"Sacred Origins of Profound Things: The stories behind the rites and rituals of the world's religions" by Charles Panati

 

Publisher: Penguin 

Copyright: 1996

ISBN: 0140195335

Sacred Origins is an interesting book to read that goes into a lot of detail about the origins, rights, rituals and general beliefs of the various major religions in the world. It concentrates primarily on Christianity with Judaism second and a little bit of Islam thrown in for good measure.

The detail covered in this book is quite amazing actually it starts off with talking about popular piety which are things such as prayer postures, etc. It goes on to talk about the various heavenly hosts, then wise words which is all about moral codes. Mr. Panati then talks about the actual rights and rituals, feasts and festivals, the saints and their bones, celestial persona, marriage, evil, things you shouldn't shouldn't do, the various religious realms, and acts of faith.

As I said earlier it is an interesting book to read, but i believe it could do with a second edition as it is 27 years old. Since this time we have gone through many events such as 9-11 and other crises that have stemmed from religion.

All in all an excellent book, and one that should be more widely read by a lot of people I believe.

 

Publisher: Del Rey

Copyright: 1990

ISBN: 0345358074

"Dark hand…" Is the third book in the Sun Wolf trilogy, and complements the other two books very well. In this installment sun wolf is still on this quest to find a teacher to help him with his magic, however the teacher he finds wants to enslave him rather than teach him. Sun Wolf therefore has to find this teacher, prevent him from enslaving him, and hopefully learn from him. Not an easy task.

To add to this, Sun Wolf's old mercenary troop contacts him as they are in the middle of a campaign, but seem to be hexed in such a way that nothing goes right for them.

Once again this is a very good addition to the trilogy, and while Miss Hambly didn't write any further stories in the series she does leave it open at the end so that it Sun Wolf and Starhawk could come back.

"How to Find Out Anything: from extreme Google searches discovering government documents…" By Don MacLeod

 

Publisher: Prentice Hall Press

Copyright: 2012

ISBN: 9870735204676

This book is an extremely interesting guide to various forms of information that are available to pretty much everybody, but which very few people know about.

Mr. McLeod starts off talking about how to think like a researcher, then goes into the realm of Google, does two chapters on libraries, then moves onto associations, finding people, information on companies, the public records, and concludes with a chapter and putting it all together.

I found this to be an extremely interesting and useful book however, it is based pretty much entirely on the United States and no other countries are really mentioned except in passing. In addition it is now 11 years old, so definitely needs to be revised and updated.

However it is still a valuable resource for any beginning researcher, as long as they understand that things will be different in other countries such as resources, contact information, what is available in the public record, etc.

The Witches of Wenshar by Barbara Hambly

 

Publisher: Del Rey

Copyright: 1987

ISBN: 0345329341

"The witches…" follows directly timewise after the Ladies of Mandrigyn and once again is following the ex-mercenary Sun Wolf and is ex-lieutenant and now lover Starhawk in his quest to be trained in the magic he has acquired. Unfortunately Sun Wolf's luck has not really been a blessing to him, as he hears of a wizard named Kaletha who has supposedly found a series of books written by the witches of Wenshar, but who specialized in summoning and controlling demons for their evil machinations.

Suddenly people around sun wolf, Starhawk, Kaletha begin dying, or rather being murdered rather gruesomely and of course Sun Wolf is blamed.

This is a very good book that is the second part of the of the Sun Wolf trilogy. It has been many years since I first read this series, and I had forgotten a lot about it so it was very good to be able to remind myself of how well it had been written, and plotted.

Well worth the read.

"The Middle Ages: A Graphic History" by Eleanor Janega

 

Publisher: Icon Books

Copyright: 2021

ISBN: 9781785785917

As the title suggests this is essentially a graphic novel, however with the double twist that it is both drawn in the style of the middle ages, and it's real!

This book takes the reader on a guided tour of some of the many topics that would be part of a mediaeval history course.

