I assume this painting in the public domain needs little introduction – Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper painted in 1498, one of the most famous and most imitated paintings
APOSTLES & SAINTS (MUSES): MYTHOLOGY
No, not the usual apostles and saints, the apostles and saints of Christianity, particularly as exemplified by Roman Catholicism (although ironically there is some overlap which I will also feature here) – these are my apostles of the goddess and saints of pagan catholicism.
These are the apostles and saints that I have playfully canonized for the mythos I call home – which I also playfully refer to as my pagan catholicism.
Also the ethos I call home – that classical Greek pagan ethos encapsulated by Weston La Barre as “live valiantly, gloriously and joyously in the world”.
So what are my apostles of the goddess and saints of pagan catholicism?
They are the cultural or literary figures – writers in other words for the latter, predominantly drawn from the authors of my favorite books or literary works – that embody or exemplify the mythos or ethos of paganism, consciously or otherwise (as well as seriously or otherwise – I’m joking and I’m serious!). The apostles of the goddess are my highest class of saint – those saints that spread the gospel of the goddess or that embody or exemplify the mythos or ethos of paganism with particular emphasis on the goddess or goddesses. I also classify my apostles and saints as greater or lesser (essentially based on their iconic status), with the former signified by upper case and the latter by lower case.
Finally, I use the opportunity of my lists for my apostles and saints to also include my muses – that is, the female cultural or literary figures that appeal to or inspire me, again predominantly drawn from the authors of my favorite books or literary works. Of course, most of them rank among my apostles or saints, particularly the former.
Poets and writers of fantasy tend by their very nature to be saints of pagan catholicism, but students of mythology are almost up there with them.
APOSTLES OF THE GODDESS
(1) St. Barbara Walker
Apostle of the goddess with her Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths & Secrets (as well as other works)
(2) ST. ROBERT GRAVES OF THE WHITE GODDESS
The original apostle of the goddess – the White Goddess. For she is the goddess and this is her body
(3) St. Joyce Tyldesley
Egyptologist with her specialty of women in ancient Egypt and goddesses in Egyptian mythology
(4) Discordian Apostles of the Goddess
How I found Goddess – and what I did to Her when I found Her. Apostles of the goddess Eris Discordia – the writers of the Principia Discordia and apostles of Discordianism
(5) ST. APULEIUS OF THE GOLDEN ASS
The original apostle of the goddess or at least the one with the earliest surviving gospel of the goddess – “Queen of Heaven…in whatever aspect, by whatever name, with whatever ceremony we should invoke you”
(6) St. Bettany Hughes of Helen & Aphrodite.
Apostle of Aphrodite – and of Helen of Troy
(7) St. Natalie Haynes
English classicist with her specialty of the women and goddesses of classical mythology
SAINTS OF PAGAN CATHOLICISM
(1) BIBLICAL SAINTS OF PAGAN CATHOLICISM
Or as I like to dub them, double saints – akin to double agents. That is, those saints that are simultaneously saints within Biblical or Christian tradition and also act as saints or agents of pagan catholicism. They’re surprisingly prolific – so much so that there’s enough for their own separate list.
(2) ST. HOMER OF THE ILIAD & ODYSSEY
Need I say more? Author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the rosy-fingered dawn of Western literature and classical mythology. Even more so as he (or she or they?) went round singing it from memory, truly an epic level of bard
(3) St. Katherine Briggs of Fairy
The classic British folklorist, particularly of fairy folklore
(4) St. Peter Dickinson of Dragons
Canonized for his “natural history” of dragons that makes you believe in their reality
(5) ST. JOSEPH CAMPBELL OF HERO
Saint of the heroic monomyth in The Hero with a Thousand Faces – the archetypal heroic narrative which has influenced mythology and literary or writing studies ever since, most notably including George Lucas’ Star Wars
(6) SS. Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant of Symbols
Canonized for their Penguin Dictionary of Symbols
(7) St. Weston La Barre of the Ghost Dance
Canonised for his deliciously snarky magnum opus The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion, presenting all religions as shamanic in nature and ghost dances at heart
(8) St. Ronald Hutton
The foremost contemporary scholar of neopaganism, druids, shamans, witches, and more.
