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From: nagasiva@yronwode.com (nagasiva)
Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.satanism,alt.religion.satanism,talk.religion.misc,alt.magick.tantra,alt.mythology
Subject: Re: The Black Dog
Date: 27 Aug 1998 18:50:57 -0700
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980827 IIIom

catherine yronwode <cat@luckymojo.com>:
>> |I am researching black dog cults around the world right now....

the only other item I could find on Myrddin and Black Dog was what
RJStewart writes that considering the _Vita Merlini_:

	There are two further aspects which connect harmonically
	to both Tarot images and to Merlin's own period as a
	wild man of the woods....

	[The tarotic Fool], like Merlin, is led by a totem
	canine beast, in this case a dog.  

	...Merlin becomes Lord of the Animals [note that this
	is also an epithet of some of Siva's cognates],
	leading a herd of stags and goats, while riding upon
	a great stag.  Merlin, in his wildwood phase, is
	connected to the stag and therefore to the hunt that
	leads to sacrificial death.  In Celtic myth, the
	souls of the dead are pursued across the sky by a
	Wild Hunt led by the god of death and the Underworld....

	The Wild Hunt is associated with the festival of
	Hallowe'en, at which time the spirits of the dead
	are said to be close to the world of the living,
	and the gates between the worlds open wide.  

	...

	Merlin.... ...teaches through example and through
	symbols of insight, rather than direct or 
	instructional exposition.  Towards the close of
	his life, Merlin grows beyond prophetic powers
	and retires to the woods for spiritual contemplation.

	The older elements of Merlin are connected to a
	primal, seasonal myth in which a wild man of the
	woods, ruler of the animals, relates to a flower
	maiden who represernts the fertile earth.  The
	seasonal cycle is partly reflected in the progress
	of Merlin during the narrative development of the
	[_Vita Merlini_].
	
	Merlin also commands certain cosmic or transcendent
	powers of vision; these are the ultimate end of
	prophecy rather than mere far-sight or prediction.
	In this role he is intimately connected to a female
	divinity, who appears as either a guiding or enabling
	figure (Minerva) or a weaving power who both assembles 
	and unravels the solar system (Ariadne).
	---------------------------------------------------
	_The Mystic Life of Merlin_, by RJStewart, 
		Arkana Books, 1986; pp. 73, 197-8.
	__________________________________________,

ps, the NTolstoy book was published in 1985.
blessed beast!
nagasiva
-- 
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