In part one Dr. Janega covers such topics as common misconceptions about the middle ages, the mediaeval period and what it was, myths of the dark ages, the fall of Rome and how that affected neighbouring countries. Part two deals with early religions including Christianity Islam Judaism, the various saints etc. Part three deals with the rise of empires. Part four is about the life around the year 1000 and how the majority of christians expected the world to be ending in the immediate future, Which led to various atrocities such as the crusades, the Norman conquest, and a lot of antisemitic violence.

Part five deals with the high middle ages. Part six with the role of women and other groups of people who were and still are marginalized such as sex workers, homosexuals, Jews, Heretics, and lepers in the medieval period.

Part seven deals with the late. Mediaeval period which was dominated by the black death, the 100 years war, the schism in the Catholic Church and various peasant revolts. Part eight deals with the end of the Middle Ages.

Dr. Janega makes the whole of mediaeval history very easy to understand, and this would make this book a valuable addition to any school's library. 

The Ladies of Mandrigyn by Barbara Hambly

 

Publisher: Del Rey

Copyright: 1984

ISBN: 0345309197

The Ladies of Mandrigyn is the first book in the trilogy that tells the tale of a mercenary captain by the name of sun Wolf, who is kidnapped by the aforementioned ladies to assist them in reading themselves of the wizard king Altiokis Who has essentially enslaved their people of their city, and a good portion of the country itself. Add to this that he's essentially immortal and you have a bit of a problem. Originally the ladies had offered to hire Sun Wolf and his mercenary army to fight Altiokis, however he refused.

The ladies back up plan was therefore to kidnap him and have him train and leave the ladies in the fight against him. Has a little bit of an incentive thing they give him a slow acting poison of which only they had the antidote.

Unbeknownst to both the ladies and Sun Wolf this poison has some rather interesting side effects, that changes his life a fair bit.

This was a very good novel, which I first read many many years ago, and one of Barbara Hambly's earlier ones. She goes on to write the second in the series "The Witches of Wenshar" (1987) and the third "The Dark Hand of Magic" in (1990), which I will be reviewing in the future.

"The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society" by Eleanor Janega

 

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Copyright: 2023

ISBN: 9780393867817

This was a very enjoyable and extremely informative book to read. It gives the reader whole new insights into how women have been treated over the centuries and the reasons behind why they were generally treated so badly. Primarily this was due to the influence of the various flavours of the Christian church, Which essentially blamed women for everything because of the mythology surrounding the original sin.

As a humanist I will freely admit that I do not understand the concept of original sin, and the various other concepts and myths that are listed in the Bible, as for the most part they seem to simply take a concept or an event and find someone or something to blame it on. And while this seems to comfort a large group of religious people in the world it seems like a rather shortsighted way to justify the way society as a whole treats 1/2 of our population.

Dr. Janega goes into a lot of detail as she investigated the various roles that women filled in medieval times, and looked at how real women lived in that era.

I first encountered Dr. Janega on the History Hit YouTube channel where she does the occasional episode on medieval history, which I would highly recommend if you're interested as she gets into some very interesting topics. She is also the creator of the popular "Going Medieval" blog and the author of "The Middle Ages: A Graphic History".

An excellent read with lots of fascinating information. Highly recommended.

"Support Your Local Wizard" by Diane Duane

 

Publisher:  Guild America Books

Copyright:  1983

ISBN:  None listed

"Support Your Local Wizard" is a compilation volume of the first three stories (So You Want to Be a Wizard, Deep Wizardry, & High Wizardry) in the "Young Wizards Series", and tell the tale of two grade school children who discover they are wizards, and are recruited into the local wizards union (for lack of a better term).

Juanita "Nita" Callahan is a young girl who is constantly being bullied by few other girls in her school, and who finds a book (or does it find her?) in her local library when she hiding out from the gang. She teams up with another young wizard Christopher "Kit" Rodriguez, and have a series of interesting adventures.

Now while some people may be inclined t equate these stories with another tale of wizardry about a boy with a scar on his forehead, these stores were written many years before so banish the thought.

I found these stories to be very well written, and while the second is somewhat darker that the first it allows for significant world building, and the three novels work well together. When I first read these I though this was all there was to the series, but I have since discovered that Ms. Duane has written seven more in the series, which I now have to go and find.

A great series.