Top Tens – Miscellany: Top 10 Youtube (Special Mention) (2) Cinema Sins & TV Sins

Youtube channel banner as at 17 April 2024

 

(2) CINEMA SINS & TV SINS (USA 2012 & 2018)

 

“No movie is without sin.” Ding!

With over 9 million subscribers, Cinema Sins is the most popular (and prolific) film review or commentary channel in my top tens or special mentions by a long shot (probably among film channels in general for that matter) – and not coincidentally, the most contested. People seem to love or hate them online.

Haters tend to see it as nitpicking and to a clickbait formula at that – with some fairness to both claims, although as my top-tier ranked special mention would indicate, I think that’s taking the whole sin schtick too seriously.

I see their video content more as playing a drinking game while watching a film, even (or perhaps especially) films they like or enjoy, and calling out ‘sins’ for shots – with only a minority of sins as actual flaws in the film and the majority mostly running gags or just plain snark:

“Sins include continuity errors, research errors, anything that breaks willing suspension of disbelief, editing mistakes, instances of  “Dude, Not Funny!”,  instances of idiot ball or idiot plot, plot holes, deus ex machinas, logical fallacies, continuity lockouts, overused and misused tropes, or just anything the guys can make a snarky joke or reference to.”

I mean how seriously can you take such running gags as “Roll credits” (for title drops or where the title of the film is used in the film itself), or my personal favorite “Scene does not contain a lap dance” (for exactly what you think – an actress the narrator finds attractive is onscreen, usually in a titillating way).

I’m also a fan of their recurring gag for “the Prometheus school of running away from things” for the infamous scene in the film Prometheus for running away from the crashing ship in a straight line (and failing), as opposed to taking a few steps to the side. Also their sin “they survive this”, for scenes in which the characters should have died.

And speaking of “they survive this”, you know their takedowns of the Fast and Furious franchise as cinematic trash is absolutely right, even if I have seen (and will continue to see) every film instalment in that franchise.

They do remove sins from time to time for things they like about a film or that it does well (like having Natalie Portman curtseying in kinky outfit in V for Vendetta).

They’ve had several spin-off channels, but the most enduring (and one I like the most) is TV Sins, which adapts the Cinema Sins formula to episodes of TV series.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (Special Mention) (2) Chartomancy

Jane Seymour as Solitaire in the 1973 James Bond film “Live and Let Die” – my favorite depiction of the Tarot in film, for which they designed their own pack, the Tarot of the Witches. Also – Jane Seymour!

 

(2) CHARTOMANCY – CARTOMANCY (TAROMANCY)

 

“I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died” – Steve Wright

Special mention to the first of what I call my casino trinity of mancy – cartomancy or divination by cards, with the foremost of those being divination by Tarot cards, occasionally styled as taromancy.

That casino quip is not casual – I suspect there is a substantial overlap between methods of divination and gambling in games of chance or fortune, evolving to or from the other. However, it is not an area in which I have read (if such references exist), although Encyclopedia Britannica at least seems to endorse that gambling evolved from divination.

I have read that something of the reverse happened with Tarot cards. Tarot cards appear to have originated as the very subject of Wright’s joke – a more mundane medium for playing card games – but subsequently acquired their mystique as a means for divination, often in popular culture with dire portents Wright played on for his joke.

Less dramatically, cartomancy tends to use standard playing cards, which were introduced into Europe (from foreign origins, apparently ultimately from China) at about the same time as Tarot, albeit not necessarily in their contemporary form. I understand that the history (and historical forms) of playing cards is less than clear, as is the Tarot and any relationship between them – contrary to my former beliefs (from superficial reading) that playing cards evolved from the Tarot.

Cartomancy is itself a form of chartomancy, which is divination by…paper?! Well, not just any paper, but paper with things on it – which could potentially be as simple as paper with different colors on it (for example, drawn randomly by a querent) but more usually paper with words or visual symbols written or printed on it, hence cartomancy.

