The Shoe Tree is dead. Long live the Shoe Tree. I learned about Nevada’s Shoe Tree on the “Loneliest Road in the World” from a touching article in the Los Angeles Times. In December 2010, this modern-day sacred tree was cut down by vandals with a chainsaw, after serving as a curious and cryptic symbol in [...]
Mythphile
all the myth that’s fit to print
Browsing the blog archives for February, 2011
12 Feb 11
Sopdet, Egypt’s Herald of the New Year
Set your calendars, Egypt. No, not for 2/11/2011. (Congratulations and good luck!) I’m talking about August 2nd, when a very old Egyptian goddess is set to rise. Like most agrarian societies, the Egyptians watched the skies closely. They needed some sort of calendar to tell them when to plant and plan their harvests. The regular [...]
1 Feb 11
The Curious Myth of Groundhog Day
Groundhog Day Ceremony Photo Credit: Aaron E. Silvers, CC America’s Groundhog Day, February 2nd, is a puzzling, fascinating, contradictory calendrical festival whose roots may go back to pre-Christian European traditions — and then again, they may not. What fascinates me about Groundhog Day is that it seems to follow the same pattern as many ancient [...]