles makes a star with six points. The red triangle, pointing up, resembles fire, and the blue triangle, pointing down, resembles water. Three lines connect each point in the star to a point on the opposite side of the symbol. The equator in this symbol is a brown line connecting the Morning Star of denying passion in the east, with the Evening Star of asserting passion in the west. The purple line maps the circle of the Zodiac, and the invisible mystery line connects the Sun with the Zodiac, connecting the top point of the red triangle with the bottom point of the blue triangle.
Imagine two triangles moving toward each other, keeping the purple and brown lines connected to the proper points. The triangles touch point to point during Birth, which is E, the Spring Equinox. Incidentally, the brown and purple lines cross in the middle of the door in a way that imitates the crossing of the celestial equator with the Zodiac during the Spring Equinox. The triangles unite during Life, which is U. The triangles separate during death, which is O, and also where the purple and brown line now crosses in a way imitating the Fall equinox.
The halves, in the shape of eight, also stand for fall and spring, and each side equals four to stand for the two names of the West; the spring brings passion called EUO, and fall brings the destruction called JOVE. The passage of time crosses the Door between the past and the future, and that time is now EUOI. The two touching triangles look like an hourglass, where time runs out as if time was made to destroy us. This Door between anything also portrays the mystic who explores this symbol. Draw a figure eight and notice how it seems clockwise on one side and counterclockwise on the other. The West becomes Nature’s greatest enemy or a mystic’s greatest view of Nature. People often see things better when the clockwise is turned counterclockwise.
I set the temple clockwise. You can change the direction to make your temple counterclockwise. People see the cosmos uniquely; the world has more than one right way, and meaningful visions come from free imagination. Beyond the Door lives the mystery of the meaning of the age. I do not know if that mystery is there, but some of us do expect that it is there.
No one invents the perfect society by thinking, as Plato tried to do in the book “The Republic.” People discover what works by practice, trial, and error. Each organization must find the best way on its own, and no one should dictate what must go into someone else’s temple. Let us celebrate all the animals within us. Instead of preachers telling everyone what to believe, let us have a religion of skepticism. Let us encourage an open discussion until the temple reflects how your culture sees the world and becomes the place to feel your culture.
People wishing to scare demons away from the temple place guardian statues outside their doors. Never put these figures near our temple; we never need to scare anything. Invite every being to the temple, even Demons. We don’t scare away bad thoughts to make people think more purely. We live without chasing away potential motivations that could help. I’ve seen Catholic priests try to purify their sacred space to eliminate harmful influences. Avoid purification because we are not a purity cult. Never burn incense in the temples to purify the air. Cedar incense invokes the counterclockwise destroyer. Instead, breathe fresh air. Let our temple become a place where lives grow without lawgivers holding us back.
Section 5: Value
(Conjecture) 9
How do you know these images lead in the right direction? The gods might want to see you walk over a cliff. The feeble need fables and the fables keep them feeble. Such people don’t need a guide; they need a dose of reality. So, find better ways of dealing with life than talking to imaginary personalities. In Mexican mythology, a great king created a civilization, and then one day, a trickster came to the temple with a black mirror that contained the night sky with all the stars, including what is, was, and will be. The truth lived inside the mirror, and inside of this truth, the king saw the reflection of a person. Before this discovery, the king never knew that a king’s reflection was that of an ordinary person. The king thought something else would be seen.
When I was a kid, the show Cosmos by Carl Sagan made me want to be a physicist, but people who understand physics usually start learning calculus at a young age, and I can barely pass a basic calculus class. There is a religious tone to the show Cosmos since the show also includes ethics and opinions about how the world should be. Sagan felt that certain ideas were worth following, and Sagan might not call these ideas gods since Sagan was an Atheist. Nothing stops us from calling concepts gods.
Carl Sagan inspired young people to find meaning and purpose by becoming scientists. The TV show shows us that science can lead us to a better world and that you can be part of that mission. Some of you might say that science has created all kinds of problems. That is why we need scientists like Carl Sagan, who care about the future and will try to fix the problems that science has created.