I suspect chartomancy is more a label of convenience for similar methods of divination using written or printed words or symbols on paper rather than a meaningful denomination for divination from paper of itself. Although apparently there was papyromancy for divination by folding paper – reading the creases from crumpled paper not unlike the lines in a hand in palmistry.

Writing (including writing visual symbols) probably did have an appearance of magic or at least some mystique to it with the advent of literacy which was passed on to its mediums including paper – arguably reflected in the enduring image of magic in books or scrolls.

Another example of chartomancy would be fortune cookies – used more now for casual entertainment, but apparently (or at least arguably) with a serious historical pedigree dating back to Mesopotamia and Greece, occasionally termed as aleuromancy or divination by the use of flour.

Yet another example would be stichomancy (occasionally styled as rhapsodomancy), divination by lines of verse (or poetry), or what I might call small-b bibliomancy, literally divination by books – of which the most famous is big-b Bibliomancy, or divination by the Bible, typically by lines or passages “taken at hazard” or at random.

Obviously other books can and have been used, although usually of equal significance – Homer’s Iliad and Oydssey (sometimes styled as stoichomancy or stoicheomancy), the works of Virgil and the mysterious Sybilline Books in Rome, the Koran (or Quran) and so on. I’d like to see dictiomancy – divination by words at random from the dictionary.

As a method of divination, the various forms of chartomancy have a power corresponding to what is used – standard playing cards might seem mundane but Tarot cards have the emotional resonance of their vivid, and violent, visual imagery.

And as a type of magic, there’s that enduring image of books and scrolls as the means for magic, including in Dungeons and Dragons. It would be intriguing to extend that to cards, perhaps adapted in different styles or schools of magic from card games such as poker or blackjack. Or perhaps conjuration using Tarot cards – although Dungeons and Dragons has done something of the sort with its Deck of Many Things.

Although knowing my luck, I’d mostly draw Swords, perhaps echoing Indiana Jones and snakes. “Swords – why did it have to be Swords?”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythologies (Special Mention) (2) Shamanism

Free “divine gallery” art sample – OldWorldGods

 

 

(2) SHAMANISM

 

I am a shaman in the tribe of catholicism –

a voice crying for a vision,

animal powers and spirit guides,

true names and song lines,

second sight and third eye.

 

After paganism, the second of my holy trinity of mythic worlds – the mythos that I playfully refer to as my shaman catholicism.

Also like paganism, as much my ethos as mythos – “but then the awesome mysterious world will open its mouth for you, as it will open for every one of us, and then you will realise that your sure ways were not sure at all”.

And yes – again like paganism, I know shamanism is not so much an individual mythology or religion, but rather an amorphous agglomeration of mythologies or religions, but on on an even potentially larger scale in space and time.

Strictly speaking, shamanism refers to the indigenous religions of Siberia and neighbouring parts of Asia, with the word shaman itself orginating from the language there.

But where’s the fun in speaking strictly? And so shamanism has been used in a very broad sense, arguably the broadest sense of any mythology or religion – ranging through space to tribal religions on every (populated) continent, and even more broadly in time, through so-called deep history to prehistoric or primal religion.

Peter Watson in The Great Divide hypothesizes that the pre-Columbian Americas was essentially shamanic, having remained the most so (since crossing into the Americas from Siberia) and certainly more so than Eurasia, not least because of the high concentration of psychedelic or psychotropic plants.

While Weston La Barre in The Ghost Dance hypothesizes that all religion is essentially shamanic in nature – and all religions are ghost dances at heart.

As for shamanism itself, animism is often asserted as its defining feature – and there is certainly something appealing in an animistic view of the world. Perhaps its primary definitive feature is its focus on states of altered consciousness – archetypally through psychedelic or psychotropic substances – as thresholds to the spirit world or otherworld.

And again, like paganism, I have a soft spot for the nomenclature of paleoshamanism and neoshamanism – with paleoshamanism as the original forms of shamanism, potentially very paleo indeed back to the Paleolithic, and neoshamanism as modern reconstructions.

