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LEGEND or FOR REALSIES: Pope Joan
Most legends have roots in fact. Was there a King Arthur? Yes. Was he the vaunted king of old with round tables and wizards and Holy Grails? No. Was there a Robin Hood? Yes. Was he really an altruistic vigilante fighting for the little guy? Probably not, and his name was most likely not “Robin of the Hood”. Jesus Christ…. Well that is a topic for another day. For now, let me weave you a tale. Sometime in 1099, an educated young daughter of a landowner falls in love with the third son of a nobleman. She is shamed for her near-spinster status (at the ripe old age of sixteen)…
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TRAJAN
Have you ever looked back on history and thought to yourself: “Wow. Everyone who came before me was a bag of dicks.” I mean, seriously: Most of our world today was shaped by jackholes being jackholes. By all rights, Ghengis Khan, Alexander the Great, Nero, Caligula, Henry VIII, Louis the XVI, were all jerks; hell even JFK was kind of a git. Great man with great ideas, but that doesn’t always mean he was a good person. So does that mean that our world was built on the shoulders of dirtbags and murderers? To some degree. But see, in the wake of every genocidal expansionist tyrant there were a whole…
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DRUIDS
Ah the druids. For most, the very name conjures images of white-robed, long bearded pale guys with a “special” relationship with nature and a penchant for speaking in riddles and cryptic messages. Dark druids who chant around purple bonfires at midnight and sacrifice babies on an altar of antlers and bone…. Okay, I totally ripped that last one from a D&D game I played once, but lets face facts, it was meant to be allegorical. Druids get a bad rap overall and I totally don’t think that is fair. What follows are a series of theories based on new(ish) archeological research and speculation by people smarter than me, because the…
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Miyamoto Musashi
There is a tale that is told in the islands in the east where the sun rises. It is a tale based on truth, but it is as shrouded in myth and mystery as any creature that haunts our dreams. It is a tale about Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest swordsman who ever lived and died under the mortal sun. The tale tells of Miyamoto’s duel with Sasaki Kojiro on the small island now called Ganryujima, centuries ago. Kojiro issued the challenge, to Miyamoto, offering time and place and eternal glory for the man who walked away. Kojiro, known as the Demon of the West for his fearsome prowess with the…
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MALLEUS MALEFICARUM
Okay, I am an open-minded guy. I really am. I accept all faiths, creeds, races, religions, sexual-orientations, and firmly believe in their right to practice their beliefs in whatever manner they see fit so long as it 1) Does not hurt people; 2) does not hurt animals; and 3) I am not actively told I am wrong for not believing in it. But I have to say that there is very little more… evocative than the title of this book. In three different languages, it draws on the imagination like an insane zealous Teutonic preacher etching his initials in blood on the pages of history. I mean, the Latin is…