We do not live in a society where people give their souls to science. We do not live in Star Trek: The Next Generation, where people are motivated to improve themselves. Instead, we live in a world where people sell their souls for money. Sometimes, people would sell their relatives into slavery just for a few coins. You might be surprised at how little human life can be valued. Your breakfast probably costs more than slaves in some countries. You might think that you are better than the people who own slaves, but did you know that slaves might have made your shoes, and your phone contains minerals that those slaves dug up? It’s nice being one of the privileged. Isn’t it?
One of the worst illusions is Money. It keeps us from seeing ourselves. We must create a religion that avoids making money. Offer a small leaf to the temple; the temple requires no more. If people want to offer more to the temple, it should be a gift or volunteer work. Do not give cash. It makes trade faster. We do not need trade to happen this fast. A church that takes or gives money becomes a business that forgets how to serve the community and becomes a parasite that feeds on the community. Priests must support themselves without the church or people paying. The priest must never live off feminine people the way pimp Jesus did.
“And Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance.” (Luke 8:3)
Trade between communities makes us dependent on economic networks where people specialize in specific products and lose the variety in their culture. The young in small civilized towns complain about nothing to do and move to big cities. Families break up, and people end up in city slums. A place where everyone builds what the community needs will provide us with opportunities, and people will look toward these opportunities instead of financial gain. We build a better quality of life with care than with money.
People pray for money, creating a terrible demon, so stop treating it as a God. The priest should encourage celebrants to burn money. East of the temple put a small fire for burning money. This destruction is a holy act that frees us to find a better purpose in life. The money you burn should be your money and not someone else. I do not care if you burn a million dollars or one dollar. The gods are pleased as long as you burn some. Also, since money exists without actual cash, we must free ourselves from all factors that make it seem real.
Are you able to free yourself from the illusion of money? Would you be able to throw this illusion in the fire? From what other illusions should you free yourself? Various writers, such as Rilke, would recommend solitude to find your inner calling. This method only works for a while; after too much time alone, your mind will become attached to something you value. You will end up holding your precious like Gollum in those books by Tolkien. You need other people to help cultivate your goals and ambitions.
In Matthew 21, Jesus chased the moneylenders out of the temple. The money changers came back in the modern world. Now, TV evangelists tempt the faithful into giving them money. Taking money has been a feature of Christianity since it first began. Paul’s letters are all part of a scam to get people to send money.
“Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.” (1 Corinthians 16:1-4).
Not only do we live in a world where we feel like we need money, but they make us feel like giving money is a virtue. Don’t pay these liars.
Section 6: Sola Scientia
(Verifiable) 10
Carl Sagan said something about how extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Cosmos episode 12). Actually, all claims require evidence, or they are assumptions. Aristotle relied too much on personal judgment. For the ancient philosopher, a category called substance had properties (Metaphysics bk. Zeta), and things have the potential to become what things are destined to do (Metaphysics bk. Theta). Modern physics advanced beyond Aristotle when Newton discovered how mass and velocity better explained the evidence that was available in Newton’s time.
The scientific method differs from what medieval philosophers called science. Back then, science meant they organized words into patterns. Thomas Aquinas thought science was built out of principles (Summa I, Q. 1 Art 2). Academics in those days tried to use these principles to support Christian ideas about god (Summa I, Q. 2). These principles were old ideas from the ancient Greeks, which medieval scholars would discuss in philosophical debates. Eventually, the scientific revolution happened when the curious stopped being philosophers and became explorers. Modern science has discovered an amazing universe that is billions and billions of times larger and more interesting than anything the ancient Greeks ever imagined.
A few centuries ago, scientists would measure stuff since they thought the measurements gave information about how the world works. This led to all kinds of discoveries; however, our ideas of how the world works have gotten a lot more complicated since the days of Newton’s clockwork universe. Newton’s gravity equations are useful when describing the moon’s orbit, but we need other formulas to predict how light moves through a gravitational field.