“When a vision comes into the world…it comes into the world with terror like a thunderstorm…if the vision was true and mighty, I know it is true and mighty yet, for such things are of the spirit and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost”.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT GREAT SPIRIT TIER?)

 

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention) (2) Tarot

0 The Fool – Rider-Waite Tarot (A.E.Waite & Pamela Colman Smith as artist)

 

(2) TAROT – RIDER-WAITE & CROWLEY THOTH

 

The Tarot earns special mention in my Top 10 Mythology Books for the decks of cards, particularly the two iconic and definitive modern decks.

Of course, there are a plethora of modern Tarot decks, most of which originate from those two definitive modern decks (named for their creators) which were themselves substantial reconstructions from earlier tarot decks, pumping up their esoteric mystique – the Rider-Waite deck and the Crowley-Thoth deck, my Old Testament and New Testament of Tarot respectively. (And like Martin Prince in The Simpsons dismissively handwaving away Ray Bradbury from his ABC of science fiction with “I’m aware of his work”, I’m aware of the third most common modern Tarot deck – the Marseilles Tarot).

Interestingly, both these two definitive decks were by female artists, Pamela Colman Smith for the Rider-Waite deck and Lady Frieda Harris. My personal preference is for the artwork and themes of the Crowley-Thoth deck (even if Crowley himself was one generally weird dude and sick puppy), albeit still shaped by the influence of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

Top Tens – Miscellany: Top 10 Youtube (Special Mention) (1) Dovahhatty

Youtube channel banner as at 16 April 2024

 

(1) DOVAHHATTY (BRAZIL 2013)

 

“There once was a dream…a dream to purge this rotten world from the barbarians who infest it. A dream called Rome.”

Or at least a dream called the Unbiased History of Rome. I’m calling it now – despite being self-proclaimed satire and “a channel not for learning history…but to indulge in the sheer madness of it”, it is still the best introduction to the history of Rome from its legendary founding to the fall of the western empire.

And certainly the most entertaining – I never knew I needed Roman history as depicted by memetic chads, wojaks and virgins but there you have it. I desperately needed it and you do too. Note that it evolved over the course of its videos – all nineteen of them, from The Roman “Mythology” in Unbiased History of Rome I to The Fall of Rome in Unbiased History XIX – from simpler and shorter videos to more sophisticated and longer videos. For all his historical parody, Dovahhatty has an eye for attention to detail and his content appears comprehensively researched.

Narrator (no, not Dovahhatty as narrator appearing in his own videos as an horned overlord in purple but my own rhetorical narrator): “It is in fact not unbiased”.

Indeed, it is history as the Romans themselves might have told it, but even the most luridly over-the-top self-mythologizing Romans – looking at you, Virgil – might have blushed at it as “blatantly biased towards particular factions, sometimes even reinterpreting entire events in their favor”.

And by particular factions, I mean the Romans – but not all Romans, just the good ones, not the plebs. And by the good Romans, it means selected emperors, leaders and military commanders or other heroic figures, typically those who the Romans themselves saw as exemplary or heroic. Usually of the patrician class – with the occasional equestrian or even low-born figure risen through the ranks of the army thrown in.

Not so much the senatorial class or senators with occasional exceptions – after the Senate turned bad that is, conspiring against the emperors, usually in the same room each time as a running gag. Also not so much the Praetorian Guard – after they turned bad, which was almost immediately. And of course not so much Roman women – or foreign women for that matter – who constantly recur in something of a running gag theme as the eternal femme fatale for Rome, particularly the empire, although there are noble exceptions.

The good Roman men are of course usually portrayed as absolute chads – or the occasional good wojak. The bad Roman men are usually portrayed as memetic virgins – or the occasional bad wojak. Although Dovahhatty often has his tongue firmly in his cheek, portraying emperors notorious for their legendary cruelty and depravity as the divine chads they no doubt saw themselves as – Caligula, Nero, Caracalla and Elagabalus for example.

