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When my phone rang one day early in 2004, it was an acquisitions editor
at RedWheel/Weiser. "We like the way you write," she said to me. "Would
you write a book for us?" "Sure thing," I replied. "What would you like
me to write?" "We want a daily calendar book," she said. "Call it
365 Pagan. And put lots of goddesses in it."
So I signed the contract and wrote the book. To meet their deadline, for six months I wrote every morning (which means I wrote thirty or thirty-one daily pages every two weeks), edited (so I could still pay the rent) every afternoon, and did research every evening.
What I found out when I sent them the completed manuscript, however, was that they'd wanted a frothy little gift book. What I'd sent them was a real book, with real scholarship, real history, real writing. It was too long. But when you're writing a calendar book, you can't just lop sixty pages off the end; you have to trim every single day. They wanted 300 words per page, max. I edited each page down to 301 words.
Here's part of the review from Publishers Weekly. I'm pleased by it and hope you'll be intrigued enough to buy the book.
Ardinger's latest contribution to pagan literature is a short-essay book of days jammed with facts about goddesses and saints, alongside an assortment of random pop culture references and personal musings. The author of several books including Finding New Goddesses, Ardinger is a regular encyclopedia of knowledge not only about paganism but more broadly about significant women figures and goddesses in history (think Julian of Norwich, Mother Teresa, and Isis, all of whom make appearances among the 365 days). … Chocolate lovers will surely delight to learn the story behind Lady Godiva (July 10) and those uninitiated into the history of Sophia (December 16) will be happy to learn of her illustrious past.
One thing I discovered in writing Pagan Every Day was that if you've studied enough metaphysics, then you can find a nice metaphysical meaning in nearly anything. As I did for Barbie, Miss Piggy (the Goddess of Everything), and Dirty Dancing. Following are four new days from the book (one for each season).
The sixt was August, being rich arrayd
In garment all of gold downe to the ground …
[He leads] the righteous virgin which of old
Liv’d here on earth, and plenty made abound…
—Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
As Spenser reveals in the final two lines of the stanza, that righteous virgin, who is holding stalks of wheat, is Astraea:
But, after wrong was lov’d and justice solde,
She left th’ unrighteous world and was to heaven extold.
During the Golden Age, the deities lived among us. As the ages declined, however, and mankind became increasingly violent, the deities departed. Astraea, a goddess of justice and daughter of Themis and Zeus, was the last to leave. She is now the constellation Virgo.
Spenser (1552–1599), an older contemporary of Shakespeare, is considered the greatest Elizabethan poet. The Fairie Queene (published in 1590) is dedicated to Elizabeth I. The poem’s conclusion, Book VII, Canto VII, presents a masque (think of the Rose Parade on stage in Radio City Music Hall with singing, dancing, and acting) before the “great goddesse, Great Dame Nature, great grandmother of creatures bred.”
First to appear is Mutabilitie, who reigns in all things and to whom all things are subject. As the four elements enter, we learn that Vesta and Vulcan rule fire, Ops rules earth, Juno rules “ayre,” and Neptune rules the seas. Next are the seasons—“lusty Spring,” “jolly Summer,” Autumne “in his plentious store,” and “Winter cloathed all in frize.” Then come the Monthes, Day and Night, the Howers, and, finally, Mercury, Venus, Phoebus, Mars, Sir Saturne, and Dan Jove. Thus we see an Elizabethan version of pagan mythology.
We know Virgos. They’re the obsessive folks to whom every detail has to be correct. Lilith the astrologer says that Virgos even quantify their every emotion.
The primary sources of the mythologies we know are written in dead languages—Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Latin, 13th century Icelandic. Linguists can read these languages, but you and I depend on secondary sources, which are the translations, interpretations, and commentaries. The great age of scholarship in mythology lasted from about 1850 until about 1950.
Thomas Bulfinch (1796–1867) was an American writer whose Age of Fable, published in 1855, retells the myths, legends, and stories of Charlemagne, King Arthur, and the Greco-Roman gods and heroes. It is the first significant American book of mythology.
