Australian Mardudjara Aborigines: Rites of passage ceremony

This gruesome rite of passage consists of two parts the circumcision and sub-incision. the ceremony starts when a young boy of the tribe turns of age usually about 15 or 16. upon this happening the boy is lead to a fire and is told to lie down next tot he fire while tribe members sing and dance around him and a special group called the mourners wail and cry as the ceremony takes place. a tribal elder then sits upon the boys chest facing his feet and with the help of two other men wielding special ceremonial knives the tribal elder removes the foreskin of the boy. The boy is then told to kneel on a shield and let the smoke "cleanse him" finally while in this daze the boy is told to swallow a piece of good meat which is actually his freshly removed foreskin. He is told he has now eaten a piece of his own body and that it will grow in him and make him strong. At this point the ceremony is not over in a few months time the boy is surprised and again lead to the fire with the same setting again the tribal elder sits on the boy this time with the help of a few other men the sub-incision is performed. The process for this is to shove a stick up the urethra to act as a backing then a knife is used to split the penis from the underside. once this process is completed the boy is then told to stand over the fire and let his blood fall upon the flames. At this point the boy is a man and the ceremony is complete. One of the reasons that it is thought that this ceremony is done is so men of the tribe can sympathies with the women of the tribe and from the point this sub-incision is complete the boy will forever have to squat when he pees further forcing him to sympathies with women.

Breakdown of page 89

The first sentence on this page reads "Of the Olympians, the first thing we can say is that they were new gods." Standing out above the rest of his sentence to me were the words "new gods". I am sure this could be interpreted in a number of different ways but i elected to think of it as  the Olympians being a re-imagined version of the gods already perceived by  men. And using this interpretation i continued to break down the remainder of the page. Next Herodotus is mentioned now Herodotus is an ancient Greek Historian who is often called the father of history. Herodotus goes on to say "Before Yesterday no one knew where any of these gods had come from" Meaning there is now origin for these new Olympians only the appearance so little was known it wasn't known whether they existed eternally or even what it was they looked like. It is worth mentioning that when Herodotus says yesterday he is referring to the contest of Homer and Hesiod, a Greek narrative that expands on a remark made from Hesiod's a Work of Days which took place about four centuries before Herodotus's time. It is this narrative that gave the gods their names and brought to light arts and honors held by the gods while also describing what they look like. Hesiod still puts forth an effort to establish an origin story for the gods that made sense. And not until the end were honors gifted to the new gods by Zeus. The war involving Troy is brought up and it is mentioned that the pomposity or hotheadedness of Homer is revealed to be the cause due to his presumption as to the beginning of his tale not being at the beginning but at the end. Those ten terrible years involved in the war of Troy are thought to be the reason the heroes are no more. Even though they heroes themselves are seen as a greatness Homer celebrates their death as the true phenomenon. Olympians always being happy with the way things are had fallen into a rut and not wanting to falter for their way would be content staying their current path forever. And because of this rut the Olympians were in the notion of what happened before them was forgotten.

Again for some reason i have already made this post but it vanished from my blog so i am reposting it sorry i will try to prevent this from happening again.

Anyways this tree that i am hugging is or at least appears dead so i hope that my hugs and prayers to Hamadryades the god of trees will bring it back to life.

Genesis 1 creation myth

God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning, But it was dark so god said let there be light and there was light he separated light from dark and made night and day allowing for the first day to come and pass. On the second day god commanded a dome to separate two waters naming the above waters the sky. The second day came and past. On the third day god commanded dry ground to rise forth from the water below the sky he would name this dry ground land and fill it with plants of all kinds both in the water and on the land. The third day came and passed. On the fourth day God commanded two lights to govern the day and the night a greater to rule over the day and a lesser to shine at night and to accompany the lesser he filled the sky with stars. And the fourth day came and passed. On the Fifth day god said i command to ocean to fill with living creatures and the sky's to do the same. he created every kind of bird and all of the sea creatures. The fifth day came and passed. And on the sixth day god said i command the earth to give life to all kinds of tame animals and so it was so. To govern over all he had created god decided to create man in his image he looked at what he had done and it was good. The sixth day came and passed. Finally on the seventh day god rested. God blessed this seventh day and made it special because on the day he rested from his work.

Kratos: Spartan General

First let me start by saying i already made this post but for some weird reason it didn't post of save so i am rewriting it.

Kratos was a young general in the spartan army his tactics were brutal but effective. He had won many battles until he met the army of the barbarians and in a desperate attempt to save himself he offered up his soul to Aries. Aries accepted and in the climax of the war he gave Kratos the strength to conquer his enemy. After the war rather than just taking Kratos's soul Aries enslaved Kratos and commanded him to attack a town. In Krato's blood lust he unknowingly killed his wife and daughter in the onslaught. The orical wanted the world to know of his terrible deeds and to do so she bound the ashes of Kratos's Wife and dauhter to his skin thus earning Kratos the name of the ghost of sparta.

Kratos: God of War Part II

I forgot to mention the inspiration behind these few posts one of my roommates really enjoys playing the video game god of war and i recognized the similarities in class so i decided to make a few posts concerning the adventures of the protagonist Kratos.

After Kratos committed the atrocious deed of killing his family he offered himself to servitude to the gods to reconcile his past transgressions. Most of his affairs were handled by Athena. He carried out many deeds but the most challenging and taxing was when he was ordered to kill Aries the true God of War. In order to carry out the task of killing Aries Kratos was to go to Athens, which at the time was under siege by Aries, to find the oracle to inquire as to how to kill a god. The oracle then told Kratos that the only method a mortal could use to kill a god was to find Pandora's box and utilize its power to finish the god. 

To Be Continued...