And that’s the Romans – you can imagine how hilariously biased it is against the various peoples Rome saw as their barbarian enemies. By Jupiter – it’s scathing of their “civilized” opponents like the Greeks, let alone when you get to the Persians or Germans, both of whom it literally demonizes.

Its portrayal of Germans or “Germs” is a particularly amusing highlight for me – typically horned and fanged with yellow or red demon eyes (except when they’re slightly more human wojaks with slasher smiles). And of course they’re mindlessly destructive, hating the barest hint of civilization or construction of anything less rudimentary than their wretched mudhuts, with a persistent desire to spread chaos and burn the world as they constantly clamor in (modern) German, albeit often as only single-word expressions of their chaotic evil – “toten”, “mord”, “zerstoren”.

Indeed – the only reason that Dovahhatty is my top special mention and not first in my actual top ten is that, sadly, he seems now to be dormant. That is despite continuing his Roman history with his Byzantine Empire Unbiased History (until the dawn of the Arab conquests) as well as a couple of other historical topics and media reviews – including one of Game of Thrones – all of similar high quality.

One simply doesn’t listen to a Dovahhatty video in the background (unless you’ve already seen it) – it’s important to actively watch for the in-video captions, usually the dialog of the historical characters and source of much of the humor, albeit often misspelt.

Speaking of captions, I’ll let Dovahhatty’s disclaimer which appears at the start of his videos speak for itself:

“Unbiased history is a work of historical parody…It seeks nothing, but to provide a severely distorted, and outright false rendition of historical events, producing heavily biased narratives for light-hearted critical reflection, and with luck, comedic effect…It portrays acts of sexual, vulgar, violent, and highly offensive nature. The topics it discusses are those of political intrigue, historical importance, and humanitarian tragedies”.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (Special Mention) (1) Gynomancy

Free “divine gallery” art sample from OldWorldGods

 

(1) GYNOMANCY

 

“Frenzied women from whose lips the god speaks”

Yes – there is no entry for gynomancy in the Wikipedia list of methods of divination and I made it up for special mention from the suffix gyno-, but it does have some basis in history or mythology and even more potential in fantasy, both enough for goddess-tier ranking.

But first, gynomancy might be defined in one of two ways – divination of women, or divination by women.

The first is essentially divination by observations of women or a woman – for example, perhaps along the lines of somatomancy or divination by the female body or its feminine aspects, which would make for a novel twist on those FBI female body inspector shirts. “Please undress – trust me, I’m a gynomancer!”

The second is of course divination or magic by women – one of few areas extending back in history and mythology prior to the modern period where women match or even exceed men in otherwise patriarchal societies.

Sure, the Bible is mostly a patriarchal prophet boys’ club, with prophets such as Jeremiah famously ranting about Israel as an unfaithful wife (and sleeping around with other gods), but even it does have female prophets, albeit usually without books to their name (with arguable exceptions such as Esther).

Elsewhere, however, divination had more equal opportunities. Walter Burkert observed that the “frenzied women from whose lips the god speaks” were recorded as far back as the Near East in the second millennium BC or Assyria in the first millennium BC, and there were similar female figures (heh) in Egypt. Often these female figures were associated with snakes, which puts a different spin on Eve and the Serpent in Genesis.

However, the most famous female figures of divination were from classical history. Foremost among them was the Pythoness or Pythia of the Delphic Oracle (there’s that snake association again), albeit as the mouthpiece of Apollo as god of prophecy. For Rome, there was the Sibyl and her Sibylline Books.

Yet female divination or gynomancy goes even further than this with the female figures that recur throughout European mythology and folklore as forces of fate or fortune, typically as a trinity, from the Fates of classical mythology to the weird sisters of Macbeth – at least speaking to human fate or fortune, if not actively making or shaping it, and enduring even as witches or fairies (or fairy godmothers) in fairy tales.

This female trinity varies, but one of the most popular conceptions of it is as the trinity of Maiden, Mother and Crone, occasionally styled as the phases of the moon (waxing, full and waning) or the trope of the Hecate Sisters – and there’s an argument for each of the trinity as definitively embodying the female aspect for divination or magic.