Reliable research depends on how well the information gets verified. Good scientists check facts. Bad scientists repeat bad ideas. The scientific method tests ideas; the results from conditions containing a variable get compared to similar conditions without the variable. Modern researchers make predictions, and then the success or failure of these predictions says something about something. The significance of something about something contrasts with philosophical gibberish about nothing. The scientific method helps to filter useful information from misinformation. People who avoid verifying ideas using the scientific method will have unreliable information.
Even the best scientists make mistakes. Ideas that seem to make sense can turn out false. For example, substance X mixed with substance Y could equal XY; however, People would not know if XY happens until we observe the results of combining the substances. Sometimes, the results differ from our expectations. Since the foolishness of one person affects the results, the experiments must be repeatable by more than one person working independently from each other. Since investigation using different methods could reveal an error, plausible alternatives need consideration, and new variables should be tested. No interpretation should ever be considered final. Nothing is ever proven.
Philosophers call science reductive; scientists don’t talk that way. The world is full of poets, moral philosophers, social critics, and religious scholars who claim science cannot be the only source of knowledge. Those people spend their lives impressed by fairy tales while they pretend a bigger picture exists outside scientific scrutiny. This alternative understanding produced nothing useful. An airplane built with information gathered using the scientific method might fly; an airplane built with faith or poetry will not fly. Fortunately, philosophical arguments about the limits of science have not stopped the research, and the scientific method continues to discover more about the world no matter what the poets say. Also, poetry and morals are not outside the reach of scientists. Scientists can derive moral values or poetry from scientific information. Look at the TV series “Cosmos” (1980) by Carl Sagan to see a scientist looking at the big picture. Sagan was better at poetry than any poet and better at morality than any preacher.
Never trust information if you cannot verify its reliability. Good journals publish papers only after passing a peer review evaluation process, though, even with properly reviewed literature, always check the sources. Good scientific papers make the sources easy to find. Check what methods were used to confirm ideas. Check the sources of the sources. Check what the other literature says because the information in reviewed papers can get reliably refuted, and someone could accidentally use outdated papers to support their claims.
Beware of research done by people who have economic motivations. They tend to have their thumbs on the scales. Beware of research done by people who have a political motivation. They tend to only tell one side of an argument. Beware of people who support social issues. They seldom do research. Beware of conclusions created by combining complicated statistics. Most of us have no idea which numbers to include or exclude and end up overestimating or underestimating. We only see what we want to see. Certain people claim their position is science, and their opponents reject science. That claim cannot be true since no field of science has a single position. So, beware of doctors who claim to be the science.
If someone claims a scientific study shows their opinions are true, ask to see the source. If the person might talk about their academic certifications instead of saying where to find the paper, don’t be surprised if they have no paper. If they do have a good source, compliment them. We should value good scholars. I don’t require people to give me a perfect reference for every opinion. If someone gives me a general idea of where an idea came from, I can usually find the paper.
Before the internet, our ancestors had to spend hours in libraries to find a few facts, and even large libraries lacked needed information. Suppose you wanted a complete translation of the Mahabharata; most universities only had short, abridged versions. Without the full version, people relied on scholars to tell them what the book said, and unfortunately, the scholars sometimes failed to mention essential parts. Today, anyone can easily download several long translations of the Mahabharata on a Kindle. With information so easily available, we no longer have an excuse for ignorance of published information. You can quickly check almost any information.
Next Page Chapter 9
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Aristophanes. Thesmophoria. Translated by Eugene O’Neill, Jr. 1938.
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Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. New York: The Viking Press, 1959.
Dunning, David. “We Are All Confident Idiots”. Pacific Standard, 27 October 2014.
Edmunds, R. David. The Shawnee Prophet. University of Nebraska Press, 1985.
Havamal (Words of the High one). Translated by Auden and Taylor. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2010.
Holy Bible. King James Version. Oxford, 1769.
Iamblichus. On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. Translated by Thomas Taylor. London: Chiswick Press, 1821.
Neihardt, John. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. New York: W. Morrow & Co., 1932.
Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet, 1929. Translated by M. D. Herter Norton. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1934.
Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. New York: Random House, 1980.
Sapolsky, Robert. “Emperor Has No Clothes acceptance speech.” Freedom From Religion Foundation convention. San Diego, 23 November 2003.
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