Sir James Frazer (1854–1941) was a Scottish social anthropologist who traveled widely in Greece and Rome. His most famous work is The Golden Bough, originally written in 1890. The third edition (completed in 1936) runs to thirteen volumes. Although in many ways outdated, it remains popular.
Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) was a classicist whose most famous books, The Greek Way (1930) and Mythology (1942), are still in print. Hamilton was born in Germany and grew up in Indiana; she and her sister were the first female students accepted at German universities. Her books are based not on archaeology but on a love of the classics and the daily life of olden times.
Robert Graves (1895–1985) was a prolific scholar and novelist. The PBS mini-series, I, Claudius, is based on his work. Graves is best known to pagans as the author of The White Goddess (1948)—neither history nor herstory, neither theology nor thealogy—in which he invents the “capricious and all-powerful Threefold Goddess.” His other best-know work, The Greek Myths, was published in 1955.
Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) is best known for The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949) and his interpretations of mythology, as given in the PBS series, The Power of Myth (first broadcast in 1988).
It’s common to think the Greek and Roman pantheons were identical and had alternate names. This is not true. The Roman gods and goddesses were born among the early Latin tribes and adopted later by Rome, usually for political purposes. As the upstart republic in central Italy conquered Greece during the third and second centuries before the Common Era, the old Latin tribal deities were swallowed up by the Greek ones, who were older and grander. The Roman gods and goddesses personified civic virtues, whereas Greek mythology was largely philosophical.
Mars, after whom March was named, was originally Marspiter, Father Mars. Mar may mean “generative force” or “to shine,” and piter is the same as pater. He was an Etruscan and Sabine agricultural god, known to the early Romans as Mars Gradivus, grower, and Silvanus, who oversaw their herds of cattle. The wolf and the horse were also sacred to him. His mother was Juno, his father, a flower. After Mars fathered Romulus and Remus and moved to the city, the Romans built him a temple on the Palatine Hill. Mars became a god of defensive warfare because the Romans needed someone to defend their fields and produce. Like his people, he was a farmer first; he took up arms later.
Ares, on the other hand, was a berserker and a bully. In Homer’s Iliad, Athena loathes him and Zeus calls him the “most odious” god” who enjoys “nothing but strife, war and battles.” His sons, Deimos (Fear) and Phobos (Fright), are horrifyingly destructive. Read the Iliad again. I’ve always rooted for the Trojans. If any war has good guys, the defenders of Troy were the good guys in that war.
We can find honor, virtue, and nobility in Mars, but anyone who worships Ares must be out of his mind.
The Romans brought Apollo home when they conquered Greece in the third and second centuries, B.C.E. The Games of Apollo became so popular they filled seven days in July.
The ancient world had ten sibyls. They were prophetesses, women who channeled divine energy, who lived in Persia, Libya, Samos, Cimmeria, Erythraea, Tibur, Marpessus, Phrygia, Delphi, and Cumae. The last two are the best known. Delphi, in central Greece, was ruled by Apollo.
The Cumaean Sibyl lived near Naples in the fifth century, B.C.E. Her cave, which was said to lead directly to the underworld, was rediscovered in 1932; the passageway is 375 feet long. Like the priestess at Delphi, the Cumaean Sibyl gained her prophetic powers through her association with Apollo, who offered her anything if she would spend a night with him. She asked for eternal life, but as she neglected to ask for eternal youth, she shriveled away into a shadow.
She wrote her prophecies on leaves that she placed at the mouth of her
cave. If no one came to pick them up, she let the wind scatter them. The
Sibylline Verses, which told the Roman how to gain favor with foreign gods,
were eventually bound into nine volumes, which the Sibyl tried to sell
to the Latin king, Tarquin. He scoffed at the exorbitant price, so she
burned three books and came back. The price was still too high, he scoffed
again, she burned three more books. When she returned with the three last
books the king decided maybe there was something he ought to know, so he
bought them. They were kept in the Capitol and consulted until some were
destroyed in a fire in 83 B.C.E. The rest survived until another fire in
405 C.E., at which time enterprising Romans began writing pseudo-Sibylline
prophecies.
Do you want to know what happened in pagan history or in my imagination
today? What I wrote about on your birthday?
BUY THIS BOOK. You can buy a signed copy from me and you can find
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