(9) SAINTS OF TAROT
Essentially any creators of Tarot decks – foremost among them SS. Pamela Coleman Smith and Arthur Waite of Tarot as creators of the definitive and most influential modern Tarot deck. (And no – I refuse to canonize Aleister Crowley, even as creator of the other definitive modern Tarot deck, although I’m prepared to beatify his artist Lady Frieda Harris)
(10) SAINTS OF THE FOLKLORE INDEX
SS. Antti Aarne, Stith Thompson, and Hans Jorg Uther – canonized as creators of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index and Thompson Motif-Index of Folklore-Literature
(11) ST. THOMAS BULFINCH
Sadly not quite how I’d like to imagine him – as a banker by day and Bacchanalian by night – but more of an accidental saint of pagan catholicism, as compiler of his classic reference Bulfinch’s mythology
(12) ST. E. COBHAM BREWER OF PHRASE & FABLE
As an ordained Reverend perhaps even more incongruously saint of pagan catholicism than Thomas Bulfinch but similarly earns his sainthood as compiler of the classic Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
(13) ST. JAMES GEORGE FRAZER OF THE GOLDEN BOUGH
Saint of the monomyth of the sacrificial sacred king and dying-resurrecting god of fertility
(14) St. Walter Burkert
Pretty much any scholar of classical mythology – or “classics” in general as it is termed in academia – ranks as a saint of pagan catholicsm by nature. St Walter Burkert earns his canonization more than most for his landmark study Greek Religion
(15) SS. Richard Barber & Anne Riches of Fabulous Beasts
Canonized for their dictionary of that title for legendary creatures
(16) SS. Alberto Manguel & Gianni Guadalupi of Imaginary Places
Canonized for their dictionary of that title for legendary geography
(17) St. Michael Jordan of Gods
Canonized for his encyclopedia of gods. Bonus points for featuring God as one god among many
(18) St. Jonathan Kirsch
It may seem surprising that I canonized an author who writes almost entirely about the Bible as a saint of pagan catholicism but there you have it. After all, I’ve canonized my Biblical saints of pagan catholicism so why not Kirsch? Kirsch has written some of my favorite pagan Biblical studies, in effect if not intent – looking at the more graphic or problematic content of the Bible, the type that has people exclaim what do you mean THAT’S in the Bible?!
(19) St. John Lindow
Canonized for his encyclopediac reference to Norse mythology
(20) St. Camilla Townsend
Scholar of Aztec mythology
(21) St. Charles Fort of the Super-Sargasso Sea
Creator of the modern mythology of anomalies named for him as Forteana – and proclaimed with tongue in cheek “I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written”
(22) St. Jans Harold Brunsvand
The foremost chronicler of the modern mythology of urban legends
(23) Saints of the Church of the Sub-Genius
Eternal salvation or triple your money back!
Similar to the apostles of Discordianism, except that the Church of the Sub-Genius does not have the same focus on a supreme goddess (with the arguable exception of Connie Dobbs, wife of their prophet J. R. “Bob”Dobbs) – a joke disguised as a religion or a religion disguised as a joke
(24) ST. EURIPIDES OF BACCHAE
Evangelist of the gospel of Dionysus
(25) St. Paul Robichaud of Pan
Evangelist of the gospel of Pan
(26) ST. LAO TZU OF TAO
Evangelist of the Tao, which I rank within the broad church of catholic paganism
(27) ST. THOMAS MALORY OF ARTHUR
Evangelist of King Arthur – fifteenth century writer of the definitive version of Arthurian legend in popular culture, Le Morte d’Arthur.
(28) St. H.A. Guerber
American writer of “lively retelling of myths” in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century
(29) ST. MIRCEA ELIADE
Saint of “the nostalgia for Paradise…the desire to find oneself always and without effort in the center of the world, at the heart of reality” – one of the foremost scholars of mythology, close to Campbell albeit without the same name recognition in popular culture and imagination
(30) SS. Wil Huygen & Rien Poortvliet of Gnomes
“Jesus, read a coffee table book”
Similar to Peter Dickinson with dragons, canonized for an iconic “natural history” of gnomes that makes you believe in their reality
MUSES
To restate my muses that have already featured among my apostles of the goddess or saints of pagan catholicism above:
APOSTLES OF THE GODDESS
(1) Barbara Walker
(2) Joyce Tydlesley
(3) Bettany Hughes
(4) Natalie Haynes
SAINTS OF PAGAN CATHOLICISM
(5) Katherine Briggs
(6) Anne Riches
(7) Camilla Townsend
(8) H.A. Guerber
To which I add the further following muses:
(9) Natalie Lawrence
Author of Enchanted Creatures
(10) Catherine Johns
Author of S€x or Symbol: Er0tic Images of the Greeks and Romans
MUSES (SPECIAL MENTION)
(1) BIBLE
Wait, what? Women wrote the Bible? Or parts of it?