Perhaps the obvious female aspect is female sexuality, typically represented by the Maiden – although perhaps with characteristic irony (or duality), divination or magic may be associated with virginity, with one theme being the loss of such powers with the loss of virginity. Think Vestal Virgins but with divination or magic to go along with their sacred position – or Solitaire in the James Bond film Live and Let Die.

Of course, divination or magic may also be associated with active female sexuality (which raises a number of interesting possibilities for gynomancy in fantasy) – which may also take us from the Maiden to that figure with the most powerful ultimate expression of female sexuality, the Mother (which again raises a number of interesting possibilities for gynomancy in fantasy being based on pregnancy, or giving birth, or nursing, and so on). And of course mothers are generally known for prophetic pronouncements, particularly to their children.

“Two things, my lord, must thee know of the wise woman. First, she is…a woman. And second, she is…”
“Wise?”
“You do know her, then?”
“No, just a wild stab in the dark, which is, incidentally, what you’ll be getting if you don’t start being more helpful”

The Crone tends to involve female aspects other than active sexuality – but there’s a long history of weird sisters, wise women and witches that speak for her as a figure of divination and magic.

Speaking of the Hecate Sisters, there is Hecate herself as the literal goddess of magic in classical mythology, reflecting the recurring role of divine female figures for magic in mythology – Isis and Freya come to mind – although in fairness divine magic is distributed among both gods and goddesses as part of their nature. Odysseus is particularly reliant on the kindness of divine female strangers and their magic in the Odyssey, prompting speculation of female authorship for that epic.

Anyway, gynomancy has a lot of potential, particularly in fantasy, as either or both of a method of divination or school of magic. Bonus points if divination or magic is exclusively gynomancy – that is, only women can use divination or magic (or some similar variation, such as they are more attuned to or powerful in its use), which opens up considerable potential for equalizing sexes or powerful female characters in fantasy. Indeed, there’s a whole trope for it – Magic is Feminine.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GODDESS TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythologies (Special Mention) (1) Paganism

Free “divine gallery” art sample – OldWorldGods

 

(1) PAGANISM

 

I believe in all the gods –
especially the goddesses

The mythos I call home – which I playfully refer to as my pagan catholicism.

Also the ethos I call home – that classical Greek pagan ethos encapsulated by Weston La Barre, “live valiantly, gloriously and joyously in the world”.

Let’s face it – it’s my mythos, ethos, eros and hieros gamos.
For mine is the passion play, grail quest, ghost dance and mojo rising.

And yes – I know paganism is not in itself a mythology or religion, but rather a loose amorphous agglomeration of mythologies or religions, usually identified with ‘pre-Christian’ Europe, whether prior to the advent of Christianity or their conversion to it.

And not even that to start with –
“It is crucial to stress right from the start that until the 20th century, people did not call themselves pagans to describe the religion they practised. The notion of paganism, as it is generally understood today, was created by the early Christian Church. It was a label that Christians applied to others…as such, throughout history it was generally used in a derogatory sense”.

Pagan apparently originated from Latin paganus – essentially to connote rural (as opposed to the more Christianised urban population of the later Roman empire), or civilian by the Roman army and hence adopted by Christians to distinguish themselves as “soldiers of Christ” (although I seem to recall the Roman army was big on Mithras until late in the piece).

“The adoption of paganus by the Latin Christians as an all-embracing, pejorative term for polytheists represents an unforeseen and singularly long-lasting victory, within a religious group, of a word of Latin slang originally devoid of religious meaning. The evolution occurred only in the Latin west, and in connection with the Latin church”.

Apparently elsewhere and at other times, “Hellene or gentile remained the word for pagan; and paganos continued as a purely secular term, with overtones of the inferior and the commonplace”.

Which suits me as my paganism is essentially a fusion of Hellenism (alternating with Romanitas) and humanism, with Dionysianism thrown in for the fun of it.

