Word: ancient
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Oral literature throve in Ancient Greece and, less celbratedly among the ancient Celts and Mesopotamians, and even among some modern-day Yugoslavs. Harvard's lecture halls, with their crowds of literate students, would not seem fertile territory for this genre...
...there's a bard here, who each year steps onto the stage of Sanders Theater to infect students with his love for ancient legends. Unbowed by his decades of teaching, Albert Lord is himself the most legendary of Harvard professors still actively teaching undergraduates, the kind of man today's students will remember 20 years hence the way returning alumni now recall John Finley...
...European cultures for alternative social models. Explaining paganism's curious fascination for them, New Right Journalist Louis Pauwels says, "We do not wish to burn Bibles or churches, but their message is only part of the European tradition." Just as important, says Pauwels, are "the mores of the ancient pagan cultures and heroes like Prometheus and Faust, who show that man is made to conquer the world...
Originally, modern interest in ancient pagan practices was spurred by research early in this century by British Anthropologist Margaret Murray, who sought to dispel folklore that witches were invariably malevolent. But today's neopagan movement has its roots in the counterculture. Though many neopaganists live otherwise ordinary lives as, say, bank tellers or bartenders, others gather in communes. Psychologists say that neopaganism functions as a form of "folk therapy," a sort of ritualized search for self-worth in an increasingly complex society...
Modern pagan groups tend to be small (at most 20 members) and eclectic, drawing their beliefs from such diverse sources as ancient Egypt, the Druids, Greek and Roman antiquity and the American Indian religions. But the groups share some tenets. Most believe in reincarnation" and in a universe ruled by a supreme godhead comprising two parts: a male half, which includes the sun, and a female half, which includes the moon. The distaff side is frequently considered to have more status, which makes neopaganism especially attractive to some feminists...