Probably not, at least for the written text of it.
However, there are some hypotheses to the contrary, although they seem improbable.
American Biblical scholar Richard Friedman proposed that J – the name given to one of the major sources of the Old Testament, from Jahwist or Yahwist because of its characteristic use of Jehovah or Yahweh for God (as opposed to Elohim by the Elohist or E – may be a woman but that really was a theory based on the vibe. That is, that J seemed to write from or favoring the perspective of a woman.
There are similar theories, although the only one on a similar scale is for the New Testament – that the third gospel or Gospel of Luke and its sequel the Acts of the Apostles may have been written by a woman, proposed by at least one scholar to have been St Paul’s companion Thecla.
On a smaller scale, there are also theories that the New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews may have been written by an early Christian missionary Priscilla, as well as theories that the Old Testament Book of Ruth was written by a woman, consistent with its narrative of a female convert to the Israelite faith.
Even without female authorship of any written text of the Bible, it is usually acknowledged that the written text originated from preceding oral traditions – that is, accounts or stories told in (memorized) spoken form before they were recorded in written form.
Hence it seems probable that at least parts of this oral tradition originated with or were propagated by women, just as with other oral traditions – the archetypal old wives’ tales without the pejorative connotations. Indeed, this seems inherent in the narrative of the written text itself, where parts could only have originated with women – with perhaps the best example being the narrative of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, at those times when the male disciples of Jesus had fled and only the female disciples remained.
In any event, the writers of the Bible have given us some of the most memorable, vivid, and enduring female characters in Western literature, so I feel they’re due at least an honorary muse award – if not for themselves then at least for their characters.
(2) HOMER – ODYSSEY
Wait, what? Homer was a woman?
Probably not – although the so-called Homeric Question as to the identity of Homer as one or more poets remains. Or rather Homeric Questions, since the identity of Homer as one or more poets is only one aspect – and even that comprises more than one question, with further queries as to whether the Iliad and the Odyssey were of single or multiple authorship.
But yes – there has been some speculation that Homer was a woman, or at least the Homer that wrote the Odyssey was a woman, most famously proposed by nineteenth century English writer Samuel Butler.
That seems improbable and more a vibe, based on the larger role of female characters in the Odyssey and its predominant theme of homecoming – but Butler took that vibe and ran with it, speculating not just a woman but a young Sicilian woman.
I don’t know if it was Butler, Robert Graves who developed the theory further in his novel Homer’s Daughter, or someone else following in Butler’s footsteps but I understand that the theory is even proposed that it was a woman much like Nausicaa who inserted herself in the story as that character.
Whoever they were, the author (or authors) of the Iliad and Odyssey have, like the authors of the Bible, given us some of the most memorable, vivid and enduring female characters in Western literature so they’re getting an honorary muse award.
(3) TAROT
We’re in solid muse special mention territory with the Tarot.
There are many modern versions of the Tarot, many of which created or designed by women. More fundamentally, the two definitive modern versions of the Tarot – the Rider-Waite Tarot and the Crowley Thoth Tarot – may have been designed by men, A.E. Waite and Aleister Crowley respectively, but it was female artists who created them, Pamela Colman Smith and Lady Frieda Harris respectively. Smith is sometimes acknowledged in variant titles such as Waite-Smith Tarot or Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot.
(4) FOLKLORE
This special mention entry is prompted by the Folklore Index or more precisely Indices – the Arne-Thompson-Uther Index or the Motif-Index of Folk Literature (by the same Thompson as that for the Arne-Thompson-Uther Index).
Now, none of those – Arne, Thompson or Uther – were women but I’m opening this entry up to folklore itself. Women have undoubtedly contributed to the formation or propagation of folklore, and perhaps even played the predominant role in doing so for some areas of folklore.
(5) WHITE GODDESS
O yes – the Gospel of the Goddess according to Robert Graves.
Graves’ White Goddess was not only a muse for himself but has subsequently served as a muse for others in paganism or popular culture.
More fundamentally, this entry is for the actual woman that served as muse for Graves writing the White Goddess – Laura Riding.