“Owing to the history of its nomenclature, paganism traditionally encompasses the collective pre- and non-Christian cultures in and around the classical world; including those of the Greco-Roman, Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic tribes” – with those of Germanic tribes of course being best known through Norse mythology.

Although I think that overlooks the sphere of Roman Empire beyond Europe, notably in the near East – because I’m determined to get those funky animal-headed Egyptian deities and slinky goddesses in there as well.

“However, modern parlance of folklorists and contemporary pagans in particular has extended the original four millennia scope used by early Christians to include similar religious traditions stretching far into prehistory.”

And some would argue also well beyond Europe, pretty much to all mythologies or religions outside of Christianity, Judaism, Islam or variants of those – with Hinduism, Taoism, Shinto, native American and African diaspora religions looming large in such arguments.

I have a soft spot for the nomenclature of paleopaganism and neopaganism (by neo-pagan Isaac Bonewits), although they are also somewhat amorphous (even more so for his mesopaganism, which largely overlaps with the argument for extending paganism throughout non-Abrahamic mythologies or religions of the world).

Paleopaganism essentially refers to the original ‘paganism’ prior to Christianity – largely unknowable as religious practice, although we come closest with classical Greco-Roman paganism due to the surviving texts.

Neopaganism refers to the modern reconstruction of paganism, which arguably has led to its own distinctive mythology (or synthesis of mythology) – and in the opinion of Ronald Hutton, a distinctively modern religion “and the only religion England has ever given the world” (at least for Wicca or modern ‘witchcraft’, the predominant form of neo-paganism).

I also have a soft spot for polytheism, often asserted as the defining feature of paganism. Monotheism is monopoly! Let the marketplace of gods – and goddesses – decide! A polytheistic view of the world just seems more cheerful and easy-going, where gods can rub shoulders – or other parts – together.

Although paganism is more complex than a straightforward matter of polytheism versus monotheism. Paganism essentially had as many different philosophical variants as Hinduism – including monotheistic or at least henotheistic variants, as well as more outright atheistic, agnostic or humanist variants.

The more popular variants of modern paganism or neopaganism tend more towards either a duotheism of overarching female and male deities, or a goddess monotheism of an overarching sacred feminine or divine female figure. With the emphasis on figure in some cases – but I’m down with that. She is the goddess and this is her body.

I believe in L.A Woman & Mr Mojo Risin’.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT GODDESS-TIER?)

 

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention) (1) Homer – Iliad & Odyssey

Homer Simpson as Odysseus from “D’oh, Brother Where Art Thou?” in “Tales from the Public Domain” (episode 283 – S13 E14) – aptly enough and still one of the best televised adaptations of the Odyssey

 

(1) HOMER – ILIAD & ODYSSEY

 

“Sing, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles”.

Also “tell me, Muse, of the cunning man who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famed city of Troy”

We’re going old school here, the oldest school there is – the Iliad and the Odyssey, the rosy-fingered dawn of Western literature, preceding even literacy as those two epic poems were performed or sung rather than written by their author Homer, with tradition holding that he memorized both and probably changed the story each time he told them. (And no, not that Homer, although I couldn’t resist using him as my feature image). Although everything about Homer – or is that Homers? – is contested, such as whether he was indeed illiterate, or blind, or a man (I do have a soft spot for the theory that while a male Homer authored the Iliad, a female Homer authored the Odyssey), or Greek, or indeed even existed at all, at least as a single person.

“The Greeks held Homer in something like reverence” – as they and everyone else damn well should have or should – “viewing his works as the foundation of their society, in much the same way as modern Europeans view the Bible”. As do I and have since childhood, in which they (or at least the Odyssey) have been hugely influential for me personally, comparable to my god-tier mythologies or books of mythology, such if you were to peel back the layers of my psyche you’d find them deep within it. Of course, that wasn’t because anyone sung them to me – although again they damn well should have – or even that I read them in their original poetic form, but as a prose adaption of the Oydssey for children, which still remains the version of the Odyssey lodged within my psyche. Sadly, I can’t recall the name of its author, except that it was female – aptly enough for that female authorship theory for the Odyssey or both, and aptly enough in that I recall it brought the female characters, upon which its protagonist heavily relies, vividly to life.

