Bibliomancy: The Story of My Life in the Form of a Cut-Up of Random Quotes from the Books on My Desk

Bluejay once went to visit the Shadows, although he did not know whom he could make friends with there. [1]

I beheld two youths with yellow curling hair, each with a frontlet of gold upon his head, and clad in a garment of yellow satin, and they had gold clasps upon their insteps. In the hand of each was an ivory bow, strung with the sinews of the stag; and their arrows had shafts of the bone of the whale, and were winged with peacock’s feathers; the shafts also had golden heads. And they had daggers with blades of gold, and with hilts of the bone of the whale. [2]

And when Scathach saw that, she said: “I think this young man has pleased you.” And Uacthach said: “There would be great grief on me indeed, were he not to return alive to his own people, in whatever part of the world they may be.” [3]

The King is come; deal mildly with his youth,
For young hot colts being raged do rage the more. [4]

Telemachus – so grand, impetuous
an orator – it’s time to set aside
the hostile speech and deeds your thoughts devise. [5]

So Spider Woman directed the people to make round, flat boats of the hollow reeds they had come in and to crawl inside. Again they entrusted themselves to the water and the inner wisdom to guide them. For a long time they drifted with the wind and the movement of the waters and came to another rocky island. [6]

And then her eyes took in the ancient forests,
the inmost groves, the grottoes, and the flowers—
those countless points of color on the meadows.
She said the daughters of Mnemosyne,
in what they did and where they lived, were blessed. [7]

Then in the grass the golden figures,
the far-famed ones, will be found again,
which they had owned in olden days. [8]

I came into being from out of primeval matter, and from the beginning I appeared under the form of the multitudinous things which exist. [9]

***

[1 - Folk-Tales of the Coast Salish ed. Thelma Adamson, “The Bungling Host” (Third Version) p. 9]
[2 - The Mabinogion trans. Lady Charlotte E. Guest, from “The Lady of the Fountain” p. 140]
[3 - Lady Gregory’s Complete Irish Mythology, “Cuchulain of Muirthemne,” p. 359]
[4 – William Shakespeare’s Richard II (Act II, Scene 1, 69-70)]
[5 – The Odyssey of Homer trans. Allen Mandelbaum, II.305-307]
[6 - Primal Myths: Creating the World ed. Barbara C. Sproul, “Hopi: The Emergence,” p. 281 (excerpt from The Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters)]
[7 – The Metamorphoses of Ovid trans. Allen Mandelbaum, V. 264-268]
[8 - The Poetic Edda trans. Lee M. Hollander, Völuspá 60]
[9 - Legends of the Egyptian Gods trans. E.A. Wallis Budge, “The History of Creation—B,” p. 9]

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Posted by Ryan on November 14, 2012

http://paganreveries.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/bibliomancy-the-story-of-my-life-in-the-form-of-a-cut-up-of-random-quotes-from-the-books-on-my-desk/