Thecla's "Identity"

Lee Berman · 10 Apr 2013, 18:02 · from 2013-April.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:02:30 -0400
Subject: (urth) Thecla's "Identity"
Message-ID: <BLU175-W3F06D08D27BE35D251B45CFC70 at phx.gbl>

>Ross Arlen Tieken: Remember Wolfe is from Texas. Vegetarians 
>aren't "normal" here (in Texas), but those who have religious reasons 
>to do so receive high respect.
>Also, I am a scholar of Neo-Paganism, and did some anthropological 
>work in England with them for about six weeks. Their attitudes are not 
>as simple as you recount them here; they are far more modern and 
>dependent on modern attitudes, and far more influenced by Golden Dawn 
>practices, which is sort of a hyper-modern ceremonial magic.

Thanks Ross. I found the Texan view of vegetarianism to be interesting and
relevant.

With regard to neo-pagans, I didn't mean to simplify or imply I had any sort
of authority or final word on the subject.  We have this limited format to
work within as we post...

I find the neo-pagan anthropology topic and your research to be completely 
fascinating but I'm not sure how relevant your studies are to an understanding of
Gene Wolfe. BotNS was written largely in the late 70's and I must think 
Severian's philosophy was derived from that time period not a more modern era of
neo-paganism. Perhaps things have not changed so much in the past 30-40 years? I 
don't know.  But my impression is that paganism back then was a more naive, 
hippie-ish, retro- sort of faith and philosophy than it is now.

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