Indeed, the Iliad is my Old Testament and the Odyssey is my New Testament. Aptly enough, given the Bronze Age battle hymns of Iliad and Old Testament, or the hero’s return from death in Odyssey and New Testament.

And while we’re on such comparisons, the Second World War is the American Iliad and the Cold War the American Odyssey.

However, I have always preferred the Odyssey to the Iliad. When people think of the Iliad, they usually think of all the things that aren’t actually in it – the whole mythos of the Trojan War in what is usually referred to as the Trojan Cycle. Instead, the Iliad is an incredibly brief snapshot of the Trojan War – a few weeks or so in the final year of a legendary ten year war. And of course most of that is the greatest Greek warrior Achilles sulking in his tent, because the Greek leader Agamemnon deprived him of the booty, in both senses of the word, of a Trojan girl taken captive. Until of course Achilles’ boyfriend Patroclus is killed by the greatest Trojan warrior Hector – at which time, it’s personal. Well until the Trojan king Priam begs Achilles if the latter could please stop dragging Hector’s dead body behind him while doing victory laps in his chariot.

Ultimately though, the Iliad is just men killing each other and squabbling over women. The Odyssey on the other hand is a ten year maritime magical mystery tour – or dare I say it, Poseidon adventure, as the Greek hero Odysseus just tries to return to his kingdom Ithaca after the Trojan War, barely escaping death as he is tossed from flotsam to jetsam in one shipwreck after another from Poseidon’s wrath. I mean, seriously, he could have walked home faster from Turkey to Greece, although Poseidon probably still would have got him somehow. And he loses all his ships and men en route, returning home as lone survivor – and stranger, as even then he has to remain disguised as a beggar to infiltrate his own household and outwit his wife’s persistent suitors partying it up there. And let me tell you, every dog has its day. Literally and heartbreakingly, as he is recognized by his faithful dog Argos who has awaited his return for twenty years (only to finally pass away with that last effort). But also figuratively and with undeniable satisfaction as he outwits and defeats the suitors.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

Top Tens – Miscellany: Top 10 Youtube (Special Mention)

 

What can I say? There’s a lot of Youtube channels out there – more than enough for my usual twenty special mentions I like to have for a top ten, if the subject matter is prolific enough.

 

So these are the special mentions for my Top 10 Youtube list, featuring channels beyond reviewers or commentators in popular culture, film or television to history and other topics – more than half the entries or so for the latter, although of course there are still some of the former. 

 

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (Special Mention)

Free “divine gallery” art sample from OldWorldGods

 

But wait – there’s more mancy!

Of course, you knew that already.

There is a plethora of methods of divination (or types of magic) connoted by the suffix -mancy, indeed so many that I could have done my usual twenty special mentions several times over. Just look at the Wikipedia entry for methods of divination – or the TV Tropes entry for whatevermancy.

As I said in my introduction to the top ten, there is an almost overwhelming number of variants of divination (or magic) with that suffix -mancy, and their sheer abundance has always fascinated me. In part that reflects the ease by which one can coin such a word, usually by combining a Latin or Greek root word with -mancy. However, it predominantly reflects connoting forms of divination actually used by people as observed or recorded in history or anthropology – as people have used almost anything and everything as the magical means of divination.

Of course, some or even many are incredibly particular, esoteric or obscure as a result – to use just one example to illustrate, belomancy (or bolomancy) is the art of divination by use of arrows.

Accordingly, I have continued to prefer the broader brush strokes I used in my top ten for the special mentions as well, although as usual I splash out with some wilder entries in my special mentions.

And once again, it goes without saying that the top ten or special mentions does or do not reflect any personal beliefs in methods of divination or forms of magic, just my interest in them.